The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross 25)

I trailed Sampson past stacks of moving boxes choking the front hallway, hearing a familiar voice saying, “Be careful with that! It was my mother’s!”

We stepped out into a living area with large glass windows that gave a sweeping and dramatic view of Baltimore Harbor. Wearing jeans and a loose-fitting pink jersey, Lourdes Rodriguez paced by the window, watching the workmen move a table into position.

She looked puzzled when she saw Sampson standing there holding his badge. Then she noticed me.

I stepped into the room, said, “You never sent me your new e-mail,

Annie.”

For a second, the love junkie was so shocked, I thought she might faint dead away.

Then she croaked, “Dr. Cross? What are you doing here?”

“I could say the same, Annie. Or is it Lourdes?”

She swallowed, looked away. “Lourdes.”

“Why’d you use the fake name when you came to see me?”

Rodriguez blinked, puffed out her cheeks, and glanced at the workmen, who were leaving the room. “Isn’t this privileged?”

“Not when it comes to murder, kidnapping, and torture,” Sampson said.

That threw her. “What are you talking …” She looked at me. “Dr. Cross, I came to you under an alias because of the addiction I told you about. I don’t know anything about any torture or murder or kidnapping.”

“The van that was stolen from you when you were working for Dish,” Sampson said. “We ran tests on the interior. Whole lot of blood spatter.”

She looked down. “Blood spatter? I don’t … it was stolen. I had nothing to do with that.”

“Didn’t you?” I said. “The same van was caught on film when two blond girls from Pennsylvania were taken.”

Her jaw dropped, and she took a step backward.

“Seemed a big coincidence,” Sampson said. “Given that you left behind all those articles about the same missing girls at your old apartment at Mr. Feiffer’s.”

“And given that I saw you leaving my office in a car driven by a man posing as Alden Lindel, the father of one of the missing girls,” I said.

She shook her head as if trying to clear it. “Wait. What? The father of one of the missing girls?”

“A man who’s been claiming to be him. You got into his Nissan Pathfinder right after our one and only session. I saw you. What is going on, Annie, Lourdes, whatever your real name is?”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Last time I left your office? I called Uber. They sent some Uber guy. You can check. I’m sure there’s a record.”

Uber? Was that possible? The fake Alden was an Uber driver. You call for an Uber car and usually the one that’s closest responds. Which meant what? That the impostor, whoever he was, had been close by, watching my house?

“We will check Uber,” Sampson said. “What about the news articles?”

Rodriguez rubbed her neck, didn’t look at us, and didn’t reply.

“It’s going to come out sooner or later,” I said. “Courts go easier on the first person in a conspiracy to flip.”

“Conspiracy?” she said sharply. “No, it’s nothing like that. Not really.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Looking flustered now, Rodriguez wrung her hands and then held them up in surrender.

“Okay, okay, I got caught up in something a long time ago, Dr. Cross, and … I’ll tell you everything I know. Everything. The honest-to-God truth.”