Alex Cross's Trial

L.J. and I took our places on the porch. We’d been friends for a long time, but he’d gotten better and better with the years, the exact opposite of Jacob.

    I arranged the other men as carefully as a Civil War general planning his lines of defense. I put two of the new men on the roof, despite Moody’s protest that the sheets of tin were so old and rusty that they would almost certainly fall through.

    Then L.J. dispatched five of the men in an enfilade line among the old willow trees at the edge of the woods.

    “Stay awake. Stay alert,” he told everyone. “Don’t leave your post for any damn reason. If you need to pee, just do it in place.”

    As the second night watch began, our fears were as high as on the first.

    Around eleven L.J. and I decided a finger of sour-mash whiskey was what our coffee needed to take the edge off. After midnight Moody came out with a fresh pot. She told me Abraham was awake.

    Through the window I saw him propped up on his pillow. Between his hands he held a bowl of steaming liquid, which he raised to his lips.

    “How’s he doing?”

    “He’s got a little more energy tonight. But I ain’t getting my hopes up. Aunt Henry says he’s on his way.”

    I nodded and walked inside.

    “How are you feeling, friend?” I asked.

    He smiled. “How are you, is the question,” he said. “I ain’t doing nothing but laying on this bed, trying not to die. You the one doing somethin’.”

    “I’ll keep doing my job, as long as you do yours,” I said.

    I was surprised how sharp he seemed, and I seized the opportunity.

    “Still no word from the White House, Abraham,” I told him. “Makes me angry.”

    “The Lord and the president, they both work in mysterious ways,” he said.

    “How did you ever come to know him, Abraham?” I asked. “The president, that is.”

    “Mr. Roosevelt’s mama was a southern lady, you know. Miss Mittie. From over where I’m from, in Roswell, Georgia. And see, my sister Annie went to work for Miss Mittie, eventually went with her up to New York. She was still up there, nursing Mittie, the day she died. Died the same day as Mr. Roosevelt’s first wife, Alice. Did you know his mama died the same day as his wife? I was there that day, helping Annie. That was a terrible day. I guess he never forgot it.”

    “ Ben! ” L.J. shouted. “The sons o’ bitches are here! They’re everywhere! ”

    From all around the cabin came a clatter of hooves, then an explosion of gunfire.

    I lunged for the front door. I was almost there when one of the Raiders came crashing through the roof, landing on my back.

    Chapter 87

    BULLETS WERE WHIZZING through the air as the confused-looking man picked himself up off the floor, still clutching a scrap of rusted tin he’d brought with him on his fall through the roof.

    L.J. ran into the house and aimed a rifle at the fallen Raider. “Get the hell out of here or die. I see you again, you die!”

    In the darkness outside I could see eight men wheeling about on horses. They wore no sheets, no hoods. They weren’t bothering to hide themselves. I recognized the redheaded troublemaker I’d encountered at the trough in front of Jenkins’ Mercantile.

    One lout, on a big dappled quarter horse, must have weighed in at four hundred pounds. The horse struggled to keep from collapsing.

    The fat man was agile, though, hopping down from his saddle like somebody a third his size. The other Raiders were getting down too, yoking their horses together.

    One aimed his shotgun at the house. Ka-blam!

    “Goddammit,” L.J. grunted. He poked the barrel of his fine hand-carved rifle through the window, squeezed the trigger, and dropped the shooter in his tracks.

    This was war, just like I remembered it from Cuba, except the enemy was from my own town.

    L.J. called, “Take the back of the house, Ben!” So I ran to the tiny kitchen and onto the stoop.

    Behind the trunk of a giant pecan tree stood Ricky, with his shotgun trained across the yard on an oak where a White Raider huddled with his rifle trained on him.

    Neither of them had a clear shot, but they were banging away at each other, riddling each other’s tree trunk with bullets and squirrel shot.

    As I burst headlong onto that stoop, I presented a clear target for the White Raider.

    He swung his gun toward me, and time seemed to slow down while I watched him turn. He squeezed off a shot. I saw the spark of the bullet strike a rock near the stoop.

    The man ducked behind the oak, but he was big enough that the