Two more cuts slashed across the front of his chest and down his abdomen. Nicholson screamed both times.

He drew in his stomach muscles as if he could somehow escape the blade even as it continued down slowly, separating skin from skin, until it stopped just at the base of his cock.

“Who else, Nicholson? Now would be a good time for you to get chatty.”

“Nobody! Jesus, God, don’t do this!”

He was crying now, moaning out of control. It was all so incredibly unfair. He’d spent his adult life trading in one kind of a lie or another, and now here he was, caught in the truth.

“I don’t know what it is you want,” he blubbered at them. “I don’t know anything anymore….”

Somewhere behind him, a third voice came out of the dark. It was different from the other two, with the kind of Dukes of Hazzard redneck twang Nicholson had looked down on ever since he came to America.

“Hey, fellas, let’s move this along, all righty? I got some work of my own to attend to.”

And that’s when Nicholson gave up the last piece, his lifeline—at least he hoped so.

“I gave a disk to the cops. Zeus was on it. Detective Alex Cross has the disk!”

Chapter 93

IT TAKES WHAT it takes. That had always been a favorite expression of Nana’s—one part stubbornness, one part optimism—and it kept running through my head these days. I wasn’t giving up on this case, any more than I was giving up on her.

The entire intensive care unit at St. Anthony’s, Five West, was more than a little familiar by now. I knew all the nurses and some of the patients’ family members. In fact, I was in the hall that night, chatting with a new acquaintance about her father’s brain injury, when the alarm went off in Nana’s room.

Alarms weren’t always a reason to panic on Five West. They rang all the time, for slipped finger clips and some electronic glitch or another. The rule of thumb was that the higher and more obnoxious the sound got, the more you needed to be concerned.

This one started low, but by the time I got inside Nana’s room, it was up to a hard wail. One of the nurses, Zadie Mitchell, was already in there.

“What is it?” I asked Zadie. “Anything?”

She was adjusting Nana’s O₂ clip and watching a wave pattern on the monitor, so she didn’t answer right away.

Another nurse, Jayne Spahn, came in behind me. “Bad pleth?” she asked.

“No,” Zadie said. “It’s accurate. Page Donald Hesch.” She hit the hundred-percent-oxygen button on the ventilator and started suctioning Nana right away.

My heart was pounding now. “Zadie, what’s happening?”

“She’s desaturating, Alex. Don’t worry yet.”

I wasn’t so sure. Even with the ventilator, all the excess fluid in Nana’s system made it a constant struggle for her heart to circulate enough oxygen. For all I knew, she was drowning in front of my eyes.