In the thirty-second thriller of James Patterson’s Alex Cross series, Detective Alex Cross faces his most personal and perilous case yet. A ruthless serial killer is targeting America’s top legal minds, and as Cross is drawn deeper into the investigation, his wife Bree and best friend John Sampson vanish. Now, he has only three priorities: find Bree and John, escape from a web of deadly threats, and survive long enough to confront a killer who strikes close to home. As the stakes reach a breaking point, failure isn’t an option—because if he loses, the House of Cross will fall.

PROLOGUE

Potomac, Maryland

MARGARET BLEVINS LOVED HER morning runs. They allowed her time alone, which kept her even-keeled in a beyond-hectic life.

That mid-December morning, the fifty-two-year-old mother of three teenagers followed her normal three-and-a-half-mile route as she ran by headlamp light in the predawn, trying to keep her mind free of thoughts, lost in the delicious feeling of her leg and back muscles warming and firing at the fastest pace in weeks.

For a moment, she regretted slipping out to run without informing her security team. But they always slowed her down, were always fussing, and, my God, she’d been running this route for more than fourteen years, a full thirteen and a half years before she became a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Justice Blevins felt good enough to pick up the pace a little. And for the first time in a long while, she felt loose and good doing it.

Where’s this coming from? Blevins wondered as she approached the entrance to a trail through Watts Branch Park off Lloyd Road. She checked her watch and saw she was three minutes ahead of her usual time.