Cat and Mouse (Alex Cross 4)

Was there a difference anymore?

He threw his head back and roared with laughter. It was one of the oddest, craziest things I’ve ever seen. The look on his face, the body language, his calmness. He was daring us to shoot him at ninety miles an hour on Route 2 outside Concord, Massachusetts. He wanted to crash and burn.

We hit a stretch of highway with thick fir woods on either side. Two of the FBI cars caught up. They were pinned on Pierce’s tail, pushing, taunting him. Had the Bureau come here planning to kill Pierce?

If they were going to take him, this was a good place — a secluded pocket away from most commuter traffic and houses.

This was the place to terminate Thomas Pierce.

Now was the time.

“You know what we have to do,” Sampson said to me.

He’s killed more than twenty people that we know of, I was thinking, trying to rationalize. He’ll never give up.

“Pull over,” I yelled at Pierce again.

“I murdered Isabella Calais,” he screamed at me. His face was crimson. “I can’t stop myself. I don’t want to stop. I like it! I found out I like it, Cross!”

“Pull the hell over,” Sampson’s voice boomed. He had his Glock up and aimed at Pierce. “You butcher! You piece of shit!”

“I murdered Isabella Calais and I can’t stop the killing. You hear what I’m saying, Cross? I murdered Isabella Calais, and I can’t stop the killing.”

I understood the chilling message. I’d gotten it the first time.

He was adding more letters to his list of victims. Pierce was creating a new, longer code: I murdered Isabella Calais, and I can’t stop the killing. If he got away, he’d kill again and again. Maybe Thomas Pierce wasn’t human, after all. He’d already intimated that he was his own god.

Pierce had out an automatic. He fired at us.

I yanked the steering wheel hard to the left, trying desperately to get us out of the line of fire. Our car leaned hard on its left front and rear wheels. Everything was blurred and out of focus. Sampson grabbed at the wheel. Excruciating pain shot through my wrist. I thought we were going over.

Pierce’s Thunderbird shot off Route 2, rocketing down a side road. I don’t know how he made the turnoff at the speed he was traveling. Maybe he didn’t care whether he made it or not.

I managed to set our sedan back down on all four wheels. The FBI cars following Pierce shot past the turn. None of us could stop. Next, came a ragged ballet of skidding stops and U-turns, the screech and whine of tires and brakes. We’d lost sight of Pierce. He was behind us.

We raced back to the turnoff, then down a twisting, chevroned country road. We found the Thunderbird abandoned about two miles from Route 2.

My heart was thudding hard inside my chest. Pierce wasn’t in the car. Pierce wasn’t here.

The woods on both sides of the road were thick and offered lots of cover. Sampson and I climbed out of our car.

We hurried back into the dense thicket of fir trees, Glocks out. It was almost impossible to get through the underbrush. There was no sign of Thomas Pierce anywhere.

Pierce was gone.

Chapter 127

THOMAS PIERCE had vanished into thin air again. I was almost convinced he might actually live in a parallel world. Maybe he was an alien.

Sampson and I were headed to Logan International Airport. We were going home to Washington. Rush-hour traffic in Boston wasn’t cooperating with the plan.

We were still half a mile from the Callahan Tunnel, gridlocked in a line that was barely moving. Grunting and groaning cars and trucks surrounded us. Boston was rubbing our faces in our failure.

“Metaphor for our case. The whole goddamn manhunt for Pierce,” Sampson said about the traffic jumble, the mess. A good thing about Sampson — he gets either stoic or funny when things go really badly. He refuses to wallow in shit. He swims right out of it.

“I’m getting an idea,” I told him, giving him some warning.

“I knew you were flying around somewhere in your private universe. Knew you weren’t really here, sitting in this car with me, listening to what I’m saying.”