I, Alex Cross

"Truth be told, I thought it was my lucky night," he said, "until I saw what kind of terrible shape she was in. Any bigger caliber on that slug in her back and she would have been dead."

Even so, the girl had insisted that Johnson keep driving, at least until they were across the state line. He finally got her to an ER just outside Winston-Salem.

"Still, A

"Her name is A

"I'll get to that part," Johnson said.

"Why did she come forward when she did?" I asked them. All I knew was that the contact between Mr. Johnson and Mahoney had started before the names Constantine Bowie and Zeus had ever made it into the headlines.

"That's a little complicated," he said. "She still hasn't told us everything. We don't even know her real name; we just call her A

"And where is she now, Aubrey?" Ned asked.

"Not far." Johnson took a set of keys off the counter. "I'll let her speak for herself, but I will tell you this much. That fellow they're calling Zeus on the news? She says you all got the wrong man. She isn't A

Chapter 106

JOHNSON LED US back through the village in his truck, almost to the mainland bridge.

Then he turned off and parked at the Dauphin Island Marina. Fewer than half of the slips were occupied, and the office and snack shack on the waterfront both looked closed and shuttered for the season.

We followed him up one of the three long docks to a sport fishing boat called the May. A heavyset woman, presumably Mrs. Johnson, was waiting on the deck. She looked at us a lot more skeptically than her husband had.

"This them?" she said.

"You know it is, May. Let's go."

She didn't move. "This girl's been through a living hell, do you understand me? You need to go easy with her."

I had no quarrel with the attitude; actually, I was grateful for it. We assured Mrs. Johnson that we'd be good with the girl, and then followed her down to the little cabin below deck.

"A

Mahoney started with introductions and asked if she was willing to give us her name.

"It's Ha

Ned explained that the US Attorney's office would decide if she even needed to testify, but if so, then yes, she was a perfect candidate for WitSec. In the meantime, he assured her, we wouldn't record anything that she had to tell us.

"Let's start with what happened to you," I said. "The night Aubrey picked you up in his truck."

She nodded slowly, mustering the memory, or maybe just the will to tell it. May Johnson sat next to her, holding her hand the whole time.

"It was supposed to be some kind of private party at Blacksmith," Ha

"Was this party held in the apartment over the carriage barn?" I asked.

"That's right." She seemed surprised that I already knew. "I'd never been up there before. I knew the pay was better."

"When you say 'we,' " Ned asked, "how many of you were there with Zeus?"

"Just me and one other girl, Nicole," she said. "Although I doubt that was her real name."

It also wasn't the first time I'd heard it used in a conversation like this. I could feel my heart thumping as I reached into my pocket and took out the picture of Caroline that I'd been carrying with me from the start of this terrible, unholy mess.

"Is this her, Ha

She nodded, and the tears started to come.

"Yes, sir. That's the girl who died. That's Nicole."

Chapter 107

I LISTENED CAREFULLY, filtering my rage away from the information Ha

She described how Zeus had handcuffed them to the bed, then used his fists and his teeth, focusing more on Caroline than on her, for reasons she couldn't explain, even now. By the time he had raped both women, she said, "Nicole was barely conscious, and the mattress cover on the bed was slick with blood."

He left soon after that, and Ha

"They worked quickly, like they'd done it before. Cleaned up his mess," Ha

Both girls were then carried down and put in the trunk of a car. Ha

They were in the woods, at a cabin of some kind. A third man was there, and he seemed to take over for the other two. The only light on them was his lantern, and he held it up to Ha

That's when Ha

The three men came after her, of course, and there were gunshots, including the one that lodged in her back. Somehow, she managed to keep going. It was nothing she could explain at this point, or even remember very clearly, right up until she came out on the road and saw the oncoming headlights of Aubrey Johnson's pickup truck.

Everything about the story lined up with what I already knew – the indications of bite marks on Caroline's remains, the cabin in the woods, the description of the two men with the car. There was only one question still hanging.

The question.

"Who was he, Ha

"We knew because he showed us his face. He lifted his terrible mask and said it didn't matter if Caroline and I saw him."

"Ha

And even then, with everything else I knew about this case, her answer still floored me.