Cross Country

mean?”
    “You know, are you jealous of them?”
    He smiled again, but only to himself. Then he slouched down on the couch and reached out with a toe to casually tip over the orange juice I’d given him. It spilled across the table between us. “Yo, they got any Skittles in the machine downstairs? Go get me some Skittles!”
    I did no such thing. After the session, I escorted Pop-Pop out to his social worker and told the boy I’d see him on Friday. Then I went home and picked up Nana.
    We went to the Cox family funeral together. We held each other and cried with everybody else.
    I didn’t care if people saw me cry anymore. I just didn’t care. If they were friends, they would understand. If they weren’t, what did it matter what they thought of me?
    That philosophy, to give credit where credit is due, was a Nana-ism.

Chapter 21
    “THIS IS DETECTIVE Alex Cross. I’m with the Metro police here in Washington. I need to speak with Ambassador Njoku or his representative. It’s important,
very important
.”
    Late that night, I was in the car with Bree, speeding to the Bubble Lounge in the heart of Georgetown. Four people were dead at the club. Two were Nigerian citizens, and one was the son of the ambassador. Advance reports had twenty-one-year-old Daniel Njoku as the gunman’s primary target. That meant one thing to me: The Njoku family didn’t need just notification; they might also need protection — if it wasn’t already too late. So far, all of the gang’s murders had involved families.
    A night deputy from the Nigerian embassy was on the line with me. I kept one ear covered, trying to hear what she was saying above the wail of Bree’s siren.
    “Sir, I am very sorry, but I will need more information than simply —”
    “This is an emergency call. Their son Daniel was just murdered at a nightclub. We have reason to believe the ambassador and his wife may be in danger too. We’re sending police cruisers right now.”
    “But, sir . . . the Njokus are not in the country. They are at a symposium, in Abuja.”
    “Find them, then. Tell them to get somewhere secure. Please, do whatever you can do. Then call me back at this number. I’m Detective Cross.”
    “I’ll do what I can, sir. I will call you back, Detective Cross.”
    I hung up, feeling a little helpless. How was I supposed to stop a murder that could happen six thousand miles away?

Chapter 22
    “I WANT TO talk to the witnesses first. As many of them as I can. No one goes home.”
    The Bubble Lounge had been a lively place, but by the time I got there it was a wrecking yard. There were overturned tables, smashed and scattered chairs, broken shards of glass everywhere. Body teams were working both floors; we had six GSW, one broken neck, and one suffocation. EMTs were still busily triaging the wounded. Young people were moaning and crying, and everyone I passed looked dazed, even the police officers.
    Members of Daniel Njoku’s party were being held in the coat-check area. I found them sitting close together on sofas, huddled. One girl, wearing a tiny black dress with a man’s blazer over her shoulders, had blood smeared all over her neck and cheek.
    I knelt down next to her. “I’m Detective Cross. I’m here to help. What’s your name?”
    “Karavi,” she said. She had beautiful long hair and scared dark eyes, and I thought she might be East Indian. She looked to be early twenties at most.
    “Karavi, did you get a look at the people who did this?”
    “Just one man,” she whimpered to me. “He was huge.”
    “Excuse me, sir,” one of the others interrupted, “but we need to speak with our lawyers before we say anything to police.” The speaker had an air of privilege about him; these twenty-somethings spent their Saturday nights in private boxes at a private club.
    “You can talk to me,” I said to the girl.
    “Nonetheless, sir —”
    “Or,” I interrupted, “we can do this later tonight and tomorrow. After I’m done here with all of the others.”
    “It’s all right, Freddy,” Karavi said, waving off the boy. “I want to help if I possibly can. Daniel is dead.”
    We sat off to the side for a little privacy, and Karavi told me she was a grad student in cell biology at Georgetown. Both her parents were in the diplomatic corps, which was how she knew Daniel Njoku. They had been best friends but were never a couple. Daniel’s girlfriend, Bari Nederman, had been shot tonight too, but she was alive.
    Karavi