Hope to Die (Alex Cross 22)

Bree’s arm was out from under one of the straps, and with her hand she was making a circular motion toward the rear wall. I tried not to look, but then I saw Damon doing the same thing. Ali seemed to be moving too. They’re awake, playing possum, and—what? Telling me to keep him talking? Telling me to get him closer?

But would either of those things help the situation? He had the guns, and as far as I knew, there was no one looking for us here.

Or was there? Lester Frost and Madame Minerva seemed to have been following me back there at the ferry. Maybe they had already called the police, and help was on the way. Maybe hope had not really died.

“So who should enjoy my skills first?” Sunday asked. “Your awake, nubile, and athletic daughter? Or your comatose, ripe, and buxom wife?”

I said nothing as he reached around and tucked the Ruger in his waistband. Then he switched the .357 to his left hand and moved it toward Jannie.

“Don’t!” she yelled. “You frickin’ creep!”

Sunday laughed. “Feisty, aren’t you?”

I said, “He’s not a creep, Jannie. He’s a wallowing pig.”

You’d have thought I’d slapped him, the way his face turned red and his expression hardened. “You have no idea who I am or what I am capable of,” he said in the coldest voice I’d ever heard. “I am limitless.”

“I know who you are and I know your limitations,” I shot back. “When it comes down to it, Mulch, you’re just the kid who smelled like pig shit in school. It was why you killed Alice Littlefield, right? Because she commented on your piggish odor in class?”

Sunday took two long strides and kicked me hard in the stomach. It blew the wind out of me, and I fell to my side, gasping for air.

“You shut up and watch now,” he said calmly, but in a West Virginia accent, before turning and walking past Jannie. “I’m gonna tear your heart right out of your chest, Alex Cross.”

He went toward my wife then, pressed the pistol muzzle to the side of her head, and looked back at me.

My stomach turned inside out, but I tried to show Sunday no reaction.

Bree’s hand was still free—he hadn’t seemed to notice—but the gun against her skull effectively neutralized her threat. My mind flashed on the corpse of the woman at the construction site who’d looked like Bree. I felt the bottomless grief of that moment again and wondered if I could bear seeing her actually die right in front of me. No fake photos. No look-alike. For real.

I had to act. I had to do something.

Do I continue to attack him?

Or plead for Bree’s life?

CHAPTER

95

SUNDAY MADE UP MY mind for me. With his free hand, he drew down the sheet covering her breasts, glanced at them, and then winked at me.

“My, oh my, Alex Cross,” he said, and whistled. “Must have been something to have this fine woman in your bed ev

ery night. Yes, sir. Yes siree.”

“Leave her alone, asshole!” Jannie cried. “She’s drugged, defenseless.”

“Oooh, that helps,” Sunday said, nodding. “Keep it up there, girlie-girl. Stir that pot!”

He lazily traced his index finger around my wife’s nipples, watching me and smacking his lips as if he were savoring a meal of my misery and a wine of my hatred.

“Shall we see more?” Sunday asked, teasing the sheet down over her belly. “If I remember, no Brazilian-wax fan down there. Uh-uh, Bree’s got the prettiest little trim job. I like that, fits perfectly with a man in your line of work. Leave a little mystery, right?”

Remembering how he’d lost it when I brought up his life as Thierry Mulch, I attacked there again.

“Baby Boar,” I shot back. “That’s what they called you, right? At home, anyway. But at school? I heard it was just Pig Boy and Little Piggy-Shit Boy.”

His shoulders hunched. For a second, I thought he was going to come for me again. Instead, he watched the action of his fingers on Bree’s breast, saying in that Thierry Mulch accent, “You best hush, you know what’s good for you, Alex Cross.”