Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 49

Hala Al Dossari is back in DC, I thought, sitting in the passenger seat of a blue Jeep Grand Cherokee that had come to get me.

A doctor by training, a jihadist by choice, Hala was a member of Al Ayla, the Family, a terrorist organization seeded and rooted in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and subsequently transplanted to the United States. At the moment, Hala occupied slot number six on the FBI’s ten most wanted list, sought in connection with the poisoning of the Washington, DC, water supply the prior summer and suspected in the murders of at least six Saudi expatriates, including her late husband, Tariq.

I understood why Mahoney had called me. We’d worked together trying to catch Al Dossari after the water incident. I’d even helped construct an extensive profile of her.

But my mind would not call up the details. As we drove through the city, I stared out the windows. I couldn’t believe how much snow there was. It looked like an avalanche had hit Washington. But wreaths still hung on doors, and Christmas trees still lit windows. Seemed like everybody in the District had given up on going outside and settled in for a sweet night. Everybody, of course, except me.

When do I start saying no, I thought, instead of just reacting to whatever crisis life sends my way? When do I begin to live Alex Cross’s life? I mean really live it. Here I was, blessed with terrific kids and a grandmother who was as healthy as a twenty-year-old and as smart as the Sphinx. And then there was the miracle of Bree. I’d found someone wonderful to love me just when I’d thought romance had left me lame at the starting gate.

When was I going to have the chance to enjoy life?

I called home, wanting at least to tell Bree that I was feeling these things.

The phone at my house rang. Then it rang some more. And some more. Then the damn thing kept ringing. In my mind, I could see and hear the scene at home where that phone was ringing.

Nana Mama would most likely say something like “If you don’t want a slap on the wrist, then I advise you not to answer the phone.”

“But Nana,” Damon would say, “what if it isn’t Dad calling? What if it’s somebody else?”

“Well, whoever it is should have called earlier,” she would reply.

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“They should call 911.”

I hung up and then pressed Redial. The ringing started in again, and I had a vision of Nana coolly saying something along the lines of “I wonder who that could be?”

I hung up and stared morosely out the window. My family knew what a detective’s life was like. Bad guys don’t take holidays. They show up anytime, anyplace. Not just on a summer Sunday afternoon when you’re sitting and painting a fence, but also on a Christmas afternoon when you’re sitting and having dinner.

They all knew my job was an emergency-type job, like being a doctor or a firefighter. On top of that, it was a tough job. And beyond that…beyond that…Well, beyond that, I wished someone would answer the damn phone. Because they were my family, and I was really missing them.

That longing remained as we passed through police lines that closed off Louisiana Avenue for two blocks between C Street and Massachusetts Avenue, including most of lower Senate Park. The road had already been plowed on both sides. But the only vehicles visible on that stretch of Louisiana were two black motor homes idling near D Street, wheels buried in the snow.