Cross and Sampson

The novel follows two parallel crises that separate its central duo: Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist and FBI consultant in Washington, DC, and his lifelong best friend, John Sampson, a DC Metro Police detective. While Cross searches for his missing son in North Carolina, Sampson hunts a bomber terrorizing the nation's capital.

The story opens with Cross and Sampson cruising DC streets, exchanging family updates. Cross's eldest son, Damon, is in a clinical psychology PhD program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His wife, Bree, a former detective and FBI agent, works for the Bluestone Group, an international private security firm. Their household includes Cross's grandmother, Nana Mama; his daughter Jannie at Howard University; and his youngest son, Ali, in middle school. Sampson lives with his young daughter, Willow, his engagement to Rebecca Cantrell, a U.S. attorney, on hold because she fears for his safety.

Trouble arrives when Damon's academic adviser calls to report he has missed three days of classes and is unreachable, as is his girlfriend, Melissa Lange. Alex and Bree fly to North Carolina immediately. Before Sampson can follow, a car bomb detonates at Thirteenth and N Streets Northwest, leaving multiple dead and wounded. Sampson joins a task force led by FBI agent Ned Mahoney. He also meets Anna Rizzo, an explosives enforcement officer with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), who profiles the bomber as highly intelligent and technically proficient.

In Chapel Hill, Cross and Bree encounter bureaucratic walls. Campus security has no jurisdiction over Damon's off-campus housing. Detective Hugh Malone of the Chapel Hill police takes their report but declines to go public, his department focused on security for an upcoming campus speech by Michaelson Woods of the Young Freedom Fighters (YFF), a right-wing extremist group Damon had publicly protested. They search Damon's apartment and find it undisturbed. FBI agent Drake Cannon, sent by Mahoney, assists unofficially. Melissa surfaces and reports she last saw Damon three mornings earlier, when he left to clear his head. His bicycle is missing.

The bombing investigation advances rapidly. At the ATF lab, Rizzo identifies remnants of a fertilizer bomb with shrapnel and a C-4 plastic explosive fragment whose taggants, microscopic identification markers, are absent from standard databases, pointing to a classified government source. A second bomb detonates near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Rizzo recalls a practice bombing in Palmer, Georgia, and she and Sampson confirm the blast zones match. A suspect emerges: Aiden Phillips, a former Special Forces soldier with Explosive Ordnance Disposal training and a stay at a VA hospital for a mental health condition. Facial-recognition software confirms Phillips was at both DC sites.

In North Carolina, cell-tower data places Damon's phone at the Mason Farm Biological Reserve before it went silent. Bree finds his abandoned bicycle on a trail. When Bree confronts Melissa about encrypted emails, Melissa admits that she and Damon's friends broke into the home of Professor Darius Lucas. Lucas, a social psychology professor, and his teaching assistant, Amy Tyne, had disappeared a week before Damon. The department claimed both were on a research trip, but the cover story was debunked months earlier. Lucas's cat had been left without food or water. Damon vowed to investigate the disappearances himself and vanished days later. An organized search yields nothing.

Bree is recalled to DC when Bluestone is drafted to coordinate on the bombing response. Working alone, Alex follows an FBI wiretap lead to two men who knocked Damon off his bicycle near the reserve and stole his phone and laptop. They did not kidnap Damon; when they returned, he was gone.

A third bomb strikes a DC refugee coalition's office, and a sniper's laser dot appears on Rizzo's forehead at the scene. Sampson tackles her to safety, though no shots are fired. A raid on Phillips's motel room finds decoys and newspaper clippings about the bombings but no bomb-making materials. CIA Inspector General officer Roland Perkins and field operative Tom Walsh reveal that Phillips briefly worked for the agency after the fall of Kabul and may have smuggled C-4 from Taliban stockpiles. A bomb planted in Sampson's driveway then detonates as Rizzo arrives to share urgent information, killing her instantly. Sampson places Willow in the bathtub for protection before rushing outside to find Rizzo dead in the wreckage.

That evening, Phillips appears in Sampson's home and insists he is innocent, naming fellow veteran J. T. Polermo as the real bomber. He persuades Sampson to confront Polermo at a safehouse in rural Virginia, but an improvised explosive device (IED) detonates under their car on approach. Polermo fires on them, blows up the building, and escapes. Phillips is shot in the thigh.

In the reserve, Alex discovers a hidden trail leading to a fortified farmhouse belonging to Colton Brophy, a massive Civil War reenactor whose property includes an underground shelter. Returning at night, Alex is caught by Brophy and forced into the shelter at gunpoint. Alex wakes to hear Damon's voice. His son is alive, as are Lucas and Amy, kidnapped when they stumbled on the compound while hiking. Damon arrived days later after his attackers chased him into the reserve; lost and desperate, he approached the farmhouse for help. Brophy, a virulent white supremacist, views Lucas and Amy as a mixed-race couple (they are not; Amy is gay) and Damon and Melissa as the same.

Brophy descends again, forcing a hooded Melissa down the ladder, having abducted her from campus. Following Alex's lead, Melissa improvises: She pretends to convert to Brophy's ideology and denounces Damon. As Brophy grins and his shotgun droops, Alex lunges for the barrel. The gun fires into the floor. Melissa kicks Brophy in the groin, and together the captives subdue him.

At Perkins's Georgetown home, Sampson finds Phillips already holding Perkins at gunpoint. Phillips reveals that Walsh, while stationed at a secret CIA base in Pakistan, sold classified weapons-system software to the Taliban for personal profit. Four enlisted soldiers witnessed the transactions, including Polermo; Walsh hired Polermo to eliminate the other three. The DC bombings were not terrorist attacks but disguised assassinations: Each targeted a specific veteran who knew Walsh's secret, with all other casualties as cover. As Phillips hands Perkins a paper bearing the victims' names, a sniper round fired by Polermo kills Perkins. Sampson pockets the evidence, restrains Walsh, and engages Polermo in a firefight. Phillips provides cover fire while Sampson flanks and knocks Polermo unconscious.

In North Carolina, Alex uses his phone to guide Detective Gail Bailey and the Chapel Hill police through Brophy's compound. At a closed congressional hearing, Polermo testifies that Walsh directed the killings of three veterans at the bombing sites: former corporal Ray Kilbourne at Thirteenth Street, former sergeant Stacy Fine at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and former specialist Jean Baptiste in the Montgomery building. At Arlington National Cemetery, Sampson attends Rizzo's funeral with full military honors, kneeling before her children to tell them their mother was a hero. Willow places a single flower on the casket.

With both crises resolved, the extended family gathers at the Cross house. Nana Mama prepares a feast. Damon arrives with Melissa, and the household erupts with hugs. Sampson and Alex sit in easy chairs, surrounded by the chaos of family, as Nana Mama bangs a skillet and orders everyone to wash their hands for supper.