Page 33 of Alex Cross Must Die

“What do you want?”

“We want five million dollars.”

“What?”

“I’ll speak more slowly. Five. Million. Dollars. For your husband and your daughter’s safe return.”

“Dear God …”

“One more thing. About the detective.”

“Detective? What detective? I haven’t called the police. I promise you!”

“The detective. The lady. The one with the English accent. Tell her to back off or everybody dies. Badly.”

Then the line went dead.

CHAPTER 32

AT 11:44 THATnight, Holmes arrived at the designated location. His contact had been very specific about the timing. After the Uber drove off, he was the only one left in the vast parking lot in Bayonne, New Jersey. In front of him sat a massive warehouse, weather-beaten and rusted, like dozens of others on the huge lot.

For a few seconds, Holmes wondered if he was in the right place. He looked up. A faded unlit sign near the edge of the roof saidJ.E.H. ENTERPRISES. Holmes smiled. The joke cinched it. He imagined that, somewhere, J. Edgar Hoover was smiling too.

At 11:45 exactly, a truck-sized cargo door on the front of the warehouse began to open. Holmes expected it to creak and groan as it moved along its track. Instead, it glided smoothly to the side with a gentle hum.

Holmes walked through the entrance into a space half the size of a soccer field, lit only by yellow security lamps. Row after row of metal storage racks ran down the entire length of the building, almost disappearing into the gloom. The huge door closed behind him with a gentle thud.

“That you, Mr. Holmes?” A voice echoed from the shadows somewhere above.

“Who’s asking?” Holmes called back.

There was a loud bang, and suddenly long light banks on the ceiling popped on, bathing the space in bright fluorescent light. Holmes heard a metallic whine overhead. He looked up. A man in blue was descending from a scaffold in a bucket at the end of a huge mechanical lift. As the bucket touched the concrete floor, the man unhooked his safety belt and stepped out.

“Forgive the deus ex machina,” he said. “I love to make an entrance.” He extended his hand. “I’m Essen Blythe.”

“Brendan Holmes. Thanks for meeting with me.”

“No problem. I understand you need some artistic insight.”

In his baggy coveralls, Blythe looked like a neighborhood mechanic or gym coach. But Holmes knew better. Essen Blythe, he’d been assured, was one of the world’s foremost authorities on art—more specifically, arttheft—and a highly decorated special agent in one of the FBI’s most clandestine operations. If anybody could help find the culprit responsible for the Bain heist, this was the guy.

“Hop on,” said Blythe.

Holmes looked to the side and saw a small electric vehicle—like a golf cart, only sleeker. He took the seat on the passenger side while Blythe took the wheel. There was a click and a hum as the shuttlecraft started moving down the aisle.

Rising high on both sides, the industrial shelves were filled with large wooden crates, some as compact as briefcases, others as big as highway billboards. Holmes felt his olfactory bulbs coming alive. Above the stale scents of concrete and factory dust, he could pick out dozens of odors—turpentine, hydrocerussite, plumbonacrite, and other components of aging paint. The smell of fine art.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“War orphans,” said Blythe.

“Pardon?”

“Everything in that section was reclaimed from the Third Reich,” said Blythe. “Hundreds of thousands of pieces were stolen. Hard to establish provenance after all these years, but we do our best to get the art back home.”

As the cart neared the end of the aisle, Blythe rolled to a stop facing a metal wall. Holmes assumed it was the inner side of the building’s exterior. Blythe pulled a small device from his pocket and clicked a button. The wall separated in the center, leaving a space just wide enough for the cart to pass through. As the vehicle bumped over the threshold into another huge space, Holmes looked up, stunned.

He wasn’t in a New Jersey warehouse anymore.

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