The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross 25)

“We had him,” Aaliyah said. “I mean, this was a major criminal operation. Millions of dollars, and we had him dead to rights.”

“So you go to Kovac’s apartment building to serve the warrant,” I said, pushing her toward the awful truth.

“Yes.” Aaliyah sighed. “We went in at the exact same time arrests in this case were supposed to go down all over the East Coast. Synchronized, you know?”

But unbeknownst to Aaliyah and her partner, several warrants had been served early. When police in New Jersey went through the front door of a Kovac chop shop, one of his men got off a text warning of the raid.

“Seconds before we reached the tenth floor of his apartment building, Kovac and his men left his flat,” Aaliyah said. “Cox saw them at the far end of the hallway and ordered them to the ground. They ran, and when we pursued, they shot.”

“They definitely shot first?”

“No question,” Aaliyah said, a smolder of the old fire in her eyes. “Surveillance cameras back us up.”

“Okay. Kovac and his men shoot first. Then what?”

That glowing ember died in Aaliyah’s eyes. Her neck muscles went taut as piano wires before she said, “Then it all became a nightmare.”

Provoked into a gun battle, Aaliyah and her partner followed protocol and returned fire. Her first shot hit the meat of Kovac’s thigh. Her second and third shots missed the car thief, who, howling in pain, lunged into the stairwell.

“I was in pursuit when the wailing started behind the door at the end of the hall,” Aaliyah said, and she broke down sobbing.

I knew the rest. She and Cox caught and arrested Kovac and two accomplices, but at an unfathomable cost. The bullets that went wide of the car thief had gone through the door of the apartment belonging to the Phelps family—Oliver, a young, successful attorney; Patricia, a young, successful physician; and their twins, four-year-old Meagan and Alice.

Alice had been playing in the front hallway. The nanny had rushed to get her at the first shot.

“What are the odds, Dr. Cross?” Aaliyah asked, still weeping bitterly. “What are the odds of wounding the nanny and killing the girl?”

CHAPTER

18

AFTER AALIYAH POURED out her anguish, her grief, her guilt and despair, she pulled her feet up under her on the chair, wrapped her arms around her knees, and stared off into the distance.

“In the end, I’ll always be the cop who killed a child,” she said hollowly. “No matter who I was before or who I become after, that’s who I will be.”

“To who? You?”

“I pulled the trigger, Alex. That’s what they’ll write after I die.”

“I empathize with the pain and regret you must be feeling, but you don’t know what the future holds for you. None of us do.”

She blinked slowly, said, “There is a way to know your future for certain.”

That got my attention and concern. “Have you thought about that, Tess?”

Aaliyah took a big breath and then shook her head. “No. Not really.”

“Not really?”

“Not at all. I’m just trying to find a way to process this, you know?”

There was little conviction in the detective’s voice, and she appeared preoccupied.

“Are you sleeping?” I asked.

“Some days it’s all I do.”

“Self-medicating? Alcohol? Drugs?”