Double Cross (Alex Cross 13)

One of the spotlights exploded as Anthony passed under it. He was getting away—running in a low crouch. He was also laughing. Playing another part? Or just being himself?

I heaved, legs straining, and the rope finally pulled free. It slackened on my wrists, enough for me to wrench my hands out, anyway.

Then I ran after Anthony.

“Call for backup!” I shouted to Bree. The black Motorola was still on the ground. So was Sandy Quinlan, wide-eyed and bleeding from two wounds so tightly bunched that they almost looked like one.

I hit the stairs and immediately heard glass smashing above me. Anthony—DCAK—was getting out of there, wasn’t he? Seconds later, I stumbled up into an empty storefront.

The door to the street was closed and still had a padlock. But the display window was no more than glass shards and air. I spotted an old wooden chair lying out on the sidewalk.

I ran up and climbed through the opening in the window. People hovered outside, watching me like I was the boogeyman. A kid pointed up the block. “White guy,” he said.

I saw Anthony then, running at a full clip on the other side of the street. He looked back and spotted me too. Then he ducked into a store on his right.

“Call the police!” I shouted for anyone who would listen and maybe help. “That’s DCAK!” I added. Then I tore up the sidewalk after him.

Chapter 121

THE PLACE DCAK HAD ENTERED was a hole-in-the-wall restaurant for Mexican takeout. There were no tables in the front, just one very shaken old woman splayed on the floor and a skinny cashier still pressed to the wall like he was his own shadow.

I ran around the counter, pushing through a swinging door back into the kitchen.

The temperature instantly went up about twenty degrees. Two cooks shouted at me in Spanish.

Too late—I saw Anthony come at me from the right. What the hell? A cast-iron pan burned through my shirt and sent searing pain up my arm and right into my brain.

I countered reflexively with my other hand, an uppercut to his temple, a second punch to his throat.

He let go of the frying pan, and I grabbed it myself. I pushed it into Anthony’s face, then let it go before it fried the skin off my hand. He howled and stumbled back, blackened prosthetic skin sagging around one ear. Both of the cooks screamed as if they were the ones who’d just gotten burned.

Anthony steadied himself on the edge of an industrial range. He grabbed another cooking pan and hurled sizzling oil and vegetables in my direction. I avoided the flying grease, but Anthony was headed toward the back door.

He pulled down a set of baker’s shelves as he went. Dishes and equipment crashed everywhere. Lots of noise and chaos and shattering pottery.

“My sister’s dead!” he screamed back at me. Meaning what—that now he was really mad?

I grabbed a kitchen knife and went after him.

Chapter 122

AS I JUMPED OUT into a long, wide alleyway—the delivery entrance—I heard sirens wailing from somewhere in the neighborhood. I hoped to hell they were for us and that somebody would figure out real fast that I was back here with DCAK.

The alley ran behind several buildings, with a dead end to my right and a busy street to my left, about fifty yards off—farther than he could have run by now, anyway.

So where was he hiding? He had to be close. But where?

I threw open the nearest Dumpster, and a repulsive wave of garbage smell came up at me, but no Anthony. No DCAK. I turned my back on the alley just long enough to lean into the trash and make sure he wasn’t there.

Another three Dumpsters lined the wall. Dusty, rusting cars were stacked on the other side. I checked down low. He wasn’t hiding under any of them. Where was he?

I saw him out of the corner of my eye—and just in time. I narrowly missed getting sliced across the face. He’d been behind one of the Dumpsters, and he had a knife. He seemed confident and scarily under control considering the circumstances, almost like he was playing another role.

I sure wasn’t; knives weren’t my thing. But the kitchen blade was the only weapon I had right now.

He came for me again. The blade whiffed past my face, barely missing flesh. He sliced the blade at me again, and again, and again.

I feinted a short thrust back at him, and he laughed. “I think I’m going to like this,” he said. “I know I am. I trained in hand-to-hand. How about you, Dr. Cross?”