James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

“No,” Fowler said. “I’m enjoying his suffering.”

“Then let someone else in there go. One of your children.”

Silence, and then he said, “A goodwill gesture, isn’t that what you said it would be?”

“That’s right.”

“Wish granted,” he said. “I’m sending out the only one in this house I really care about.”

Nu knocked on the wall, signaled me toward the van’s side window. I got up, saw the front door open. A black Labrador retriever with a red bow around its neck slunk out, and it startled and began to run away, its tail between its legs, when the door slammed shut.

Fowler was definitely toying with us, demonstrating that even when he was in mortal danger, with threats from the snipers and SWAT assaulters all around him, he was the one who decided who lived, who died. I could have gone the anger route, called him on it, put more pressure on him, but something told me it would backfire.

“You love your dog, Fowler?” I asked.

“What kind of man doesn’t love his dog?” he replied sharply.

“A man who has a cat,” I said.

“Funny, Cross.”

“I appreciate you letting the dog go,” I said. “What’s the dog’s name?”

“Mindy,” Fowler said.

“We thank you for releasing Mindy, and I assure you she’ll be well cared for. But I need more, Fowler, if I’m going to keep these trained professionals from kicking down your door and trying to blow your head off before you can hurt anyone else.”

A long silence. “Like what?”

I looked over at Nu and McGoey and then said, “I want to come in again-with medical personnel. I want to take Barry out of there.”

Fowler began to scream, finally going rhino. We heard things breaking, and then he came back on the line. “I don’t care what you want! I want what I want! Barry’s going to die! Got that? He’s going to die for what he did to me! And so is my ex-wife. They took my life! Now I’m going to take theirs. I am going to kill them all.”

“I’m coming in, Henry,” I said. “Right now.”

But he’d hung up.

“Pancakes or waffles?” Nana asked in a voice so cheerful that everybody knew it was put on. Add to that the fact that both Jannie (always pro-waffle) and Damon (fiercely pro-pancake) said they didn’t really care, and it was obvious that worry about Alex had pretty much sucked the joy right out of the holiday.

“It’s Christmas,” Nana finally said. “Why don’t I just make both? Pancakes and waffles coming up!”

No response from the kids.

Suddenly Nana yanked off her apron and flung it to the kitchen floor. “Enough of this!” she shouted and began to march up and down, swinging her fists like she was punching the heavy bag in the basement.

That got everyone’s attention.

“Now, you all listen to me,” Nana said, snatching up a wooden mixing spoon and shaking it at them. “I don’t like this terrible situation any more than you do. I’ve got a grandson who’s missing for Christmas. Does it make me gloomy? Does it make me angry? Does it make me sad?”

She peered around at them in the intimidating way she’d perfected as a vice principal. “The answer to all three of those questions is yes. It certainly does. My heart’s as heavy as yours. I could burst into tears any minute. Fact is, I did, twice last night, and I may do it again. But the truth is, life has to be lived. This Christmas is today. Now. This Christmas will never come again. And I don’t mean to be giving a holiday sermon, but Christmas is about hope and faith. And we’d all better realize that, you hear me? Hope and faith. You hear me?”

Except for bacon popping in the frying pan, the room was silent.

“I said- you hear me? ”

“It’s hard to feel hope and faith when you’re sick to your stomach,” said Jannie. “No one who doesn’t live in a police family can understand what this feels like, Nana.”

“It sucks,” Damon added.

“I don’t disagree with any of that,” their great-grandmother said. “If it were easy, I wouldn’t have to be delivering this lecture.”

“Okay, we embrace hope and faith,” Bree said. She squeezed Nana’s shoulders and gave her a kiss. “At least, I do.”

“Now, that’s fine,” Nana said. “I hope your stepchildren will have the same common sense. Now, whoever dropped my apron on the floor, please pick it up and give it to me.”

Everyone laughed…a little.

“Then we’ll have a real fine breakfast,” she went on. “And then we’ll go into the living room, and we’ll each open up one gift. And then…”

“Then what?” Ava asked.

“Then Damon will go out and shovel the front walk. So when his father gets home we can all go to church. ”

“You are not going back in there,” Lieutenant Nu said. “I’ll never be able to look your wife in the eye again.”

“Join the club on that one,” I said, jumping up. “But I’ve got to go back in there, or that doctor is dead and maybe the others too. And I have a plan.”

“And that plan is?” McGoey asked.

I told Nu that while I’d slept, part of my mind must have worked out what was really behind Fowler’s fall from glory and his actions of the past twenty-four hours.

“We can use it, I think,” I said, and I told them what I was considering.

“Shit,” Nu grumbled. “You do have to go back in there.”

He hustled me into a SWAT armored vest, and I went back out into the blizzard once more. It was six thirty, a pale winter dawn, the second time I crossed Thirtieth Street to the Nicholsons’ home. The newscasters and onlookers had been pushed back. Only the vans and the MPD officers, the medics, and the SWAT teams were allowed to remain close to the house.

I picked up the shovel the congressman’s wife had brought me and started shoveling my way up the walk through thirteen inches of snow. Church bells rang from the direction of O Street, probably Christ Church. From the other direction, more bells, probably Mt. Zion.

More than ever I felt like I was part of something that was staining the celebration, and as I rapped on the front door, I felt ready to do some cleaning up. But was I right? Would my plan work?

I heard the creak of floorboards, and my resolve grew weaker.

The door opened. I stepped inside, hands raised. Fowler kicked shut the door, pushed me face-up against the wall, and frisked me again. “Not a good idea, Cross,” he said as he searched me. “Coming back in here.”

“Why’s that?”

“I can’t let you leave now.”

Because it was Christmas morning, a special day, Nana agreed to make her sweet bacon. The recipe: thick bacon fried in a cast-iron skillet, then covered with brown sugar and baked in the oven.

“I only cook sweet bacon for a holiday or a birthday,” she had always said. That used to be the rule of the house. Her house, she insisted, even though Alex had bought and paid for it. But once, Damon had insisted that Arbor Day was a real holiday, and Nana had agreed with him. And after that, she changed the rule. Now she said: “I only cook sweet bacon for a major holiday or a birthday.”

Waffles. Pancakes. Cheese grits. And sweet bacon.

“There may be no need to cook the turkey later on,” Bree said. “This meal could last me the whole day. Maybe the whole week.”

“You speak for yourself,” Damon said. “I’ll be ready for turkey and mashed potatoes. And those yams I love with the mini-marshmallows.”

The maple syrup was soaking into the waffles and pancakes. The sweet bacon strips were crunchy-crisp. And the mood was finally cheerful.