Alex Cross, Run (Alex Cross 20)

“W’sup, Ava?” she said. “These your people?”

“I’m Alex,” I said. “This is Bree, and Nana. We’re Ava’s foster family.”

The girl’s eye landed on the brownies, and Nana held up the tin.

“Thank you, ma’am,” she said, taking two, with a little grin. “Ava tell you what she been up to lately?”

“Shut up, Nessa!” Ava blurted out. “You mind your own business.”

“Whatever,” the girl said. I assumed she was talking about the drug counseling, but either way, she didn’t seem to take Ava too seriously. In fact, she held up her phone to snap a group shot of us, like nothing had happened. “Say cheese, y’all.”

“Cheese,” we said—except for Ava, of course. I gave the girl my number and she texted the picture right over before taking another brownie and disappearing back inside.

“She doesn’t seem so bad,” Nana said. “Is she a friend?”

“My roommate,” Ava said. “She’s a’ight.”

We offered to take both girls out to dinner, if she wanted, but Ava said they were making tacos that night, and she wanted to stick around. We all nodded and acted like we understood, but we also left frustrated when the visit was over.

I didn’t see Ava as ungrateful, or bratty. I saw her as broken, and unable to process everything she was feeling. It’s the kind of void kids try to fill up with drugs all the time. Once you add in a history of neglect, like Ava had, and the pressure of living in the foster system, meaningful change can start to be nearly impossible.

It’s all about baby steps, at best. And that’s on the good days.

Today was not one of them.

CHAPTER

79

MEANWHILE, THE HITS JUST KEPT ON COMING.

Back at work the next morning, I went to log into the case files, and the system spit back an unwelcome message.

Login ID not recognized.

I tried a few more times but kept getting back the same message. Clearly, my access to the system had been revoked sometime in the last twelve hours. My noncontact status at work was now complete.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. All it took was a routine case review for anyone up the food chain from me to see my virtual fingerprints all over the River Killer, Georgetown Ripper, and Elizabeth Reilly files. Based on the rules of my suspension, I wasn’t supposed to be poking around the system to begin with.

But that didn’t stop me from going in to complain to Sergeant Huizenga.

“Don’t start, Alex,” she said, as soon as I showed up in her door. She knew why I was there. “I’m not in the mood.”

“This isn’t about me,” I told her. “We’ve got three potentially active serials on the books right now. When was the last time we were stretched this thin?”

“Not the point,” she said. “All Commander D’Auria saw when he caught this was something I should have already taken care of. Chewed my ass out about it, too, at ten o’clock last night, thank you very much.”

“I’m not talking about getting back in the field,” I told her. “I’m talking about reading files, so I can be up to speed when I’m reinstated.”

“What don’t you understand about noncontact status?” she shouted at me. “You think I want you on the sidelines? Jesus! Why are we even having this conversation?”

It was day eighteen of the crisis, and progress wasn’t nearly what it needed to be. The longer these investigations went on, the more Huizenga was going to have management breathing down her neck, micromanaging her life and demanding results. That’s usually when the yelling starts.

And it was about to get worse.

Just then, Detective Jacobs pushed past me into Huizenga’s office. Whatever she had, it was big. I could tell just from the way she w

as moving.