I, Alex Cross (Alex Cross 16)

“See this? They were using the studio in the back pretty regularly for a while, and then, about six months ago, it just stops cold. No more parties back there.”

“So what happened six months ago?” Sampson asked. The question was more rhetorical than anything, since we both knew the answer.

That’s when the killing started.

In which case—where were the rest of Nicholson’s disks?

Chapter 67

AFTER WORK, I picked up some Thai food on Seventh and brought it to Bree at the hospital. It wasn’t the kind of dinner date she deserved, but anything besides Swiss steak and Jell-O from the cafeteria had to be a big improvement.

It looked like she had a whole mobile-office thing going on, with her laptop and a little printer and files spread out on the counter in the back. The laptop was open to Web MD, and she was busily taking notes when I came in.

“Who ordered the panang curry and pad thai?” I called from the doorway.

“That would be me,” Bree said.

She picked her way past all the equipment and gave me a kiss hello.

“How’s our girl been doing?” I asked.

“Still fighting. She’s amazing; she really is.”

Nana looked a little more peaceful, maybe, but otherwise seemed about the same. Dr. Englefield had already warned us not to get too invested in the minutiae. You could drive yourself crazy scrutinizing every little tic and twitch, when the important thing was to keep showing up and never lose hope.

While I unpacked the food, Bree caught me up on the day. Englefield wanted to keep Nana on beta blockers for the time being. Her heart was still weak, but it was steady, for what that was worth.

“There’s a new resident, Dr. Abingdon, you should talk to,” Bree said. “I’ve got her number right here.”

I traded a plate of food and a bottle of water for it. “You’re doing too much,” I told Bree.

“This is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a real family,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

I did. Bree’s mother died when she was five, and her father never expressed much interest in his children after that. She’d been raised by a series of cousins more than anything, and when she left home at seventeen, she never looked back.

“All the same,” I told her, “you can’t take off from work indefinitely.”

“Sweetie, listen to me. I hate that this is happening. There’s nothing good about it. But as long as this is the deal, then I am right where I want to be. End of story, okay? I’m fine with it.”

She twirled up a forkful of rice noodles and popped them into her mouth, with a grin I hadn’t seen in a while. “Besides, what are they going to do at work, replace me? I’m too good for that.”

I couldn’t argue there.

Honestly, I’m not sure I could have done everything Bree was doing. Maybe I’m not that generous. But I do know that she made me feel lucky, and incredibly grateful. There was never going to be enough I could do to thank her for this, but Bree didn’t seem to want any payback.

We spent the rest of the evening with Nana, reading out loud from Another Country, an old favorite of hers. Then, around ten o’clock, we kissed her good night, and for the first time since this had happened, I went home to sleep in my own bed. Right next to Bree, where I belonged.

Chapter 68

WHEN NED MAHONEY called me the next day and said I should meet him at the Hirshhorn sculpture garden, I didn’t question it for a single moment. I left the office right away and marched over there.

The beat goes on. In double time. Now what does Ned want? What has he found out?

He was waiting on one of the low cement walls when I came down the ramp from the Mall side. Before I even reached him, he was up and walking—and when I did come alongside, he started briefing me without so much as a hello. I knew Ned well enough to understand when I should just shut up and listen.

Apparently, the Bureau had already secured an administrative subpoena to get a look at Tony Nicholson’s overseas bank records. They’d gotten a whole list of deposits, originating accounts, and names attached to those accounts, through something called the Swift program.

Swift stood for the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. It’s a global cooperative based in Belgium that tracks something on the order of six trillion transactions every day. The database doesn’t include routine banking—they don’t necessarily know when I go to the ATM—but just about everything else is in there. The program was under all kinds of legal scrutiny, since it had come out that the US government was using it to track terror cells, post 9/11. Whatever the obstacles, though, someone at the Bureau had gotten around them.