I, Alex Cross

Chapter 92

NICHOLSON WOKE UP in the dark, on cold ground, but at least he was alive. He was completely naked, he realized, and his wrists and ankles were bound.

A horrible ache blazed up in his neck when he tried to look around. But he was still in the game, which was all that really counted now, wasn't it?

There was a building of some kind behind him, dimly lit from the inside. Everything else was just shadows and trees. A stack of firewood, maybe. Machinery of some kind near the building. What? A snowblower? Lawn mower?

"He's waking up," a voice said, not far away from him.

Nicholson heard footfalls and the sound of sloshing water. As the steps came closer, a flashlight beam lit the ground in front of him. He saw a pair of feet in dark cordovans.

"Welcome back, Tony. Thought we lost you back there. Here you go!"

When the splash of water hit, it jolted him like an electric shock. His whole body seized with the cold, and his breath came in crazy accordion gasps he couldn't control.

"Get him up," someone else said.

They hoisted him under the arms until his bare ass landed on a wooden chair. The flashlight caught just glints of things – a face, a stump, a flash of silver in someone's hand. Gun? Phone?

"Where's Mara?" he slurred, as she suddenly came to mind.

"Don't worry about her right now. Least of your problems. Trust me on that."

"We had an arrangement!" He sounded pathetic and he knew it. "Promises were made to me. I did exactly as I was told!"

Something sharp pricked at the crown of his head. "Who else knows about Zeus?" one of the men asked. His tone was bland, conversational.

"No one! I swear! Nobody knows. I did my part. So did Mara!"

A stinging line, almost like fire, ran straight down behind his ear to the back of his neck. There was a slight breeze, an air current, but it lit up the pain like acid.

"Not Adam Petoskey? Not Esther Walcott?"

"No! I mean… they might have figured a little out. Adam wasn't as careful at the end as he was at the begi

Two more cuts slashed across the front of his chest and down his abdomen. Nicholson screamed both times.

He drew in his stomach muscles as if he could somehow escape the blade even as it continued down slowly, separating skin from skin, until it stopped just at the base of his cock.

"Who else, Nicholson? Now would be a good time for you to get chatty."

"Nobody! Jesus, God, don't do this!"

He was crying now, moaning out of control. It was all so incredibly unfair. He'd spent his adult life trading in one kind of a lie or another, and now here he was, caught in the truth.

"I don't know what it is you want," he blubbered at them. "I don't know anything anymore…"

"Somewhere behind him, a third voice came out of the dark. It was different than the other two, with the kind of Dukes of Hazzard redneck twang Nicholson had looked down on ever since he came to America.

"Hey, fellas, let's move this along, all righty? I got some work of my own to attend to."

And that's when Nicholson gave up the last piece, his lifeline – at least he hoped so.

"I gave a disk to the cops. Zeus was on it. Detective Alex Cross has the disk!"

Chapter 93

IT TAKES WHAT it takes. That had always been a favorite expression of Nana's – one part stubbor

The entire intensive-care unit at St. Anthony's, Five West, was more than a little familiar by now. I knew all the nurses and some of the patients' family members. In fact, I was in the hall that night, chatting with a new acquaintance about her father's brain injury, when the alarm went off in Nana's room.

Alarms weren't always a reason to panic on Five West. They rang all the time, for slipped finger clips and some electronic glitch or another. The rule of thumb was that the higher and more obnoxious the sound got, the more you needed to be concerned.

This one started low, but by the time I got inside Nana's room, it was up to a hard wail. One of the nurses, Zadie Mitchell, was already in there.

"What is it?" I asked Zadie. "Anything?"

She was adjusting Nana's O2 clip and watching a wave pattern on the monitor, so she didn't answer right away.

Another nurse, Jayne Spahn, came in behind me. "Bad pleth?" she asked.

"No," Zadie said. "It's accurate. Page Donald Hesch." She hit the hundred-percent-oxygen button on the ventilator and started suctioning Nana right away.

My heart was pounding now. "Zadie, what's happening?"

"She's desaturating, Alex. Don't worry yet."

I wasn't so sure. Even with the ventilator, all the excess fluid in Nana's system made it a constant struggle for her heart to circulate enough oxygen. For all I knew, she was drowning in front of my eyes.

Dr. Hesch came in a couple minutes later, with Jayne and one of the staff respiratory therapists. They squeezed between the machines to work on Nana. All I could do was stand by, listen in, and try to keep up.

"She was bolused this morning for MAPs in the forties. I've been suctioning blood-tinged sputum since we paged you."

"Did she get a gas today?"

"No. She's a hard stick; her last gas was two days ago."

"Okay, go up to ten and try to get a reading in an hour. Let's see what dialysis does in the morning. I'll check her X-ray in the meantime."

Hesch rushed back out without another word, and Jayne took me by the elbow into the hall.

"She's having a rough night, Alex, but she's going to get through this okay."

I watched Nana through the door, where Zadie and the RT were still working on her. It was such a helpless feeling, not being able to give her what she needed, even something as basic as oxygen. Especially something like that.

"Alex, did you hear me?" Jayne was still talking, I realized. "There won't be any more to know until tomorrow morning. Someone can call and check in around seven -"

"No," I said. "I'm going to stay tonight."

She put a hand on my shoulder. "That's really not necessary," she said.

"I understand."

But it wasn't about necessary anymore. It was about what I could and couldn't control here. For the past ten minutes, I hadn't just been thinking about losing Nana. I'd been wondering, What if I wasn't here? What if she died and no one was with her when it happened?

I'd never forgive myself, I thought. So if it meant going back onto the night shift for a while, then that's what I was going to do.

Whatever it took – I was going to be there for Nana.

Chapter 94

SENATOR MARSHALL YARROW was pulling a bag of golf clubs out of the back of his Navigator when he saw me and Sampson coming across the parking lot of the Washington Golf and Country Club. He looked like I'd just ruined his perfectly good Saturday morning. Imagine that. What a damn shame.

"What in hell's name are you doing here?" he asked as we came up to his vehicle.

"Three appointments, three cancellations," I told him. "Call me crazy, Senator, but I'd say you're avoiding me. You were, anyway."

"And who's this?" He looked John over – more up than down, given Sampson's height.

"This is my partner, Detective Sampson. You can just pretend he's not here. He fits right in, doesn't he? We both do. Maybe as caddies."

Yarrow snorted at me and waved to someone waiting under the porte cochere in front of the club. "Mike, I'll see you inside. Order me an espresso, would you?"

I realized after the fact that the other man had been Michael Hart, a senator from North Carolina, and a Democrat to Yarrow's Republican.