Kill Alex Cross Read Free

dangerously across the bridge.
    Hatfield blinked hard to keep his vision from tunneling. There were cars and pedestrians everywhere. The whole scene couldn’t possibly be more confusing.
    This thing is not going to end well . He could feel it everywhere in his body.
    At Twenty-eighth Street, a second marked unit finally fell in behind. Hatfield recognized James Walsh’s voice as he took over radio communication. Walsh was a pal of his on the force, but also a tormenter.
    “How you doing, Robert?”
    “Fuck you, how am I doing?”
    “Continuing southeast on Pennsylvania,” Walsh went on. “Suspect’s driving is extremely erratic … seems to be a single occupant, but it’s hard to tell. We’re going to hit Washington Circle any second now and — oh, shit! Bobby, look out! Look out!”
    As the van came into the rotary, it cut left instead of right, straight into oncoming traffic. Cars and cabs swerved to get out of the way.
    It was like the parting of the Red Sea from where Hatfield was sitting — and there, on the other side of the gap, was a city bus, too big to avoid. The bus driver cut hard to the right, but it was no good.
    All he did was give the van a solid wall to run into!
    Hatfield slammed his brakes and sent his own car into a hard skid. Even then, his eyes never came off the van.
    It crashed, head-on at full speed, right into the Neiman Marcus ad on the side of the bus. The front end crumpled like an accordion. Glass flew everywhere and the van’s back wheels lifted a good foot off the ground before the whole mess finally came to a sliding stop.
    Hatfield was out of his car right away, with Walsh running up behind him. Miraculously, it looked like the bus had been out of service — nobody but the driver on board. But Washington Circle was a tangle of stopped cars and rear-end collisions.
    Within seconds, another half-dozen marked units had converged on the spot.
    Uniformed officers were suddenly everywhere, but Hatfield was the first to reach the back door of the van. Its gray metal panels were buckled inward and the chrome handle was smashed to shit.
    His heart was still thudding from the chase and he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. This wasn’t over yet. What the hell were they about to find on the other side of that door? Armed gunmen? Dead men?
    Even worse — dead kids?

AT THE TIME of the first incident in the chain of events, I didn’t know it was the president’s son and daughter who were missing. All I’d heard on my radio was “possible kidnap.” That’s all any of us knew at that point.
    I’d been driving east on K Street at the time and I was off duty. The location given put me less than two blocks from the crash site and I got over to Washington Circle even before the EMTs. I had to help if I could.
    I was there in less than sixty seconds. A uniformed cop scurried behind me, unspooling a roll of yellow tape as I headed toward the smashed-up van.
    The first thing I noticed was the wide-open back door. Second, that there was no sign of any kidnap victim here at all.
    And third — Secret Service were everywhere! Some of them in the usual dark suits, others in preppy blazers, knit ties, dress shirts , and khakis. They looked like schoolteachers, but the corkscrew wires behind their ears told another story.
    I badged my way over to the van to see inside for myself. The driver was pinned to his seat where the engine block had come all the way through in the crash. He was covered in blood below some obvious trauma around his midsection. His right arm was sticking up and out in a way that arms weren’t meant to go.
    The guy looked to be midthirties, curly black hair, a sketchy beard with soul patch that was as slight and pathetic as he was.
    But where was the victim? Had this whole thing been a hoax? An intentional diversion? Already, I was starting to think so, and the possibility sent a rush of adrenaline through me. A diversion from what? What else had happened at that