Джеймс Паттерсон: The People vs. Alex Cross

“Shut up. Get on your knees. Both of you.”

I stood my ground. So did Bree.

I said, “Your mother stumbled when she came into view. Did you push your mother, Dylan? Did she know what you meant to have happen?”

“Lying again.” He sneered. “Making shit up. It’s what you do, Cross. But not this time. This time, you’re gonna die. Like you should have before.”

I heard the click of the revolver’s hammer cocking.

“Don’t do it,” Bree said. “Killing cops never ends well.”

“I don’t care,” Dylan said. “This is where I end too. Once I see you both—”

I caught a flicker of movement behind and to his right a split second before Soneji’s son screamed and spun around, firing. The shot hit the porch ceiling.

Plaster dust and splinters hit me in the face as I charged, smashed my shoulder into his rib cage, and drove him hard against the railing. I heard ribs crack and saw all the wind go out of him before I dragged him to the porch floor and pinned him.

Bree kicked away his gun, backed up, and turned on the porch light.

Dylan Winslow lay under me, gasping for air, one hand groping for the vanes and shaft of the competition dart buried deep in the left side of his neck.

“Who’s the brat now, jackass?” Ali cried, leaping onto the porch, pumping his fist, and then pointing a finger triumphantly at Soneji’s kid. “I smoked you with a ten-ringer from thirty-five feet!”

Late the following April, Ali and I drove out to Assateague State Park on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It was a glorious spring day, unnaturally warm, and it felt good in my bones when I climbed from the car after parking beside a familiar Jeep Wagoneer.

“Why would Mr. Aaliyah want to teach me to fish?” Ali said, coming around the back. “He doesn’t even know me.”

“He’s heard of you. Besides, he likes to teach kids to fish.”

“Why?”

“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”

Ali gave me a funny face. “Who said that?”

“Someone smarter than me,” I said as a Volvo pulled into the lot.

A woman in her thirties with ash-blond hair climbed out and looked over at us uncertainly. “The beach isn’t far, is it?”

“Just over the dunes,” I said and motioned to Ali to kick off his sneakers.

Barefoot, we walked the sand path through the dunes. My ankle didn’t feel too bad at all, and there was a nice breeze blowing that smelled like spring.

“What’s going to happen to him, Dad?” Ali said. “Dylan Winslow?”

“That’s out of my hands. He’ll get his day in court.”

“I heard Bree say they think something’s wrong with his brain.”

That was sadly true and, if the doctors’ suspicions proved correct, unsurprising. Dylan had been born on the wrong end of a DNA chain, one where psychopathic tendencies were passed on by a criminally insane father and first expressed through a delight in torturing defenseless animals. Abetting the murder of his mother and then attempting to murder us were natural progressions for him, in some ways as predictable as diseases.

“Doctors are looking at that possibility,” I said. “If so, Dylan will go to an institution for people like that.”

We emerged on the beach. The sky was ridiculously blue. The sea heaved and rolled in a deeper azure. Early-season sunbathers and a smattering of fishermen dotted the pristine sand.

“That guy’s got a big fish!” Ali said, pointing to a man pulling one ashore.

“Nice one.”

“I like this place, Dad. I want to learn to fish.”

“Thought you might.”

We walked south a hundred yards and found Bernie Aaliyah and his daughter, Tess, waiting for us.

“Heard a lot about you, kid,” Bernie said, shaking Ali’s hand. “Remind me not to get between you and a dartboard.”

Ali grinned, and I knew they were going to be buds. Bernie started to show Ali how the tackle worked. I went to Tess, said, “Long time, no see.”

She put her hands in her back pockets, said, “I’m doing better. Most days.”

“Take a stroll?”

“Why not?”

We walked back the way I’d come.

“I’ve heard rumors of you leaving Metro,” Tess said. “On to bigger and better things.”

“It’s true,” I said, and I explained the deal I’d forged.

Similar to Rawlins, I was now an independent contractor for the FBI, working as a consultant on the most sensitive and high-profile cases. The same was true with Metro.

“I was getting restless,” I said. “I needed a new challenge, and I’ll get it. And because I’ll be called to work only the most demanding cases, I’ll have time to dedicate to my counseling practice, where I find a lot of personal fulfillment.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“I think so.”

I saw the ash-blond woman from the parking lot walking our way. She’d put on big sunglasses and a tennis visor and held the hand of a pretty young girl in pigtails who wore pink culottes and carried a little bucket and shovel.

“Detective Aaliyah?” the woman said.

Tess pulled her head back, clearly not recognizing her.

The woman glanced at me and then took off her sunglasses. “My name is Patricia Phelps.”

Tess took a sharp breath. Her shaking hands traveled to her lips in disbelief. The mother of the little girl she’d shot was standing right there.

“I’ll let you two talk,” I said, and I walked toward the dunes.

I climbed up on one and sat on top for the longest time, rubbing my ankle and watching life play out on the beach below me. I saw Patricia Phelps forgive Tess Aaliyah as she’d promised she would. Tess fell into the woman’s arms, and later they built a sand castle with Meagan, the little girl.

It took a while, but Ali finally got the hang of casting and later hooked his first fish, a nice striper. He danced all around, throwing his hands up in the air, and I could hear his shouts of victory over the surf.

I smiled and gazed beyond the breaking waves to the sea and the far horizon, feeling that these kinds of moments, these small triumphs, were more than enough to keep me working for the good in the world despite all the dark webs I’d been thrust into over the course of my life.