Alex Cross, Run (Alex Cross 20)

The place was dark, but he’d brought one of Miranda’s keys from home. He let himself in through the porte cochere entrance and up to the grand hall that ran down the center of the old place. It was one of those eight-bedroom, twelve-bathroom deals they called a “cottage” around here. Typical WASP understatement.

It was ridiculous, really. Miranda had been rich as Croesus long before the two of them had ever met. Her parents—in Provence for the season—had some kind of bottomless fortune, tied to half a million acres of sugarcane in Hawaii and Australia. Miranda’s stock options alone were worth a hundred million. She may not have married Creem for his money, but she sure as hell was divorcing him for it. The last six months had turned her into a vindictive, greedy little bitch. Her, and her two little clones. There was no preserving those relationships anymore, and no sense trying.

Just the opposite, in fact.

Creem skipped the nostalgia tour this time and went straight to the so-called blue room on the third floor. It was the one Miranda favored. He’d stayed in it several times himself. Chloe was even conceived in the room’s nineteenth-century sleigh bed. That’s where he stopped to change.

He peeled off the mask, the dress, and the godforsaken undergear, folding them carefully onto the bed. A duplicate pair of masks were rolled in Bubble Wrap inside his suitcase, for the two-day bus trip to Miami.

In the meantime, he took out a few of his own things and quickly re-dressed. He also took out three pairs of steel handcuffs, a roll of black packing tape, and a small, sealed bottle of chloral hydrate.

From the game table in the corner, Creem took one of the straight-back chairs and moved it to the space under the window by the bed. It was all planned out. Miranda would be the last to go, but she’d get the show of her life before she did.

The only thing he kept on him was the scalpel. He slid it carefully into his back pocket as he crossed to the window again and looked outside.

From here he could see where the white crushed-gravel driveway curved around the back of the house to a parking courtyard. There was no sign of Miranda or the girls yet, but there had been a Newport paper in the front hall, open to the movie section. Chances were, they wouldn’t be long.

As he stood there at the window, surveying the back of the house, something suddenly caught Creem’s eye. A flicker, or a reflection of movement in the glass.

He turned around fast to see the tall shape of a man, silhouetted in the bedroom door against the light from the hall.

“Elijah Creem?” the man said. “You need to come with me. You’re under arrest.”

Creem still couldn’t make out the face, but he recognized the deep tone of the man’s voice right away.

It was his new best friend, Alex Cross.

CHAPTER

100

MY GUESS IS THAT CREEM THOUGHT FLYING WOULD BE TOO RISKY. IT HAD taken him the better part of the day to reach the house in Newport over land.

Not me. With the favor of a Bell helicopter from the Bureau—and specifically from Ned Mahoney, who was now on the list of people I owed, big-time—Valente and I had gotten to Rhode Island in two and a half hours. We’d also contacted an investigative unit with the Newport County sheriff’s office. The house where Miranda Creem and her daughters were staying had been vacated long before Dr. Creem ever got there.

Given my previous contact with Creem, my psych background, and the disaster of Josh Bergman’s suicide, it was agreed I’d approach Creem first. I had a two-way radio clipped to my belt, with a backup mike on my cuff. A full team of local police and detectives were all now in position, just outside. Help was a word away, if I needed it.

When I flicked on the bedroom light, it looked to me as if Creem had some kind of lacerations around his face. Then I realized I was looking at the remnants of latex and glue from whatever mask had gotten him this far.

“I’ll be honest,” Creem said. “I’m surprised to see you.”

I motioned with the Glock in my hand. “Get down on your knees and lace your fingers behind your head,” I said.

Creem didn’t move. I could see him regrouping, and taking in the room around us. He was looking for a way out, even now.

“I have every right to be here,” he said, settling back into his usual superiority. “I let myself in with a key. You’re the one who’s trespassing. I’m here to see my wife.”

“I’ll bet you are,” I said. “Were you going to kill your daughters, too, Creem?”

He grinned at that, in a way I’d seen before. It was pure Elijah Creem, treading that fine line between confident and sociopathic.

“This is a bit of déjà vu, isn’t it?” he said. “That night we met in Georgetown, I offered you twenty thousand, or maybe it was thirty, for a little head start out the bedroom window.”

“I remember it didn’t get you anywhere,” I said.

“No. It didn’t, did it?” he said. He nodded several times, as if he were finally coming to the logical conclusion here.

But instead, Creem made a break for it. He put his hands on the back of a tall wooden chair and swung it all at once, right through the bedroom’s picture window. It brought down a shower of glass, even as he was climbing onto the sill to jump out.