Джеймс Паттерсон - Cross Kill

“Who’s making sure you’re safe in your own home?” Mahoney asked once I’d closed the door.

“Metro in unmarked cars, both ends of the block,” I said.

“Soneji’s still the type to try.”

“I know,” I said. “But I think we’re good.”

“I’m still unclear why you wanted me here, Dr. Cross,” Agent Batra said.

“I think Soneji or The Soneji may have made a mistake,” I said. “If I’m right, they left a digital trail inside my house, or on our network, anyway.”

I got to GW Medical Center early the following morning with my children’s howls ringing in my head. Special Agent Batra had taken every computer and phone in the house to Quantico. She’d promised to work as fast as she could, but it was like they’d lost their right hands when the phones were taken away.

I kind of felt the same way walking to Sampson’s room, and decided to buy a cheap phone afterward. I was happy to find John sitting up and drinking through a straw.

Billie hadn’t arrived yet, so I’d gotten to sit with him awhile, and brought him up to date on all that had occurred the prior day. Though his eyes tended to drift off me, he seemed to understand much of what I was saying.

“If anyone can find this guy, it’s Batra,” I said. “I’ve never seen anyone like her before.”

John’s eyes softened and he smiled. He tried to say something and couldn’t. You could see how frustrating it was.

I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “You’re in for a long haul, buddy, recovering from this. But if there’s any man alive who can do it, you can.”

Sampson’s lazy, sad gaze came and dwelled around me for several seconds. Then he started struggling, as he got more and more upset.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s okay. We’ll—”

Garbled sounds came out of his mouth.

He tried again. And again.

The sixth time, I thought he said, “Evan-widda.”

“Evan-widda?” I said.

“Evan-widda... b... bag,” he said, and then smiled and lifted his right hand to point to the surgical bandage. “Ho-ho... n... ed.”

I frowned, but got it then, and smiled. “Even with a big hole in your head?”

Sampson smiled, dropped his hand, and winked at me before nodding off to sleep again, as if that had taken every bit of his strength.

But he’d spoken! Sort of. Definitely communicated. And the doctors had said his sense of humor could be gone with a wound to that part of his brain, but here he was making a joke about his situation.

If that wasn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.

Billie arrived shortly before eight and beamed when I told her what had happened.

She kissed John, and said, “You spoke?”

He shook his head. “Alack vent... r... wrist... crist.”

“What?”

“He said, ‘Alex is a ventriloquist.’ I think.”

John grinned again and said, “Whips do no move.”

Billie had tears in her eyes. “Lips don’t move.”

Sampson made a wheezing sound of delight that stayed with me on the way to work and buying a burner phone.

I went to Bree’s office, and I knocked on her doorjamb.

“Long time no see,” I said.

Bree glanced at the clock, said, “Are you getting obsessive about me?”

“I’ve always been obsessive about you, from the very first,” I said.

“Liar,” Bree said, but she was pleased.

“The truth,” I said. “You had me the first time you glanced my way.”

That pleased her even more. “Why are you buttering me up?”

“I’m not buttering you up,” I said. “I was just flirting with my wife before I told her that Sampson spoke this morning.”

“No?” she gasped. “He did?”

“It took a little interpretation, but he was telling jokes.”

Bree got tears in her eyes, stood up, came around the desk, and hugged me. I got tears, too.

“Thanks,” she said. “What a perfect thing to hear.”

“I know,” I said, before the cheap phone I’d bought on the way to work buzzed. Who knew the number? I’d just gotten the damn thing. Just activated it.

“Hello?” I said.

“It’s Special Agent Batra.”

“How’d you get this number?”

“By being good at my job,” Agent Batra said, sounding annoyed. “I thought you’d be happy to hear from me so soon.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I was beginning to think there wasn’t a box in the virtual universe that Henna Batra couldn’t find and unlock if she set her mind to it. “You found something?”

“You were compromised in a troubling fashion.”

I wanted to say that I could have told her that, but asked, “How so?”

“They got a bug into your son’s computer operating system, piggybacked to a game app he downloaded at school.”

“At his school?” I said, feeling queasy.

Soneji or The Soneji were not only threatening me in my house, they were targeting my youngest child.

“What else?” I demanded.

“Your daughter, Jannie, had the same bug in her system,” Batra said. “It was uploaded to her computer without her knowledge when she was using her phone as a mobile hotspot at a coffee shop not far from your house.”

This was worse. Both my children were being targeted.

“What about my phone? My wife’s?” I asked, and turned on the speaker on the burner phone so Bree could hear.

“Clean,” Batra said. “I’ll have them messengered over in the next hour.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Is that it?”

“No, as a matter of fact,” the FBI cyber expert said. “There was a similarity in the signature of the bug coder and the coder who created www.thesoneji.net.”

I looked at Bree, who shrugged in confusion.

“You want to run that by us again?” I said.

The cybercrimes expert sounded irritated when she said, “Coders are artists in their own way, Detective. Just as classical painters had recognizable brushstrokes, great computer coders have a recognizable way of writing. Their signature, if you will.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “So who coded the website?”

Batra said, “It took me much, much longer than I expected to break through the firewalls that surrounded the identity of the creator and curator, but I did just a few minutes ago.”

“Have you been up all night?” I asked.

“You said it was important.”

Bree leaned forward, said, “Thank you, Agent Batra. It’s Chief Stone here. Do you know who he is? The website creator?”

“She, and I’ve learned quite a bit about her in the past hour or so, thanks to a friend of mine at the NSA,” Agent Batra said. “Especially the boyfriend she’s fronting for. In fact, I know about him going right back to what his first-grade teacher said about him the day she recommended he be expelled from school.”

I felt fear in the pit of my stomach. “And what was that?”

“She said she thought he was kind of a monster, Dr. Cross. Even then.”

An hour later, I set in to wait on a bench in a hallway by the door to a loft space on the fourth floor of an older building off Dupont Circle.

I’d gotten into the building by showing my badge to a woman entering with groceries. I told her who I was looking for.

“Out running, that one,” she’d replied. “Every lunch hour. Quite a sight.”

I’d knocked on the door just in case, but there was no answer. I had a search warrant. I could have called for patrol to break the door down, but I hoped I could get more information by going patient and gentle.

Twenty minutes later, a fit Asian American woman in her late twenties came huffing up the staircase. Her black hair was cut short and her exposed arms were buff and sleeved in brilliantly colored tattoos.