“Kid talks a lot.”
I smiled. “Nonstop.”
“Smart.”
“Brilliant.”
M glanced at the ceiling, then back at me. “Life is full of injustice.”
“You watched my family,” I said. “You’ve seen Ali smile. Heard Ali laugh.” I paused, trying to channel my love for my son but not wanting my emotions to overwhelm me. “That boy has a lifetime ahead of him,” I went on. “Who knows what Ali will be able to do if you’ll just take a chance and listen to your heart.”
M stayed silent and would not look at me.
I waited a full ten minutes, sighed, then turned and headed for the door.
I’d opened it and was leaving when M said, “Cross.”
I wanted to melt but stood tall and pivoted to look at him.
“The anthill,” he said.
Chapter 104
The FBI Helicopter flew in over Dwight Rivers’s property in the Shenandoah Valley and landed in the meadow between the solar panels and the house. It was past midnight. A full moon lit the place in a strange blue light.
We’d called Rivers, who’d gone home to heal after being released from the hospital. He said he had not been in the anthill since returning. The FBI had sealed the bunker because of the head found in there.
“Exceptional hiding place if you think about it,” Mahoney said.
“Who would look in a sealed crime scene?” Bree said before the pilot gave us the all-clear.
We jumped out and started running toward Rivers’s bunker. There were lights on in his house, but we found him on crutches next to an ATV waiting by the main entrance to the anthill.
“Padlock’s still in place,” he said. “So is the seal.”
We all shone flashlights on the seal, which showed no signs of having been tampered with. Mahoney took two pictures of the seal, then broke it.
Rivers gave us the padlock combination, and we were quickly inside. The doomsday prepper hobbled in behind us, flipping switches, starting generators, lighting the anthill up from top to bottom.
“If your son is in here, you’ll find him, Dr. Cross,” Rivers said. My thoughts were on Ali, but I couldn’t help noting the irony that I’d suspected the man enough to break into his bunker, and yet here he was, helping me to find my boy.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, then I led the way down the short hallway to the staircase.
Mahoney and Sampson climbed. Bree and I descended.
“Ali!” we shouted. “Ali Cross, can you hear us?”
We opened doors and went into every level of the maze, calling and looking in the kitchen, the armory, the security hub, the battery operation, and the water-filtration room. The workshop, where the head was found, was still sealed tight off the main staircase. I broke the seal and we went inside.
The first thing I noticed was that the heavy steel door at the opposite end of the space was on the floor in the hallway beyond. That door had been locked and sealed. The rest of the workshop looked much as I remembered it except there weren’t any bloody tools or equipment; the FBI had seized those as evidence.
Then I noticed an empty plastic water jug by one of the lockers and empty tins of food strewn in the corners.
“Smell that?” Bree said.
I did, faintly. “Human waste.”
It didn’t take long to locate the smells. The floor drain stank of stale urine, and in a closed locker, we found zip-lock bags filled with feces and used toilet paper.
Mahoney and Sampson came in. “Anything?”
“He played me again,” I said, shaking my head in helpless anger.
“Someone was confined in here,” Bree said.
“I have a forensics team on its way from Quantico,” Mahoney said. “Let’s back out, let them do their jobs, figure out for sure if it was Ali being held here.”
“I know he was,” I said, and I gestured at dust by one of the lockers, where a single finger had doodled a design. “Ali draws those in his notebooks all the time.”
Bree nodded, said, “And there are small footprints over by that door.”
I went over and saw multiple shoe prints on top of each other, including several that looked Ali’s size. I shone a light into the hall and spotted an acetylene blowtorch and tank by the ladder and a discarded hacksaw blade.
Bree said, “M must have come down this interior ladder and blowtorched and cut his way in. With the seal and lock still on the main staircase door, he’d know no one was coming in here. Perfect place to keep a kidnap victim.”
That made me furious.
“Ali!” I shouted up the ladder. “Ali, can you hear me?”
“Alex?” Mahoney said. “He’s not here anymore. We need to back out. Be sure.”
“I’m staying,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” Bree said. “You’re coming home with me. I need you. So do Nana and Jannie. We’ll go back to talk to M in the morning.”
I stared at her, feeling overwhelmed at the idea that Ali had been right here sometime in the past few days, and now he was gone again.
But I nodded and left the workshop, unable to fight off the thought that I might never see my little boy again. My eyes welled up with emotion when I thanked Dwight Rivers for his help.
“You’ll find him,” Rivers said. “And I figured out how they were getting in and out. Someone’s been using the roof winch. The cable line’s hanging on the side.”
“We left that,” Sampson said.
“What?”
“It’s a long story, sir, and it’s late,” I said, and I set off toward the helicopter.
Bree came alongside me and took my hand. My mind kept up a flashing slideshow of Ali moments: His birth. The first time he walked. The first time he talked.
Riding a bike. Playing in the ocean out in front of Ned’s place on the shore.
The memories kept coming for me as we buckled ourselves into the helicopter seats: Ali obsessed with zombies. Obsessed with darts. Obsessed with mountain bikes. Obsessed with everything and, more often than not, grinning from ear to ear.
As the helicopter lifted off, Bree broke down sobbing and fell against me. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling her shudder as tears poured down my face in the darkened cabin. I imagined Ali alive so vividly, I could have sworn I heard his voice on the wind.
Chapter 105
Both our phones started buzzing and ringing at four thirty a.m.
I took a look at the text from Mahoney and cursed. “That’s impossible!”
“Goddamn it!” Bree yelled.
We dressed in seconds and pounded down the stairs.
“What’s happening?” Nana Mama cried after us.
“Go back to bed.”
“You’ve barely been to bed!”
We didn’t answer, just ran out to the car. I threw a bubble on the roof and we took off, me driving, Bree on her radio, barking orders. Sirens wailed all around us as we sped through the deserted city. Six minutes later, we pulled up in front of George Washington University Hospital.
“Go out ten blocks with the perimeter,” Bree said into her radio. “No one in or out. All vehicles searched.”
Sampson was already in the hall outside the ICU. “He’s armed and dressed as a uniformed Metro police officer.”
“What?” I said as Bree broadcast the news. “How?”
“Take a look.”
We walked to the open door of the room where M had been. Ivan Marky, the same young officer who’d been on guard when we left the evening before, was in the bed. He was naked. His throat had been cut.
Sampson said, “M put his clothes on, went to the nurses’ station, put the officer’s gun in the faces of the two on duty, and ordered them to give him all the narcotics and antibiotics they had. Then he took their cell phones, locked them in a closet, and left.”