Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

I couldn’t see what had happened up ahead, but suddenly I heard the eeriest sound. It was a high-pitched wail, a keening.

Five shots!

Three—then two more.

The keening sound was coming from where I had last seen fleeting glimpses of President Byrnes, where the shots had exploded just a few seconds before.

I shoved my body, all my weight, against the crowd and forced myself toward the epicenter of the madness.

It felt as if I were trying to swim out of quicksand, to pull myself free. It was almost impossible to walk, to push, to shove.

Five shots. What had happened up ahead?

Then I could see. I saw everything at once.

My mouth felt incredibly dry. My eyes were watering. The bunkerlike tunnel had become strangely quiet. President Thomas Byrnes was down on the gray cement. A lot of blood was flowing in rivulets, spreading down his white shirt. Bright red blood drained from the right side of his face, or maybe the wound was high in his neck. I couldn’t tell from where I was.

Gunshots. Execution-style.

A professional hit.

Jack and Jill, those bastards!

It was their pattern, or close to it.

I waded forward, roughly, shoving people out of my way. I saw Don Hamerman, Jay Grayer, and then Sally Byrnes. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

Sally Byrnes was trying to get to her husband. The First Lady didn’t appear to be hurt. Still, I wondered if she was a target, too. Maybe Jill’s target? Secret Service agents were holding Mrs. Byrnes back, trying to protect her. They wanted to keep her away from the bloodshed, from her husband, from any possible danger.

I saw a second body then. The shock was like a low hard punch to my stomach. No one could have anticipated this terrible scene.

A woman was down near the President. She’d been shot in her right eye socket. There was a second wound in her throat. She appeared to be dead. A semiautomatic lay near her sprawled body.

The assassin?

Jill?

Who else could it possibly be?

My eyes were drawn back to the motionless figure of Thomas Byrnes. I was afraid that he was already dead. I couldn’t be sure, but I believed he’d been hit at least three times. I saw Sally Byrnes finally reach her husband’s body. She was weeping uncontrollably, and she wasn’t the only one.

CHAPTER

92

JACK SAT STILL and calmly watched the maze o

f bumper-to-bumper cars and tractor-trailers stalled on West Street near the entrance to New York’s Holland Tunnel.

He could hear radios blaring on each side of his black Jeep. He observed the troubled and confused faces inside the cars. A middle-aged woman in a forest-green Lexus was in tears. A thousand sirens screamed like banshees on the loose in midtown.

Jack and Jill came to The Hill. Now everyone knew why, or at least they thought they did.

Now everyone understood the seriousness of the game.

Turn off your news reports, he wanted to tell all these well-meaning people approaching the tunnel out of New York. What’s happened has nothing to do with any of you. It really and truly doesn’t. You’ll never know the truth. No one ever will. You can’t handle the truth, anyway. You wouldn’t understand if I stopped and explained it to you right here.

He tried not to think about Sara Rosen as he finally rode into the long, claustrophobic tunnel that snaked beneath the Hudson. Beyond the tunnel, he drove south on the New Jersey Turnpike, then on I-95 into Delaware and points farther south.