Criss Cross (Alex Cross #27)(8)

In compartments belowdecks, Coast Guard officers found sixteen teenage girls from Brazil, Cambodia, and India. They were all starving and dehydrated.

The girls later said the shootings had occurred four nights before. They’d heard a boat come alongside the yacht, which was not an uncommon occurrence. Usually that meant there was a buyer or a seller coming aboard.

Then the shooting started, at first slow and methodical, then more frenzied. They heard the other boat leave, and then there was nothing but silence for days. Because the yacht had been found adrift close to international waters, the FBI had been called in. The condition of the bodies had hampered the investigation but not thwarted it.

Each of the six victims had been shot at point-blank range from behind, right between the shoulder blades. Their heads had been removed with surgical precision.

The bullets were later matched to a gun Forbes had used when he’d been a field agent. The .40-caliber pistol was found in a closet at the West Virginia cabin where he’d gone to write his book. The FBI also found DNA evidence putting Forbes on the yacht.

“Alex?” Forbes said now, pressing his hand against the bulletproof window. “Please, you’ve got to listen to me. I didn’t do this. I was framed.”

“By who?”

He hesitated. “I … don’t know … I can’t say for sure. He calls himself M.”





CHAPTER 9





AT THREE THAT AFTERNOON, I climbed up into the grandstands above the track at Coolidge High School, still feeling like I’d entered some kind of twilight zone during my discussion with Martin Forbes.

M?

Again?

How is that even possible?

But those six bodies were…just like…

“Alex?”

I glanced over to see Nana Mama waving at me. My grandmother wore a wool hat and jacket and had a heavy blanket across her lap. The drizzle had stopped, but the air was still chill and dank. Ali, next to her, was engrossed with something on his phone.

“How’s our girl looking?” I said, sitting down next to them.

“Haven’t seen her yet,” Ali said without raising his head.

“Really?” I said, gazing at the track and field where athletes from three different high schools were warming up. “That’s not like her.”

“You notice she’s been dragging?” Nana said. “She’s not getting enough sleep.”

“She’s a seventeen-year-old girl. It’s impossible for her to get enough sleep.”

“Dad,” Ali said, “can I borrow your phone? Mine died.”

“To play a game?”

He looked insulted. “No, to read a book.”

I handed it to him, said, “What are you reading?”

His thumbs flew over the screen of my phone as he said, “Criminal Investigation: An Introduction to Principles and Practice, by Peter Stelfox.”

“Where’d you find that?” I asked.

“Online.”

“You should be reading books that are more age-appropriate,” Nana said.

“Age-appropriate things bore me,” Ali said as he stared at my phone’s screen.

My grandmother looked at me sharply, apparently waiting for me to say something. “I could use a little backup at times,” she said.

Before I could reply, Jannie came out and started jogging around the track; she wore sweatpants and a hoodie, which was up. Normally, my daughter ran with a noticeable springiness in her gait, a bounce every time her foot hit the ground. It was almost like she was bounding. That natural stride had attracted the serious attention of several NCAA Division I coaches, all of them waving scholarships.

But as Jannie increased the pace of her warm-up run, I could see she was not striking the ground with the balls of her feet but farther back, toward her heels. It made her look awkward, and that was one thing Jannie never was on a track.

“She injure her foot again?” Nana Mama asked, concerned.

“I sure hope not,” I said, standing and raising my binoculars to get a better look.

Jannie had gone through a difficult year after breaking one of the sesamoid bones in her foot. She’d had an operation, and it was touch and go for a time whether she’d recover fully. But she had, and she’d run some very impressive times during the indoor-track season.

Now, however, something was definitely off, though I didn’t think it was her foot. Her shoulders were level, and her face showed no evidence of pain on the footfall.

But there just wasn’t the spark you normally saw in her.

“She mention anything bothering her in school?” I asked Nana Mama after Jannie slowed to a walk, hands on her hips, head down.

“Straight As so far.”

“Boys?”

Ali sniggered. “Jannie scares them away.”

Bree arrived and sat down. “Did I miss her?”

“No,” I said, watching my daughter again through the binoculars. She seemed distracted, almost listless, as she crossed the field toward her team.

I lowered the glasses and gave Bree a hug and a kiss. “Glad you made it.”

“Me too,” she said, and she smiled. “You texted that you had something bizarre to tell me?”





CHAPTER 10