Cross Country (Alex Cross 14)

Chapter 147

IT WAS ALL so baffling, so incomprehensible, wrong in so many ways.

Bree and I brainstormed for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate. My thinking was too chaotic; I was too crazy in the head, too disturbed and lost. I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to eat, and I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even keep my eyes shut the one time I lay down on the living room couch. I thought about taking a drive, then decided no, not right now.

“I’m going to go for a run,” I finally told Bree. “Clear my head. There has to be something I’m missing.”

“Okay, Alex. I’ll be here. Have a good run.”

She didn’t offer to come, understanding that I wanted to be alone now. I did need to be by myself, to plan, to do something that would make some sense of what had happened.

I ran, at first along familiar streets close to my house, but then on the streets winding off Fifth, where I didn’t remember ever coming on foot before.

Finally I was able to concentrate a little better, and I began to think about what Adanne had told me in Lagos. Had her secrets caused any of this—the death of her family, her own murder, whatever had happened to Nana, Ali, and Jannie?

“Alex, I know terrible things,” she’d told me. “I’m writing a story about it. I have to tell somebody what I found out.” She was afraid that something would happen to her.

Well, something had happened to Adanne.

I continued to run and I found that I was getting stronger physically, or moving faster, anyway. What a cruel world this could be sometimes. Jesus. That wasn’t how I looked at things usually. That wasn’t me. Only now it was.

I didn’t notice anything, until a gray van stopped suddenly at the curb and the sliding door flew open. Three men jumped out. Suddenly they were all over me, knocking me down, pushing my face into the grass and dirt on somebody’s lawn.

Then I felt a sting in my thigh.

A needle?

Three men, not boys. Not the Tiger’s team.

Who then?

Who was holding me now?

What did they want?

Chapter 148

THERE WAS A damp cloth over my face, some kind of a hood that reeked of rubbing alcohol. Then I was being pulled to my feet. I’d been unconscious, but I didn’t know for how long.

I had no idea where I was now, but it wasn’t a five-star hotel. I could smell, almost taste, body odor, feces, and urine. The ground under my feet was rough stone, maybe concrete. Did that tell me anything?

“Put your hands flat against the wall and spread your legs. Stay just like that. Don’t move, or you’ll be shot.”

“Where’s my family? Where the hell are they? Who are you?”

Instead of an answer to the question, I heard an amplified whirring sound in the room.

“Stay just like that—or you die right here and now. Then you’ll never know about your family. Never is a long time, Dr. Cross. Think about it.”

I thought about other things first. Who had grabbed me off the street in Southeast and was holding me now?

Could it be another Tiger? Somebody else from Nigeria?

The voice didn’t sound like it. No accent. American. Could it be the CIA?

“Where’s my family?” I asked again.

No one answered, and I stayed there with my hands tied and held flat against the wall over my head. I knew this particular kind of torture had a name, wall-standing. I was also made to wear a hood and was subjected to loud noise and sleep deprivation. I’d heard about these torture techniques before. Now I was the victim.