Target: Alex Cross
James Patterson
CONTENTS
About the Book
About the Author
Also by James Patterson
Praise
Who is Alex Cross?
Map
Title Page
Prologue
One
Two
Part One: Five Days Later
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two: Time of Death
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Part Three: Black Friday
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Part Four: A Nationwide Manhunt
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Part Five: Stop Me, Please
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Have you read them all?
Extract from Ambush
Copyright
ABOUT THE BOOK
TARGET: HEAD OF STATE
Men and women from across the nation line the streets of Washington D.C. to mourn the unexpected death of the President. Hit by painful memories of the loss of his first wife, Alex Cross is left reeling by this tragedy.
TARGET: UNITED STATES CABINET
A sniper’s bullet strikes another devastating blow to the heart of Washington with the assassination of a prominent Senator. The shock of this attack puts huge pressure on the police to deliver a speedy response, and as Chief of Detectives, Alex’s wife Bree Stone is given an ultimatum: solve the case, or lose her job.
TARGET: ALEX CROSS
The new President calls on Alex Cross to lead an unparalleled FBI investigation to help capture America’s most wanted criminal. Alex has a terrible feeling that the assassination is just the beginning of a much larger plan. All too soon this fear springs to life as a terrifying chain of events plunges the government and the entire country into chaos.
The stakes have never been higher for Alex Cross as his courage, his training and his capacity for battle are stretched to their limits in the most important case of his life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 375 million copies worldwide. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past two decades – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Detective Michael Bennett and Private novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers.
James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers including the Middle School, I Funny, Treasure Hunters, House of Robots, Confessions, and Maximum Ride series. James has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops and has been the most borrowed author of adult fiction in UK libraries for the past eleven years in a row. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.
Also by James Patterson
STAND-ALONE THRILLERS
The Thomas Berryman Number • Hide and Seek • Black Market • The Midnight Club • Sail (with Howard Roughan ) • Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro ) • Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan ) • Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund ) • Toys (with Neil McMahon ) • Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp ) • Guilty Wives (with David Ellis ) • Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan ) • Mistress (with David Ellis ) • Invisible (with David Ellis ) • Truth or Die (with Howard Roughan ) • Murder House (with David Ellis ) • Woman of God (with Maxine Paetro ) • Humans, Bow Down (with Emily Raymond ) • The Black Book (with David Ellis ) • Murder Games (with Howard Roughan ) • The Store (with Richard DiLallo ) • Texas Ranger (with Andrew Bourelle ) • The President is Missing (with Bill Clinton ) • Revenge (with Andrew Holmes ) • Juror No. 3 (with Nancy Allen )
THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB SERIES
1st to Die • 2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross ) • 3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross ) • 4th of July (with Maxine Paetro ) • The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro ) • The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro ) • 7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro ) • 8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro ) • 9th Judgement (with Maxine Paetro ) • 10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro ) • 11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro ) • 12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro ) • Unlucky 13 (with Maxine Paetro ) • 14th Deadly Sin (with Maxine Paetro ) • 15th Affair (with Maxine Paetro ) • 16th Seduction (with Maxine Paetro ) • 17th Suspect (with Maxine Paetro )
DETECTIVE MICHAEL BENNETT SERIES
Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge ) • I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Gone (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Burn (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Alert (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Bullseye (with Michael Ledwidge ) • Haunted (with James O. Born ) • Ambush (with James O. Born )
PRIVATE NOVELS
Private (with Maxine Paetro ) • Private London (with Mark Pearson ) • Private Games (with Mark Sullivan ) • Private: No. 1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro ) • Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan ) • Private Down Under (with Michael White ) • Pri
vate L.A. (with Mark Sullivan ) • Private India (with Ashwin Sanghi ) • Private Vegas (with Maxine Paetro ) • Private Sydney (with Kathryn Fox ) • Private Paris (with Mark Sullivan ) • The Games (with Mark Sullivan ) • Private Delhi (with Ashwin Sanghi ) • Private Princess (with Rees Jones )
NYPD RED SERIES
NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp ) • NYPD Red 2 (with Marshall Karp ) • NYPD Red 3 (with Marshall Karp ) • NYPD Red 4 (with Marshall Karp ) • NYPD Red 5 (with Marshall Karp )
DETECTIVE HARRIET BLUE SERIES
Never Never (with Candice Fox ) • Fifty Fifty (with Candice Fox ) • Liar Liar (with Candice Fox )
NON-FICTION
Torn Apart (with Hal and Cory Friedman ) • The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard ) • All-American Murder (with Alex Abramovich and Mike Harvkey )
MURDER IS FOREVER TRUE CRIME
Murder, Interrupted (with Alex Abramovich and Christopher Charles ) • Home Sweet Murder (with Andrew Bourelle and Scott Slaven ) • Murder Beyond the Grave (with Andrew Bourelle and Christopher Charles )
COLLECTIONS
Triple Threat (with Max DiLallo and Andrew Bourelle ) • Kill or Be Killed (with Maxine Paetro, Rees Jones, Shan Serafin and Emily Raymond ) • The Moores are Missing (with Loren D. Estleman, Sam Hawken and Ed Chatterton ) • The Family Lawyer (with Robert Rotstein, Christopher Charles and Rachel Howzell Hall ) • Murder in Paradise (with Doug Allyn, Connor Hyde and Duane Swierczynski )
For more information about James Patterson’s novels, visit www.jamespatterson.co.uk
Why everyone loves
James Patterson and Alex Cross
‘It’s no mystery why James Patterson is the world’s most popular thriller writer. Simply put: nobody does it better .’
Jeffery Deaver
‘No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent – which is what Jim has, in spades. The Alex Cross series proves it.’
Lee Child
‘James Patterson is the gold standard by which all others are judged.’
Steve Berry
‘Alex Cross is one of the best-written heroes in American fiction.’
Lisa Scottoline
‘Twenty years after the first Alex Cross story, he has become one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time, a character for the ages.’
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
‘Alex Cross is a legend .’
Harlan Coben
‘Patterson boils a scene down to the single, telling detail, the element that defines a character or moves a plot along. It’s what fires off the movie projector in the reader’s mind.’
Michael Connelly
‘James Patterson is The Boss . End of.’
Ian Rankin
Prologue
ONE
TEMPERATURES THAT LATE January morning plunged to four degrees above zero, and still people came by the hundreds of thousands, packing both sides of the procession route from Capitol Hill to the White House.
I was waiting at the corner of Constitution and Louisiana Avenues surrounded by my entire family. Bree Stone, my wife and DC Metro PD’s chief of detectives, stood in front of me wearing her finest dress blues.
My twenty-year-old son, Damon, was on my right. He had flown up from North Carolina the night before and had on long underwear, a suit and tie, and a black down jacket. Nana Mama, my ninety-something grandmother, had refused to listen to reason and watch this on TV. Sitting in a folding camp chair to my left and wrapped in blankets, she wore a wool ski cap and everything warm she owned. Jannie, my seventeen-year-old, and Ali, nine, were dressed for the Arctic but hugging each other for warmth and stamping their feet behind us.
“How much longer, Dad?” Ali asked. “I can’t feel my toes.”
Over the soft din of the crowd and from well up Capitol Hill, I heard the four drum ruffles and bugle flourishes that precede “Hail to the Chief.”
“They’re leaving the Capitol,” I said. “It won’t be long now.”
The presidential anthem soon ended, and the cold crowd quieted.
I heard a man’s voice call out, “Right shoulder, arms!”
Another voice repeated the call. And then a third. One by one, every fifty yards and moving east to west, the soldiers flanking the route followed the command, bringing their rifles to their right shoulders and standing at ramrod attention.
The drums began to beat then, the slow cadence sounding muffled and somber from that distance.
One hundred West Point cadets appeared at the top of Capitol Hill, all dressed in gray and marching in unison. Similar contingents from the U.S. Naval, Air Force, and Coast Guard Academies followed, striding in precision, heads high, eyes focused straight ahead as they reached the bottom of the hill and passed us.
Up on the hill, the slow, steady beat of the drums continued, getting louder and coming closer. A color guard appeared bearing flags.
I heard the clopping of hooves before seven pale gray horses trotted from the Capitol grounds. Six of the horses moved in formation, two following two following two. The seventh horse marched at the head of the column to their left.
All seven horses were saddled, but only the left-hand three and the horse at the head of the column carried riders, uniformed members of the U.S. Army’s Old Guard unit. The six horses in formation pulled the hundred-year-old black caisson that bore the flag-draped coffin of the late president of the United States.
TWO
THE SLOW, STEADY clip-clopping of the horses came closer and closer, the noise building along with the somber beat of the drum corps.
Behind the caisson, a black, riderless horse, known as a caparisoned steed, shook its head and danced against the reins held by another member of the Old Guard.
The late president’s personal riding boots were turned backward in the stirrups.
“Why do they do that?” Ali asked in a soft voice.
“It’s a military tradition that signifies the fallen commander,” Nana whispered. “They did the same thing at President Kennedy’s funeral almost sixty years ago.”
“Were you here then?”
“Right where you’re standing, darling,” Nana said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. “I remember it like it was yesterday, just as tragic as today.”
I wasn’t alive when JFK was president, but Nana had told me that it had been a time of great hope in the country because of its young leader and that hearing of his assassination had felt like a kick in the gut.
I’d felt the same way when Bree called me to say that Catherine Grant had collapsed in the Oval Office and died at age forty-seven, leaving behind a husband, twin ten-year-old daughters, and a stunned and grieving nation.
President Grant had been among the rarest of creatures in American politics, someone who actually managed to bring opposing sides together for the benefit of the country, and she’d done it by sheer force of her empathetic personality, her piercing brilliance, and her self-deprecating wit.
A former U.S. senator from Texas, Grant had won the White House in a landslide, and there’d been a real feeling of optimism in the country, a belief that the gridlock had ended, that politicians on both sides of the aisle were finally going to put their differences aside and work for the common good.
And they had, for three hundred and sixty-eight days.
Seventy-two hours after celebrating her first year in office, President Grant had been meeting with her military advisers when she suddenly complained of dizziness and seemed confused, then fell to the floor behind her desk. She died within moments.
Her doctors were stunned. The late president had been in top physical condition, and she had passed a rigorous physical exam with flying colors not two months before.
But the pathologists at Bethesda Naval Hospital said that Grant had succumbed to a fast-growing tumor that had enveloped her internal carotid artery, essentially interrupting the blood flow to most of her brain. No one could have saved her.
So there was a real
sense of shared loss and broken hope the morning of her funeral. As her cortege approached us, the mourners on both sides of Constitution Avenue turned sadly quiet.
Damon helped Nana Mama to her feet. Bree and I came to attention, and I had to fight against the emotion that built in my throat as Grant’s coffin rolled by and the black riderless horse pranced and reared in the bitter-cold air.
But what really hit me was the sight of the limousine that trailed the black horse. I couldn’t see them, but I knew that the late president’s husband and daughters were inside.
I remembered how I’d felt when my first wife died tragically, leaving me lost, angry, and alone with a baby boy to care for. Those were the worst days of my life, when I thought I’d never be right again.
My heart broke for the First Family as they passed. I blinked back tears watching the drum corps march by, eyes straight ahead, the cadence of the funeral beat never wavering.
“Can we go now?” Ali asked. “I can’t feel my knees.”
“Not before we all hold hands and say a prayer for our country and that good woman’s soul,” Nana Mama said, and she held her mittened hands out to us.
Part One
FIVE DAYS LATER
CHAPTER
1
SNOW FELL AS Sean Lawlor slipped into a narrow alley in Georgetown. A ruddy-skinned man with a salt-and-pepper beard and unruly hair, Lawlor was dressed in dark clothes, gloves, and a snap-brim cap with the earflaps down. As he moved deeper into the alley, he knew he was leaving tracks in the snow but didn’t care.
Forecasts were calling for six inches before dawn, and he planned to be finished and gone long before the storm ended.
Lawlor padded to the rear gate of a beautiful old brick town house that faced Thirty-Fifth Street. After a long, slow look around, he climbed the gate and crossed a small terrace to a door he’d picked earlier in the evening after bypassing the alarm system.
