James Patterson - Kill Alex Cross

The command center was a cavernous space with the soft lighting of a movie theater. But the volume was more like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and the tension was sky high.

Thousands of personnel had been dispatched to locations all over the city, and reps from every major agency had been assigned to this room, like me. Each area was marked with quickly made signs taped to the front of the desks — HOSTAGE AND RESCUE, MPD, CIA, MOBILE CTOC COMMUNICATIONS, and on it went.

Beyond the rail yard incident itself, we had a whole new element to deal with this morning. As of five a.m., Homeland Security had raised the terror threat level for Washington’s mass transit system from orange to red. All subway service, bus routes, and commuter trains were suspended until further notice.

This was only the second time any sector had gone red since they established the alert system after 9/11. There was no soft-selling it to the locals anymore.

Reports were steadily coming in that people were starting to flee the city in noticeable numbers.

The story had gone fully national, too. CNN was up on several screens around the room, covering the shootings and transit shutdown to the exclusion of everything else. They had a live helicopter shot of the rail yard, crawling with TV crews.

You could see officers from the Explosive Ordnance Division in their bulky suits, climbing in and out of the subway cars, like something right out of The Hurt Locker . It was the kind of imagery news directors love, and law enforcement hates.

I took my seat next to Javier Crist, an MPD sergeant who worked at LX1 full-time. He had the computer-assisted 911 dispatch up on one of the screens in front of him, monitoring the distress and emergency calls that were pouring in from everywhere. Our job was to gather information from the field, report it to the room, and send back a constant stream of leads for MPD to run down.

“Welcome to Camp Hell” was all Crist got out before he had to take another call.

That was the extent of my orientation. My own phone was already ringing.

I slapped on a headset and got straight to work. This wasn’t what I had been hoping for, but at least it was something. I was on the inside now.

Bree cross was reading in bed at two o’clock that afternoon when the doorbell started ringing. Not just once, but over and over and over.

Something was wrong.

And if it wasn’t, someone was going to get a piece of her mind once she got to the front door.

She jumped up and dropped her book on the bed. The title was You and Your Stepkids . She was supposed to be getting some sleep before the night shift, but this was a chance to sneak in a few chapters while no one was looking, especially Alex, who would be sweet enough about the book but would be unable to stop at least one snorting laugh.

“I’m coming!” Bree yelled from the stairs. The bell was still going. She could see two shadows on the other side of the front door’s frosted glass, one of them a good head taller than the other. Now what?

When she flipped the dead bolt and threw open the door, Nana was standing there. Next to her was a man Bree had never seen before. The man had his arm around Nana’s middle, and she was holding a red-stained handkerchief up to her forehead. Her left knee was dripping with blood as well.

“Oh my God! What happened?”

“My key was in my purse,” Nana said — and her purse was nowhere in sight.

“Some punk knocked her down,” the man said. He had bloodstains on the sleeve of his khaki jacket. “I didn’t get there in time to see anything. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you so much,” Nana said as he handed her off to Bree’s care. “A real gentleman. And you will absolutely be sending the cleaning bill to this address!”

As soon as the man had gone, though, her face fell into a grimace. Bree eased her down onto the old caned chair in the hall for a better look. The cut on her forehead wasn’t deep, but the knee was badly abraded.

“Goddamnit! Who would do something like this?” Bree said.

“There’s no need for language. I’ll be fine,” Nana told her. “I’ll live.”

“Sorry. Just... stay right there.”

Bree raced to the bathroom for a first-aid kit and a couple of washcloths. She was silently fuming the whole time. Her head felt like it was burning up, and her chest, too.

I’m going to kill someone. I swear to God, I’m going to commit murder today .

Back out in the hall again, she put on a calm face. Then she knelt down and gently pushed Nana’s hair away to clean the wound.

“What happened, Regina? Tell me.”

“Well...” Nana took a deep breath. “I was walking back from the pharmacy up on Pennsylvania. It was across from United Methodist, right there in the middle of Seward Square. Maybe I should have gone around the long way, I don’t know—”

Bree stopped with the washcloth in midair. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this! Since when is Seward Square dangerous in the middle of the day?”

“Since about fifteen minutes ago,” Nana said, half joking, but also on the verge of tears. She looked down at the bloodstained handkerchief in her hand. “Seventy years in this city, and I’ve never been mugged. Good Lord, I’m getting old.”

It made Bree want to cry herself. This damn neighborhood, this city, what was it doing to people? She quietly finished up the first aid and walked Nana over to the living room couch to rest.

Then just as quietly, she slipped back upstairs and took the Glock 19 out of the lockbox in her closet.

When she came down, Nana was sitting and staring out the front window toward Fifth Street. An issue of O, the Oprah Magazine sat unopened on her lap.

“I’m going to run out for a minute,” Bree told her. “You need anything right now?”

Nana eyed her suspiciously. “Why? Where are you going?”

“Just up the street. Now tell me what this asshole — excuse me, this mugger — looked like.”

The temperature was high for September. In more ways than one. Sweat started dripping down Bree’s back before she’d gone a block. It was shades of running the 440 at UVA all over again — not quite a run, not quite a sprint. She wasn’t sure how much ground she’d have to cover.

Or whose butt she was going to have to kick.

At the south side of Seward Square, she stopped to catch a breath and look around. This was most likely a wild goose chase, but she was too pissed to just sit home and file a police report like somebody else might do. Somebody sane.

And then —

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

There was the mugger, squatting in the shade of an old cherry tree in the middle of the square. Didn’t even have the sense to make herself scarce.

This had to be her. Nana had been pretty specific — red Hollister hoodie, brown denim shorts to the knees, dirty white ball cap, and a pair of ridiculous-looking white plastic shades that were too big to be anything but stolen.

Way to blend in, girlie .

She looked all kinds of stupid, but the girl did know enough to leap up and bolt as soon as she saw Bree, who was clearly on a mission. She sprang away on a pair of long skinny legs, going straight up Pennsylvania in the direction of the Hill.

She was quick, too. But she had probably never ran NCAA track, had she?

Once Bree had her on a straightaway, it took less than half a block to close the gap to an arm’s reach. She nabbed the girl by the hood and practically yanked her off her feet as they came to a stop and near collision.

The little thief didn’t weigh anything inside those baggy clothes. And her height was deceptive. Up close, she looked even younger than Jannie. She was maybe twelve years old, could be thirteen.