The murder of a glamorous DC socialite becomes Alex Cross's deadliest
case since Along Came a Spider.
Kay Willingham led a life as glamorous as it was public--she was a
gorgeous Georgetown socialite, philanthropist, and the ex-wife of the
vice president. So why was she parked in a Bentley convertible idling
behind a DC private school, in the middle of the night, with the man who
was the head of that school? Who shot them both, point blank, and why?
The shocking double homicide is blazed across the internet, TV,
newspapers--and across Alex Cross's mind. Kay had been his patient once.
And maybe more.
While John Sampson of DC Metro Police investigates the last movements of
Christopher Randall, the educator killed along with Kay Willingham,
detective Alex Cross and FBI special agent Ned Mahoney find unanswered
questions from Willingham's past, before she arrived in DC and became
known in DC society as someone who could make things happen. They travel
to Alabama to investigate Kay's early years. There they find a world of
trouble, corruption, and secrets, all of them closed to outsiders like
Cross and Mahoney.
Kay had many enemies, but all of them seemed to need her alive. The
harder the investigators push, the more resistance they find when they
leave behind the polite law offices and doctors' quarters of the state
capital. Alex Cross will need to use all his skills as a doctor, a
detective, and a family man to prevent that resistance from turning
lethal . . . again.