The Family Cross

Book 36: Alex Cross

by James Patterson

Genres: Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Alex Cross is a psychologist who hunts criminals for the FBI and the DC Metro Police.

Family matriarch Nana Mama is proud of the man she raised. 

Every morning, Alex retrieves his service pistol from the lockbox. 

Every morning, Nana is stopped cold. The sight releases a protective instinct she can barely control. 

“Alex!” she calls. “Be safe, hon.”

He grins at her. “Every day, Nana.” 

Alex Cross exits into a shadowy underworld of Washington, DC, where few ever visit, least of all law enforcement. 

With every step, he risks breaking his promise to Nana Mama—and the entire family Cross.

Release date: October 19, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 400

Sample

LIGHTNING FLICKERED AND THUNDER rumbled over Washington, DC, early that Friday morning. The storms had been rolling through all night, but the old woman slept soundly.

Regina Cross was in her nineties and had been officially retired for many years, but her alarm still jangled at five a.m. just as it had every Monday through Friday for seven decades.

Nana Mama, as she was fondly known, had long believed that rising at five was one of her superpowers.

It was quiet at five. She could be alone at five. There were few demands from the outside world at five. Getting up at five was about working on her inner self.

Nana rolled over and, without opening her eyes, reached out to shut off the alarm. She lay there a few moments listening to the rain before cracking open first one eye and then the other.

Still here, the old woman thought, and laughed a little.

She wiggled her fingers and toes before slowly clenching each muscle group in her body from her calves upward, flexing her thighs, rear, abdomen, back, chest, arms, and hands. Finally, she rolled her head to the left and then the right.

She laughed softly to herself again. Still kicking. Still smiling.

Another of her superpowers: a sense of humor.

Though her right hip had been something of a bother lately, Nana Mama got out of bed with only minor aches, kicked her feet into slippers, and put on her robe. Then she held on to the foot of her bed, faced the crucifix over the headboard, and lowered her knees onto a soft cushion. She closed her eyes, clasped her hands at her heart, and began to pray.

Nana Mama started as she always did, by thanking her Savior for another day alive. She expressed gratitude for her family members and for the purpose and strength they’d always given her. She felt blessed at the long and meaningful arc of her career as a teacher and school administrator and now as an English tutor on YouTube.

“Can You believe it, Lord?” she murmured and chuckled. “I can’t. But I enjoy it so much. I have no words, except to say that I am humbled by Your grace.”

She bowed her head, feeling a familiar warmth well up inside her. I am not bored or tired. I am still in awe of the miracle of my life.

Nana Mama did not end her prayer session with requests. She rarely did that anymore, believing that at her age, she’d been given two lifetimes of gifts already.

Just make me a better person while You can, Lord. That’s all I’m asking.

Then she let her mind fall silent and enjoyed the quiet until her hip began to nag at her. Rather than fight it, she took the pain as a signal to rise and go to her desk.

After clicking on the desk lamp, she sat, opened a little notebook, and read over her to-do list. She picked up a pen and crossed off those items she’d taken care of yesterday and noted the two tasks she had not yet completed. Then she wrote down the new tasks, large and small, that she wanted to get done today.

When Nana Mama was finished with her list, she used a pencil to number each goal, pausing several times to reassess, erase, and put them in a new order of importance. When she was satisfied, she could almost see the happy pattern of the day flowing smoothly. Another of her superpowers.

It was twenty minutes to six when she heard a door creak open. She closed her notebook, got up, and opened her bedroom door.

She saw her grandson Alex Cross sneaking down the stairs, his tie hanging loose over his crisp white dress shirt, his shoulder harness empty. He was back on the Metro Police force full-time, no longer just a consultant. He heard her and looked over.

“You want breakfast?” she asked.

Alex shook his head. “Sampson and I are taking the early shift at the soup kitchen before work. I’ll eat there.”

“Give my best to John and everyone.”

“Will do. Love you.”

“Love you too. When will you be home?”

“Unclear, as usual,” Alex said as he continued down the stairs.

Nana Mama was about to go to the kitchen and make some coffee but seeing Alex retrieve his service pistol from the lockbox in the closet stopped her cold.

Her grandson was a grown man. He’d had a long, decorated career hunting criminals for the FBI and the DC Metro Police. And yet the sight of him arming himself still got to her, released a protective instinct in her she could barely control. She took two steps toward him.

“Alex!” she hissed when he was halfway out the front door.

He turned to her with a puzzled expression on his face, and she smiled lovingly at him. “Be safe, hon.”

He grinned at her. “Every day, Nana.”

IN SOUTHEAST DC NOT long before dawn that same day, flashes of lightning periodically revealed the hulking silhouette of the last remnant of an abandoned highway project.

Blocked off at both ends by concrete barriers, the high, curving ghost ramp—the remaining quarter of a cloverleaf—stood awaiting demolition as it had for ten years, a blight between a lumberyard and a back channel of the Anacostia River.

The lightning flashes also revealed the bleak world beneath the ramp, the tents and impromptu shelters erected by hundreds of unfortunates: the sick, the tragic, the addicted, and the long forgotten, who were living their lives as best they could under the span.

The most coveted camping spots were high up on each of two six-story embankments that supported huge concrete stanchions cradling what remained of the ramp. The fortunate few who had those spots were tucked right up under the abandoned exit and sheltered from all the elements save the cold.

The rest of the dwellings spilled haphazardly toward the bottom of both embankments, increasingly exposed to wind and rain the lower they got. But the tents, tarps, and slapped-together structures on both sides of the camp stopped well short of what remained of an old road grade that ran beneath the ghost ramp toward the river.

In the throes of the latest storm, in the strobe-like lightning flashes, no one appeared to be out or moving on either embankment except for a thirteen-year-old boy named Boog who’d had to pee so badly that he left the plywood hovel where he lived and went out under a tarp slung over a three-legged table and two cracked plastic chairs.

He’d no sooner finished relieving himself than the rainstorm lost some of its power. Before returning to his nest, he peered uphill into the gloom and darkness under the ramp, a learned habit.

Then Boog turned back to the old army blanket that served as the door to his home and looked down the grade in the gathering gray light toward the roadbed, a mud-and-broken-pavement mess. He saw water sluicing around a car that had not been there before.

Not that people didn’t boost cars, strip them, and abandon them beneath the ghost ramp now and then. But this car, a small black SUV, looked intact. And who knew what was inside? Boog had very little time to act.

If the car was unlocked, he wanted to be in before the rest of the vultures were even aware of its existence. Boog dropped fast down the steep slope and wove around the tents and shacks. He could see the vehicle better now.

An Audi! That’s luxury!

If it was locked, he’d break the window, get in, and take whatever was there. Finders keepers, right?

Near the bottom of the embankment, he caught movement to his left, back toward the lumberyard. A shadow, the silhouette of someone, vanished into the brush that choked the ground on both sides of the old roadbed.

Had that person been inside the car already?

Feeling frantic, Boog jumped off the low concrete retaining wall at the bottom of the embankment and landed in the weeds and mud. He hated getting his sneakers dirty, but this was business. He might find something he could sell for enough money to buy food for a week, maybe enough for him to leave this godforsaken place for good.

Who knows what’s inside? Boog excitedly jumped from pavement piece to pavement piece until he was fifteen feet from the Audi, which was almost broadside to him. He smelled gas and stopped.

Was the tank leaking? Had the guy been siphoning gas and spilled some?

Even though it was almost dawn and Boog was just fifteen feet away, he couldn’t see through the Audi’s tinted windows. He took several steps closer, and the gas smell got stronger.

Thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed and flooded the interior with brief, garish light. Boog froze in horror.

There was a person in the front seat!

Boog took a step back as another lightning bolt lit the scene, revealing big smears of what appeared to be blood down the window. He tried to see past the blood smears to get a better look at the figure inside.

He could swear he saw—

In his peripheral vision, back toward the brush where the shadow had vanished, he caught a flash of something intensely blue. He turned to it and saw a low wall of flame ignite.

The flames were a foot high even in the rain and came fast toward Boog and the car in a sinewy, hurrying line.

The boy felt the danger, spun, and ran. He jumped up on the concrete retaining wall just as the flames leaped a narrow channel of water sluicing down the road and continued racing toward the Audi.

The car ignited in a whoosh of flame that billowed up like a yawning mouth and ate the Audi whole. There must have been puddles of fuel mixed in with the rainwater. Boog knew what was going to happen and began scrambling up the embankment, trying to get far away before—

The SUV’s gas tank exploded. The boy threw himself to the ground and covered his head with his arms. A few seconds later he peered back and saw a column of fire soar above the Audi almost high enough to lick the underside of the ramp.

The eruption sounded like a bomb going off and woke the other citizens of that wretched place. They started shouting and crawling from their tents and shacks to see what had happened. Boog lay on the slope, shaking, staring at the burning car, and mourning the loss of what had seemed a sure score just a few minutes ago.

“Anyone got any marshmallows?” a woman up the embankment from him called.

He heard guffaws at that, and a man said, “I’ve got s’mores fixings.”

Boog felt ill. He looked up at the people huddled there in the wavering firelight, felt tears coming on, and yelled, “There’s a… there’s someone in there! You want to cook on that?”

ONCE A WEEK, FRIDAYS usually, my best friend and partner, John Sampson, and I volunteer for the early shift in the kitchen of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. It’s both a giveback—a reminder of just how good we’ve had it in life—and a chance for us as police officers to build rapport with a community that frequently goes unnoticed but often sees all.

It was raining hard that morning, thunder booming, the basement lights flickering at the lightning strikes. Sampson was watching bacon topped with brown sugar and cayenne under the broiler. I whisked three dozen eggs and wondered whether I was making too much.

“Not a big turnout,” I said, eyeing the line of fifteen hungry, wet folks waiting for us to throw open the aluminum grate.

“Rain’s supposed to let up,” Sampson said. “Then we’ll see the surge.”

“Coffee’s good to go,” I said, checking the big brewing machine in the corner. “I’m going to get it out there first.”

“Smart,” Sampson said. “Warm them up.”

Beyond the grate, back in the line, a woman in her forties wearing a filthy trench coat heard us and yelled, “Pop-pop, what, what? Coffee futures up, up, up! Earthquake in Sumatra! Coffee futures up, up, up!”

Other people in line began to groan as I filled one of the urns.

“Better calm her down before things get wild,” Sampson said.

“On my way,” I said, picking up the urn and heading for the door.

We knew her as Anna Bananas, an infrequent visitor to the kitchen who never left St. Anthony’s without at least three bananas sticking out of the pockets of her trench coat. She lived on the streets somewhere, suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, and seemed to be bipolar, sometimes on a high and pontificating, sometimes reduced to gibberish and confusion.

That morning she was clearly on one of her towering upswings, which we had seen turn chaotic in the past.

“Pop-pop, what?” she cried again, shaking her short dreads. “Is Bananas wrong? Coffee up, up, up. Money up, up, up. But nothing for the street. Nothing for the people under the bridge.”

“Save it for the next socialist pep rally,” a big shaggy guy behind her said, and several people in line started laughing.

“Pop-pop-pop-pop,” she sputtered. “Nothing, nothing, nothing,” she said to the big shaggy guy in a voice that turned seething. “People beneath the bridge, we get nothing. No food. No cops. Pop-pop-pop. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Coming through the door with the urn, I said, “Anna, Anna, Anna! Let’s get you warmed up with some fresh coffee.”

Anna Bananas looked over at me with sudden interest. “Coffee futures. Up! Up!”

“Heard that,” I said. “Big earthquake in Sumatra.”

“Pop! Pop!” she said and walked closer as I set the urn on a table. I poured a paper cup of coffee for her.

She looked me in the eye and said, “You a cop?”

“Detective.”

She blew air through her lips, making them vibrate and form spit bubbles the way a baby does. “Did you know that a society is judged by the way it treats the people on the lowest rungs of the ladder?”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “But you’ll get no argument from me.”

Anna Bananas squinted her left eye. “Things are bad under the bridge, and you police won’t come.”

I didn’t know exactly what she was talking about but nodded. “Okay?”

Her face clouded. “Pop-pop. Don’t just agree with me, man. What do you know?”

I sighed. “I know you’re hungry, Anna, and so is everybody else in line, so I should go finish making the eggs so we can open on time.”

She glared at me as I turned away, hoping she wouldn’t explode into a tirade.

A phone rang, and I glanced back to see Anna answer a battered cell. “Talk. Talk.”

I was shutting the kitchen door when she screamed, “Pop-pop-pop! Mr. Detective! I told you it was bad under the bridge!”

I WATCHED THROUGH THE grate as Anna Bananas cursed at me and then everyone else before fleeing from the basement. I admit I felt relief at her departure. I picked up the mixing bowl and the whisk and finished preparing the eggs.

“Anna Bananas does have a point,” I said to Sampson as I poured the eggs into a hot cast-iron skillet. “The way people at the bottom of the ladder are treated is the true measure of a society.”

“Society is scoring pretty low by that measure,” Sampson said, taking the pan of bacon from under the broiler and setting it on the stove. “Something has to give on that front.”

“I hear you,” I said. It was part of why we did the work here.

Soon we had piping-hot scrambled eggs in a large serving tray and a second tray piled high with John’s special bacon and toast. We threw up the grate and pushed the trays forward.

“Appreciate it,” the big shaggy guy in the army jacket said as we doled out the food. “Tough night for some of us out there.”

“Glad we could help,” I said, smiling. “Hope your day is drier.”

He laughed, showing a missing lower canine. “We can only hope.”

The rain let up around twenty minutes later. As Sampson predicted, there was a doubling of the hungry, and it was all we could do to keep up until the next shift arrived and helped us over the peak of the demand.

“This continues, we’re going to need a bigger kitchen,” I said to Sampson at a quarter to eight.

Sampson’s phone rang before he could reply. He answered, listened, and said, “Where was this?” After a pause, he said, “I have Cross here with me.” After another pause, he said, “We’re on our way.”

He hung up and took off his apron. “We’ve got a body in a burned car under an abandoned off-ramp down by the Anacostia River.”

“I know where that is,” I said, taking off my own apron. “Behind the lumberyard. Big encampment of homeless people there, I think.”

We quickly had a bubble flashing on top of Sampson’s new F-150 and our siren wailing. We drove over the bridge to Anacostia and then south along the river until the off-ramp came into view behind a screen of brush that separated it from the lumberyard. It was a quarter past eight by then and the sun was breaking through, glary and hot for May.

John parked behind a patrol car blocking the alley-like way ahead.

We got out to talk to the officer, whose name badge said DENNISON. He and his partner had taped off the area, but he told us the ground had already been trampled by people from the encampment who’d gone down for a look after the flames died.

“When did all this happen?” I asked.

“A little before six, we guess,” Officer Dennison said.

“Guess?”

“The trolls don’t like to talk.”

“Trolls?” Sampson frowned. “We’re talking about humans down on their luck, Officer.”

Dennison put up his hands. “That’s what a lot of them call themselves, Detective. Trolls. And PUBs. You’ll see.”

I said, “PUBs?”

“Stands for ‘people under the bridge.’ I’m telling you, it’s real tribal back in there.”

“How many in the tribe?” Sampson asked.

Dennison shrugged. “Two hundred? Maybe more than that? I don’t know. Hard to tell. Place like this, people come and go, you know? Anyway, Gleason, my partner, he’s in there guarding the scene, waiting on you.”

We thanked Dennison and walked to where an old road of sorts cut into the dense wet foliage, which in the building heat made us feel like we were in a steam room. Drenched with sweat, we came to an overgrown clearing in the trees that gave us a cleaner look at the ramp and the stanchions that supported it.

Graffiti covered almost every inch of the massive concrete structure.

“That kind of sums it up, I guess,” I said.

“What does?” Sampson said as we began to pick our way down the old roadbed.

I gestured at the biggest, most colorful graffiti painted in ornate scrollwork along the side of the ramp. It read The Bridge to Nowhere.

“I see it,” John said. “And they see us.”

“Who?”

“The trolls. The PUBs. Quite a few of them. Look up, under the ramp.”

I shaded my eyes from the sun and saw a score of adults and teens watching us from high up. There were more people down on the embankments that supported the ramp’s opposing stanchions, and I saw the suggestion of primitive shelters beyond.

I said, “Didn’t Anna Bananas use that same phrase this morning? People under the bridge?”

Sampson shrugged. “Dunno. I was focused on bacon.”

“You’re very mission-oriented.”

“I’ll own that.”

We rounded a corner. The ground ahead was a quagmire of reddish mud and broken pavement pieces that ran under the ramp to the car, which was still smoking.

Officer Gleason saw us and waved us to the right of the mess, where we were able to cross toward him and the yellow tape without losing our shoes. As we got closer, I could see more of the Bridge to Nowhere encampment. The shanties and tents started about a third of the way up each embankment and grew denser higher up beneath the ramp.

It was shocking to see. It was worse to smell.

Knowing we were being observed by dozens of eyes as we neared the police tape, Sampson muttered, “Looks like a miniature version of a slum I saw in Rio once.”

“People shouldn’t have to live this way,” I said. “Especially in the nation’s capital.”

“People shouldn’t have to live like this anywhere,” Sampson said. We jumped across a small rivulet of rainwater and came up alongside Officer Gleason. Gleason’s partner was right. The muddy area around the burned Audi had been trampled.

We introduced ourselves to Gleason. “No one’s talking,” he told us.

“Heard that,” I said. I ducked under the tape and walked to the burned vehicle, smelling the acrid odors still coming from the smoking wreckage.

Sampson followed, putting his mouth and nose in the crook of his arm as we came up alongside the Audi. The explosive heat had been so extreme, the glass in all the windows was blown out, giving us an unobstructed view from several angles of the charred corpse inside.

AWARE OF THE AUDIENCE still monitoring us from above, John Sampson and I moved slowly counterclockwise around the car and the burned body. The upper torso had pulled away from what remained of the front seat and was curled forward and down, arms at the sides, forehead resting against what was left of the dash.

“Male, I think,” John said, peering in the driver’s side.

“Male,” I agreed, looking through the windshield frame at the blackened back of the skull. “And I don’t think he burned to death.”

Sampson stood up. “Died somewhere else and was brought here?”

“Gimme a second,” I said, returning to the side of the car. I stuck my head in and held my breath while I quickly inspected the charred flesh and bone at the back of the victim’s skull. I found the injury I’d suspected would be there, low on the left occipital bone.

I pulled my head back out and said, “He was shot before the fire. There’s a clear small-caliber bullet hole in his skull. And see the posture? Curled forward and down?”

“I do.”

“It suggests he was held up long enough after death by a seat-belt harness for his body to become stiff with rigor.”

“Or the heat caused his muscles to contract and pull him forward.”

“Or both.”

Sampson nodded, said, “And when the fire ate away the seat belts, the body fell forward against the dash and burned to charcoal.”

“That’s my take,” I said, turning my attention to the north embankment. The people under the bridge were still watching us, mostly in silence.

I was going to suggest we each take a side of the camp and start climbing up to canvass the spectators when I heard an all-too-fam. . .