I, Alex Cross (Alex Cross 16)

It came out quickly, a simple statement of fact. When she spoke again, her voice started to shake. “I’m going to lay my baby to rest…” She stopped to take a steadying breath. “And then I’m going to go back home to Providence. That’s as much as I can handle right now.”

“You don’t have to go through this alone. You can come stay at the house. Nana and I would like that. I know it’s been a long time—”

“A long time since you turned your back on your brother.”

So there it was. Twenty years of misunderstanding coming out, just like that.

Blake’s addiction had done a lot of the talking for him near the end. He’d cut me out when I got aggressive about rehab, but that was obviously not what he told Michelle, who was using heroin at the time too, even while she was pregnant with Caroline.

“It was actually the other way around,” I said to her as gently as I could.

For the first time, her voice rose. “I can’t, Alex! I can’t go back to that house, so don’t ask me to.”

“Of course you can.”

We both turned around. It was Nana who’d spoken. Bree, Jannie, and Ali were there too, coming up on either side of Nana, her honor guard, her protectors.

Then she walked right up to Michelle and put her arms around her.

“We lost sight of you and Caroline a long time ago, and now we’ve lost her for good. But you are still a part of our family. You always will be.”

Nana stepped back and put a hand on Jannie’s shoulder. “Janelle, Ali, this is your aunt Michelle.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Jannie said.

Nana went on. “Whatever happened before today, or whatever happens tomorrow, doesn’t mean a thing right now.” Her voice was filling with emotion, and I could hear shades of the southern Baptist heritage coming through. “We’re here to remember Caroline with all the love we have in our hearts. When those good-byes are over, then we’ll worry about what comes next.”

Michelle seemed conflicted. She looked around at each of us, not speaking a word.

“So all right, then,” Nana said. She patted her chest a few times. “Lord, all this grief has given me an awful feeling. Michelle, take my arm, would you?”

I knew Nana’s heart was breaking too. Caroline was her granddaughter, though she never really got to know her, and gone forever now. Meanwhile, there was someone else here who needed her help. Maybe that’s where I get it, I thought. Sometimes the best, or only, way to take care of the dead is to take care of the living.

Chapter 17

MICHELLE DID GO back to her home in Rhode Island that night. I put her on a plane to Providence myself, but I made sure she had my numbers and told her that I hoped we’d hear from her—when she was ready.

The next morning, I was right back at it, the investigation of her daughter’s awful murder, and possibly the murders of others.

The first thing I tackled at the office was the phone numbers we’d found at Caroline’s apartment and in Timothy O’Neill’s bedroom.

My backup plan was to hit up the Bureau for help, but I had a feeling about these numbers. If there was a key to unlocking them, it was probably something that Caroline or Timothy O’Neill could use on a regular basis. I was betting I could do this myself.

I started by writing out all the lettered strings I had on a piece of paper, just to get them rolling around in my head.

A simple A-to-Z, one-through-twenty-six substitution didn’t seem right, since anything above J, or ten, wouldn’t apply to a phone keypad.

But what if it came off the keypad itself?

I opened my cell on the desk and wrote down what I saw.

ABC—2

DEF—3

GHI—4 (I = 1?)

JKL—5