“The bubbles tickle,” Kym said. “I have an itch inside me now. You want to scratch it? ”she asked Starkey.

The switchblade seemed to come from nowhere. Kym jabbed it at Starkey without actually stabbing him. She screamed, “You go! Leave right now. Or I cut you bad!”

Then Starkey had his gun out again. He was so cool and calm. He reached and shut off the loud music. Silence. And dread. Incredible tension in the room. Everywhere except on Thomas Starkey's face.

“Dung, dung!” cried Kym. "Hay dep sung ong sang mot ben di boNo, no! Put the gun away.

Starkey moved toward little Kym. He wasn't afraid of the switchblade, almost as if he knew he wasn't going to die like this. He twisted the knife out of her hand, then he held the revolver against the side of her skull.

Tears ran down the girl's smooth cheeks. Starkey brushed them away. She smiled up at him. “Hay yew toi di, ank ban,” she whispered.

Make love to me, soldier man.

Starkey was there in the apartment, but his head was in Vietnam. Kym was shaking and he loved that, the total control he felt, the evil he was capable of, the electricity it could bring into his system.

He looked at Harris and his friend knew. He just knew.

They fired the guns simultaneously.

The girls flew back against the wall and then slid down onto the floor. Kym was shaking all over, very close to death. “Why?” she whispered.

Starkey just shrugged at her.

Upstairs there were two more pffthts. The sound of falling bodies, Susie and Hoa. Warren Griffin had been waiting for them. He knew, too.

It was just like in the An Lao Valley, Vietnam.

Where the madness had started.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Sixty-Seven

When we finished up at Colonel Bennett's house, Sampson and I checked into the Hotel Thayer, right on the grounds of West Point. I continued to think about the three killers and how they kept getting away. Force without any conscience. That was what Agent Fescoe had called it.

In the morning I met Sampson for breakfast in the hotel dining room overlooking the majestic Hudson, which appeared almost steely gray in the distance and was topped by whitecaps. We talked about the grisly Bennett murders and wondered if they were connected to the others, and if the killers had changed their pattern.

“Or maybe there are more murders that we just don't know about,” Sampson said. “Who knows how many have been killed at this point, or how far back the murders go?” He poured himself another steaming cup of coffee. “It has to come down to the three killers. They were here, Alex. It has to be the same three men.”

I couldn't disagree with him. "I have to make a few calls,

then we're out of here. I want to make sure the local police are checking into whether anybody actually saw three men who don't belong on the grounds or in Highland Falls."