Kill Alex Cross (Alex Cross 18)

Findlay stared hard at me. I watched his jaw work back and forth, heard a cracking noise. He knew I had jurisdiction here, that I had him if I wanted to go that way.

“It’s Zoe and Ethan Coyle,” he said finally. “You’ll hear about it soon enough. They disappeared from the Branaff School about twenty minutes ago.”

I was stunned into silence. Knocked back on my heels. The enormity of this — the implications — started to fall on me at once. “What else is happening on your end?” I asked in a lowered voice.

“The school’s locked down,” Findlay said. “Every available Secret Service agent is either there or on the way.”

“Could they still turn up over there?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We’d have found them by now. No way they’re still on the campus.”

“Any idea how someone could have gotten them out of there?”

Again, he paused. I got the impression he was editing himself as he went forward. The other thing I didn’t know yet was that Findlay was lead agent on Ethan and Zoe’s protective detail. This was all on his head. The president’s children.

“Not really. It just happened,” he answered. “There’s an underground passage. Used to connect the main house with some of the service buildings. Way back when it was the Branaff Estate. We keep it all closed off now, but kids still break in there sometimes. Smoke a cigarette, grope each other. Believe me, if Ethan and Zoe were in that tunnel before, they aren’t anymore.”

The van driver was out on a gurney now, hooked up to a nasogastric tube and IV. As they wheeled him to the back of the ambulance and loaded him up, Findlay and I fell in behind the procession.

My badge was out again. So were his creds.

“Hey!” one of the medics yelled at us as we climbed in. “You can’t —”

“We’re coming with him,” I said, and closed the ambulance doors. No further discussion. “Let’s go.”

MY MIND WAS working even faster now, probably too fast. So was my pulse. And I couldn’t catch my breath either.

The president’s kids.

George Washington University Hospital was only a few blocks from the crash site so this was going to have to be quick. While the EMTs worked over our suspect and radioed in his vitals, I leaned in as close as I could to get his attention.

“What’s your name?” I said.

I had to ask a couple of times before he finally responded.

“Ray?” He said it like a question.

“Okay, Ray. I’m Alex. You with me here?”

He was flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. I ran a finger back and forth in front of his eyes to get him to look at me.

“What are you on, Ray? You know what you took?”

His expression was as distant as ever. “Just a drink of water,” he said finally.

“Don’t give him anything!” one of the medics barked at me.

“I’m not,” I said. “‘Drink of water’ is PCP. That’s what he thinks he took.”

“Thinks?” Agent Findlay asked.

“Something heavily anesthetic, anyway. Probably some kind of nose cocktail.” And I was guessing he didn’t mix it himself.

“Who got you the van, Ray?” I said. “Who put you up to this? There’s somebody else, right?”

“Anyone, anyone,” he said. “Five hundred bucks and a little drink of water.”

“Five hundred bucks?” Findlay looked like he was ready to tear the guy’s face off. “Do you have any idea what kind of shit storm you just landed in — for five hundred dollars?”