Alex Cross, Run (Alex Cross 20)

“An abandoned apartment building on the waterfront, across the river. Junkies flop there all the time. It was a . . . Jesus, Alex, it was a terrible scene. They took samples, but . . .”

The tears were streaming down my face, even as the anger started flooding in. Sampson was having a hard time getting through this himself.

“Just tell me everything,” I said. “What else do you know?”

John took a long, slow breath. “The body was burned. Beyond recognition. I don’t know why. Maybe she’d scored a hit and someone wanted it. Maybe someone killed her on accident and tried to cover up.”

“But it was her?” I said. “For sure?”

“It was a young woman. African American. Ava’s height and build. And Alex? They found this on the body.”

He opened an envelope and poured the blackened pieces of Nana’s locket into my hand. The two hinged halves had come apart from the chain, and the photos were either burned up, or missing. But it was most definitely the necklace that Nana Mama had given Ava on the day she’d moved out. I could just make out the engraved R. C. on the back—for Regina Cross.

Suddenly, the front door opened and Nana was there with Bree.

“What is going on out here?” Nana said. She stopped short the second I turned to look at her. It was the same way I’d seen the truth on John’s face.

As her eyes traveled down to the pieces of the locket in my hand, I reached over and pulled her close.

“No,” she said, stiffening up at first, but then buckling at the knees just as fast. “No, no, no. Not our Miss Ava. Oh, Lord. Please, no!”

“She’s gone, Nana,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

Bree was crying now, too, and I could see the kids standing behind her, moon-eyed and watching. It was like waves of heartbreak, just seeing their faces and knowing what I had to tell them.

My mind went somewhere else, in a way. Without a word, we all moved back inside as a family. Sampson didn’t even come in. There was no good-bye. He left us to grieve, and to try to explain to Jannie and Ali how something like this could possibly happen.

How it could possibly be true.

CHAPTER

104

I DON’T BELIEVE IN A VENGEFUL GOD, BUT I WILL SAY THAT I FELT CONFUSED as much as anything in those first few hours. How could something like this happen? And why? Most of all—why?

Had I done something to bring all of this down on my head? On my family’s heads?

And Ava’s?

It’s not the kind of question I ask too frequently—or lightly. But I had to confront the fact that whatever choices I’d made had brought me to this point, in some small or large way. I’d never know now if I could have done something else to stop it.

Jannie and Ali took the news very differently from each other. After we all sat and talked, and cried together, Jannie withdrew. She said she wanted to be alone and think it all over in her room, which we let her do.

Ali stuck close. I think he was just old enough to understand what had happened, but too young to have ever felt anything like this before. I read to him in bed for a long time that night, and held his hand after I turned out the light, like he asked me to.

“All the way to asleep,” he said. “Okay, Dad?”

“You got it, bud,” I said, and I stayed right there while he slowly drifted off.

I wasn’t sure which of my kids my heart

was breaking for more. All of them, I suppose. Ava, too.

When we spoke to Damon on the phone, he asked to come home the next morning, on the first bus. I told him he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to, but I was glad when he insisted. It felt like the right thing, having all of us together now.

Nana went to bed early, but Bree and I sat up late in the attic, talking for hours. Part of me would like to say that I wasn’t already thinking about the investigation on this, but I was. Bree, too. We’d been so engaged in looking for Ava, it felt like we already had a blueprint for where to start asking questions.

“Whoever sold to her, or whoever did this . . . we’re going to find them,” Bree said. “And they’re going to pay, Alex. You can be sure about that.”