James Patterson - I, Alex Cross

Remy scratched at his crotch – a little overkill, maybe – and then shuffled around to the back of the car. The driver popped the trunk for him. Jesus! Look at this .

The two bodies were double wrapped in black poly sheeting and sealed with packing tape. These guys were pros at what they did; he had to give them that much. But who the hell was hurting these girls in the first place? What was the big picture here? Who was the killer?

He dragged both "packages" out of the trunk and onto the canvas tarp he'd already spread. His tools were laid out on a big hickory stump, and there was an extra gallon of gas next to the chipper.

"Which one'd you say was shot?" he called over to the spooks.

"Tall one. Left chest. What a waste. Girl was a real looker."

He rolled her over and slit the plastic down the middle, pushing just hard enough with the tip of his bowie knife to leave a thin red trail in its wake. When he pulled back the wrapper, he found a small crater just above the very well-formed left breast. The body was still warm – in the nineties or high eighties. Dead only a few hours at most.

"Okay, got it. You want me to pull the slug or do you care?"

"Pull it. Get rid of it."

"All righty. Done . Anything else?"

"Yeah. Close the trunk."

A few seconds later, the two smartass bastards were gone.

Distrust aside, Remy didn't mind their arrogance, mostly because he knew it worked in his favor. It probably never even occurred to those two how expendable they were.

Or how vulnerable.

In fact, they'd already done a good bit of the work for him when they erased their own identities. Now they were just a couple of spooks, and Remy knew as well as anyone that when the time came, there was nothing easier to make disappear than a ghost.

He could do that – hell, he'd done it before. Made a career of it, actually.

He unwrapped the second girl – another real looker. Seemed like maybe she'd been strangled. And bitten? He massaged the girl's lukewarm breasts, played around a little bit more, then took the two of them up the hill to the chipper.

What a waste was right. Who the hell would do such a thing? Somebody even crazier than he was?

I HAD ANOTHER clandestine meeting with Ned Mahoney Saturday afternoon – this time at a busy parking garage on M Street in Georgetown.

As I pulled in, I couldn't help thinking about those Deep Throat scenes in All the President's Men , the book and the movie. There was a definite cloak-and-dagger thing happening here. Why was that? What in hell was going on?

Ned was already waiting when I got out of the car. He handed me a manila folder with the Bureau's seal on it. Inside, I found some notes and a collection of photos, copied two to a page. "What's this?"

"Renata Cruz and Katherine Tennancour," he said. "Both missing, presumed dead."

Each picture showed one of the girls, in several locations around town, with a variety of mostly white, much older men.

"Is that David Wilke? " I asked, pointing at someone who looked very much like the current chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Ned nodded. "That's David Wilke, all right. Both women have powerful men as regular clients, which is why we've been tracking them to begin with. And Katherine Tennancour, at least, worked at the club out in Virginia."

I didn't say a word, just stared at Mahoney.

"I know exactly what you're thinking," he said. "Might as well break out the legislative directory while we're at it."

This whole thing was getting more insidious by the minute. There was no way to track this killer – or this network, if that's what we were looking at – without exposing all kinds of very dirty laundry in the process. A lot of innocent family members' lives would be ruined – and that was just the start of it.

House and Senate majorities, not to mention presidential elections and governorships, had been lost over a lot less than this. No one would be going down without a fight either; I already had a bad taste of that from Internal Affairs. Anyone who thinks that cops look forward to these sensational "career-making" cases has never been in the middle of one.

"Jesus, Ned. It's like waiting for a hurricane to happen right here in DC."

"More like running after one – looking for trouble," he said. "A real category-five shitstorm. Don't you just love Washington?"

"Actually, I do. Just not right at this minute."

"So listen, Alex." His voice went serious again. "The Bureau's all over this. It's about to go pop . I'd totally understand if you want to back off, and if you do, now would be a good time. Just hand the envelope full of goodies back."

I was a little surprised by the offer. I thought Ned knew me a lot better than that. Which meant, of course, that his offer carried a serious warning.

"Does that mean you're ready to hit the club out in Virginia?" I asked him.

"I'm waiting on the ex parte right now."

"And?"

Ned grinned, and if I'm not mistaken, he looked just a little relieved. "And you should probably leave your phone on when you go home tonight. I'll be calling."

THE GOD NEWS was I got to have a nice dinner with the family. I even got to spend some time hanging out with the kids afterward, just before all hell would probably break loose, probably like nothing I'd ever experienced before. It all depended on who was at that private club tonight.

Jannie had been teaching Ali to play Sorry, one of the most boring games in the universe, but I liked playing just about anything with the two of them. I goofed around between my turns, stealing pieces off the board and telling old jokes to Ali. Things like "Why is six afraid of seven?"

"Because seven ate nine!" Jannie cackled. She loved to be the spoiler, and Ali was a perfect audience. The boy just loves to laugh. He's the least serious of my three kids by far.

Nana sat off to the side, watching us over the top of A Thousand Splendid Suns, one of the books she'd been tearing through these days. She and Bree had settled into a tentative partnership, with Bree slowly asserting herself around the house and Nana learning she could afford to let go of a few things she'd always controlled – like how to load the dishwasher.

It was all good – until the phone rang.

Usually, I expect the kids to put up an immediate stink when that happens. "Don't answer it, Daddy" had become a common refrain around our house. So when both of them just looked away, waiting for the inevitable, I felt even worse.

I checked the ID. It was Mahoney. As promised.

"I'm sorry; I really do have to take this," I said to Ali and Jannie.

Their silence was loud and clear as I went out to the hall to answer.

"Ned?"

"We're a go, Alex. There's a Holiday Inn off Exit 72 in Arlington. I can meet you in the parking lot if you come now. Right now."

IT WAS CALLED Operation Coitus Interruptus, which only goes to prove that there are some people in the FBI with a sense of humor.

Ned's full team had convened at a small farm in Culpeper County, about an hour and a half west of DC and not far from Shenandoah National Park. It was a strange, foreboding mix: Mahoney and his co-case agent, Renee Victor; six HRT agents; three crisis negotiators from the Tactical Support Branch; and a ten-man FBI SWAT team.

I'd been expecting an all-HRT team, but I wasn't concerned in the least. FBI SWAT has some of the best tactical units in the world. This was going to be quite a show.

There was also a rep from Virginia State Police, who had two collection wagons on standby, and me. I'm not sure what strings Ned had to pull to have me there, but I appreciated it, and also knew that he figured I would add value. We all gathered around the tailgate of someone's pickup for a quick briefing from the big guy.