Джеймс Паттерсон - Cross Kill

“Be right here until you get back,” I said.

When she’d gone out, I held Sampson’s giant hand and gave him an account of the day’s investigation, sparing him no detail. It felt good and familiar, and right, to talk it out with him, as if Sampson were not drugged down to the reptilian part of his brain, but acute and thoughtful and funny as hell.

“That’s it,” I said. “And, yes, I want another crack at Soneji’s widow and kid before long.”

The door opened. Billie stepped back inside, and then several of the monitors around Sampson began to squawk in alarm.

A team burst in. I was pushed to the corner with Billie.

“It’s his blood pressure again,” Billie said in a wavering voice. “Jesus, I don’t know if his heart can take this much longer.”

Ninety seconds later, the crisis passed and his vitals improved.

“I don’t know what happened,” I said, bewildered. “I was telling him about the investigation and...”

“What?” Billie said. “Why did you do that?”

“Because he’d want to know.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s done. That’s over, Alex.”

“What’s over?”

“His career as a cop,” Billie said. “No matter how he recovers, that part of John’s life is over if he wants to continue to be my husband.”

“John loves being a cop,” I said.

“I know he does... did... but that’s over,” Billie said sharply. “I will care for him, and defend John until the day one of us dies, but between now and then, his days carrying a gun and a badge are behind him.”

“She’s got the right to demand that,” Bree said later in the hospital cafeteria. “John took a bullet to the head, Alex.”

“I know,” I said, frustrated and heartsick.

It felt like part of John had died and was never coming back. And it would never be the same between us, as partners anyway. That was dead, too.

I explained this to Bree, and she put her hands on mine and said, “You’ll never have a better friend than John Sampson. That friendship, that fierce bond you two have, will never be broken, even if he’s no longer a cop, even if he’s no longer your partner. Okay?”

“No,” I said, pushing my plate away. “But I’ll have to learn to live with it.”

“You haven’t eaten three bites,” Bree said, gesturing at the plate.

“No appetite,” I said.

“Then force yourself,” Bree said. “Especially the protein. Your brain has to be tip-top if you’re going to find Soneji.”

I laughed softly. “You’re always looking out for me.”

“Every moment I can, baby.”

I ate quite a bit more, and washed it down with three full glasses of water.

“Not quite Nana Mama’s cooking,” I said.

“I’m sure there’ll be leftovers,” Bree said.

“You trying to get me fat?” I said.

“I like a little cushion.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and we both burst out laughing. Then I looked over and saw Billie standing in the doorway, watching us with bitterness and longing in her expression. She turned and left.

“Should I go after her?” I asked.

“No,” Bree said. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

“Home?”

“Home.”

We left the hospital and were crossing a triangular plaza to the Foggy Bottom Metro station when the first shot rang out.

I heard the flat crack of the muzzle blast. I felt the bullet rip past my left ear, grabbed Bree, and yanked her to the ground by two newspaper boxes. People were screaming and scattering.

“Where is he?” Bree said.

“I don’t know,” I said, before the second and third shots shattered the glass of one newspaper rack and ping ed off another.

Then I heard squealing tires, and jumped up in time to see a white panel van roar north on 23rd Street, Northwest, heading toward Washington Circle, and a dozen different escape routes. As the van flashed past us, I caught a glimpse of the driver.

Gary Soneji was looking my way as if posing for a mental picture, grinning like a lunatic and holding his right-hand thumb up, index finger extended, like a gun he was aiming right at me.

I was so shocked that another instant passed before I started running across the plaza to 23rd, trying to get a look at his license plates. But his plate lights were dark, and the van soon disappeared into evening traffic, headed in the direction of whatever hellhole Gary Soneji was calling home these days.

“Did you see him?” I asked Bree, who was shaken, but calling in the shots to dispatch.

She shook her head after she’d finished. “You did?”

“It was him, Bree. Gary Soneji in the flesh. As if he hadn’t been blown up and burned, as if he hadn’t spent the past decade in a box under six feet of dirt.”

The next morning, I called GW to check on Sampson. His vitals had destabilized again.

Part of me said, Go to the hospital, but instead I drove out to Quantico, Virginia, and the FBI Lab.

For almost seven years, I worked for the Bureau in the behavioral science department as a full-time consultant and left on good terms. I have many friends who still work at Quantico, including my old partner, Ned Mahoney.

I called ahead, and he met me at the gate, made sure I got the VIP treatment clearing security.

“What are friends in high places for?” Mahoney asked when I thanked him. “How’s John?”

I gave him a brief update on Sampson and my investigation.

“How could Soneji be alive?” Mahoney said. “I was there, remember? I saw him burning, too. It was him. ”

“Then who was the guy who shot Sampson and tried to shoot me last night?” I said. “Because both times I’ve seen him, my brain has screamed Soneji! Both times.”

“Hey, hey, Alex,” Mahoney said, patting me on the shoulder out of concern. “Take a big breath. If it’s him, we’ll help you find him.”

I took several deep, long breaths, trying to keep my thoughts from whirling, and said, “Let’s start with the cybercrime unit.”

Ten minutes later, we went through an unmarked door into a large space filled with low-walled cubicles that were in a soft blue light Mahoney said was supposed to increase productivity. There were three, sometimes four computer screens at every workstation.

“The only thing that separates the IT brainpower in this room from a company like Google is the dress code,” Mahoney said.

“No Ping-Pong, either,” I said.

“There’s agitation in that direction,” Mahoney said, weaving through the cubicles.

“Any chance it happens?”

“When the Bureau starts admitting J. Edgar preferred panties,” he said, and then stopped in front of a workstation in the middle of the room.

“Agent Batra?” Mahoney said. “I want to introduce you to Alex Cross.”

A petite Indian woman in her late twenties in a conservative blue suit and black pumps spun around from one of four screens at her station. She stood quickly and put out her hand, so small it felt like a doll’s.

“Special Agent Henna Batra,” she said. “An honor to meet you, Dr. Cross.”

“And you as well.”

“Agent Batra is said to be at one with the internet,” Mahoney said. “If anyone can help you, she can. Stop by the office on your way out, Alex.”

“Will do,” I said.

“So,” Agent Batra said, sitting again. “What are you looking for?”

“A website where there are active conversations going on concerning Gary Soneji.”

“I know that case,” Batra said. “We studied it at the academy. He’s dead.”

“Evidently his admirers don’t think so, and I’d like to see what they’re saying about Soneji. I was warned we’d never find the site in a million years.”