A Better World

CHAPTER 35

Natalie said, “I don’t understand.”

They were in the hallway of the subterranean clinic, Cooper pacing, feeling the weight of the earth above them, the weight of the world about to crack. He’d been so sure he was right, so sure he’d found a way out. For a moment life had seemed like it was supposed to, like if he fought the good fight and didn’t quit, maybe things would turn out all right.

He’d imagined that it would take hours, that he would have to pore over personality profiles and arm-twist Bobby Quinn and maybe get Epstein to hack into privileged government systems. But all it had taken was five minutes of looking at the crime scene photos.

“There is no way that the DAR kidnapped Dr. Couzen.”

“How can you be so—”

“Because it’s what I do, Nat. You know how many operations I’ve run for the DAR? How many times I’ve sent teams to arrest a target, or tracked one down myself? I know what our protocols look like. The DAR has some of the best tactical assets in the world.”

“So?”

“So, the window beside Couzen’s door was broken so that someone could reach in and unlock it. The DAR would have used a ram or a Hatton round, a specialized shotgun shell meant to breach a door. The neighbors reported hearing gunfire; the agency would have used suppressed weapons. There was furniture overturned, evidence of a struggle, but how does a 150-pound egghead make that kind of mess against a tactical team? And there was blood all over his lab; if the department wanted him alive, then that’s how they would have taken him.”

“Maybe he had a gun. Maybe he saw the agents coming, and he—”

Cooper shook his head. “It wasn’t the DAR. Trust me.”

“Okay,” she said. “But what difference does it make who kidnapped him? Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed.”

“Why?”

“Because he wasn’t kidnapped at all.”

It was the blood that gave it away. He wasn’t a forensic expert, but you couldn’t do what he had spent a decade doing and not pick up a few things. If Couzen had been attacked by the DAR, and if he had fought back hard, and if they’d been forced to use a weapon that caused blood spatter at all, it would have been a firearm.

The blood from a bullet wound sprayed in tiny droplets, what was called high-velocity impact spatter. Yet the blood on the wall was densely packed and medium size. The kind of pattern that occurred with brutal blunt force, like a lead pipe hitting the head. The kind of weapon the DAR would never use.

But exactly the kind of pattern that might result if someone took a small container of their own blood and flung it at the wall. There was more, but that was when he’d known.

“He faked it.” Cooper stopped pacing, leaned against the wall, his eyes closed. “He faked his own kidnapping. No one came for him.”

Natalie paused, thinking it over. “But if that’s true, it means—”

“It means that he’s running. That for some reason he decided to vanish and wanted to buy himself time. Maybe someone made him a better offer than the Epsteins. It doesn’t matter.” He rubbed his eyes. “All that matters is that the one man who has a solution to all of this madness has gone AWOL.”

“I still don’t understand. Why is that worse?”

“Because it means he’s hiding. Actively hiding.”

“So find him.”

He laughed. “I can barely move without seeing spots. My right hand is utterly useless. We’re ten minutes from a civil war, and the only guy who can stop it has a huge head start. My son is in a hospital bed.” Cooper slid down the wall and sat on the floor. “What do you want me to do?”

He knew how everything he’d just said sounded, and he didn’t care. The floor tile was comfortingly cool through his hospital gown. He’d been running so hard for so long, and all that he’d accomplished was to make things worse. Enough.

Natalie walked to the wall opposite him and sat down herself. Her hair was bundled back in a tight ponytail, and coupled with the dark circles under her eyes, it made her look drawn and pale. She said, “You think you’re the only one?”

“No. I know that you—”

“I’m the reason Todd is here. Me. It was my dumb idea, remember? I wanted us to be together, as a family. For the kids, and also”—she shrugged—“if I hadn’t had some romantic notion of all of us being together, of what it might mean for us, you and me, Todd would be back in DC right now. Instead, he’s in a coma. So don’t start with me, okay?”

“Natalie—”

“You don’t see it. You never did. In your head, it was always you against the world. You, personally, were going to be the man to save it.” She laughed coldly. “What would you even do if things did get better? Tell me, Nick, I’m curious. What would you do if suddenly the world didn’t need saving? Take up golf? Become a CPA?”

“Hey,” he said, “that’s not fair.”

“Fair?” She snorted. “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved. And we were so good together, we were happy, we made beautiful children. But somewhere along the line it stopped working. Maybe it was your job, maybe it was that you’re gifted and I’m not, maybe it was just that we fell in love too early, burned out on each other. Not fair, but, fine. Life happens, you move on. And we did, and that was okay too.

“And then it turns out that Kate is an abnorm, and not only that, but she’s tier one. They’re going to take her from us.

“Instead, you do this amazing thing. You go undercover and risk everything for her. Not fair. And the way it ended, not fair either.

“But life starts to go back to normal. Maybe better than normal. And part of me starts to wonder, were we too quick before? Should we have stuck it out? And because I’m wondering that, and because I want you to know that you’re not alone, we come here, and—” She sucked in a deep breath. “ ‘Fair.’ Fuck you.”

The words were a slap, and he jumped. “Natalie—”

“You’re hurting, I get it. And things look bleak, I get that too. But don’t talk to me like that. Did we make mistakes? Sure. No doubt. But we were fighting on the side of the angels. I know it, and you know it too. And now you’ve got a choice. You can sit on the floor outside your son’s hospital room and wait for the bombs to start falling. Or you can take one last shot, no matter how slim the odds are, to make a better world. It’s up to you, Nick, it really is. No one could blame you no matter what you decide. But either way, don’t talk to me about fair.”

As suddenly as she’d started, she stopped, and the silence felt like the aftermath of a thunderclap, the air electric. Cooper stared at her and felt a pain in his chest that had little to do with the knife wound. He tried to think of what to say, how to answer. Where to start.

Finally, he said, “Couzen is a genius. He knows he’ll be pursued. He won’t go anywhere people would look for him. Nothing he owns, no family or friends, no research facilities.”

Natalie gazed at him, that cool, level look that always matched her thoughts. “So how do you find someone if all you know is that he won’t go anywhere you expect?”

He stared down at his hands. One in ruined agony—

Time is against you. War will break out any moment.

Dr. Couzen may be the only person on the planet who can stop it. His research could change everything. Even in this desperate hour.

Only, he’s hiding, and the chances of you finding him are slim to none.

The data Epstein gave you said that though Couzen was a genius, he didn’t work alone. He had a team of the best and brightest.

Including a protégé.

Where are you, Ethan Park?

—the other still strong. He rose, then leaned over to offer his good arm to Natalie. She took it and stood opposite him. Their faces were close.

Cooper leaned in and kissed her, and she kissed back, both of them hungry. After far too short a moment, he broke it, leaned back. “You’ll tell the kids I love them?”

Natalie bit her lip. He could see the realities hitting her, the consequences of her speech, and see that even so, she didn’t regret it, and he loved her for that. She nodded. “Where are you going?”

“To convince Erik Epstein to loan me a jet. But first”—he smiled—“I’m getting out of this goddamn dress.”