James Patterson - Kill Alex Cross

“I’m not going to fight about this, Nana. We can’t help every kid on the streets of DC,” I said, and kept moving.

“Who said anything about that? ” she called after me, but I was already halfway to the stairs.

I hated being cast as the bad guy. It wasn’t like I thought Nana was crazy for feeling the way she did, but I truly believed I was doing the right thing here. For everyone involved, even the girl.

At least up until what happened next.

When I got upstairs to Damon’s room, Ava was sitting on the bed reading one of his old X-Men comics.

“Ava, it’s time to go,” I said. “I’m going to bring you down to the intake center and get you settled over there, okay? Just like we talked about last night.”

She wouldn’t even look at me. She lifted and lowered one very cold shoulder and swung her feet onto the floor. Maybe she’d been getting pointers from Nana.

Then, as she got up to shuffle over to the door, I noticed something on the floor behind her. Something under the bed.

“What’s that?” I said, pointing.

“Nothin’.”

She didn’t even glance back. The girl was a terrible liar.

“Hang on a second.”

I walked over and knelt down on the rug to have a look. There, between the bed and the nightstand, was a small pile of food. I saw half a loaf of bread, some bananas, a sleeve of crackers, and a jar of peanut butter.

Honestly, I wasn’t so surprised. It’s not unusual for a kid from the streets to hoard food, given the chance. And I wasn’t even remotely mad about it, either. Ava had done this by instinct, as likely as anything. Survival instinct.

Maybe that’s why it broke my heart. Why should a thirteen-year-old kid have to think about where her next meal might be coming from?

Why should Ava? Or anyone?

Just like that, something shifted inside me. It happened the way these things do sometimes, when you least expect it — or even want it.

But that was also the moment that Ava made a break for the stairs. When I turned around, she was gone.

“Ava, wait!”

By the time I got out to the hall, she was already down by the front door, trying to get out. Our dead bolt’s a little complicated, a little tricky, and it was slowing her down.

“Ava!” I called out again.

As I came closer, she gave up and ran for the back of the house instead. She crashed right through the kitchen door and just kept going. I heard the sound of breaking glass.

Then Nana’s voice. “What in heaven’s name—?”

When I rushed into the room, Ava was still there. One of the panes in the back door was shattered, and her hand was bleeding. She stood staring at it, frozen in her tracks like a trapped animal.

I put my hands out in front of me. “It’s okay,” I said. “ Really . Everything’s okay.”

Nana grabbed a dish towel to wrap the cut. She put her arm around Ava and made her sit down.

“Nothing to worry about,” she said in a soothing voice. “Just a little cut, but you go ahead and cry if you need to, sweetheart.”

“I’m sorry,” Ava said, more to Nana than to me. “I didn’t mean to...”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “It doesn’t matter about the food. The window, either. None of it matters. We’ll work it all out.”

Still, Ava tried to squirm away toward the door. She stood up again, and Nana pulled her back down with that surprising strength of hers.

“You sit down, right now!” she commanded. “You’re not going anywhere, young lady.”

I stayed where I was, giving her a little space. “You know what, Ava?” I said. “Nana’s right. We don’t have to make any decisions about this tonight.”

But in fact, that wasn’t entirely true. I’d already decided something.

Nana was right. Maybe we couldn’t save every kid on the streets of DC, but there was no reason — no good enough reason — why we couldn’t help this one. Right here, right now. Even if it was only for a little while.

I’d call whoever I needed to in the morning. Get an expedited home check. Pull a few strings, if I had to. Make things right for this young girl.

“Just... stay,” I said. “Please.”

The next morning, Bree took over at home, and I was back at work. Whatever influence the First Lady had exerted on my behalf, I had no trouble getting onto the Branaff School campus — inside the gates this time.

I got there early so I could get a better feel for the place before the school day started. I wanted to retrace, as much as I possibly could, Ethan and Zoe’s footsteps on the morning they had disappeared.

As I came up the front drive toward Branaff House, the school’s Georgian-style mansion of a main building, I couldn’t help thinking about the modest charter John and Billie Sampson were trying to start up just a few miles from here. It was a world apart, that’s for sure. Branaff House was the crown jewel of an eighty-acre campus, with the kind of restored beauty that persuaded parents to part with forty-five thousand dollars a year for middle school.

It was also where the Coyle kids had last been seen. What had happened to them?

I started in the main foyer. According to the reports I’d read, this was where a fight had broken out that morning, between Zoe and Ryan Townsend.

It hadn’t lasted long, and Secret Service Agent Findlay immediately pulled both of the Coyles away from the scene and into an adjacent lecture hall.

At 8:22 a.m., Findlay had radioed his team that he was giving the kids two minutes alone to speak privately.

At 8:24, he opened the door again and found the lecture hall empty.

About ninety seconds after that, the van driven by Ray Pinkney had gone tearing off campus through the east gate — without Ethan and Zoe on board, as it turned out.

What that left was a three-and-a-half-minute window, from the last time Findlay saw the kids, until that van left the school grounds.

Somewhere in there, a kidnapping had taken place.

So what happened in those three and a half minutes?

I let myself into the lecture hall and closed the door behind me.

The room was high-ceilinged, with several austere portraits looking down from the walls. It was a little creepy, actually, but definitely imposing. It made even a big man like me feel small.

Whatever had gone down in that room, Zoe and Ethan couldn’t have been there for long. The clock was ticking on those three and a half minutes, whether they knew it or not.

There were two doors at the front, both covered by the same security camera in the hall outside. The only other possible exits were the five windows at the back.

Agent Findlay had reportedly found the center one unlatched, and I went to it now.

I hopped up on the heat register, slid open the window, and ducked outside.

It was an easy drop to the ground, landing me behind a thick tangle of lilac bushes.

Footprints found in the dirt that day confirmed that two people Ethan and Zoe’s size had come this way.

But where did they go from here? Were they still alone at this point? When exactly did things turn horribly wrong?

We had just a few facts. The rest of the scenario was mostly supposition.

But there was one other known piece of the puzzle, and I needed someone here at the school to show it to me.

George O’Shea was the head of maintenance at Branaff. He was a big, redheaded fireplug of a guy, with arms that bulged against the sleeves of his uniform the same way his gut strained at the buttons in front. I found him in his basement office under the main building.

“Nice to meet’cha,” he said, half crushing my hand. “I’m guessing you came down to see the tunnel? Headmaster’s office called ahead.”