Patterson, James - Alex Cross 2 - Kiss the Girls

I was finally inside the house of horror. What I saw made me retch. A woman's body was laid out on a couch in what appeared to be a well-appointed living room. The corpse had begun to decompose. The features were unrecognizable. Maggots were swarming all over the victim.

Move, I had to tell myself. Go! Go now.

“I'm right behind you,” Sampson whispered in his deep, homicide-scene voice. “Watch yourself now, Alex.” “This is the police!” I called out. My voice was shaky and getting hoarse. I was afraid of what else we might find in the hideaway. Was Naomi still here? Was she alive?

“We're down here!” a woman called out. “Can anybody hear me?” “We hear you! We're coming!” I shouted again.

“Please help us!” A second voice sounded farther away in the underground house. “Be careful. He's tricky.” “See. He's tricky,” Sampson whispered. Never at a loss.

“He's in the house! He's in here now!” one of the women shouted a warning to us.

Sampson was still standing behind me, keeping close. “You want to keep the point, partner? Walk on the ridge line?” “I want to be the one to find her,” I told him. “I have to find Scootchie.” He didn't argue. "You think lover boy is down here someplace?

Casanova?" he whispered.

“That's the rumor going around,” I said and moved forward slowly. Both of us had our guns drawn and ready. We had no idea what to expect next. Was lover boy waiting for us?

Move! Move! Move those legs! I led the way out of the deserted living room. There were high-tech lamps in the ceiling of the adjoining hallway. How was he able to get electricity in here? A transformer? A generator? What should that tell me? That he was handy? That he had connections with the local electric company?

How long had it taken to get the underground cellar in this condition?

I wondered. To fix it up like this? To make his fantasy come true?

The space was extensive. We entered a long hallway that snaked off the living room to the right. There were doors on either side, and they were bolt-locked from the outside, like prison cells.

“Watch our backs,” I said to Sampson. “I'm going in door number one.” “I always watch your back,” he whispered.

“Watch your back, too.” I went up to the first door. “This is the police,” I called out. “I'm Detective Alex Cross. Everything's going to be all right.” I yanked open the first door and peered inside. I wanted it to be Naomi. I prayed that it was.

Alex Cross 2 - Kiss the Girls

CHAPTER 107.

SUCH UTTER FOOLS,“ said the Gentleman, intolerant and impatient as always. ”Two carnival clowns in blackface.“ Casanova smiled thinly, growing impatient with the Gentleman. ”What the hell did you expect?

Brain surgeons from Walter Reed in Washington? They're a couple of ordinary street cops."

“Not so ordinary, perhaps. They found the house, didn't they? They're inside right now.” The two friends watched everything coming together from a nearby hiding place in the woods. They had tracked the detectives all afternoon, observing them with binoculars. Plotting, planning, but also playing with their prey. They were careful as they moved in for the final confrontation.

“Why didn't they bring the others out here? Why didn't they bring the FBI?” Rudolph asked. He was always inquisitive and very logical. A logic machine; a killing machine; but a machine that ran without a human heart.

Casanova looked through the powerful German binoculars again. He could see the open trapdoor that led down into the underground house, the masterpiece that he and Rudolph had built by hand.

“It's their policeman's arrogance,” he finally answered Rudolph's question. “In some ways, they're like us. Cross is especially. He trusts himself and no one else.” He glanced over at Will Rudolph, and both men smiled. The irony was beautiful, actually. The two detectives against the two of them.

“Cross probably thinks he understands us, our relationship, that is,” Rudolph said. “Maybe he does a little bit.” He had been paranoid about Alex Cross since the close call in California. Cross had tracked him down, after all, and that frightened him. But the Gentleman also found Cross interesting as an opponent. He enjoyed the competition, the blood sport.

“He understands some things, he sees patterns, so he thinks he knows more than he actually does. Just be patient, and we'll expose Cross's weaknesses.” As long as they were patient, Casanova believed, as long as they thought everything through carefully, they would win; they would never be caught. It had been that way for years, from the first day they met at Duke University.

Casanova knew that Will Rudolph had been careless out in California.

He'd had that disturbing tendency even as a brilliant medical student.

He was impatient, and had been sloppy and melodramatic when he killed Roe Tierney and Tom Hutchinson. He had almost been caught back then.

He was questioned by the police, and had been a serious suspect in the famous case.

Casanova thought about Alex Cross again, evaluating the detective's strengths and weaknesses. Cross was careful, and he was a thorough “professional.” He almost always thought things through before he acted. He was certainly smarter than the rest of the pack. A cop and a psychologist. He'd found the hideaway, hadn't he? He'd gotten this far, closer than all the others.

John Sampson was more impulsive. He was the weak point, though he certainly didn't look it. He was physically powerful, but he would be the one to break first. And breaking Sampson would break Cross. The two detectives were close friends; they were extremely emotional about each other.

“It was stupid for us to split up a year ago, to go our separate ways,” Casanova said to his only real friend in the world. “If we hadn't begun to compete and play egocentric games, Cross would never have found out anything about us. He wouldn't have found you, and we wouldn't have to kill the girls and destroy the house now.” “Let me take care of the good Dr. Cross,” Rudolph said. He didn't react to the things Casanova had just said. Rudolph never showed much emotion, but actually he'd been lonely, too. He'd come back, hadn't he?

“No one takes care of Dr. Cross alone,” Casanova said. "We'll go after them together. We make it two against one, the way we work best.

First, Sampson. Then Alex Cross. I know how he'll react. I know how he thinks. I've been watching him. Actually, I've been hunting Alex Cross since he came to the South."

The two human monsters moved closer to the house.

Alex Cross 2 - Kiss the Girls

CHAPTER 108.

I SWITCHED ON overhead lights in the first room and I saw one of the captive women. Maria Jane Capaldi cowered like a frightened little girl against the far wall. I knew who she was. I'd met her parents a week or so back; I had seen old, cherished photographs of her.

“Please don't hurt me. I can't take any more of this,” Maria Jane pleaded in a hoarse whisper.

She was hugging herself, rocking gently back and forth. She had on ripped black tights and a wrinkled Nirvana T-shirt. Maria Jane was just nineteen years old, an art major and aspiring painter at North Carolina State in Raleigh.

“I'm a police detective,” I whispered in the softest voice possible.

“Nobody can hurt you now. We won't let them.” Maria Jane moaned, and she began to cry tears of relief. Her whole body was quivering.

“He can't hurt you now, Maria Jane,” I reassured her in the softest voice I could manage. I could barely speak, actually. "I have to find the others. I'll be back, I promise you. I'm leaving your door open.

You can come out. You're safe now."