But he went no further than that. He didn’t actually push the buzzer today.

  Without making a sound, he turned on his heels and left the way he had come. Minutes later, he was back out on the street, busy Connecticut Avenue.

  The drill, the rehearsal, had gone fairly well. There were no major issues, no surprises either. And now Qasim jostled along with the rush-hour pedestrian traffic. He was invisible here, just as unseen in this herd as he needed to be.

  He felt no impatience for the execution up on the twelfth floor. Patience and impatience were irrelevant to him. Preparation, timing, completion, success: those were the things that mattered.

  When the time came, Yousef Qasim would be ready to do his part.

  And he would.

  One American at a time.

  I WAS OUT OF POLICE WORK, and had been for a while now. So far, that was okay with me.

  I was standing with my back against the kitchen door, sipping a mug of Nana’s coffee, thinking that maybe it was something in the water, but all I knew was this: my three kids were growing up too fast. Blink-of-an-eye stuff. And here’s the thing—either you can’t stand to even think of your kids leaving home or you can’t wait, and I was definitely, firmly, in the former camp.

  My youngest, Alex Jr.—Ali—was going to be a kindergartner now. He was a sharp little guy too, who rarely, if ever, shut up except when he knew you wanted to know something from him. His passions at the moment included Animal Planet’s Most Extreme, the Washington Nationals baseball team, the Michael Jordan biography Salt in His Shoes, and anything to do with outer space, including a very strange TV show called Gigantor, with even stranger theme music that I couldn’t get out of my head.

  Preteen Jannie had begun trading in that twiggy body of hers for a set of starter curves. She was our resident artist and actress, and was taking painting classes through the Corcoran ArtReach Program.

  And Damon, who had just passed the six-foot-one mark, was looking forward to high school. So far, he didn’t whoop and shout or trash-talk, and seemed more generally aware of his surroundings than his peers were. Damon was even being recruited by a couple of prep schools, including a persistent one in Massachusetts.

  Things were changing for me too. My private-therapy practice was going pretty well. For the first time in years, my life had nothing “official” to do with law enforcement. I was out of the loop.

  Well, almost, anyway. I did have a certain senior homicide detective in my life: Brianna Stone, also known as the Rock, if you asked some of the detectives who worked with her. I’d met Bree at a retirement party for a cop we both knew. We spent the first half hour that night talking about the Job and the next few hours talking about ourselves—kind of crazy things like her “race-hand release” as a paddler on the Dragon Boat Racing Team. By the end of the night, I barely had to ask her out. In fact, as I think about it now, she might have asked me. But then one thing led to another, and another, and I went home with Bree that night and we never looked back. And yes, I think Bree asked me to come home with her that night too.

  Bree was fully in control of herself—intense, in all the good ways and none of the bad. And it didn’t hurt that she seemed to have a natural chemistry with the kids. They dug her. She was, in fact, right now chasing Ali at Olympic speed through the first floor of the house on Fifth Street, roaring like the child-eating alien she had apparently become, while Ali used a Star Wars lightsaber to keep her at bay. “That sword can’t hurt me!” she shouted. “Prepare to eat carpet!”

  Bree and I didn’t stick around on Fifth Street too long on that particular morning, though. To be honest, if we had stayed there, I probably would have been forced to sneak her upstairs to show her my nonexistent etchings, or maybe my lightsaber.

  For the first time since we’d been going out, we had managed to synchronize our schedules for a few days away. I went out the front door loudly singing the end of Stevie Wonder’s very first hit, “Fingertips Part 2”: “Good-bye, good-bye. Good-bye, good-bye. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.” I knew the words by heart, one of my gifts.

  I winked at Bree and pecked her cheek. “Always leave them laughing,” I said.

  “Or at least confused,” she said, and winked back.

  Our destination, Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, was on the eastern rampart of the Appalachian Mountains, not too far from Washington—and not too close either. The mountains were perhaps best known as the site of Camp David, but Bree knew about a campground open to mere mortals like us. I couldn’t wait to get there and be alone with her.

  I could almost feel the thrum of DC move out of my head as we headed north. The windows of my R350 were down, and as always I was loving the ride of this marvelous vehicle. Best buy I’d made in a long time. The late, great Jimmy Cliff wailed on the stereo. Life was pretty good right at the moment. Hard to beat.

  As we zipped along, Bree had a question: “Why the Mercedes?”

  “It’s comfortable, yes?”

  “Very comfortable.”

  I touched the gas. “Responsive, quick.”

  “Okay, I get the point.”

  “But most important, it’s safe. I’ve had enough danger in my life. I don’t need it on the road.”

  At the park entrance, as we were paying for the site, Bree leaned across me to speak to the ranger on duty. “Thanks a lot. We’ll be respectful to your park.”

  “What was that about?” I asked Bree as we pulled away.

  “What can I say, I’m an environmentalist.”

  The campsite was definitely spectacular, and worthy of our respect. It sat on its own little point of land, with shimmering blue water on three sides and nothing but dense forest greenness looming behind. In the far distance, I could see something called Chimney Rock, which we planned on hiking the next day. What I couldn’t see was a single other person.

  Just the one that mattered, Bree, who happened to be the sexiest woman I’d ever known. Just the sight of her got me going, especially out here on our own.

  She took hold of me around the waist. “What could be more perfect than this?”

  I couldn’t think of anything that would spoil our weekend up here in the woods.

  Read an extended excerpt and learn more about Double Cross.

  Preview of Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

  In November 2012 Little, Brown will publish James Patterson’s Merry Christmas, Alex Cross. For an excerpt, turn the page.

  SIX MINUTES BEFORE, AS WHITE FOAM CAME FROM THE MOUTH OF A convulsing pimply-faced homeboy in his late teens and people began to shout for help, Hala had slipped from the McDonald’s and taken four big, easy steps diagonally with her back to the nearest security camera. She was inside the women’s restroom in fewer than six seconds.

  She walked the length of the stalls until she spotted one with a metal grate in the wall above it. Luckily, the stall was open. She entered, still hearing shouts of alarm outside the restroom, turned, and went to work, knowing full well that the poisoning would quickly bring DC police to the area, police who would soon figure out that a suspect matching her description had been at the fountain a few minutes before the homeboy got his Coke. And so the police would join the others, probably FBI, already looking for her.

  Six minutes. That’s all she gave herself.

  Hala opened the Macy’s bag and retrieved a blue workman’s suit that had a patch sewn to the chest that said AMTRAK and beneath it the name SEAN. She tore off her jacket, removed her boots, and climbed into the jump-suit. Around her neck, she hung a chain attached to a remarkably good forgery of an Amtrak employee card that identified her as Sean Belmont, a member of an emergency-train-repair crew.

  Four minutes left. She scrubbed her face, lashes, and brows free of all makeup. She slid on workman’s boots and then tucked her hair up under a wig that featured short blond hair in a masculine cut. She put in contact lenses that turned her eyes blue and painted her face and hands with pale makeup.

  Ninety seconds to go. Hala stood up on the toilet, which put the metal grate at about shoulder height. She could look through it into a length of air duct about eighteen inches wide and thirteen high. She glanced at the stalls on either side of her and was heartened to see them empty. Quick as she dared, she tried the screws holding the grate over the duct and found them loose. She had the grate off and balanced on the toilet in less than thirty seconds.

  Hala reached inside and groped until she found the sound-suppressed pistol taped there. She tore it off, duct tape and all, stepped off the toilet, and dropped the gun into the battered canvas tool kit in the Macy’s bag. She retrieved the tool kit and set it aside. Then she reached to the bottom of the bag and took out eight Christmas- paper-wrapped boxes, each about the size of a large coffee cup. She put them in the tool kit. The jacket and high-heeled boots went in the Macy’s bag.

  Forty seconds.

  Hala got back on the toilet with the Macy’s bag. She shoved the bag into the duct hard, sending it in deep, and then refitted the grate.

  Ten seconds. The restroom door opened. A girl squealed, “OMG! Did you see the stuff coming out his mouth?”

  “I’m gonna be sick, you keep talking about it,” another girl replied.

  Hala grabbed the tool bag, opened the stall, and went right at them. “Sorry, young ladies,” she said in the deepest voice she could muster. “We had a leak back there. She’s all yours now.”

  “You coulda, like, put up a sign or something,” the OMG girl said indignantly.

  “Too much snow,” Hala said, as if there were some connection, and exited the restroom.

  She made a sharp right, ignoring the commotion unfolding in and outside of the McDonald’s to her immediate left. She walked resolutely west toward the entrance to the Amtrak gates and glanced to her left only once, when she picked up in her peripheral vision a big guy wearing a blue MPD parka and two shorter men wearing vests that said FBI. A sweaty man in an Amtrak police uniform followed the three of them into the McDonald’s.

  Hala allowed herself the barest grin. That had flushed them out, hadn’t it?

  She had no idea who the FBI agents were and guessed the sweaty guy was the Amtrak officer in charge tonight. But she totally recognized Alex Cross, the guy who found the president’s kidnapped kids. He’d been all over the papers.

  In an odd way, Hala felt honored.

  I KNELT OVER THE BODY OF PHILLIP LAMONTE, WHO DRESSED THE GANGSTA BUT whose identification showed he was a junior at Catholic University. He had a home address on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and carried a ticket to Penn Station on the Acela that was about to board. The extra-large cup lay on the floor next to him. The ice in it hadn’t yet melted.

  I lowered my face over the foam around his mouth and sniffed. I smelled an acrid odor I recognized.

  “Cyanide poisoning,” I said.

  “Hala?” Mahoney said.

  “Has to be,” I replied. “That’s how she killed her husband, right?”

  “That’s how he died,” Bobby Sparks agreed.

  I looked at the closest patrol officer. “Was this guy with anyone?”

  The cop gestured with her chin toward a skinny white kid, late teens, who was also dressed to party with 50 Cent and P. Diddy. “Name’s Allen Kent.”

  I glanced at the cup. “Phillip drinking from that before he died?” I asked Kent.

  The kid nodded, but he was obviously in shock.

  “Anyone else get close to that drink, son?” I asked.

  Kent shook his head. “Phil got it himself from the fountain.”

  I didn’t know how she’d done it, but I was certain Hala Al Dossari had murdered this college kid. And how didn’t seem to matter as much as why.

  I looked at Mahoney and Sparks, said, “Close this place down.”

  Captain Seymour Johnson, the shift commander of the Amtrak police, a sweaty, unhealthy-looking man, lost more color. “Are you crazy? We’re the only transportation into or out of DC. We don’t even know if this woman is still in here, for God’s sake.”

  “Maybe she’s not,” I said. “But if I were you, I’d put men with her picture at every exit. No one gets out of Union Station without proper identification. That goes for passengers who are boarding too. And call in Metro homicide and patrol. There’s deep snow everywhere. If she has made it outside and doesn’t have a car, then she’s on foot and visible.”

  Mahoney agreed and started making calls. Bobby Sparks did the same. So did Johnson. I looked around, spotted a guy, early thirties, wearing a chesterfield overcoat, watching. He held an iPad.

  I went to him. “You see what happened, Mr….?”

  “Goldberg. Jared Goldberg. And no, I didn’t see anything. I came over when I heard the screaming.”

  “You a patriot, Mr. Goldberg?” I asked.

  His brows knit. “I like to think so.”

  I handed him my card, said, “Alex Cross. I work with Metro DC Police and as a consultant to the FBI. Can you help me?”

  Goldberg frowned. “I clerk at the tax court. How can I—”

  “Your iPad,” I said. “Work on one of those four G networks?”

  He nodded.

  “Backed up in—what do they call it—the iCloud or something?”

  The law clerk frowned but nodded again.

  “Good, can I use it?” I asked. “I promise you I’ll return it. And if I break it, I’ll replace it with one even better.”

  Goldberg looked pained, but he handed it over.

  “What are you up to, Cross?” asked Bobby Sparks when he saw me return with the iPad in hand.

  “Those guys out in the command center,” I said. “Can they transmit the footage from the cameras at this end of the station?”

  The HRT commander thought, then said, “They’ll have to feed it through one of our secure websites, but affirmative, I think they can do that.”

  About the Author

  JAMES PATTERSON has created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels, the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years, including Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. Mr. Patterson also writes the bestselling Women’s Murder Club novels, set in San Francisco, and the top-selling New York detective series of all time, featuring Detective Michael Bennett. James Patterson has had more New York Times bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to Guinness World Records. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977, James Patterson’s books have sold more than 240 million copies.

  James Patterson has also written numerous #1 bestsellers for young readers, including the Maximum Ride, Witch & Wizard, and Middle School series. In total, these books have spent more than 220 weeks on national bestseller lists. In 2010, James Patterson was named Author of the Year at the Children’s Choice Book Awards.

  His lifelong passion for books and reading led James Patterson to create the innovative website ReadKiddoRead.com, giving adults an invaluable tool to find the books that get kids reading for life. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family.

  www.jamespatterson.com

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  Download the FREE James Patterson app.

  Books by James Patterson

  Featuring Alex Cross

  Kill Alex Cross

  Cross Fire

  I, Alex Cross

  Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)

  Cross Country

  Double Cross

  Cross (also published as Alex Cross)

  Mary, Mary

  London Bridges

  The Big Bad Wolf

  Four Blind Mice

  Violets Are Blue

  Roses Are Red

  Pop Goes the Weasel

  Cat & Mouse

  Jack & Jill

  Kiss the Girls

  Along Came a Spider

  The Women’s Murder Club

  11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro)

  10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)

  The 9th Judgment (with Maxine Paetro)

  The 8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)

  7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)

  The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)

  The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)

  4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)

  3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)

  2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)

  1st to Die

  Featuring Michael Bennett

  I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)

  The Private Novels

  Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)

  Private: #1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)

  Private (with Maxine Paetro)

  Stand-alone Books

  Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Zoo: The Graphic Novel (with Andy MacDonald)

  Guilty Wives (with David Ellis)

  The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo)

  Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp)

  Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Toys (with Neil McMahon)

  Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan)

  The Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund)

  For Readers of All Ages

  Maximum Ride

  Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure

  ANGEL: A Maximum Ride Novel

  FANG: A Maximum Ride Novel

  MAX: A Maximum Ride Novel

  Maximum Ride: The Final Warning

  Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

  Maximum Ride: School’s Out—Forever