Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

He watched his chosen little boy as the kid wandered alone down a wide aisle chock-full of action games. The boy was five or so, a very manageable age.

The anger button inside his head was going off like a powerful alarm. WOM! WOM! WOM! The terrible feeling quickly spread to his chest. WOM! WOM! It was tense and uncomfortable. Both his hands were clenched tight. So was his stomach. The back of his neck. His brain was clutching, too.

Be careful now, he cautioned himself. Don’t make any mistakes. Remember—you do perfect crimes.

CHAPTER

14

THIS WAS GOING TO BE a mite tricky going, though, working in the crowded Toys “R” Us store. What if the boy’s parents were close by? WHICH THEY DEFINITELY WERE! What if he were caught? WHICH HE WOULDN’T BE! COULDN’T BE!

That was incredibly important to him. Just watching the attractive, round-faced, sandy-haired boy, he could feel how badly this particular kid would be missed and, even better, mourned. He needed to imagine the stories that would bombard the television screens and the thrill of watching them, knowing he was responsible for so much pain and suffering and emergency activity.

The little boy was getting itchy in his woolens and starting to panic a little. He had big crocodile tears brimming in his eyes. There didn’t seem to be anybody, any adult, anywhere around him. Poor Little Boy Lost. Poor Little Boy Blue.

The killer began to move in on his prey, slowly and carefully. He couldn’t stop now. His heart was beating like a big tin drum, and he loved the powerful sensation. His legs and arms were a little wobbly. Jell-O city. His vision tunneled; he was dizzy with anticipation, fear, dread, exhilaration.

Do it.

Now!

He bent, picked up the boy, and immediately starting smiling and talking the happiest, friendliest barf-babble he could come up with.

“Hi there, I’m Roger the Artful Dodger. I work here at Toys ‘R’ Us. What kind of fantastical toys do you like best, huh? We’ve got every kind of toy in the whole wide world, ’cause we’re the world’s biggest, coolest toy store. Yahoo! How ’bout that? Let’s go find your superpathetic mom and dad!”

The boy actually smiled up at him. Kids could do weird mood changes like that. His beautiful blue eyes sparkled, glistened; something wet and wonderful happened. “I want Mighty Max,” he proclaimed as if he were Richie Rich instead of Little Boy Lost.

“Okay, then come with me. One Mighty Max coming up! Why? ’Cause you’re a Toys ‘R’ Us kid.”

He cradled the boy in his arms and began to hurry up the wide shopping aisle toward the front of the store. Suddenly, he knew he could get away with it, even something this audacious and shocking, with almost a hundred eyewitnesses in the store. Hey, he was the new Pied Piper. Kids loved him.

“We’ll get a Vac-man. Then how about X-Men? Or how about a Stretch Armstrong?”

“Mighty Max,” the little boy repeated, stuck on his one track. “I only want Mighty Max.”

The killer peeked out of aisle three. He was less than thirty feet from the store’s front exit. The mall parking lot bordered on Columbia Park, which had been part of his escape package from the start.

He took a couple of fast steps, then stopped dead in his tracks at the front of the store.

Shit! A couple in their late twenties were walking toward him! The woman looked just like Little Boy Blue.

They had him… dead to rights. They had him nailed! They had him!

He knew what he had to do, so he never panicked for a nanosecond. Except for the two or three major heart attacks he had on the inside. Well, here goes everything. Time to bet the ranchero.

“Hey, hi there.” He smiled broadly and went into his best stand-up routine ever. “This little guy belong to you? He was lost in the action-figure section. Nobody c

ame for him. I figured I better bring him up to the store manager. Little guy was crying his eyes out. You his mom?”

The mother reached out for her precious bundle of joy, while at the same time throwing her husband a dirty look.

Aha, there was our villain! Pop was obviously the one who had lost the boy in the first place. Pops couldn’t get anything right these days, could they! His own pop sure hadn’t been able to.

“Thank you, so much,” the mom said. She tossed another incredibly nasty look to pop. “That was very sweet of you,” she told the killer.

He continued to hold his best smile. Man, he was acting his heart out. “Anybody would do the same thing. He’s a nice little boy. Well, so long. Bye-bye. He wants a Mighty Max. That’s probably what he was searching for.”

“Yes, he does want Mighty Max. Bye. Thanks again,” said the mom.