But Sunday was cunning enough to understand that he couldn’t act like a bull in a china shop. He had to do this cleanly, with no noise that might alert Bree before it was too late.

She turned on the burners, put a lid on the pot, and went upstairs to change. She was deeply favoring her left side. Good. All good.

Sunday knew from experience that the long Velcro strips that sealed off the Visqueen sheets might be loud enough to be heard upstairs.

Instead of chancing that, he got out a utility knife with a fresh blade, and a 9mm Beretta, and waited. The hypodermic needle with the Rohypnol was in his shirt pocket, ready to go.

Now all he needed was for Bree to return to see if the pot was boiling. Five minutes later, he heard the staircase creak and the padding of feet. Cross’s wife walked right into the dining room, right to the pot. She had her back to him, wore sandals, yoga pants, and a loose blouse. No holster. No gun.

In two silent diagonal downward slashes, Sunday opened a large triangle of the sheeting. It flapped forward, leaving the writer a gaping hole through which to aim. “You watch pots, they never boil,” he growled at her.

Bree jumped and knocked into the pot. It fell. The heated water poured all around the bags of crabs. She tried to turn around, but Sunday was already through the sheeting and right behind her, the muzzle of the Beretta pressed to the nape of her neck. “Don’t do it,” he said. “Or I’ll be forced to kill you.”

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he replied, kicking her feet apart and feeling for a second weapon at her ankle. But she’d taken both holsters off upstairs.

“What do you want?” she said. “Do you know who I am? Who lives here?”

“I know exactly who lives here,” Sunday replied. “So listen. We’re going out through the addition and the gate into the alley. If you value your family, you’ll do exactly as I say. Now, back through that hole in the plastic.”

Bree hesitated and he pushed her roughly in the ribs, showing her that he understood where her balance points were, that he understood where her injuries lay. From that point on, Cross’s wife did as he instructed, leading the way through the addition to the steel door and out into the backyard.

It was just before dark and the neighborhood was alive with dogs barking, moms calling their children to dinner, baseballs striking leather mitts. But the only thing Sunday was focused on as they made their way to the rear gate was the smell of Bree Stone. That, as much as the threat of violence, aroused him. When he and Acadia were finally alone, they’d tear each other apart.

When they got to the gate, he said, “Open it.”

Bree hesitated, said, “I’m a cop. You know what they do to people who mess with cops?”

“I know what I’m going to do if you mess with me,” Sunday said.

Cross’s wife threw the latch and pulled open the gate.

“Slow left,” he said. “Go to the back of the van and open the door.”

The alley was quiet, dark, and empty. His vehicle was ten yards away. Sunday knew that if Bree were to try a countermeasure, she would do so climbing into the van, as much out of panic as opportunity.

For a moment as she climbs in she’ll be higher than me, he thought. She’ll also be seeing her stepson and Cross’s grandmother.

Sure enough, when Bree opened the door and started to get in, she spotted Ali and Nana Mama, passed out, duct tape across their mouths and around their wrists and ankles. She tried to mule-kick Sunday, but he’d already anticipated that move and eased off to the side. With her leg fully extended, he stuck the hypodermic needle through the stretchy fabric of her yoga pants and buried it and the drug in her right haunch. Bree gave a kind of half-scream and fell forward on her broken ribs, out cold.

Sunday pushed her legs in, calmly shut the rear door, got into the driver’s seat, and left. When he was well away from the Cross household, he checked his phone and saw that he had a new text from Acadia: Done. Moving.

Right behind you, he replied.

Tucking his phone back in his breast pocket and putting the van in drive, he thought: Let the enormity of his plight take hold in Cross’s vivid imagination, let him wallow in it a good while before Thierry Mulch flips the switch and shows Dr. Alex his new and stark reality.

Part Five

The Zombie Walks

Chapter

99

Around seven that evening, I came home to find the door unlocked and the front rooms of the house dark and silent. I stepped into the front hall and called out, “Anybody home?”

I heard them then, making noises like the clicking of many dead phone lines, or cigarette lighters being struck one after the other. When I flipped on the hall light, six or seven blue crabs scuttled away along the floorboards, claws raised, snapping as they went. There were more lo

Tags: James Patterson Alex Cross Mystery
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