Kill Alex Cross

about it until later, but he never had any of the cocoa. Just me.”
    It seemed pretty clear where this was headed now. I could feel the dread climbing up my neck, thinking about Molly, but also about Ethan and Zoe.
    “Pretty soon, I started feeling sleepy,” she went on. “Like weirdly sleepy. It came on so fast, I didn’t even get to wonder what was happening.
    “The next thing I knew, I was waking up in this … place. Like a basement, or a cellar. I don’t even know what it was. I remember it smelled like dirt, if that makes any sense.”
    “Molly, do you have any idea where this was?” I asked. I couldn’t hold back my questions anymore. “Do you remember where he took you? Anything about the ride there?”
    She shook her head. “Believe me, I’ve wondered, but that whole time is just a foggy dream in my mind. He left a cooler with sandwiches, and some water, and I’m sure the food and water had more of whatever was in that hot chocolate. But it was like I didn’t even care. I barely remember any of it. Sometimes I even wonder if it happened at all.”
    “I think it did, Molly. Please go on. How long were you there?” I asked.
    “Three days. I was in and out the whole time. Then, at some point, I woke up again and I was just … back home. In my bed. There was a note from Rod, trying to apologize, and all of his things were gone.”
    She took a long, deep breath and looked over at me for the first time since she’d started her story. She was still shaking, but not as much as before.
    “That was it. A week later, I called a lawyer and filed for divorce. Rod didn’t contest it.”
    “And you never pressed charges?” I asked.
    “I never told anyone about this,” she said. “Not a soul. I know how that must sound, but … I don’t know. After losing Zach and everything else that happened, I just couldn’t stand to look back anymore. Like I’d go crazy if I thought about it too much. All I wanted was to move on.” She smiled again, sadly, down into her lap. “You must think I’m pretty pathetic.”
    “No,” I said. I reached over and took her hand, fighting back my own tears. “Just the opposite. I think you might be a hero.”

ON THE WAY back to DC, I got Bob Shaw, the captain of MPD’s Homicide Unit, on the phone and started lining up an immediate mobile surveillance team on Rodney Glass. This detail needed to be as covert as possible. That meant pulling cars out of the pool that weren’t Crown Vics or Impalas — makes that screamed “undercover cop” to the informed eye.
    I also gave Shaw a list of names from Narcotics and a few of the warrant squads — guys I knew had the look and skills to go unnoticed on the street. What I didn’t want was anyone who had been anywhere near the Branaff campus since this investigation had started.
    That included myself. Glass knew me. I was going to have to stay on the fringes of this surveillance for the time being.
    By four o’clock that afternoon, I was back in the city, and we had three cars positioned strategically around the school neighborhood, just as Glass was leaving for the day.
    All of my team were carrying GPS locators so I could use a single laptop to track them from a distance in my own car. We had radio communication set up on an alternate, nonrecorded channel, which was as private as we were going to get on short notice. I parked several blocks away and listened in.
    “This is Tango. He’s out the south gate. Green Subaru Forester, turning north on Wisconsin.”
    “Go ahead, Tango. This is X Ray. I’ll cut around and get you somewhere after Thirty-seventh Street.”
    “No problem. Bravo, hang back if you can.”
    “Copy that.”
    We had just enough units to run a floating box, with one car following for a while, then dropping off while another came in to take its place. I gave them some time to get ahead of me, then pulled around and brought up the rear from about half a mile back.
    “Who’s got eyes on him?” I asked, once I was headed up Wisconsin the way they’d gone. “What’s he doing?”
    “This is Bravo. He’s just driving. Listening to music, it looks like, tapping his hands on the wheel. Guy doesn’t seem like he’s got a care in the world.”
    “Yeah, well, I think maybe he does.”
    Glass stayed on Wisconsin for a couple of miles. It seemed like he might be headed into Maryland, but then I got word he was stopping in the Friendship Heights shopping mall. He parked in the lot outside