Alex Cross, Run (Alex Cross 20)

“It was a jeep,” she said right away. “He was white, too, but Ava didn’t care. I think she liked that jeep—and whatever else he was givin’ her, if you know what I mean. No disrespect.”

I felt sick to my stomach. I still couldn’t know if this was the same man, but the similarities were there—to Elizabeth Reilly, and to Amanda Simms as well. All these girls were disconnected from their families in some way.

Young. Vulnerable. Alone.

The idea of this monster plying Ava with drugs, promises, sex—whatever it had been—made me want to excuse myself and puke my guts out in the bathroom.

“You said he was white,” I went on. “What else?”

She sat up a little straighter then and started thumbing at her phone. “I got a picture, yo,” she said. I think she was just relieved that I wasn’t giving her a hard time for holding back this long.

She swiped past several dozen images before she came to the one she was looking for, and then held it up to show me.

“Here,” she said. “I used to see her over on Eastern, talkin’ to him in that jeep, see? Ava didn’t even know I took it, but once I showed it to her, she stopped talkin’ shit about not havin’ no boyfriend.”

The picture had been snapped from maybe half a block away. Ava had her back to the camera, but I easily recognized her long, thin frame, and the suede boots she’d worn almost constantly since Bree bought them for her.

That wasn’t all. I also recognized the gray-green jeep in the photo, and the tall, bearded man behind the wheel.

It was Ron Guidice.

CHAPTER

106

I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED TO ME NEXT. OR IF I EVEN fully understand it myself.

When I left Howard House, it was as if there were no words for anything I was feeling. There was nothing inside me at all but pure, white-hot anger. That, and the image from Nessa’s phone, burning into my brain, as clear as anything else.

I barely remember driving home. When I came in, Bree was there, with Sampson and Billie at the kitchen table. I must have looked like hell, because they all stopped what they were doing and stared at me.

“Alex?” Bree said. “What is it?”

I stood at the head of the table, holding myself up with both hands on the back of a kitchen chair.

“Where are the kids?” I said.

“On a walk with Nana. Billie wanted some cornstarch from the store. Why? What’s going on?”

“It was Guidice,” I said. Already, I was walking out of the room. I headed up the hall toward the stairs at the front.

“Wait—what?” Bree said, catching up behind me. “What was Guidice?”

I took the stairs two at a time, even as I tried to explain to Bree what Nessa had shown me. The words practically stuck in my throat. It was hard focusing on anything except what I’d come here to do.

“Did you call it in?” Bree asked as we came into the bedroom.

“No. I’m going out to find him myself.”

I opened the closet door and started working the combination on the safe. No electric keypad here—it was twenty-three right, thirty-nine left, nine right.

I took out my Glock and a magazine, slapped it home, and stuck the gun in my jacket pocket. I didn’t bother with a holster.

“Hold on,” Bree said. She grabbed her own gun out of the safe before I closed the door. “If you’re arresting him, I’m coming, too.”

“I’m not arresting him,” I said.

She grabbed my arm then and looked me deep in the eyes. If I’d been anywhere near myself, I might have seen enough right there to stop what I was doing and pick up the phone. Or even to send Sampson out instead of me. But I didn’t.