“You’ve got five seconds to get back on the other side of those barriers.” I pointed to the top of the block, where a crowd had gathered. Some of them were even carrying protest signs—KEEP GEORGETOWN SAFE, WHAT THE HELL, MPD? I’m sure Guidice was loving those.

His eyes narrowed, and his pupils danced back and forth, taking me in.

“You are high, aren’t you?” he said. “I didn’t want to write about this until I was sure, but—”

“Ronald Guidice, you’re under arrest for trespassing on a designated crime scene,” I told him. I already had the bracelets out. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

He was still between the cars, and I had to step in there to try to get him moving. But then, as I did, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my leg.

When I looked down, it was just in time to see Guidice pulling his hand back. He was holding something, but I couldn’t see what it was.

My next response was automatic. I hit him, hard. My fist sent a shower of blood out of his nose and down over his mouth. I probably should have stopped there, but the adrenaline had me, and Guidice was still standing. I countered the right punch with a left hook.

This time, he went down.

He landed on his back, looking stunned. My knee was on his chest now, holding him in place. My thigh was throbbing with the pain. He’d gotten me right in the muscle.

“What the hell was that?” I yelled at him. “What’d you stick me with?”

I’d barely started reaching for his pockets before two uniformed cops were pulling me off of him. A third cop knelt down next to Guidice and pulled him in the opposite direction, up onto the sidewalk.

Valente was there, too, and I saw Huizenga rushing over from her car.

“Alex? What’s going on here?” she said.

“He’s under arrest!” I pointed at Guidice. “Check his pockets! Book him!”

Guidice had gone slack, watching me as they held us apart. “Sergeant, your detective here is obviously on drugs. He just attacked me for no reason.”

He wiped the blood off his mouth, keeping his hand up high for the cameras at the end of the block.

“Alex Cross did this to me!”

“Come here!” I yelled at him, but Huizenga put herself in the way and walked me back. Valente had me by the arm, too.

“Pull it together, Alex!” Huizenga said. “Now tell me there’s a good goddamn reason for this.”

“He just stuck me!” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know….” I said. “I don’t know what that…was.”

It was hard to concentrate, and my thoughts were starting to swim. I felt a tingling all over my body. A warm sensation crawled up through my limbs and into my head.

“I think I’m…”

I meant to say, I think I’m going to pass out, but I never got that far.

It wasn’t just a stab or an ordinary needle stick, I realized. It was something else. The last thought I can remember before I lost consciousness was that I’d just been poisoned.

Had Guidice killed me? Was I dying?

CHAPTER

57

I WOKE UP IN THE AMBULANCE. HUIZENGA WAS THERE. WE WERE MOVING.

None of it made sense at first, but quickly I remembered what had happened.

“Lie back,” Huizenga said, pushing me onto the gurney when I tried to sit up.

Two paramedics were perched on either side. One of them had a blood-pressure cuff on my arm. The other was radioing my vitals, presumably to whatever hospital we were headed toward. Georgetown, maybe.

“He stuck me….”

“Just relax.”

“He…”

I felt like Jell-O all over, except for a twitch in my hands. My head was still swimming. What the hell was this? I knew cognitively that something was terribly wrong, but somehow I couldn’t quite feel that way. It was like a euphoric state more than anything, with the fear and dread somewhere way in the background. I felt like I was watching the movie of my own emergency more than I was actually in it.

My eyes rolled. A paramedic lifted one of my lids to have a look.

“He’s nodding out,” the guy said.

That was the last I heard.

CHAPTER

58

THE NEXT TIME I WOKE UP, I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL. A FLUORESCENT BOX fixture was shining down on me. Instead of walls there was a blue curtain pulled around whatever examination room or cubicle they’d stuck me in.

Huizenga was still there. Bree now, too, I realized.

“Hey there,” she said, squeezing my hand. “How do you feel?”

I was still groggy, and floating on the last of some kind of cloud. I smiled, in spite of everything else. It was all a little blurry.

“How long have you been here?” I asked her.

“A couple of hours. It’s six o’clock.”

“What happened?”

“They found opiates in your bloodstream,” Huizenga said to me. “Mostly OCs.”

“Mostly?”

“A little morphine.”

“Ah.” I let my head fall back on the pillow. “I knew I recognized something.”

I’d been through my share of scrapes before—been given my share of morphine, too. The last time was when I’d been shot, tracking a case up to Vermont several years earlier.

Now, everything started coming back in pieces. I remembered the crime scene in Georgetown. The security company. Guidice—

I sat up all at once and threw off the thin blanket they had over me.

“Where’s Guidice?” I said. “Is he in custody?”

“Whoa,” Bree said. “Slow down, Alex. Take it easy.”

“Where is he?” I repeated.

“I think they still have him over at the department,” Huizenga told me. “But no. He’s not arrested.”

“What are you talking about? I was in the middle of putting the cuffs on him when he stuck me.”

Marti took a deep breath and looked at Bree before she answered. They both knew something I didn’t.

“There was nothing on him, Alex,” she said. “Just ID, cash, and his camera.”

“Well, he must have ditched the needle,” I said. “I’m telling you—”

She cut me off. “Everything we found was on you. Including this.” Huizenga held up a brown pharmacy bottle. “These were in your pocket when we got here. And his prints aren’t on the bottle, either.”

“What?”

“Guidice is claiming you were on drugs—which you were, one way or the other. Also, that you attacked him for no reason. If he stuck you, Alex, nobody saw it.”

“Oh my God.”

I lay back again. The full twisted reality of it all started to sink in. Huizenga wasn’t done, either.

“He’s also filing assault charges against you. A restraining order, too. He says you’ve been out to get him ever since he started writing about you.”

I looked up into Huizenga’s eyes. “I’m being set up here, Marti. Jesus—do you even believe me? You know the history on this guy, right?”

She stood back from the bed, hating every second of this, I could tell.

“I don’t want to say too much, Alex. Not until we know more. But I am going to need your gun, badge, and ID.” She took another deep breath. “And I’m going to have to take you in when we’re done here.”

“Like hell you are!” Bree stepped in now. “You heard the man. He was attacked. Are you seriously questioning his word on this? He’s one of the best cops in DC.”

“I’m not questioning anything,” Huizenga told Bree. “But the department’s circling the wagons. We’ve got a whole city screaming for police accountability these days, and the fact of the matter is that—for whatever reason—Alex assaulted this guy.”

“I don’t believe this,” Bree said. “You people have lost your minds!”

For the first time, Huizenga raised her voice.

“Bree, you’re here as a professional courtesy, and I am your superior officer. You got that? Now dial it the hell back down, or I’m going to ask you to leave.”

“Ask all you like,” Bree said. “He’s coming home with me.”