Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 109

A week later, it was raining and warm; the deep freeze that had gripped the city so severely was gone, and the snow had turned into slush and puddles. But that would not stop me from taking my wife out for dinner and dancing on New Year’s Eve. We were going to double-date with John Sampson and his wife, Billie. We’d done it up right, rented a car and driver to chauffeur us to our dinner at the rooftop-terrace restaurant of the W Hotel-best view in the city-and then across the river to the Havana Breeze Latin Club in Fairfax for a little salsa, a little merengue.

Why not? We were all in a mood to celebrate, and a jazz club just wasn’t going to do it. After all, we’d not only put Hala Al Dossari and her coconspirators in prison, we’d also foiled their ultimate plot, which was a doozy.

Documents that we’d discovered in the terrorists’ van laid out the plan: The stolen chemicals were to be held for twenty-six days in a basement apartment Nazad had rented on Capitol Hill. Early on the morning of January 20, Nazad, a trained chemist, would mix the organophosphates in a rented five-hundred-gallon water tank. Then he and his accomplices would put the tank full of the crude nerve-gas agent in the back of a pickup truck and skirt the closed roads in the city until they got upwind of the Capitol.

Then they would all don masks, do the final mix, and spray the chemicals up into the prevailing winds, in the hope that the toxic vapor cloud would drift over the massive crowds gathered on the National Mall and across to the back steps of the Capitol, where the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court would be swearing in the president of the United States.

It was so crazy, it might have worked. Hundreds, maybe thousands might have died. The president might have died, and the justices, and every member of Congress. It was so crazy, I didn’t want to think about it anymore, I decided at around six that New Year’s Eve as I waited in the kitchen for Bree to finish with her hair and finally choose the dress she was going to wear for our big night out on the town.

My younger son, Ali, and Jannie and Ava were devouring a plate of fried rabbit, one of my grandmother’s specialties. Ava had balked at the idea at first, but once she saw Jannie and Ali tearing into it, she’d tried it, and now she was on her second piece.

“Good, huh?” I asked.

“Better than good,” Ava said. “I had no idea rabbit could taste this amazing. Like chicken, but way, way better.”

“It’s the buttermilk,” Nana Mama said, looking pleased as she scrubbed out the cast-iron skillet she’d used to fry the rabbit. “I soak the meat in buttermilk overnight to make it tender like that.”

“Damon’s gonna be mad when he hears you made fried rabbit after he went back to school,” Jannie remarked.

“Damon could have stayed home until tomorrow,” my grandmother responded. “He chose to go back early.”

“To get ahead on his studies,” I reminded her.

“Can’t fault him for that,” Nana Mama allowed. “But even the best choices sometimes have adverse consequences.”

“Like missing fried rabbit,” Ali said.

Nana smiled and pointed at her great-grandson. “See there? Always said you were a smart, smart boy.”

Ali grinned from ear to ear and reached for the last piece of rabbit, but Ava got to it first. He groaned.

“I’ll split it with you,” Ava said.

My grandmother squinted in my direction. “How you doing?”

“Twenty-four hours since my last pain pill and it doesn’t bark at me unless I move it,” I said, glancing down at my right arm, which was in a sling.

I’d broken my clavicle, dislocated my shoulder, and cracked the head of my humerus bone falling as I tried to get out of the way of the bulldozer. A surgeon had put me back together four days ago. In three months, he’d said, I’d be good as new.

Bree came into the kitchen wearing a very flattering black cocktail dress and a pair of black stiletto heels.

Nana Mama whistled at her. So did I.

“You really going to go out with Alex looking like that?” my grandmother asked in a playful tone.

Bree’s face fell. “What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that outfit,” Nana Mama replied. “Everything’s right with that outfit. But look at the man who’s going with you to ring in the New Year. Arm in a sling, looking all beat-up. People’ll think you got to be his nurse. That’s not the kind of man you want holding your hand when you’re dressed like you’re in a movie or something.”

Everyone was laughing, including me.

Bree threw her arms around my neck, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “Honey, from where I’m standing, you’re looking fine.”

“Even with a busted shoulder?” I said.

“You wear it well,” she assured me, and she kissed me again before looking at my grandmother. “Am I right?”

Nana Mama tried to look skeptical, but then she cracked up.

The doorbell rang. The driver had come for us. Nana Mama and the kids watched us through the front window as we were driven away. Dinner was off-the-charts great. So was the Chilean wine Sampson ordered.

We got to the Havana Breeze around ten thirty, took a booth, and ordered mojitos. Billie told Sampson she wanted to dance right away.

“Who can argue with that?” he replied.

They went out on the dance floor. I was nursing my drink and having a good old time watching my towering best friend try to samba with Billie, who even in high heels barely reached his chest.

“You’re something, I ever tell you that, Alex?” Bree asked.

I glanced over at my wife, who looked dazzling.

“What nonsense are you talking now, woman?” I asked.

Bree smiled, shook her head, said, “No, seriously. I don’t know how you do it, but despite all the chaos you get yourself into and out of, you find a way to keep your balance. I love the fact that even though you’re called into these horrible situations where you see the worst in people, you somehow manage to remain a fundamentally good person.”

I flashed on the hooded men behind Hala Al Dossari’s children. I felt my expression darken, and I looked away from her, saying, “I don’t know about that sometimes.”

She took my chin, turned my face back to her. “Listen to me. You, Alex Cross, are the best man I know.”

I looked into her eyes, hating the fact that I had to keep things from her, hating the fact that I had already secretly met with Father Harris twice so I could try to make sense of what Ned and I had done to prevent a nerve-gas attack on Inauguration Day.

I kissed Bree, said, “And you’re the best woman I’ve ever known.”

A hip-moving salsa tune came over the speakers.

“So let’s dance,” I said.

“You want me to dance with a man in a sling?” Bree asked.

“Uh, you said I wore it well.”

“Did I say that?” she asked, watching me.

“You did,” I said. I slid from the booth and held out my good hand for her.

My wife took it, smiled, and got up. But she hesitated at moving to the dance floor, leaned into me, and said over the pulsing music: “Alex, are you all right?”

“I have the sexiest, most beautiful woman in the club with me,” I replied. “It’s almost twelve. And we’re about to ring in the New Year in each other’s arms. How could I not be all right?”