Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

The very idea of it made my head start to pound, and I just wanted to go somewhere in the darkness and sleep. Both my aunts and Sydney Fox’s mother looked at me in concern.

“What?” I said. “I just don’t remember it ever getting that bad.”

Aunt Connie said sadly, “Alex, it got so bad, the only way your mom and dad could escape was by dying.”

Hearing that after so long a day, I hung my head in sorrow.

Bree rubbed my back and neck, said, “Is Bell still a dealer?”

They argued about whether he was. Aunt Hattie said that soon after my father died, Bell took his profits and went twenty miles north, where he built a big house on Pleasant Lake. He bought up local businesses and gave every appearance of a guy who’d straightened out his life.

“I don’

t believe that for a second,” Ethel Fox snapped. “You don’t change your spots just like that, not when there’s easy money to be made. You ask me, he runs the underworld of this town and the towns all around us. Maybe even over to Raleigh.”

I raised my head. “He’s never been investigated?”

“Oh, I’m sure someone has investigated him,” Connie said.

“But Marvin Bell’s never been arrested for anything, far as I know,” Hattie said. “You see him around Starksville from time to time, and it’s like he’s looking right through you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Bree asked.

Hattie shifted in her chair. “He makes you uncomfortable just by being near, like he’s an instant threat, even if he’s smiling at you.”

“So he knows who you are? What you’ve seen?” Bree asked.

“Oh, I expect he knows,” Connie said. “He just don’t care. In Bell’s kingdom, we’re nothing. Just like Alex’s parents were nothing to him.”

“Any evidence linking Bell to Rashawn Turnbull?” Bree said.

Naomi shook her head.

Patty Converse seemed lost in thought.

I asked her, “Stefan ever mention him?”

My cousin’s fiancée startled when she realized I was talking to her, said, “Honest to God, I’ve never heard of Marvin Bell.”

Chapter

21

I awoke the next morning to find my daughter, Jannie, at the side of my bed, shaking my shoulder. She had on her blue tracksuit and was carrying a workout bag.

“Six a.m.,” she whispered. “We have to go.”

I nodded blearily and eased out of bed, not wanting to wake Bree. I grabbed some shorts, running shoes, a Georgetown Hoyas T-shirt, and a Johns Hopkins hoodie, and went into the bathroom.

I splashed cold water on my face and then dressed, willing myself not to think about the day before and Marvin Bell and what my aunts said he’d done to my parents. Did Nana Mama know? I pushed that question and more aside. For a few hours, at least, I wanted to focus on my daughter and her dreams.

Nana Mama was already up. “Coffee with chicory,” she said, handing me a go cup and a small soft cooler. “Bananas, water, and her protein shakes are in there. There’s some of those poppy-seed muffins you like too.”

“Fattening me up?”

“Putting some meat on your bones,” she said, and she laughed.

I laughed too, said, “I remember that.”