Hope to Die (Alex Cross 22)

The temperature was in the sixties, but to me it felt like the air had been heated to a hundred degrees or more. My breath turned labored. Sweat trickled off my brow and from under my arms. And yet my hands were clammy, as if I’d just touched the cold skin of a day-old corpse.

Hearing the gravel crunch under my shoes like so many tiny brittle bones, I turned my head and the camera, giving Mulch multiple angles of the building. I drifted the camera across the sign for A. J. Machine Tool and Die before going around the near corner of the building and passing a closed loading dock. I climbed cement stairs to a door, twisted the knob, and opened it.

CHAPTER

42

INSIDE THE LOADING DOCK, the only light, a red bulb, revealed boxes, dollies, and hand trucks. With slow, soft steps I went to an interior door and hesitated there, my head bent, looking down at my gun hand and my gloved free hand, which hovered over the thumb latch. My shoulders trembled, and I wondered if I had the strength to press the latch, much less pull a trigger.

“Do it,” I choked out softly. “Just do it.”

Then I thumbed the latch and drew the door open. I raised my head, which raised the camera, and both shook ever so slightly, as if I were in the first stages of Parkinson’s disease. I stepped through into the machine shop. Without pausing to look around, I pivoted and slowly shut the door so the click was no louder than the second hand ticking on my grandmother’s clock.

The shop was lit like the loading dock, with red lights glowing in cages bolted high on the walls every thirty feet or so. At the rear of the space, however, several bright lights shone in an office with windows that were opaque for the first three feet and then clear, as if the manager liked his privacy but also wanted to be able to look out at his workers. I stood several long moments, peering intently over the tops of heavy metal lathes, drill presses, planers, cutting tools, and bending devices, until I saw dark movement behind the lower, opaque glass.

“He’s in there, Mulch,” I said in the barest of whispers.

Then I set off slowly through the machine shop, hyperaware of everything around me, sidestepping rebar and pipe, pausing in the darkness next to two of the biggest machines to listen and peer out until I spotted a shadow moving behind the glass.

The side door to the office was open, throwing a thick shaft of light toward heavy-duty shelving that held stacks of sheet metal and steel bar. Ten feet from that light, I hesitated again, thinking I could not go through with it, that I could not sacrifice an innocent human being even if it meant saving another innocent human being who just happened to be more precious to me.

But could I imagine having to face another member of my family dead, beaten to a pulp and carved up for fetish reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom?

I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. The war inside me echoed in the short, sharp breaths I was taking and in the jerky way I stepped into the dim light.

Wearing a green baseball cap and a green jacket that said SECURITY, an old black man sat with his back turned not ten feet from me, hunched over, facing one of those old rolltop desks. He was hunt-and-peck typing on a computer keyboard. The screen was big, but he craned his neck toward it as if he could barely see what he was working on.

“Sir,” I said softly. “I’m here, sir. It’s time.”

The man froze for a long moment, then hunched over more and said, “Let me close this. One last letter to my daughter.”

I just stood there, looking at his back, sniffling and feeling tears dripping down my cheeks. The computer screen went dark.

Atticus Jones swiveled in the chair to face me. Despite the shadows, I could make out his expression of resoluteness and courage. He licked his lips before he said, “I’ve lived a long life, young man, but the pain’s too much. You’re doing me a favor; nothing wrong with mercy. I want to see my wife again. I want to see my mother and my father. I want you to see your loved ones too. In this life, not the next.”

“Yes, sir,” I sobbed. “And may God have mercy on my soul.”

Then Jones clasped his hands and bowed his head. A slat of light crossed his face, and then it was lost in shadow.

I raised the Colt shakily, the barrel wavering during several sharp breaths before the wispy white hair of his head steadied in the Colt’s sights.

And I squeezed the trigger.

And I shot that wonderful old man dead.

Part Three

CHAPTER

43

SUNDAY HIT PAUSE, STARED at the dead man on the computer screen.

“Look it there, Marcus,” Acadia purred. “Cross made it a mercy killing. Bet you weren’t expecting that. I know I wasn’t, but even so, it’s made me hornier than ought to be allowed in civilized—”

He cut her off, snarling, “My love? With all due respect for your insatiable libido, please shut the fuck up.”

They were in the living room of an apartment Sunday had rented in Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood. He sat on the couch. She and Cochran stood behind him.