James Patterson - I, Alex Cross

"Come on, John. We're going to Alexandria. We need to find out if that was Zeus."

AT THE DETENTION center in Alexandria, Sampson and I walked in through the visitors' area. We went down a familiar path – past Records and Door 15, where inmates are released, until we got to the command center.

At that point, our police IDs were enough to get us buzzed through another pair of steel doors, to the booking desk.

All that was the easy part.

As usual, three guards were stationed on the desk. Two of them were middle-aged and hung in the background. One younger guy had the grunt job of processing walk-ins like us. A gold tooth caught the light when he spoke.

"State your business."

"Detectives Cross and Sampson, MPD. We need a temporary custody order on two prisoners, Anthony Nicholson and Mara Kelly."

"You got a letter on file?" He was already picking up the phone.

"We've interviewed them before," I said. "Just a few follow-up questions and we're out of here."

It was worth a shot, anyway. Maybe there was a crack we could fall through.

The deputy wasn't on the phone for long, and he shook his head at me as he hung up.

"Well A, you don't have a letter for today, and B, it don't matter anyway. Your people are gone, Nicholson and Kelly both."

"Gone?" I couldn't believe what I'd heard. "Please tell me you mean they were transferred."

"I mean gone, man." He flipped open a black binder on the desk. "Yep, right here. Eleven hundred hours today. Someone named Miller posted – Jesus – full cash bonds on both of them. A quarter mil each."

That got the attention of the other two guards, and they came to look over his shoulder. One of them whistled low. "Must be nice," the other one said.

"Yeah, right?" the kid agreed.

This wasn't their doing and it wasn't their fault, but they were the ones standing in front of me.

"What is going on around here?" I said. "Nicholson is a major flight risk. Did anybody bother to check on that? He had plane tickets booked the day he was arrested!"

The young guard was staring at me now. The other two had hands on their batons. "I hear you, man, but you've got to step back, right now ."

I felt Sampson pulling on my shoulder. "Don't waste your breath here, Alex. Let's go. Nicholson and the girl are gone."

"This is a disaster, John."

"I know, and it's done. Come on."

I let him pull me away, but I would have paid good money to take a swing at someone. Tony Nicholson, for one. Or that smug lawyer Miller.

Even as we were leaving, I could hear the guards talking about their former prisoners. "Fuckin' Richie Riches, man. They get their own breaks and everyone else's too."

"Yeah, right? It's like they say, the rich just get richer, and the poor -"

"Work here."

The last thing I heard was the guards laughing among themselves.

WHAT AN INCREDIBLE circus! Whether or not it was Nicholson's own money that got him out, he still would have needed a federal judge to sign the Form 41, and someone else even higher in the food chain to broker the deal.

The cover-up was getting broader and deeper and dirtier every day, wasn't it? I think I was more awed than shocked by the whole thing, and worse, I suspected it wasn't close to being over.

John and I went through the motions of running out to Nicholson's house and then Mara Kelly's apartment, but we found exactly what we expected.

There was yellow police tape on the doors, but no indication that anyone had been there for at least a couple of days. Even if they had been, they were long gone now. I doubted that we would ever see Nicholson or Kelly again.

Before we got back on the highway, I asked Sampson to pull over at an Exxon station near Mara Kelly's apartment. I bought a little Nokia prepaid phone for thirty-nine dollars and used it to dial the number I'd gotten the other day.

Wylie Rechler answered on the first ring. "This is Jenna. Talk to me."

"It's Detective Alex Cross, Jenna. We met the other day out in Friendship Heights," I said. "Are you ready to jump into this thing?"

I heard a melodramatic little gasp on the other end. "Honey, I was ready the last time we chatted. What have you got for me now?"

"Ever heard the name Tony Nicholson?"

"I don't think so. No, definitely not. Should I have?"

"He's the one with the little black book you'd love to get your hands on, not that any of us ever will. Until eleven o'clock this morning, he was in federal custody. Now he's out on bail, and if I had to guess, he's on his way out of the country. With the little black book."

"What does this mean for me?"

"It could mean a lot, Jenna. If you help me out. I want you to put a bug in Sam Pinkerton's ear at the Post, " I said. "Could you do that?"

"I suppose I could." She paused, and then her voice dropped. "Sam covers the White House. You know that, correct?"

"That's right."

"Oh Jesus, I'm wet – excuse my French. Okay, so what's Mr. Pinkerton going to have for me when I call? If I call."

I told Jenna the truth. "Maybe nothing right away. But you two might make a pretty good team on this one. You'll have all the right angles covered."

"I think I'm in love with you, Detective."

"That's another thing," I said. "Sam pretty much hates my guts. You'll probably get a lot further with him if you don't happen to mention my name."

As I hung up, Sampson was giving me a once-over from the driver's seat. "I thought Sam Pinkerton was a friend of yours."

"He is." I pocketed the new phone next to my old one. "I'm just trying to keep it that way."

I HAD ONE more place to be that afternoon, and I asked Sampson to drop me off.

One of Washington 's favorite sons, and one of my favorite people too, Hilton Felton, had died a while back, too young at the age of sixty. I'd spent countless nights listening to Hilton play at Kinkead's in Foggy Bottom, where he'd been the house pianist since 1993. That's where they were having a memorial concert for him.

Something like a hundred and fifty people squeezed in to celebrate Hilton's life, and, of course, hear some great music from his friends. It was all very beautiful and relaxed and wonderful in its own way. The music could only have been better if Hilton had been there to play it himself.

When Andrew White got up and played one of Hilton's original compositions, it made me feel incredibly lucky to have known the man behind that music, but also deeply sorry to know that I'd never hear him play it again in the way that only Hilton could.

I missed him terribly, and all the while I was there, I couldn't stop thinking about Nana Mama too. She was the one who first took me to hear Hilton.

AFTER THE EMOTIONAL stop at Kinkead's I caught a cab over to Fifth Street, then went upstairs to work. As if things weren't already interesting enough, we had a couple of unwanted visitors at the house that night. It was around eleven when Bree came up to my office in the attic to tell me the news.

"Alex, we've got company outside. Two guys in a Ford Explorer, parked across the street for the last hour. Cups on the dash, no coming and going. Just sitting there, watching the house. Maybe watching you up here."

Bree has the best instincts I know, so I didn't doubt that we had a new problem. I holstered my Glock and slid on a windbreaker over it.

Then I stopped in Damon's room on my way downstairs for his old Louisville Slugger. A good piece of ash, not aluminum.

"Please don't come out," I asked Bree at the front door. "Call dispatch if there's a problem."