He passed Hudson News, with all of its glossy magazine faces staring out at the world, staring at him, trying to work their propaganda. He was still being shoved and elbowed by his fellow commuters. Man, didn’t they ever stop?

Wow! He saw a character from his dreams, from way back when he was a kid. There was the guy. No doubt about it. He recognized the face, the way the guy held his body, everything about him. It was the guy in the gray-striped business getup, the one who reminded him of his father.

“You’ve been asking for this for a long time!” Soneji growled at Mr. Gray Stripes. “You asked for this.”

He drove the knife blade forward, felt it sink into flesh. It was just as he had imagined it.

The businessman saw the knife plunge near his heart. A frightened, bewildered look crossed his face. Then he fell to the station floor, stone cold dead, his eyes rolled back and his mouth frozen in a silent scream.

Soneji knew what he had to do next. He pivoted, danced to his left, and cut a second victim who looked like a slacker type. The guy wore a “Naked Lacrosse” T-shirt. The details didn’t matter, but some of them stuck in his mind. He cut a black man selling Street News. Three for three.

The thing that really mattered was the blood. Soneji watched as the precious blood spilled onto the dirty, stained, and mottled concrete floor. It spattered the clothes of commuters, pooled under the bodies. The blood was a clue, a Rorschach test for the police and FBI hunters to analyze. The blood was there for Alex Cross to try and figure out.

Gary Soneji dropped his knife. There was incredible confusion, shrieking everywhere, panic in Penn Station that finally woke the walking dead.

He looked up at the maze of maroon signs, each with neat Helvetic lettering: Exit 31st St., Parcel Checking, Visitor Information, Eighth Avenue Subway.

He knew the way out of Penn Station. It was all preordained. He had made this decision a thousand times before.

He scurried back down into the tunnels again. No one tried to stop him. He was the Bad Boy again. Maybe his stepmother had been right about that. His punishment would be to ride the New York subways.

Brrrr. Scar-ry!

SEVEN P.M. that evening. I was caught in the strangest, most powerful epiphany. I felt that I was outside myself, watching myself. I was driving by the Sojourner Truth School, on my way home. I saw Christine Johnson’s car and stopped.

I got out of my car and waited for her. I felt incredibly vulnerable. A little foolish. I hadn’t expected Christine to be at the school this late.

At quarter past seven, she finally wandered out of the school. I couldn’t catch my breath from the instant I spotted her. I felt like a schoolboy. Maybe that was all right, maybe it was good. At least I was feeling again.

She looked as fresh and attractive as if she’d just arrived at the school. She had on a yellow-and-blue flowered dress cinched around her narrow waist. She wore blue sling-back heels and carried a blue bag over one shoulder. The theme song from Waiting to Exhale floated into my head. I was waiting, all right.

Christine saw me, and she immediately looked troubled. She kept on walking, as if she were in a hurry to be somewhere else, anywhere else but here.

Her arms were crossed across her chest. A bad sign, I thought. The worst possible body language. Protective and fearful. One thing was clear already: Christine Johnson didn’t want to see me.

I knew I shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have stopped, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to understand what had happened when we left Kinkead’s. Just that, nothing more. A simple, honest explanation, even if it hurt.

I sucked in a deep breath and walked up to her. “Hi,” I said, “you want to take a walk? It’s a nice night.” I almost couldn’t speak, and I am never at a loss for words.

“Taking a break in one of your usual twenty-hour workdays?” Christine half smiled, tried to anyway.

I returned the smile, felt queasy all over. I shook my head. “I’m off work.”

“I see. Sure, we can walk a little bit, a few minutes. It is a nice night, you’re right.”

We turned down F Street and entered Garfield Park, which was especially pretty in the early summer. We walked in silence. Finally we stopped near a ballfield swarming with little kids. A frenzied baseball game was in progress.

We weren’t far from the Eisenhower Freeway, and the whoosh of rush-hour traffic was steady, almost soothing. Tulip poplars were in bloom, and coral honey-suckle. Mothers and fathers were playing with their kids; everybody in a nice mood tonight.

This had been my neighborhood park for almost thirty years, and during the daylight hours it can almost be idyllic. Maria and I used to come here all the time when Damon was a toddler and she was pregnant with Jannie. Much of that is starting to fade away now, which is probably a good thing, but it’s also sad.

Christine finally spoke. “I’m sorry, Alex.” She had been staring at the ground, but now she raised her lovely eyes to mine. “About the other night. The bad scene at my car. I guess I panicked. To be honest, I’m not even sure what happened.”

“Let’s be honest,” I said. “Why not?”

I could tell this was hard for her, but I needed to know how she felt. I needed more than she’d told me outside the restaurant.

“I want to try and explain,” she said. Her hands were clenched. One of her feet was tapping rapidly. Lots of bad signs.

“Maybe it’s all my fault,” I said. “I’m the one who kept asking you to dinner until-”

Christine reached out and covered my hand with hers. “Please let me finish,” she said. The half smile came again. “Let me try to get this out once and for all. I was going to call you anyway. I was planning to call you tonight. I would have.

“You’re nervous now, and so am I. God, am I nervous,” she said quietly. “I know I’ve hurt your feelings, and I don’t like that. It’s the last thing I meant to do. You don’t deserve to be hurt.”

Christine was shivering a little. Her voice was shaking, too, as she spoke. “Alex, my husband died because of the kind of violence you have to live with every day. You accept that world, but I don’t think I can. I’m just not that kind of person. I couldn’t bear to lose someone else I was close to. Am I making sense to you? I’m feeling a little confused.”

Everything was becoming clearer to me now. Christine’s husband had been killed in December. She said that there had been serious problems in the marriage, but she loved him. She had seen him shot to death in their home, seen him die. I had held her then. I was part of the murder case.

I wanted to hold her again, but I knew it was the wrong thing to do. She was still hugging herself tightly. I understood her feelings.

“Please listen to me, Christine. I’m not going to die until probably in my late eighties. I’m too stubborn and ornery to die. That would give us longer together than either of us has been alive so far. Forty-plus years. It’s also a long time to avoid each other.”

Christine shook her head a little. She continued to look into my eyes. Finally, a smile peeked through.

“I do like the way your crazy mind works. One minute, you’re Detective Cross-the next minute you’re this very open, very sweet child.” She put her hands up to her face. “Oh, God, I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

Everything inside me said to do it, every instinct, every feeling. I slowly, carefully, reached out and took Christine into my arms. She fit so right. I could feel myself melting and I liked it. I even liked that my legs felt shaky and weak.

We kissed for the first time and Christine’s mouth was soft and very sweet. Her lips pushed against mine. She didn’t pull away, as I’d expected she might. I ran the tips of my fingers along one cheek, then the other.