Cross Country (Alex Cross 14)

We reached Porto Novo the next day and decided it would be best if I took the bus from there to Lagos. A man stood outside the public toilet at the bus station. He tried to get me to pay to enter, until I told him I would pee on his shoes first. He laughed and stepped away.

Then Moses and I parted, and he drove off proudly in his truck. I never found out whether he was a good Samaritan or an opportunist, though my nature favored the former. I will always think of Moses as my first friend in Africa.

Back at the hotel in Lagos, I showered off three days’ worth of dust, sweat, and blood. I looked at my crooked nose in the bathroom mirror. Alex, you are a piece of work. Finally, I plopped down on the bed to call home.

I started with a call to Bree’s cell this time. It was good just to hear her voice again, but the warm hellos between us were quick.

She had news that couldn’t wait—about a new murder, on Eighteenth Street, and about the young boy she’d found there and what he’d said: There was more than one Tiger. Flaherty had told me the same thing, but I was pretty sure I was looking for one killer—I could feel it in my gut.

Bree countered, “If this boy is for real, it’s the closest thing we’ve got to inside information. He was in the gang, Alex. You could be doing just as much damage control in DC, maybe more. Come home.”

“Bree, you’re talking about a phantom witness back there. A young boy. I know that the man who killed Ellie and her family is here right now. He’s in Lagos.” At least my instincts told me he was. Who knows now?

“I’ll see what else I can find out, specifically about him.” Her voice was tight. We’d never really fought before, but this conversation was feeling pretty close.

“Listen, Bree,” I said. “I swear, I’m not going to stay here any longer than necessary.”

“I think we have very different definitions of what that means, Alex.”

“You could be right about that.”

I might have kept that to myself, but the only thing I could offer Bree right now was the truth.

“I miss you like crazy,” I finally said, telling Bree another kind of truth, while trying to change the subject. “What are you wearing?” I joked.

She knew I was kidding and laughed. “Where do you think I am? I’ve got Ugly Fred looking at me across my desk”—I heard a shout of protest in the background—“and half the Major Case Squad’s in the room with me. You want me to keep going?”

I took a rain check and we said our good-byes. Then, before I could dial home to Fifth Street, I heard a rattle at my door.

“Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”

The door swung open so fast I didn’t have time to get off the bed to look. I recognized the front-desk manager.

But not the two dark suits with white shirts standing in the hall behind him.

“What are you doing in my room?” I asked the desk man. “What is this all about? Who are they?”

He didn’t say a word to me. He just held the door open for the other two and then closed it from the outside as they moved across the room toward me.

I jumped up off the bed and set my feet on the floor. “What’s going on here?” I said. “What’s happening now?”

Chapter 70

“SSS!” ONE OF them shouted at the top of his voice. I had heard the initials before. State Security Service, if that’s who these two men really were.

They went right at me, totally unafraid of any consequences. One of them bear-hugged my arms and shoulders; the other scooped my legs out from under me.

Now what was happening? Were they really State Security? Who had sent them for me? And why?

I struggled, but both of them were freaks sizewise, incredibly powerful men, quick and athletic too. They had my body twisted in a corkscrew and it was impossible to break free.

We crossed the room like that, with me tangled and helpless in their arms. Then I heard a window slide open, and I felt the rush of humidity on my skin.

My whole body tensed and I started to yell for help—as loudly as I possibly could to anyone who might hear me.

There was a blur of sky and earth and swimming pool and then my back slammed hard into the hotel wall.

I was suddenly outside—and hanging upside down!