Cross the Line (Alex Cross 24)

Two days later, my face was still swollen and bruised. The knife wound had been sutured but it hurt like hell. Bree had won a commendation for solving the murder of the late Thomas McGrath. And Jannie’s orthopedist had called to say that her latest MRI showed the bone in her foot healing nicely.

“We have lots to be thankful for,” I said as we sat down to dinner.

“Says a man who looks like he went four rounds with Mike Tyson,” Nana Mama said, and Ali giggled.

“A man who went four rounds with Mike Tyson and survived,” I said, smiling and wincing at my split lip. “Anyway, we’re all here. We’re all healthy. We’re all safe. And for that, I for one am grateful.”

We held hands and said grace and then dove into a chicken Nana Mama had roasted with Dijon mustard, pearl onions, and lemongrass. It was delicious, another triumph, and we showered praise on her.

My grandmother was pleased and in peak form as dinner went on, cracking jokes and telling stories I’d heard and loved long ago. As she did, my mind drifted to the aftermath of Colonel Whitaker’s raid on Edgewater 9. Five Regulators had died in the firefight trying to escape. Two had been taken into custody by army MPs and had lawyered up.

Hobbes and Fender eluded the Coast Guard and escaped with a canister of VX, which had the country in a heightened state of alert. The men’s photographs were everywhere, and Ned Mahoney, who’d come through surgery with flying colors, was saying it was only a matter of time before they were located and captured.

George Potter, the DEA SAC, was now believed to be the source of the Regulators’ intelligence regarding the criminal supercartel targeted in the massacres.

The U.S. Naval Academy had taken two black eyes. Colonel Whitaker and U.S. Navy captain Cassandra “Cass” Pope were both graduates of Annapolis and on the faculty. Whitaker and Pope left vitriolic letters on their work computers declaring that slavers were destroying the country and that it was time for the slaves to arm themselves, rise up, and fight.

I shuddered to think what might have happened to Washington and to my family if they had managed to release a gallon of VX in the nation’s capital. But the important thing was that the Regulators or the vigilantes or whatever you wanted to call them were no longer operating. The road-rage killer was gone too. And no one had died from—

Someone started pounding on our front door.

Then she started to yell.

Chapter

105

“Alex?” a woman cried as she rang the doorbell. “Nana Mama? You in there?”

I got up and almost went for my gun before loo

king through the window and seeing Chung Sun Chung. She was in her down coat, despite the heat, and she was ringing our bell and knocking like someone playing a one-note xylophone and a bongo drum.

I limped down the hall and opened the door, expecting to find a traumatized woman or a woman in peril. Instead, Sun threw her head back and let loose with a real crazy cackle of a laugh.

“Sun, what’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” She chortled and then came to me and started beating her little fists lightly against my chest. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Sun stopped hitting me and cackled again. “Everything’s right. Where is your Nana Mama?”

“I’m right here, Sun,” my grandmother said, appearing in the hallway with the rest of the family. “God’s sake, the way you’re carrying on, you’d think I’d—”

There was a frozen moment when everyone was quiet. And then Sun howled, threw her arms over her head, and did a little jig.

“You didn’t see the drawing?” the convenience-store owner cried, pushing by me. “You won! You won the Powerball!”

My grandmother looked at Sun as if she had two heads. “I did not.”

“You did so!” Sun said, dancing toward her. “I’ve been selling you the same numbers for nine years. Seven, twelve, nine, six, one, eleven, and three in the Powerball. I saw the draw!”

Nana Mama scowled. “See there? You’re wrong, Sun. I always put a two in the Powerball, so I won something, but—”

“No, Nana,” I said, dumbstruck. “I changed half your tickets, added one to your last Powerball number. I asked Sun to put a three there.”

“Exactly!” Sun cried and started jigging again.

“Oh my God!” Jannie yelled.