Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

He could see red everywhere in the bedroom. Like this misting red. It was almost as if he were viewing the room through a nightscope.

He… was… just… about… to… go… off… wasn’t… he?

He could feel himself… exploding… into… a… billion… pieces.

Suddenly, he screamed at the top of his voice. “Wake up and smell the fucking Folger’s coffee!”

He was sobbing now, too. For what reason, he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember crying like this since he was a real little kid, real little.

His chest hurt as if he’d been punched hard. Or hit with an eighteen-inch ball bat. He realized that he was starting to wimp out. Mister Softee was coming back. He felt like Holden Caulfield. Repentant. Always triple-thinking every goddamn move both before and after he made it.

“POW,” he screamed at the top of his voice.

“POW,” he screamed the word again.

“POW.

“POW.”

And with every bloodcurdling yell, he pulled the trigger of the Smith & Wesson. He put another 9mm bullet into the two sleeping figures. Twelve shots, if he was counting correctly, and he was counting everything very correctly. Twelve shots, like those Jose and Kitty Menendez got.

The Roosevelt military education finally came in handy, he couldn’t help thinking. His teachers had been right, after all. Colonel Wilson at the school would have been proud of the marksmanship—but most of all, the firm resolve, the very simple and clear plan, the extraordinary courage he had shown tonight.

His foster parents were annihilated, completely vanquished, almost disintegrated by all the firepower he’d brought to the task. He felt nothing—except maybe pride in what he had done, in his fine workmanship.

Nobody was here. Nobody did this, man.

He wrote it in their blood.

Then he ran outside to play in the snow. He got blood all over the yard, all over everything. He could, you know. He could do anything he wanted to now. There was no one to stop Nobody.

CHAPTER

ANOTHER MURDERED CHILD has been discovered.

A male. Less than an hour ago.

John Sampson got the news about seven o’clock in the evening. He couldn’t believe it. Could not, would not, accept what he had just been told. Friday the thirteenth. Was the date deliberate?

Another child murdered in Garfield Park. At least, the body was left there. He wanted Sumner Moore bad, and he wanted him now.

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