Cross (Alex Cross 12)

“Oh.” She looked at them absently. “Nancy is amazing with all that. She’s a real country girl now, a mom. She always wanted to be a mother.”

Sampson began gently. “Lisa, I want you to know how sorry we are that this happened to you. I know you’ve spoken with a lot of people already. We’ll try not to repeat the background detail too much. Okay so far?”

Lisa kept her eyes fixed on the corner of the room. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Now, we understand you received the necessary prophylaxis but preferred not to provide any physical evidence in your exam at the hospital. Also, that you’re choosing for the time being not to give any description of the man who committed the crime against you. Is that correct?”

“Not now, and not ever,” she said. Her head shook slightly back and forth, like a tiny no repeated over and over.

“You’re not under any obligation to talk,” I assured her. “And we’re not here to get any information that you don’t want to give.”

“With all that in mind,” Sampson went on, “we have some assumptions that we’re working with. First, that your attacker was not someone you knew. And second, that he threatened you in some way, to keep you from identifying him or talking about him. Lisa, are you comfortable telling us whether or not that’s accurate?”

She went very still. I tried to gauge her face and body language but saw nothing. She didn’t respond to Sampson’s question, so I tried a different angle.

“Is there anything you’ve thought about since you spoke with the detectives earlier? Anything you’d like to add?”

“Even a small detail might aid in the investigation,” Sampson said, “and catch this rapist.”

“I don’t want any investigation of what happened to me,” she blurted. “Isn’t that my choice?”

“I’m afraid it’s not,” Sampson said in the softest voice I’d ever heard out of him.

“Why not?” It came out of Lisa more as a desperate plea than a question.

I tried to choose my words carefully. “We’re fairly certain that what happened to you wasn’t an isolated incident, Lisa. There have been other women—”

At that, she came undone. A choking sob escaped her, letting loose everything behind it. Then Lisa Brandt doubled over onto her lap, sobbing with her hands clutched tightly over her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a moan. “I can’t do this. I can’t. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Ms. Goodes rushed back into the room then. She must have been listening just outside the door. She knelt in front of Lisa and put her arms around her friend, whispering reassurances.

“I’m sorry,” Lisa Brandt got out again.

“Nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart. Nothing at all. Just let it out, that’s it,” said Nancy Goodes.

Sampson put a card on the coffee table. “We’ll show ourselves out,” he said.

Ms. Goodes answered without turning away from her sobbing friend.

“Just go. Please don’t come back here. Leave Lisa alone. Go.”

Chapter 55

THE BUTCHER WAS ON A JOB—a hit, a six-figure one. Among other things, he was trying to keep his mind off of John Maggione and the pain he wanted to cause him. He was observing an older well-dressed man with a young girl draped on his arm. A “bird,” as they had called them here in London at one time.

He was probably sixty; she could be twenty-five at most. Curious couple. Eye-catching, which could be a problem for him.

The Butcher watched them as they stood in front of the tony Claridges Hotel waiting for the man’s private car to pull up. It did so, just as it had the previous evening and then again around ten o’clock that morning.

No serious mistakes so far by the couple. Nothing for him to pounce on.

The driver of the private car was a bodyguard, and he was carrying. He was also decent enough at what he did.

There was only one problem for the bodyguard—the girl obviously didn’t want him around. She’d tried, unsuccessfully, to have the older man ditch the driver the night before, when they had attended some kind of formal affair at the Saatchi Gallery.

Well, he would just have to see what developed today. The Butcher pulled out a few cars behind the gleaming black Mercedes CL65. The Merc was fast, more than six hundred horsepower, but a hell of a lot of good that would do them on the crowded streets of London.