Triple Cross

This Alex Cross novel follows three intertwined investigations: a serial killer targeting entire families in the Washington, DC, area; a fashion mogul's ties to sex trafficking; and the unmasking of a mysterious vigilante leader.

In a prologue set in New York, Suzanne Liu, editor in chief of Alabaster Publishing, tries to retain Thomas Tull, a mega-bestselling true-crime writer whose next book will cover the "Family Man" murders. Liu submits a $10 million offer without her publisher's approval; Tull rejects it for a higher deal elsewhere. When her boss returns from the hospital after the stillbirth of his twin children, he fires Liu for losing the company's most valuable author.

The Family Man is a meticulous killer who wears a black hazmat suit, respirator mask, and night-vision goggles and uses an ozone machine to eliminate traces of human scent. The killer breaks into a compound in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and executes attorney Roger Carpenter, his wife, his mother-in-law, and all four children with a suppressed .40-caliber Glock. Alex Cross, an investigative consultant for DC Metro Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrives with his partner, Detective John Sampson, and FBI special agent in charge Ned Mahoney. This is the third Family Man attack, and the killer has left no DNA, fingerprints, or useful evidence at any scene.

Cross's wife, Bree Stone, a former DC Metro chief of detectives now working for a private security firm called the Bluestone Group, receives a confidential assignment to investigate Frances Duchaine, a billionaire fashion designer accused in a sealed lawsuit of coercing young people into sexual exploitation through false promises of modeling careers.

Tull and his longtime researcher, Lisa Moore, set up a case board in a rented Georgetown townhouse. The killer strikes a fourth time, targeting the Elliott family of Alexandria, Virginia. Security footage captures the killer vaulting a fence in full hazmat gear but reveals no identifying features. Cross contacts Paladin Inc., a data-mining firm that uses artificial intelligence to find patterns in large datasets, and requests a sift of electronic data from the areas surrounding each crime scene.

Liu visits Cross, claiming Tull is the Family Man. In his three previous books, she argues, a pattern repeats: Murders occur, Tull inserts himself into the investigation, helps police, and writes a blockbuster. She produces his book proposal with passages predicting the killer's behavior before the latest attacks. Cross dismisses Liu. She later reveals that Tull made the key breakthroughs in each case and had affairs with all three lead detectives but never disclosed these relationships.

In New York, Bree meets Detective Rosella Salazar of the New York Police Department (NYPD), who describes a young woman lured with modeling promises, pushed into debt, and funneled into prostitution through Duchaine's associates. Bree attends a Duchaine fundraiser undercover but is exposed. Her investigation deepens when an attorney describes a vast operation in which Duchaine's stores served as recruiting grounds and a network funneled victims into prostitution or sold them overseas. Bree recruits fashion designer Phillip Henry Luster as an ally; his contacts reveal Duchaine carries over $400 million in personal debt, providing a financial motive for the trafficking.

Cross travels to Boston and Charleston to investigate Tull's past cases. A convicted man from Tull's first book maintains his innocence but calls Tull a friend. In Charleston, Detective Heidi Parks confirms a two-year affair with Tull and that he suggested the critical investigative angle in her case. At Paladin's headquarters, Cross meets cofounder Ryan Malcomb, who uses a wheelchair and has muscular dystrophy. Paladin's analysis reveals localized cellular blackouts around each crime scene and satellite phone use during those blackouts, suggesting signal jammers and multiple operatives.

Bree and Salazar surveil a gathering at the home of Duchaine's associate Paula Watkins. When the lights die, gunfire erupts. Eleven people are killed, including Watkins and two alleged recruiters. The assassins entered through a basement coal chute, and no other guests were harmed, indicating targeted killing.

The Family Man kills the Kane family in Potomac, Maryland. Forensics finds light brown hairs that do not match the victims. Tull's phone data shows a suspicious blackout during the time of the murders. The killer then targets the Allison family in Falls Church, but the family retreats to a hidden safe room with battery-powered cameras. Footage captures the intruder adjusting his hood, revealing sandy-brown hair. Cross and Sampson arrest Tull. The FBI lab's mitochondrial DNA analysis of the Kane hairs matches Tull's military records, and investigators find the .40-caliber Glock confirmed as the murder weapon in a storage unit linked to Tull.

Tull pleads not guilty and claims Moore is framing him. He reveals she once worked as an intelligence contractor who killed two civilians in the Middle East. He admits paying her to stage incidents in past cases to make stories more dramatic. Moore, questioned separately, claims she was with her lover, Liu, on the nights of the murders and says Tull being the killer is more than possible. Tull also cites a Russian named Dusan Volkov as an alibi.

Bree visits the estate of Theresa May Alcott, the anonymous billionaire who hired Bluestone. Alcott reveals her granddaughter was ensnared in Duchaine's trafficking scheme and died by suicide. Bree notices "Paladin" on Alcott's phone display and records their conversation; she later discovers Alcott is Malcomb's maternal aunt.

At a Manhattan fundraiser, Duchaine spots Bree and leaves early. Three gunmen leap from a van and fatally shoot Duchaine and both bodyguards. In the ensuing chase, Bree is wounded in the arm. She and Salazar kill two gunmen; a taxi strikes the third. Salazar identifies the third gunman as Dusan Volkov, the man Tull named as his alibi. Salazar's water breaks at the scene, and she gives birth to a daughter she names Analisa Bree Salazar.

Bree learns Liu is shopping a book proposal by Moore that casts Tull as the Family Man killer. Cross arrests both women and presents the evidence: details in the proposal that only the killer could know, a confession from James Kenilworth (a felon Moore hired to impersonate Tull at the Allison break-in), Tull's hair found in Moore's apartment, and Moore's fingerprints on the murder weapon's clip. Cross then reveals the "triple cross" to Tull: Tull is the actual killer who discovered Moore and Liu were framing him and counter-framed them by planting his own hair at the Kane scene and swapping a gun clip to transfer Moore's prints onto the weapon. Cross plays Volkov's recorded statement confirming Tull paid for a fake alibi and that Tull likes to kill. Military-grade jamming equipment in a cold-storage locker Tull rented explains the cellular blackouts. Tull deflects but never confesses.

Volkov also discloses that someone called "M" hired him to kill Duchaine for $20 million in Bitcoin. On the train home, Bree replays her recording from Alcott's office and realizes the billionaire was not saying "Emma, dear" on the phone but addressing Malcomb by his nickname: M. Bree concludes that Malcomb, with his aunt's billions and Paladin's surveillance capabilities, leads the vigilante group Maestro. On a DC sidewalk, Cross speaks directly into the air: If Malcomb is listening, they are coming for him.

In a secret operations center beneath Paladin's headquarters, Malcomb watches Cross on a surveillance feed and hears the warning in real time. He orders his team to erase everything and take the operation underground. Then he wheels toward the door, rises from his wheelchair, and strides confidently away, revealing his condition has been significantly exaggerated or faked.