Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

“Izzit you, my dear?” a gruff, whiskey-soaked voice thundered from behind the living room walls.

“Who else could it be?” Jill answered.

Jack and Jill entered the bedroom together. “Surprise party,” Jack announced. He had a Beretta semiautomatic out. It was aimed at the senator’s head.

His gun hand was steady, his head very clear now. History in the making. No chance to go back now.

Daniel Fitzpatrick bolted up in his bed, surprised and burning mad. “What the bloody hell? What the… who the frig are you? How the shit did you get in here?” he slurred his words. His face and neck were bright red.

Jack couldn’t help it—he smiled in spite of everything that was going on. The senator looked like a beached whale, or perhaps an aging walrus, in his fancy bed.

“I guess you could say I’m your despicable past, finally catching up to you, Senator,” he said. “Now shut up. Please. Let’s make this as easy as we possibly can.”

He stared at Daniel Fitzpatrick and was reminded of something he’d read somewhere recently. Upon seeing the senator at a speaking engagement, a spectator had remarked, “My God, he’s an old man now.” Indeed he was. Fitzpatrick was a white-haired, jowly, graceless, sprawlingly fat, old white man.

He was also the enemy.

Jack opened the black duffel bag and handed Jill a pair of handcuffs. “One hand to each bedpost. Please and thank you.”

“It will be my pleasure,” she said. There was a simple elegance in the way she spoke, acted, even the way she moved.

“You’re in on this?” Fitzpatrick gasped as he looked around at the blond woman he’d picked up at the bar in La Colline. He seemed to be actually seeing her for the first time.

Jill smiled. “No, no. I was attracted by your vast, bloated belly, your alcoholic breath.”

Jack took out the camcorder and handed it over to Jill. She immediately aimed it at Senator Fitzpatrick, focused, and started to film. She was good with the camera.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Fitzpatrick

asked. His washed-out blue eyes were wide with astonishment, and then with genuine fear. “What the hell do you want? What’s going on here? Dammit, I’m a United States senator.”

Jill began with the shocked and surprised and hurt look on the senator’s face. She pulled out to a wider shot. Oops, a little too wide. Grabbed focus again.

Jack smiled at the inappropriate outburst of bravado. How very Fitzpatrick.

Then, voilà! It was as if the whiskey-dullness swirling in his brain suddenly stopped. Daniel Fitzpatrick finally understood. “I don’t want to die,” he whispered.

Tears unexpectedly rolled from his eyes. It was strangely affecting. “Please don’t do this. You don’t have to hurt me,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Please, I beg you. Listen to me. Will you just listen to what I have to say?”

This was incredibly important footage, Jill knew. Academy Award stuff. Perhaps the documentary film of the century. They needed this for the game of games, for one of the surprises later on.

Jack walked briskly across the bedroom. He placed the Beretta inches from the senator’s forehead.

This was it. This was where the exquisite game truly began. Rule Two: This is history. What you’re doing is important. Never forget that for a single moment.

“I’m going to kill you, Senator Fitzpatrick. There’s nothing for us to talk about. There’s no way out of this. You were a Roman Catholic, so if you believe in God, say a prayer. Please say one for me, too. Say a prayer for Jack and Jill.”

This was gut-check time. He noticed that his hand was shaking a little now. Jill saw it, too.

He told himself, This is an execution, and it’s well deserved. And this is most definitely a horror story that I’m in.

He fired once, from a distance of no more than a few inches. Daniel Fitzpatrick’s head exploded. He fired a second time. Measure twice; cut twice as well.

History was made.

The game of games had begun.

Jack and Jill.