James Patterson - Kill Alex Cross

“That’s right.”

“Smart. Jesus.”

It was starting to add up... to how Rodney Glass could have gotten Ethan and Zoe off campus and still be around for the aftermath. Then all he’d have to do was drive out to the airport, maybe stop to sedate the kids again, and continue on to wherever he wanted to take them. If anything had gone wrong in the meantime, Glass had a fire wall of anonymity for himself. Pinkney and Watkins couldn’t finger him if they wanted to. They had no idea who he was. None at all.

“Where’s Watkins now?” I asked.

I saw a few smirks around the table. “That’s what the girlfriend wants to know,” one of the case agents told me.

“Apparently, Watkins skipped town two nights ago — along with this woman’s younger sister . Sounds like she ran out of reasons for protecting him. She came in with a lawyer this morning and struck up a pretty quick deal.”

“We’ve got his name out on WALES, and every field office in the country’s looking for him,” Lindley said. “But quite honestly, Deshawn Watkins is not our number one concern right now.”

I looked up from the file. Lindley was just picking up a steel briefcase from the floor.

He set it down in front of him with his hands on the double combination lock. Then he nodded to the half-dozen other staff around the table.

“Excuse me, everyone. Could we have the room, please?”

As soon as we were alone, Lindley opened the case. The Toughbook inside powered up automatically, and he entered a long string of characters to access whatever it was he wanted to show me in private.

“What you’re about to see is a video that came into the Richmond field office this morning. A copy, anyway. The drive it came on is at the lab, but the First Lady asked personally for you to see this.”

That might have explained why I was the only non-FBI personnel here. Mrs. Coyle trusted me, for better or worse. So far, I felt like I was letting her down.

Lindley turned the case around so the screen was facing me, then hit the space bar to start the video.

At first, it didn’t look like anything was happening. Then I noticed some kind of vague movement, like someone was carrying a camera through a dark room.

My pulse ticked up a notch, anticipating what I was about to see.

A light of some kind came on, wobbly, like a handheld flashlight.

I saw the folds of a dark blue blanket. The camera kept moving, and a hand came into the frame.

Then Zoe’s face.

She seemed to be sleeping. Probably under heavy sedation, I thought, given what Molly Johnson had told me. The shot was too close up to show Zoe’s surroundings — but could this be the basement Molly had described? The one that smelled like dirt? Where the hell was it?

“The date stamp on the video file is for two days ago,” Lindley said. “Not that you can’t fake something like that, but it’s the best sign we’ve had so far that they’re alive.”

In fact it was the only sign we’d had, but I didn’t say anything.

The camera stayed on Zoe for another ten seconds or so. Then there was a blur of movement, and Ethan was there. His face was just as filthy as Zoe’s, and just as gaunt. At least there was no blood or scars, nothing to suggest they’d been beaten.

“The son of a bitch is starving them,” I said. My eyes welled up. I couldn’t help it.

Finally, I had to look away from the video.

Lindley cleared his throat. “There’s twenty-three seconds in all,” he said. “And then... this.”

The screen went dark. This time, it looked like the camera had been turned off.

When it came on again, we were looking at a plain white piece of paper with something printed there, in a small, plain font.

As the image slowly zoomed in, the words on the page became clear.

“ Believe what you want, Mr. President .”

“It’s more of the same,” I said. “He’s turning up the torture. He wants Coyle to watch his kids waste away, just like Rodney Glass had to watch his own son die.”

Lindley nodded sedately. He took back the computer case and shut it up tight.

“I’m inclined to agree,” he said. “That’s why we think it’s time to put everything on the table.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “What does that mean?”

“It means if we’re lucky, we’ve got one last chance to save Ethan and Zoe. We’re pulling Glass in for further questioning.”

“ What? ”

“I know it’s a risk,” he said. “But all we have is circumstantial evidence — at best. We need him to think he’s cornered. A confession’s our only shot.”

“Hang on. Did we just see the same video?” I said. “What do you think happens to Ethan and Zoe if you take him out of commission?”

Lindley didn’t like to have his authority questioned. I could see it in the way he set his jaw when he looked at me.

“What are you suggesting, Cross? We do nothing about this? We wait him out?”

“I’m saying let’s consider all our options while we still can.” I got up and started moving, trying to think clearly. After weeks of walking through molasses on this, it was all happening too fast. “Maybe we create a false story. We say we have his print on the videotape. Something to let Glass think he’s got no room to maneuver.”

But Lindley wasn’t even listening anymore. His phone had just buzzed. He looked down to check whatever message had come in.

“Too late,” he told me. “Glass is already here.”

Rodney Glass was a damn good actor. He seemed genuinely perplexed about why he’d been pulled in for another interview. But he didn’t fool me for a second. He’d been to medical school. Of course he was bright.

“How many times do I have to say this?” he asked, less than a minute into the interview. “I was treating Ryan Townsend for a bloody nose just after Ethan and Zoe went missing. I’ve got Ryan himself, not to mention at least one Secret Service agent, to back me up on this. So can someone please explain what I’m doing here?”

He had a cocky, almost adolescent quality to him, all the way down to his NBA kicks. Was that part of the act, too? Just another way to get the kids at Branaff to trust him? I also had the impression Glass had taken something, maybe even just a Klonopin, to keep himself loose while he was here. He certainly knew his way around pharmaceuticals.

“What about just before Ethan and Zoe disappeared?” I asked. “Where were you then?”

“Isn’t this already in your files, or whatever?” he asked.

“Humor us,” Lindley said. After our initial argument, Peter and I had agreed on one thing. Now that Glass was here, we needed to hit him with everything we had. And maybe some things we didn’t have.

“I was in the faculty restroom, okay? Taking a dump, if you really want to know.”

Lindley scribbled something in his file.

“And how long does it take to walk from the faculty restroom back to the infirmary?” I asked.

Glass shook his head and frowned. “I don’t know. A minute and a half? You tell me.”

“Just about a minute and a half,” I said. “But you weren’t coming back from the restroom, were you?”

“And that’s not really a question, is it?” he said.

“It also takes about a minute and a half to get back from the tunnel under the school, if you hurry,” I told him. “I timed it myself.”

“Yeah, good for you,” he said.

I hated this guy. I really did. The stakes couldn’t have been higher, and I was feeling edgier by the second. I didn’t care anymore that he’d lost a son. That didn’t excuse what he was doing now.