Page 40 of Alex Cross Must Die

He ran his fingers over her shoulders and teased the flowered straps of the negligee down her arms.

She gave him a playful frown. “Wait. Did I put this on just so that you could take it off?”

“So silly,” said Poe. “Seems like a wasted step.”

“I can always wear it for breakfast,” she said, pulling it over her head with one graceful sweep. Her hair fell in damp curls around her pale shoulders. Her body glowed in the candlelight. Poe actually gasped at how beautiful she was. She leaned forward. Her bare breasts brushed his chest. Poe felt his heart beating faster. He couldn’t believe how much he loved this woman, needed her, wanted her. Especially right now. He reached for her. Touched her tenderly.

“Not yet,” she said. “Close your eyes.”

He did.

The next thing he felt was a drip of hot wax on his bare chest. It stung, then instantly cooled. Another drip, this time on his belly. Then two more, on his abdomen. Incredibly arousing. He felt her pulling the sheets lower. She leaned forward, her lips brushing his ear. “Let me know if I’m hurting you,” she whispered.

“You’re not,” Poe said softly. “You never could.”

Poe gasped and woke up, clenching his pillow in both hands. He looked around the room slowly, bringing himself back to the present. Back to reality. Back to a world without her. Then the guilt flowed in again, dark and swirling.

If it weren’t for him, he knew for a certainty, Annie would still be alive.

Poe sat still for almost a minute, just breathing. Then he leaned over the side of the bed and reached between the mattress and the box spring. He worked his fingers in and swept his hand back and forth—until he felt the familiar flask.

CHAPTER 40

AS HOLMES STUMBLEDtoward home, his body ached and his mind spun with guilt. If he’d spent the night huddling with his partners instead of indulging himself, none of this would have happened. This was the worst possible time for a clouded brain. And his brain was what he needed most. His logical, analytical brain. Sometimes, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had described it, the rest of his body felt like a mere appendix.

Poe had told him about his visit to the subway skeletons in the morgue. That case alone deserved his complete focus. And what about Eton Charles and Zozi Turner? Holmes imagined them sweating and praying in some dank basement, waiting desperately for ransom. He realized that he wasn’t doing nearly enough on that investigation either. There were killers and kidnappers on the loose, and what was he doing? Chasing his own demons. He just couldn’t help it. And he hated himself for it.

Holmes crossed the street in front of the office and walked to the main entrance. Security lights glowed from the first-floor interior. The second floor was dark. He walked up the two steps to the door and punched in the code on the small panel to the side.

He heard a discordant beep. Wrong digits. He tried again. Same result.Dammit!Had somebody changed the code without telling him?

Furious, Holmes reached for his cell phone, then remembered he didn’t have it. He raised his fist to pound on the door, then stopped. He decided to turn his problem into a challenge—a way to test himself, mind and body. And to maybe punish himself a little too. A bit of penance for the night’s misdeeds. Code or no code, he was getting in.

He rounded the corner to the side of the building facing the abandoned tattoo parlor. In spite of many calls to the city hotline, the ground was still littered with rotting crates and rusted equipment.

Holmes placed his foot on a sturdy emergency water connection sticking out from the side of his building. He stepped up and reached for the concrete sill of the first-floor window. Sturdy bars blocked the opening, and a lace of sensor wires ran across the pane. He needed to get to the second floor, where the windows were alarmed but not barred. There, he might have a chance.

Holmes placed the tip of his shoe into a small crevice above a course of bricks and pressed himself up, free-climbing onto the slender first-floor window ledge. He glanced to his right. A narrow black drainpipe, marked with scabs of rust, rose from the ground all the way to the roof of the building. Holmes tugged on it. The pipe was anchored too tightly to the wall to shimmy up, but there were thin metal brackets every few feet, good enough for toeholds.

After a few strained maneuvers, Holmes was spread out like an insect against the wall—one foot braced against a pipe bracket, another resting tentatively on the corner of a brick, both hands gripping the second-story windowsill. Every muscle in his body was burning, and his breaths were coming in short gasps. He glanced down. If he fell now, he could crack his head open on the water pipe or impale himself on a piece of rusted metal. But it was too late to turn back.

Slowly, meticulously, he walked his feet up the side of the drainpipe, pulling himself up until his face was even with the lower pane of the industrial window. Only one sensor there. Maybe he could disable it or short it out.

Holmes reached instinctively for his penknife, before remembering that it was now in somebody else’s pocket. Suddenly, his foot hit a patch of scaly rust on the pipe and slipped off. His leg flailed in midair. A loose bracket fell to the ground and bounced against a metal tin with a loud bang.

Then Holmes heard another noise—this one from above.

He looked up as the window opened. The barrel of a Glock 45 poked over the sill and hovered an inch from his nose.

“Auguste! For Christ’s sake, don’t shoot!” said Holmes. “It’s me.”

Poe leaned out over the edge and gave a shaky wave. “Welcome home, Brendan,” he said. Even in the open air, Holmes could smell the liquor on his partner’s breath. This gave him a bit of solace. In the realm of bad habits, at least he had company.

CHAPTER 41

WHEN HOLMES WOKEup in his apartment a few hours later, his head was still clouded, and he felt filthy. He realized that he’d fallen into bed in his soiled suit. He rolled out, stripped himself naked, and stuffed his clothes into a garbage bag. He did the same with the bedsheets. Then he stepped into his shower and let scalding water stream over his body.

Steam filled the enclosure and cleared his nasal passages. He pressed his palms against the smooth tile walls and took long, deep breaths. Fully sober now, he realized that he was lucky to be alive.

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