Kill Alex Cross (Alex Cross 18)

He came sauntering around the corner from the front of the mall and cut diagonally across the parking lot. That son of a bitch!

“I got him,” I radioed. “He’s headed back to his car. Get out here, and get yourselves ready to go.”

It was dark by now, but the parking lot was well lit. I used a small pair of binoculars to try and see what Glass was carrying. He’d been empty-handed on the way in.

The shopping bag he had in one hand was from Anthropologie, I saw. The kind of place where my kids might shop. Or the president’s kids, for that matter. Nothing in there for someone like him. He was a tall, strapping guy — a grownup, for starters. He favored L. L. Bean and Carhartt, as far as I could tell. Not the trendy fashions of this place. What was that about?

In his other hand, he had a tall cup with a straw sticking out the top. The logo on the side said AMC. That meant the movie theater, not the food court.

Jesus. Had I been tearing out my hair for three hours while Rodney Glass had taken himself to a matinee?

Or was that just what he wanted us to think? Was this all for show? Where else might he have been all this time?

As I watched him throw his bag into the back of the car — casually, maybe too casually — I started to get a horrible, sinking feeling. It was nothing I could prove to myself either way, but my gut was starting to tell me what my head didn’t want to know.

He knew he was being watched, didn’t he? He knew.

Book Five

RUSH TO

THE FINISH

HALA KEPT HER head down, her face averted, as she walked up First Street.

She crossed K Street and then cut left into a narrow alley near the bus station.

It was well screened at the front by several large, gray dumpsters, with stacks of wooden pallets, abandoned furniture, and old bags of garbage at the back, where Tariq was waiting for her.

He was even paler than when she’d left him. It looked like he’d lost a good deal of blood. Tariq was becoming a liability.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

“Some of it,” Hala answered, and knelt down where he was sitting propped against the brick wall. From inside her shirt, she pulled out a small bottle of Tylenol, a roll of gauze, and an Ace bandage. It was as much as she’d been able to lift at the drugstore without being seen

.

“Let me see your hand,” she said. “Please. Let me see.”

She pulled away the strip of shirt cloth she’d used to wrap Tariq’s wound the night before. It was in horrendous shape. The bullet had passed right through, probably shattering the metacarpal of his right thumb as it did. He had no flexion, no extension at all. If they didn’t get proper medical attention, and soon, she was going to have to start cutting away the dead and dying flesh.

That part, she kept to herself.

He moaned as she rewrapped it, using the gauze first, then the Ace bandage. Pressure was the only tool she had at her disposal for now, but she could see the agony it put him in.

When she held out several of the Tylenol, he shook his head.

“Hala, please,” he said. “It’s not enough. You know what I want.”

She did. That was exactly why she’d taken the cyanide from him. Both of their capsules were now in her pocket, where she intended them to stay.

The only other thing they had left to their name was Hala’s Sig Sauer pistol. Everything else — their passports, money, computer, all of it — was back at the Four Seasons. It might as well have been locked in a vault. Even on her quick trip to the drugstore and back, Hala had seen her own grainy image gracing the cover of several newspapers.

They didn’t even have the means to get themselves out of Washington. This godforsaken city had become their prison — and Tariq knew it. The empty, defeated look in his eyes said everything she needed to know.

“Please, Hala,” he tried again. “There’s no dishonor in this. We’ve done all we can.”

She pressed the Tylenol into his hand. “Take them,” she said. “Trust me, my love. We’re not done yet. Not even close.”