Alex Cross 22: Hope to Die by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson [Patterson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

54

MY BRAIN REJECTED THE news out of hand.

A cruel joke. That’s all that was.

Aaliyah looked at me with the same kind of concern Brower had shown.

“Alex, did you hear what I said?”

I said nothing, the disbelief and the fear of hope just locking me up.

“Bree and Damon are likely alive,” she insisted.

“Don’t tell me that unless you have DNA evidence!” I yelled. “Do you?”

“No, but—”

“Then I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “I can’t.”

“We have conclusive evidence that the female victim is not Bree,” she said calmly. “The Jane Doe had no uterine scarring. The body you saw at the construction site belonged to Bernice Smith, a woman from northern Pennsylvania who’d gone missing two days earlier.”

I said nothing, wanting to believe but petrified to do so.

“Dr. Cross,” Aaliyah said, coming around me to show me a picture on her phone. “This is her. Mulch had a racist murderer named Claude Harrow put Bree’s jewels and wedding ring on Bernice Smith. Harrow mutilated her enough to make you believe it could be your wife.”

I looked at the rain-soaked screen, seeing a smiling woman who did look very much like Bree: same height, same athletic build, same basic facial structure.

Bree could still be alive?

“What about Damon?” I asked.

“Just awaiting the DNA, which should be in this morning, but if Mulch used one surrogate, I figure we’ll find that John Doe is not your son.”

I felt dizzy. “I need to sit down.”

She grabbed me by the arm and led me up the stairs to the coffee shop, and we went in again, both of us dripping. Aaliyah got me to a chair and I sat down hard.

For two and a half days I’d endured the hell of their deaths. And now the woman in the foundation was definitely not Bree, which meant the body in my backyard probably wasn’t Damon’s. Though it was clearly possible that Mulch still planned to kill them, part of me wanted to erupt with joy.

Instead, I laughed caustically, said, “First the doctored photographs, and now this? Killing my family again and again? Mulch is trying to drive me insane, isn’t he?”

“He’s tormenting you,” Aaliyah said, sitting beside me.

“Don’t you let him, whoever he is,” said the coffee-shop owner, setting two steaming mugs in front of us. “Don’t let him do it to you. You just gotta be strong and stay true to yourself.”

I looked at him appraisingly, said, “You’ve got experience with someone trying to drive you crazy?”

“I do,” he said. “My ex-wife tried.

She’s still trying.” Something about the way he said it made me laugh, and the agony of the past few days lifted and was replaced by hope. They were alive! God had not abandoned me.

It was unspeakable that Mulch had killed and butchered two innocent people to make me suffer, but I was overwhelmed with gratitude that my family was alive. They were not safe, but they could all still be saved. Humbled, I put my face in my hands, shook with happiness, and thanked my Savior from the bottom of my soul.

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