Merry Christmas, Alex Cross (Alex Cross 19)

He tried to react, tried to get his gun moving up toward the sound.

But the dark figure was already dropping from his hiding spot in the deep shadows above the rusted overhead track.

Boots struck Schneider’s collarbones. He collapsed backward and landed on one of those bolts sticking up from the floor.

The bolt impaled him, broke his spine, and paralyzed him.

The Glock clattered away.

There was so much fiery pain Schneider could not speak, let alone scream. The silhouette of a man appeared above him. The man aimed his flashlight at his own upper body, revealing a black mask that covered his nose, cheeks, and forehead.

The masked man began to speak, and Schneider knew him instantly, as if twenty-eight years had passed in a day.

“You thought you were prepared for this, Chris, hmmm?” the masked man asked, amused. He made a clicking noise in his throat. “You were never prepared for this, no matter what you may have told yourself all those years ago.”

A knife appeared in the masked man’s other hand. He squatted by Schneider, and touched the blade to his throat.

“My friends will come quicker if I bleed you,” he said. “A few hours in their care, and your mask will be gone, Chris. No one would ever recognize you then, not even your own dear, sweet mother, hmmm?”

DETECTIVE ALEX CROSS HUNTS THREE SERIAL KILLERS—BUT IS SOMEONE ELSE HUNTING HIM?

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It’s not every day that I get a naked girl answering the door that I knock on.

Don’t get me wrong—with twenty years of law enforcement under my belt, it’s happened. Just not that often.

“Are you the waiters?” this girl asked. There was a bright but empty look in her eyes that said Ecstasy to me, and I could smell weed from inside. The music was thumping too, the kind of relentless techno that would make me want to slit my wrists if I had to listen to it for long.

“No, we’re not the waiters,” I told her, showing my badge. “Metro police. And you need to put something on, right now.”

She wasn’t even fazed. “There were supposed to be waiters,” she said to no one in particular. It made me sad and disgusted at the same time. This girl didn’t look like she was even out of high school yet, and the men we were here to arrest were old enough to be her father.

“Check her clothes before she puts them on,” I told one of the female officers on the entry team. Besides myself there were five uniformed cops, a rep from Youth and Family Services, three detectives from the Prostitution Unit, and three more from Second District, including my friend John Sampson.

Second District is Georgetown—not the usual stomping grounds for the Prostitution Unit. The white brick N Street town house where we’d arrived was typical for the neighborhood, probably worth somewhere north of five million. It was a rental property, paid six months in advance by proxy, but the paper trail had led back to Dr. Elijah Creem, one of DC’s most in-demand plastic surgeons. As far as we could make out, Creem was funneling funds to pay for these “industry parties,” and his partner-in-scum, Josh Bergman, was providing the eye candy.

Bergman was the owner of Cap City Dolls, a legit modeling agency based out of an M Street office, with a heavily rumored arm in the underground flesh trade. Detectives at the department were pretty sure that while Bergman was running his aboveboard agency, he was also dispatching exotic dancers, overnight escorts, masseurs, and porn “talent.” As far as I could tell, the house was filled with “talent” right now, and they all seemed to be about eighteen, more or less. Emphasis on the less.

I couldn’t wait to bust these two scumbags.

Surveillance had put Creem and Bergman downtown at Microbar around seven o’clock that night, and then here at the party house as of nine thirty. Now it was just a game of smoking them out.

Beyond the enclosed foyer, the party was in full swing. The front hall and formal living room were packed. It was all Queen Anne furniture and parquet floors on the one hand, and half-dressed, tweaked-out kids, stomping to the music and drinking out of plastic cups, on the other.

“I want everyone contained in this front room,” Sampson shouted at one of the uniforms. “We’ve got an anytime warrant for this house, so start looking. We’re checking for drugs, cash, ledgers, appointment books, cell phones, everything. And get this goddamn music off!”

We left half the team to secure the front of the house and took the rest toward the back, where there was more party going on.

In the open kitchen, there seemed to be a big game of strip poker in progress at the large marble-topped island. Half a dozen well-muscled guys and twice as many girls in their underwear were standing around holding cards, drinking, and passing a few joints.

Several of them scrambled as we came in. A few of the girls screamed and tried to run out, but we’d already blocked the way.

Finally, somebody cut the music.

“Where are Elijah Creem and Joshua Bergman?” Sampson asked the room. “First one to give me a straight answer gets a free ticket out of here.”