He held up an iPhone and handed it to me.
I took one look at the screen and wanted to scream.
Instead, I jumped up and bear-hugged the startled kid.
“What is it?” Aaliyah asked.
“He got her,” I said, grinning wildly and handing her the phone. “He caught that bitch in living color.”
CHAPTER
55
THE CURRENT WAS UP on the Mississippi River just north of Memphis. It tugged and punched at the moored barge Pandora, making Acadia Le Duc unsteady as she watched Marcus Sunday work at the lock sealing the cargo container. She was worried that things had gone far enough, that this game Sunday was playing was ultimately going to be a loser.
A guy like Cross didn’t quit when it came to family, Acadia thought. If any member of the family was actually killed, Cross would hunt Thierry Mulch until his dying breath, which meant that he’d be hunting Acadia as well.
She didn’t like that idea. She didn’t like it at all.
Still, when Sunday pushed the hatch open and climbed through it, Acadia took a deep breath and followed him in, carrying a large canvas beach bag. Sunday shut and locked the hatch behind her and then flipped a toggle switch to illuminate the interior of the long, narrow space.
Sunday went immediately to a computer bolted to a stand, called up the screen, and studied it.
“Lot of sun the past two days,” he said. “Really keeping the banks strong.”
Acadia was barely listening. Her eyes were roaming over the elaborate life-support system keeping Alex Cross’s family alive.
Strapped to bunks bolted into the walls, the five were intubated and on ventilators. They had nasogastric tubes inserted to prevent them from aspirating. Intravenous lines ran from their hands to the automated Harvard pumps that governed the flow of IV fluids.
Above each bunk there was a four-liter bag of liquid hanging on a hook. The average person can survive on one and a half liters of maintenance fluids a day. Each of the bags would sustain a patient for roughly sixty hours.
There were also three smaller bags hanging on each hook, all of which were linked to smaller pumps before they joined the main IV line. One bag held sixty hours’ worth of midazolam, a relaxant similar to Valium. Another contained a two-and-a-half-day supply of morphine. The third was an equal amount of pancuronium. A molecular relative of the South American toxin curare, the third drug was a paralytic, used in surgeries or, as in this case, induced comas.
Acadia took it all in with a long sweeping glance, seeing no evidence of disruption or breakage. Sunday had bribed a brilliant, corrupt doctor with a cocaine habit to design the system and obtain the medications. The doctor had even helped program the automated infusion based on the weight, sex, and age of each patient.
Cross’s ninety-something grandmother had been the trickiest. She weighed less than one hundred pounds, and she had a history of mild cardiac problems. Every time Acadia came into the container car, she expected to find the old woman long gone. Acadia went to her first. Nana Mama’s heart rate was slightly up from the last time she’d checked. And her blood pressure looked a little low. But besides that, she was solid.
Satisfied, Acadia steeled herself for the side of nursing she’d hated in the four years she’d done it. She pulled down the old woman’s sheet, changed her diaper, threw the old one into a garbage bag, and checked her Foley catheter for signs of infection. There were none. She emptied the urine bag, replaced it, then drew the sheet back up over her, unable to shake the idea that Cross would chase her for the rest of his life. He wasn’t the kind of man who gave up, especially when his family was involved.
She glanced at Sunday, who was still studying the computers, and then at the array of medicines in the bags hanging off hooks above the old woman’s bunk. She continued with her routine, checking the vitals and cleaning the other four. The Cross children were strong, Jannie especially. She had the heart and build of a serious athlete. Acadia caught Sunday looking at the girl’s naked form with great interest and realized that he hadn’t touched her since they’d taken the Cross family hostage. When she started working on Bree Stone, Sunday was almost leering.
“She’s quite well put together, don’t you think?” Sunday asked, moving around for a better view. “You can see why Dr. Alex would be so crushed by her death.”
Acadia said nothing. She knew a thing or two about men. When they stopped wanting sex, you were in danger of being cheated on, dumped, or worse. Given the sheer audacity and scope of what Sunday had done already, she started to suspect that worse was the option he’d eventually settle on.
That suspicion built within her, and by the time she’d gotten the new four-liter IV bags and the drugs from the storage chest and swapped them out, it had become a conviction. Her time was growing short. Sooner rather than later, Sunday would kill her.
What was it he’d written in his book? That the perfect criminal was a universe unto himself? He works alone, or kills his accomplices? That was exactly what Sunday had written. But maybe—
“Acadia?” Sunday said. “Are we done here?”
She looked o
ver at him, hesitated, but then came to a decision, thinking: It’s time to ride the comet.
She said, “I’m just nervous about the intubations and the nasogastric tubes.”
“Yeah?” he said with zero interest.