Kill Alex Cross

to whatever they might remember or want to tell me.
    Zoe was as quiet as her mother thought she might be. She pulled her feet up under her and drew little circles with her finger on the arm of the couch, mostly with her eyes down.
    Ethan was nearly the opposite. He watched me closely, and always answered first, with the kind of quiet clarity you get from kids sometimes after a crisis.
    “We just kept talking to each other,” he told me at one point. “I knew we had a chance since we were still … you know. Alive.”
    The blessing, if there was one, was that neither of them remembered a whole lot about their time in that cellar. Given the levels of Rohypnol in their systems after the rescue, that was no surprise.
    Neither of them could say much about their captor, either. Everything they’d been given to eat or drink came through a sliding panel in the door. There had been no conversation at all.
    “He just ignored us the whole time,” Ethan said. “Like we weren’t even there.”
    “You knew it was a man, though?” I asked. They hadn’t been told a word about Rodney Glass, particularly the fact that he’d been released from custody for a lack of evidence.
    “I saw his hands a couple of times. Man’s hands. And sometimes, I could hear him talking on the other side of the door,” Ethan said.
    “Talking?”
    He nodded. “I think he thought we were asleep, and sometimes we were. But sometimes I’d only pretend.”
    “Did you ever hear what he said? Or recognize the voice?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “I tried, but it was too soft.”
    Ethan seemed to stop short then. His chest sunk in a little and he looked up, like he was remembering something.
    “There were these clicking noises, too,” he said.
    Zoe looked over at him.
    “What kind of clicking?” I asked.
    “It was like —” He held up his hand and bent his thumb back and forth. “Like Dad used to use.”
    “The tape recorder?” Mrs. Coyle said suddenly.
    “Yeah. Back in Madison.”
    “Ed used to dictate briefs from home when he was practicing law,” the First Lady told me. “All the time.”
    “I heard it, too,” Zoe said quietly, and we all looked at her. She was mimicking the same hand gesture that Ethan had just been making. “It was like … click on, click off.”
    “Yeah, exactly,” Ethan said, nodding enthusiastically. “Like he was always recording himself.”

RECORD .
    “I’ve been a good boy for a week now. Not that there’s much choice, is there? The only way I could have more cops watching me these days would be if I was actually in jail. Now it just feels that way.
    “At least I can get out here, stretch my legs, and get my thoughts down.
    “This is probably the last private place I’m going to have for a good long while. And even this is going to get ruined, with people coming around, and gawking, and wanting to know what really happened here.
    “It’s kind of depressing. I mean, just because everyone knows what happened, it doesn’t mean they know why . Which of course is the whole point.
    “All my new little friends at the FBI and Metro Police think I’m just some sadistic bastard who got away with the crime of the century. Well, I’ve got a news flash for them. As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t get away with anything. We’re all just right back where we started. And I know what I’ll do next. I will kill Alex Cross.”
    Stop .
    He looked down from the ridge at the old farm. The police and FBI had packed out by now, but you could see how the place had been picked over. There were still some shreds of yellow tape on a few trees, and a few stray pink flags in the dirt.
    It was tempting to go down there and have a look around, but not yet. It was still too fresh.
    Not that they could arrest him for being curious, but this was close enough for now. In fact, it was getting late. He took one last look, then turned and headed back into the woods.
    Record .
    “I don’t know. Maybe I should have just killed them while I had the chance. At least if Ethan and Zoe had died, it could have stood for something.
    “But instead, all this did was prove my whole point. We live in this world where some kids are more valuable than others, I guess, and the average Joe on the street is just fine with that, so long as it’s not his kid getting screwed over or dying.
    “Well, guess what? I’m no average Joe. I’m no kook, either. I’ve got a valid story to tell. People need to hear this, and I’m not