I, Alex Cross

patriot in a very difficult position right now, Madam President."
    Vance didn’t address me after that. The last thing I heard her say was to the agent on the other side of the door as she left.
    "Show Dr. Cross out. We’re done here."

Part Four

BURNING DOWN
THE HOUSE

Chapter 78

    THE MURDER MYSTERY was turning out to be more like a plague, spreading and infecting anyone who touched it, killing them.
    Adam Petoskey sat up suddenly on the couch, all five foot four of him. His heart was kicking at the inside of his chest. Something besides a terrifying nightmare had just woken him, though there had been plenty of those lately too.
    What was it?
    What now?
    His apartment was dark except for the TV. He’d been watching
The Daily Show
when he dropped off, finding solace in the droll humor of Jon Stewart.
    Now there was an infomercial on, people laughing and screaming about some weight-loss thing. Maybe that’s what woke him.
    Paranoia was his roommate these days, and one hairy bitch to be cooped up with too. He hadn’t left the apartment in a week. Literally a week. The phones were unplugged, the shades were drawn at all times, and garbage was piling up by the back door — ever since he’d nailed it shut on that first night when he couldn’t sleep a wink.
    There were things Adam Petoskey knew
— things he wished to hell he didn’t know.
    Working for Tony Nicholson and his girlfriend, Mara, cooking the books and looking the other way, had been shitty enough.
Not
working for him, not hearing a word from him, as it turned out, was even worse.
    Like tonight, just to use a handy example. He stood up off the couch, still a little shaky.
    Halfway to the kitchen, he stopped. For the hundredth time that week, he felt almost sure someone was behind him.
    And then, before he could even turn around —
someone was
.
    A strong arm looped across his throat and pulled hard, until his feet nearly left the floor. Duct tape was pressed over his mouth. He heard it rip in the back and felt it stick and tighten.
    "Don’t fight, Mr. Petoskey. You fight — you lose — you die."
    A hard finger pressed into the spot between his shoulder blades and moved him toward the bedroom door. "Let’s go. This way, my friend."
    Petoskey’s brain squirmed. He was a numbers man, after all. He could run equations and probabilities like a machine, and right now, everything he knew told him to do as this guy said. It was even a strange kind of relief, following someone’s orders after seven days of solitude in this hellhole.
    In the bedroom, the man turned on a light. He was no one Petoskey recognized — tall and white, with gray-flecked dark hair. His gun had one of those extensions on it, a silencer, if the ones on TV were any indication.
    "Pack a bag," he said. "Don’t leave anything out. Clothes, wallet, passport, whatever you need for a long trip."
    Petoskey didn’t hesitate, but a whole new raft of questions floated into his crowded mind as he started to pack. Where was he going? What kind of long trip? And how could he possibly convince anyone of the truth, that he’d never had any intention of telling a soul what he knew?
    One thing at a time, Petoskey. Clothes, wallet, passport…
    "Now get in the bathroom," the man told him. "Pack everything you’ll need in there."
    "
Right
, he thought, clinging to the task at hand.
Don’t leave anything out. Toothbrush, toothpaste, shaver… condoms? Sure. Why not be positive
?
    The master bath was tiny, with barely enough room to stand between the pedestal sink, toilet, and shower.
    Petoskey opened the medicine cabinet, but then he felt another poke between his shoulder blades.
    "Get in the tub and lie down, little man."
    It made no sense, but nothing did right now. Was he going to be tied up in the tub? Robbed? Left behind after all?
    "No," the man said. "The other way, with your head down by the drain."
    And suddenly it all became horribly clear. For the first time, Petoskey screamed — and he heard just how tiny his voice was from behind the tape. This was it. This was really it. Tonight, he disappeared forever.
    He knew too much — the famous names, all their dirty secrets.

Chapter 79

    I HAD FEWER and fewer people I could talk to about this murder case anymore. Lucky for me, Nana was still one of them.
    For a few days, I’d been holding back on her. Somehow it seemed wrong to bring the extra stress into her room at the hospital. But as the days had passed, and these visits of mine