Brilliance

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Out of the room, down the hall, through the bedroom, onto the balcony, over the railing, through the air, hitting hard. Behind him voices he was barely conscious of, a man, shouting something, something like Stand down! Let him go!, and the guard with his MP5 up but frozen, looking over his shoulder, Cooper thinking slide-tackle to drop him, spin, elbow to the solar plexus, right-hand chop to the throat, doing none of it, just sprinting past the stunned guard, the cold air slicing in and out of his lungs, his legs scissoring fast, feet slamming the ground, trying to outrun the things he’d heard, the pattern that formed in front and behind and all through him, the gift that he couldn’t turn off, the gift that had become a curse, the cold and relentless intuitive leap that put the pattern together, the pattern that had been right in front of him all this time but in the dark, brought into sharp relief by the illuminating influence of a handful of facts and a little nudging, all of which he could have done himself but never had, and the consequences of that, the unbelievable, horrifying, consequences—

“I need true believers.”

Drew Peters had said that to him the first time they met, and several times since, never so many that Cooper had thought it more than a call for a certain kind of loyalty, a loyalty Cooper possessed, a willingness to do hard things for a greater good. That was all it had ever been, never a delight, never. In the power, sure, and the freedom, the position, but never the act itself, not the killing but the cause. He had done what he’d done to stop a war, not to start one, to save the world, not to—

Flashes: The moon cutting silver swathes through swaying trees.

A branch he stumbled on cracking, the dry white interior like bone.

His hands, pale against pine bark.

Finally, a tiny stream glowing in the moonlight, the water burbling clean over rocks worn smooth. His knees in the water, the shocking cold of it.

If what they had shown him was true, then Equitable Services was a lie.

An extreme arm of a government agency asking for powers never granted another. The power to monitor, hunt, and execute American citizens.

An agency that was hobbling along. Barely surviving. About to be investigated. And then, suddenly, vindicated.

Granted enormous power. Unspecified funds. Direct access to the president.

Because of a lie.

John Smith didn’t kill all those people in the Monocle.

Drew Peters did.

You have spent the last five years working for evil men. You have done what they asked you to do. You believed. Truly.

John Smith isn’t the terrorist.

You are.

“Cooper?”

He heard her now. At a distance, looking for him. The sound of breaking twigs, the shuffle of dirt. She wasn’t a ghost after all.

He knelt there, in the stream, the water soaking through his pants, the moon glowing above. Didn’t want to be found. Didn’t want to hear any more.

“Nick?”

“Yeah,” he said. Coughed. “Here.”

He scooped up double handfuls of water, splashed them on his face. The cold shocking, clarifying. Knee-walked out of the stream, dropped on the bank. Listened to her approach, and for once saw her coming, sliding lithely between the trees.

Shannon hesitated for a moment when she saw him there, then adjusted her course. She splashed through the stream, then dropped down beside him. He saw her think about putting a hand on his shoulder, and decide against it. He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. For a long moment they sat side by side, listening to the trickle of the water, burbling like an endless clock.

“I thought you were still in Newton,” he said, finally.

“I know,” she said. “Sorry.”

“That thing you said. In the diner. About hoping I took the chance for a fresh start.”

“Yeah.”

“You knew I was coming here.”

“He did. I was hoping…” She shrugged, didn’t finish.

Somewhere nearby, a bird screeched as it dove, and something squealed as it died.

“A couple years ago,” Cooper said, “I was tracking a guy named Rudy Turrentine. A brilliant, medical. A cardiac specialist at Johns Hopkins. He’d done some incredible stuff in his early career.”

“The Turrentine valve. The procedure they do now instead of heart transplants.”

“Yeah. But then he’d gone over to the other side. Joined John Smith. Rudy’s latest design had this clever new gimmick. It could be remotely shut off. Send the right signal, and bam, the valve quit working. It was hidden deep in the coding, some sort of enzyme thing, I never really understood it. Point was, it gave Smith the power to stop the heart of anyone who’d had this procedure done. Potentially tens of thousands of people.”

She knew enough not to say anything.

“Rudy ran, and I found him. Hiding in a shitty apartment in Fort Lauderdale. A multimillionaire, this guy, and a brilliant, and he was holed up above a payday-loan place in the part of town tourists don’t go.” Cooper rubbed at his face, a trickle of water still left there. “My team surrounded the building, and I kicked in the door. He was watching TV, eating pork fried rice. It was greasy, I remember that. You could smell it. It struck me as funny, this heart specialist eating heart-attack fare. He jumped, and it went everywhere. A short guy, shy. He looked at me, and he…”

After a long pause, Shannon said, “He?”

“He said, ‘Wait. I didn’t do what they say.’” A sob came from somewhere. It took him by surprise, a sob like a hiccup, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried.

Shannon said, “Shh. It’s okay.”

“What did I do?” He turned to look at her, his gaze locked on her eyes glowing in the moonlight. “What have I done?”

She took a long moment before she spoke. “Did you believe it? That he could turn off people’s hearts?”

“Yes.”

“Then what you did, at least you thought you had a reason for it. You thought you were doing good. It’s the people who lied to you that you should blame.”

Cooper had a flash of Rudy Turrentine’s arms, flailing in wild punches as he stepped closer, as he moved where the man wasn’t swinging, as his own hands reached for the doctor’s head, as they twisted, sharp and hard, fast, always fast, never making it take longer than it had to.

“I’ve done things, too, Nick.” Her voice flat with effort. “We all have.”

“What if he was telling the truth? What if he hadn’t done it? What if, I don’t know, some competitor had pledged millions in campaign contributions if Rudy Turrentine died?”

“What if you killed an innocent man.”

“What if I killed an innocent genius. A doctor who could have saved thousands of lives.”

It seemed there was nothing to say to that. He didn’t blame her; he couldn’t come up with a reply either. The water trickled, trickled, trickled away.

“I’ve been used. Haven’t I?”

She nodded.

He made a sound that wasn’t much like a laugh. “It’s funny. All my life, the thing I’ve hated most was bullies. And it turns out, I am one.”

“No,” she said. “Misled, maybe. But you meant to do the right thing. I know that much about you. Believe me,” she said, and did laugh, “I didn’t want to think so. Remember on the El platform, I told you that you’d killed a friend of mine?”

“Brandon Vargas.” The abnorm bank robber who’d killed a mother and her two-year-old. Reno, Vargas smoking a Dunhill behind a biker bar, his hands shaking.

“Once upon a time Brandon and I were close. So I wanted revenge. John had told me that you were a good man, but I didn’t believe it. I wanted you to be a monster, so I could get payback.” She brushed hair behind one ear. “But then you turned out to be. Well. You.”

He weighed those words, the freight behind them. “Brandon. Was he really—”

“Yes. He really did rob those banks, and he did kill those people. The Brandon I knew was a sweetheart. He’d never have done that. But…he did.” She turned to him. “Not every moment of your life has been a lie. Some of the things you did for good really were for good.”

“But not all.”

“No.”

He rocked forward, hugging his knees. “I want it not to be true.”

“I know.”

“And if it is, then I want to die.”

“What?” Her body tensed and her face changed. “You coward. You don’t want to make it right. You don’t want to fix it. You want to die?”

“How can I make it right? I can’t take it back. I can’t bring Rudy Turrentine—”

“No. But you can tell the truth.”

It tripped alarms up and down him, a tingle and vibration up his spine. “What are you talking about?”

“Your boss, your agency—they’re evil. They are everything you say you’re against. You hate bullies? Well, guess what Equitable Services is?”

“And you have an idea how to fix that.”

“Yeah. I do.” She brushed the hair again. “There’s evidence. Of what your boss, Peters, what he did. At the Monocle.”

Now the laughter did come, though there was no humor in it. Of course.

“What?”

“That’s why you really came out here, isn’t it? You’re step two. Step one, make me see the truth. Step two, set me on some mission for John Smith.”

It was hard to gauge the full depth of her reaction in the darkness, but he could see her eyes change. Recognition, and maybe a sense of being caught. But something else, too. Like he’d wounded her.

“I’m right, aren’t I? He wants me to do something.”

“Of course,” she said, and stared at him unblinking. “Why else would he take these chances? And I want you to do it, too. And if you’re done with the woe-is-me bullshit, so do you. Because even if there is a step two, step one was tell you the truth.”

He’d been about to reply, to talk about how he didn’t work for terrorists, but that hit like a kidney punch. The truth. Right. Cooper scooped up a handful of pebbles, shook them. Tossed them, one at a time, to plunk in the stream.

After a moment, Shannon said, “You remember what I said in that shithole hotel? We were watching the news. They were reporting on what we’d just done, and none of it was true.”

Only a week or so ago, and yet it felt like a lifetime. The memory was clear, the two of them bickering like an old married couple. “You said maybe there wouldn’t be a war if people didn’t keep going on TV and saying there was.”

“That’s right. Maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t that there are normals and brilliants. It isn’t that the world is changing fast. Maybe the problem is that no one is telling the truth about it. Maybe if there were more facts and fewer agendas, none of this would be happening.”

There was something in the way she said it, clean and no bull, just fire and purity of purpose. That and the way the moonlight glowed on her skin, and the way his whole world had turned upside down, and the animal need for comfort, and the way she smelled, and the way she’d felt against him that night in the bar, and tired of thinking, he just leaned over.

Her lips met his. There was no surprise and no hesitation, maybe just the hint of a smile, and that gone in the moment. Cooper put a hand on her side and she wrapped both of hers around his back and their tongues flickered and touched, the warmth against the chill of the night as sensual as it was sexy, and then she shoved him.

He fell, landed on his back on the hard ground, pebbles digging into him. Surprise took his breath, and for a moment he wondered what she intended, and then she climbed on top of him, her knees straddling his hips, her body writhing against his. Light and strong, delicate and fierce, her breasts raking his chest, those clavicles like the wing bones of birds, the taste of her.

She broke the kiss, pushing away a playful couple of inches. A knowing smile and a fall of bangs. “I just remembered something else you said.”

“Yeah?” His hands slid down her back, cradled her midriff, slim enough his fingers almost touched.

“I said you must be a hell of a dancer. And you said, maybe if somebody else led.”

He laughed at that. “Lead on.”

She did.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Wake up.”

Cold. It was cold. He heard the words through a haze, far away. Ignored them, grabbed at the covers and found—

“Wake up, Cooper.”

—a clump of something like pine needles in his hands, and the bed hard. Cooper’s eyes snapped open. He wasn’t in a bed, and there weren’t covers, just half-discarded clothing piled atop them. A pine grove, and the trickle of a stream, and Shannon making sleepy murmurs. A shape above him, a man.

John Smith said, “Come on. I want to show you something.” He turned and started walking.

Cooper blinked. Rubbed at his eyes. His body had gone stiff and sore.

Beside him, Shannon stirred. “What is it?”

“We fell asleep.”

She sat up suddenly, and the jacket they’d been using as a blanket slipped down, revealing her breasts, small and firm, the nipples dark. “What’s going on?”

“He wants me to go with him.” He gestured after the figure. The sky had lightened enough to bring faint color to the trees.

“Oh,” she said. Still coming round. “Okay.”

“I can stay.”

“No.” She rocked her neck to one side, the vertebrae cracking. Winced. “This is twice we’ve woken up badly. We’re going to have to work on that.”

“I’m willing to practice if you are.”

She smiled. “You better go.”

Smith had kept walking, wasn’t looking back to see if he would follow. Because he knows I will. Cooper looked at her, saw that she knew it, too.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Really.”

He stood creakily. Remembering the way they’d moved, like partners who had been dancing a long time. Her riding him under the moonlight, her head thrown back, hair flying free, Mediterranean skin gone pale against the spill of stars, the Milky Way. Both of them delaying, taking their time, slow fast slow, going until they were exhausted, and when they were spent, her collapsing against his chest. The feel of her sweet and warm, they wouldn’t fall asleep, they’d just take a minute…

“Well, that was a first.”

She quirked her sideways grin and said, “Imagine the second. Now, go.”

He found his pants, pulled them on. She said, “Hold on.” Reached a hand up and grabbed his shirt. The kiss was deep and sweet. His eyes were mostly closed, and when he’d opened them, briefly, he saw that hers were, too.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m done with you.”

He barked a laugh and stumbled after John Smith, buttoning his shirt as he went.

It was maybe four thirty, five in the morning. A thin mist hung low, and the sky had softened enough to hide the stars. His breath was fog. His head, too. He didn’t push it, focused on motion, working out the cramps in his legs, getting some blood flowing. He knew the thoughts would come, and the memories, and they wouldn’t all be of sexual abandon.

And by the time he’d caught up to Smith, he was…what? Not himself. He wasn’t sure what that meant anymore. The self-assured agent? The idealist willing to kill for his country? The father who taught his children to hate bullies?

The most wanted man in America had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the peaks Cooper had noticed the day before, the spires rising from the ridge like fingers. “How’s your balance?”

Cooper looked at him, auditioned a dozen smart-ass remarks. Then he started moving, heading for the base of the tallest spire. Smith joined him. They didn’t speak, just walked, the ground rapidly growing steep, tree cover falling away. At first Cooper’s mind ran in a loop, replaying everything he’d learned the night before, looking for holes, desperate for them. Within half an hour, though, the incline had grown intense enough that thought was replaced with action, step step step breathe, step step step breathe. Soon he was using hands as often as feet, the rock rough against his fingers. The base of the towers was a scree field, loose flat stone that skittered and slipped beneath his feet. It was noisy and treacherous, every step holding the risk of picking the wrong rock and surfing it down, a sure ticket to a broken leg at the least. They were both panting now, Cooper’s shirt soaked with sweat.

The fingers turned out to be towers of blocky boulders fifty yards high. Smith started on one side; Cooper pulled himself up the other. The grips were solid and broad, and he climbed with confidence as the ground fell away. There was a heart-stopping moment when a foothold crumbled, but his arms held, and he jammed his toes in a narrow crack and continued up. After a few minutes Cooper tilted his head back and saw that the top was only twenty feet above. Energy surged through him, and he pushed into motion. No way was Smith beating him there.

If it had been a race, they’d have needed a replay to confirm the winner. Cooper thought it had been him by a nose, pretty much literally, hauling himself face-first onto the rocky peak. And then they were sitting on top of the world, and for just an instant, grinning at each other, no thought behind it, no promises, just two men recognizing the essential stupidity and joy of what they had done together.

The summit was about eight feet wide. Cooper crawled to the other side and looked over, felt vertigo twitch in his belly for the first time. On this edge the ridge fell away dramatically, a sheer drop of four hundred feet. He pushed back and sat cross-legged. Dawn now, the sky bright though the sun still played coy. “Nice view.”

“Thought you’d like it,” Smith said, looking at his hands. There was blood on them, a scrape, and he wiped them on his pants. “You okay?”

Cooper heard the multiple meanings in the question, had a flicker of insight into the man. There would never be just one thing happening here. Always levels. He couldn’t turn off his gift for tactical thinking any more than Cooper could turn off his patterning.

Even now, patterning the man. “I just got it.”

“Got what?”

“Helen Epeus. Epeus built the Trojan horse. And Helen, she was the reason for the war. There was no woman waiting for you. It was a joke.”

Smith smiled. Layers of meaning. Who knew how deep they ran.

“So we’re here,” Cooper said, “for symbolic reasons, right? Two guys waiting for the sunrise. No baggage up here. Can’t climb with it.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“What you told me last night. It’s true?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how we’re going to do this. I want truth. No agendas, no goals, no manipulation. No underlying reasons, no rationalization. Just truth.”

“Okay.”

“Because, John, I’m in a ragged place, emotionally speaking. And it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that I decide to throw your ass off this rock.”

He saw the words hit, saw that Smith believed him. To his credit—whatever else he was, he wasn’t a coward—Smith said, “Okay. But it goes both ways. You ask a question, I ask a question. Deal?”

“Fine. Did you blow up the Exchange?”

“No. But I was going to.”

“You planted the bombs.”

“Yes. I also had Alex Vasquez set to cripple military response at the same moment, and a few other strikes that I aborted.”

“Why?”

“Because I got beaten.” Smith scowled, and goddamn if there wasn’t embarrassment behind it. “I hate to say it, but it’s true. I underestimated the ruthlessness of my opponent. Fatal mistake.”

“Explain.”

“The Exchange had no tactical value, didn’t hurt me per se. Destroying it was a symbolic stroke. But sometimes those are the most effective. I wanted to refocus the country on the idea that if there’s going to be a future together, then we need to start thinking of it that way.” Smith raised his arms up, stretching them out. “So I planned to blow it up. But when it was empty.”

“That’s easy to claim.”

“It’s not a claim, Cooper. It was the point. If we’re going to coexist, the normal world has to stop trying to find ways to exclude us. Destroying the building was a way of saying that. But butchering a bunch of innocent people, what good would that do me? That would only hurt our cause. As, in fact, it did.”

Shannon had said the same thing. Of course, she would have heard it from him. Cooper said, “You had to know that targeting it put innocent people at risk.”

“A calculated risk. I wasn’t hoping it would be empty. I planned for it to be.”

“Nice work.”

“As I said, I got beaten.”

“What was the plan?”

“To release a video to every major media organization announcing that I planned to blow up the Exchange at two o’clock the following day. In it I’d say that any effort to disarm the bombs would result in me triggering them early. That they had until then to clear everyone out and evacuate the area.”

“So why didn’t you release it?”

“I did.”

“You—what?” Cooper had been jumping ahead, old interrogation habits, and the answer threw him.

“I did release it. Sent it to seven media outlets. The networks, CNN, MSNBC, even Fox.”

“But—”

“But you didn’t see it.” Smith nodded. “Yeah. That was where I got beat.”

“You’re saying that you sent the warning, and that none of the networks—”

“None of them aired it. Not one. Not before, and not after. Seven allegedly independent media organizations knew that I intended to blow up the building. They knew that it would happen around two o’clock. They knew that if they didn’t broadcast it, people would die. Eleven hundred and forty-three people, as it turned out.”

Vertigo strobed through Cooper again, though he sat nowhere near the edge. “You’re saying someone blocked that story?”

“Yes. Spiked it seven times. My turn. Who has the power to do that?”

Cooper hesitated.

“Who can convince, or force, seven independent networks to bury a story? Could a rogue group do it? A terrorist?”

“No.”

“No. Only someone in the system. Only the system itself.”

“Drew Peters again.”

“Maybe.” Smith shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. All I know is, when they didn’t air that video, when I saw that the government wasn’t evacuating, I realized what would happen if those bombs went off. And so I activated my contingency plan.”

“Shannon.”

“Shannon.”

Cooper thought back to that moment six month ago, him running down the hall at her, Shannon looking up, telling him to wait, that he didn’t understand. Jesus.

Would she have succeeded in stopping the bombs if he hadn’t caught her? Was this one more load on his creaking conscience?

“So who benefits from something like this, Cooper? Who benefits from the Exchange blowing up?”

“You asked your question.”

“Call this a follow-up.”

He knew the answer, both the one Smith wanted to hear and the larger truth behind it. Yesterday, he couldn’t have imagined admitting it. But this morning, as the first sharp rays of the sun split the horizon, he just said what his gift told him. “People who want a war.”

“That’s right. People who want a war. People who believe that it will make them richer, or more powerful. A few, even, who might truly believe that a war is necessary. But while there have been a handful of times in history when war truly was necessary, never, not once, has a war against our own children been justified. No, the people who want to start this war, they want to benefit from it.”

“How did the bombs go off if you didn’t trigger them?”

“Is that your question?”

“Call it a follow-up.”

Smith laughed. “All five had a radio trigger with a specific code frequency. No one but me knew the code.”

“So how—”

“Because I warned them.”

He stopped talking, let Cooper work it out. “Your message gave someone enough time to find the bombs and break the code.”

“Again, I didn’t realize just how ruthless my enemy was. I knew they hated me, knew they wanted a war. But even I never believed they would blow up their own building, kill a thousand people, just to foster it.”

“But…why?”

“Men will always find a reason.”

Cooper thought about that. Thought that it was probably true. “Next question. What about the rest?”

“The rest?”

“The other things you’ve done. Assassinations. Explosions. Viral attacks. All of it.”

A long silence. The sun broke the horizon, spilling bloody light across the east. As if on cue, Cooper heard birdsong, though he couldn’t see any birds.

Finally Smith said, “Are you asking if my hands are clean? They’re filthy. I’m sorry, but you wanted truth.”

“You are a terrorist.”

“I’m fighting a war. I’m fighting for my human rights, and the rights of people like me. I’m fighting for you, and Shannon, and the other million of us. Like your daughter.”

Cooper found himself on his feet before he realized he’d moved. “Be careful, John. Be very careful.”

“Oh, come off it.” Smith looked up at him mildly. “You want to kill me? You can. I’m no match for you in a fight. I knew you could last night, and I knew you could when I brought you up here. You don’t want me to talk about Kate? Fine. But I’m not the one who wants to put her in an academy.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Why? Because you throw me off this rock?”

“Because…” Drew Peters’s voice in his head. Your daughter will never be tested. Whatever happens, I’ll take care of your family.

He sank to his knees. No more. Please. Enough. Not them, too.

I’ll take care of your family.

“No one has clean hands,” Smith said. “Not me, not Shannon, not you. But the system is the bloodiest. The new world is being forged one gear at a time, and those gears drip blood. My turn. What kind of world do you want for your abnorm daughter, Cooper? And while we’re at it, what kind of world do you want for you normal son?”

He fought for breath. I’ll take care of your family. In his effort to protect them, in his blindness, he’d left them under the protection of the most dangerous man imaginable. To protect his children, he’d let a lion into their bedroom.

No.

“This evidence,” Cooper said. “Shannon said you had evidence. Of the things you’re claiming.”

“That’s a longer story.”

“I’ve got time.”

“After I met Senator Hemner at the Monocle, I headed home. Never made it. I saw police all along my block, my apartment lit up with floodlights. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew enough to run. Which was what Peters wanted. What’s the point of creating a myth like John Smith if you catch him right away? Better to let him run. To let him lurk out there in the darkness, a national boogeyman. More funding in it.” He laughed without humor.

“So I ran, and I transformed myself from an activist into a soldier. I started building an army. And then I went digging. I wanted to know who my enemy was.

“It didn’t take long to figure out that it was Equitable Services. Your agency benefited more than any other. But that wasn’t proof. I had the why, and the who. So I went after the how.”

“The how?”

“Someone had orchestrated the massacre. That same person had faked the footage of it. That was exceptional work. It had to be perfect, or as near as possible. That meant a gifted. A man who can do with image and media what I can do with a chessboard or what Shannon can do with a crowded room. That was all I needed to know to find him.”

“What happened?”

“I asked him questions,” Smith said dryly.

“You tortured him.”

“No clean hands, remember? This man ruined my life and threatened the existence of my whole race. So yes, I asked firmly. He came clean about the forgery quickly enough.”

The sun was moving fast now, the air warming every moment. Cooper stared into it, said, “If you had proof the Monocle was fake, why not release it?”

“What proof? The word of a twist to a terrorist, given under torture? Who would believe it? Would you? No one would have paid attention. I needed something more.” Smith put his hands down and spun to face Cooper. “And I got it. This man, he also said that your director knew that if the truth about the Monocle ever came out, he’d hang. So Peters made sure he had protection.”

“What kind of protection?”

Smith sighed. “That’s the frustrating part. I don’t really know. Video of some kind, that much is obvious. Something that he could use if the situation ever got dire enough. The forger claimed to have rigged the setup for Peters, but said that he never knew what the content was.”

“And you believe him?”

“My questioning was… thorough.”

I’ll bet. Cooper put aside the thoughts of torture, focused on what Smith was telling him. Forced himself to be dispassionate, to work it like a problem. To let his gift run free. “So you know this proof is out there, but you don’t know where, and even if you did, you don’t think you can get to it. Not directly. You want me to do it for you.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have any idea where to start.”

“You’ll figure it out. That’s what you do. The same way you could find Alex Vasquez. And think how much better you know Drew Peters.”

He was right, Cooper knew. Already he could feel himself patterning. It wouldn’t be at DAR headquarters, or at Peters’s house. Both places could be locked down if things went wrong. Peters would have put it somewhere safe, somewhere he could get to it in the kind of dire times he would need it. “Next question.”

“I think it’s my turn. But go ahead.”

“What you’re saying, it’s compelling. Believable. But so was the story Peters told. So was Equitable Services. None of this is proof.”

“That video is.”

“But you haven’t seen it. You don’t know what’s on it. For all I know, it proves you’re the monster the DAR says you are.”

“True.” The man said it with the calm of a logician acknowledging the fallacy in an argument.

“All right.” Cooper stood again, walked to the lip of the rock, stared down at the wide bright world. “I’ll find it. Not for you, and not for your cause.” He turned and looked back at Smith. “But you better pray that video shows what you think it does. Because I know you now. I can find you again, and I can kill you.”

“I believe you,” Smith said. “I’m counting on you to take this all the way.”

“Even if that means killing you.”

“Sure. Because only someone that dedicated will have what it takes to face off against Drew Peters. Christ, Cooper. Why do you think I sent Shannon to bring you here in the first place?”

Cooper’s hands clenched. A sick, floating feeling bloomed in his belly. “What?” His gift racing ahead again, providing yet another answer he didn’t want. “What do you mean, ‘sent Shannon’?”

“Ah.” The other man looked disgruntled for a second. “Sorry. I thought you’d figured that part out already.”

“What do you mean, ‘sent Shannon’?”

Smith sighed. He rose, slipped his hands in his pockets. “Just that. I needed you, so I dispatched Shannon to get you. I sent her to that El platform, and I planned your route to me. I made sure you saw Samantha and the uses the world has for her. I had Shannon take you to Lee Chen’s house so you could meet his daughter and her friends. I routed you through Epstein, because I knew he’d sell me out to protect his dream, and because I knew you’d never believe you could get to me without help. And I stood outside last night smoking a cigarette so you’d climb the balcony.

“I’m sorry, Cooper. I’m a chess player. I needed to turn a pawn into a queen.” Smith shrugged. “So I did.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Even now, three hours later, sitting in a leather chair twenty thousand feet up, the comment still rankled. Which was pointless; Cooper had more important things to deal with than his injured pride.

It’s not just pride. Being upset that John Smith out-planned you is like being upset that Barry Adams plays better football. It’s just a fact.

No, it wasn’t being beaten by Smith that stung. It was that for the first time since he and Natalie had split, Cooper had felt something for a woman. Yes, they were on opposite teams, and there were a thousand reasons a relationship wouldn’t work, but still, those feelings had been real.

Unfortunately, everything they’d been based on was fake. Everything she’d told him was a lie. Maybe even last night.

He leaned back in his seat. Stared out the window. The jet was just cresting the clouds, baroque castles spilling below him. Usually it was his favorite moment in a flight, a view that managed to stir that childish sense of wonder that he was miles up in the air. But the intricate cloudscape did nothing for him now.

It’s not just that you got used. It’s that she used you.

This morning, on the rock spire, he’d told Smith what he needed, and was unsurprised to find the guy had it standing by. “I’m sending Shannon with you.”

“No,” Cooper had said, “you’re not.”

“Listen, I’m sorry for your wounded feelings, but this is too important. You need her help. She goes.”

“Sorry, I don’t work for you. I’m doing this my way.”

“Cooper—”

“Just arrange the plane.” He scooted to the edge of the rock spire and hung his legs over. “I’ll get to the runway myself.”

“Talk to her, at least,” Smith had said.

Cooper had ignored him, spun to grip the edge, and begun to climb down.

From above, Smith had said, “She deserves that much.”

He’d paused, looking up. “Believe it or not, John, we’re not all pieces on your chessboard. Just arrange the plane.”

Just under three hours later he’d reached the airstrip Smith had told him about, a private field in the heart of the Holdfast, big enough to handle not only the gliders but an honest-to-God jet.

His was painted like a FedEx transport plane, flying commercial numbers. Clever; it was the aerial equivalent of a taxicab, a vehicle that could hide in plain sight. The pilot was waiting for him. “Hello, sir. I’ve got a change of clothes on board for you, and food if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks.” He’d climbed the stairs. “Get airborne and get me to DC as fast as you can.”

Fifteen minutes later he was back in civilian clothes—the sizes were perfect, of course—and the jet was racing down the runway. The pilot said it would take about four hours, longer if they had to circle when they arrived.

Which gave him four hours to figure out where Drew Peters would have hidden insurance against his sins.

Adding to the fun, DC was a risky place for Cooper. There were more cameras and more agents there than in any city in the country. If he were in Roger Dickinson’s place, if he were hunting a rogue agent whose children lived in DC, he’d make sure the city was on constant alert.

Normally even if a camera picked him up, by the time that image was found and processed, he’d have moved on. But things had changed when he talked to Peters last night. If Cooper had actually killed John Smith, he would have called the department to arrange his safe return home. And he’d considered doing that, lying to Peters, saying that Smith was dead. But what if the DAR knew otherwise? What if they intercepted a call, or saw a photo? More important, lying to Peters was equivalent to throwing his hand in with John Smith, and Cooper wasn’t ready to do that. Not until he saw the evidence. Better just to go quiet for now. The problem was that if Peters discovered him, he would assume that Cooper had been turned.

Have you? Been turned?

No. He didn’t work for Smith, and while he understood the soldier-on-the-losing-side rationale, a terrorist was still a terrorist.

But you’re definitely not a DAR agent anymore.

Which was all Peters would need to know. If the director suspected that Cooper was no longer his man, the gloves would come off. His picture would be flashed on every screen in America. John Smith had managed to hide from that, but Cooper didn’t imagine that he could. No, his best chance lay in moving fast. Get to DC, get to the video, and make his moves from there.

Four hours to figure out where a digital file that could be stored on a drive about the size of a stamp was hidden in an area of roughly 7,850 square miles.

He’d come to that number by figuring that if Peters ever needed it, he’d need it fast. No more than an hour or two from his home or office. Figure a fifty-mile radius. Pi times radius squared equaled 7,850.

Calling it a needle in a haystack was an insult to haystacks.

So think. You’ve got…three and a half hours left. And if you’re going to be playing against the entire DAR in their own backyard, it wouldn’t hurt if you could grab an hour’s sleep, too.

Obviously, the odds were better than the pure math suggested. He wasn’t going to be randomly searching the terrain. He would be patterning Drew Peters, the same way he had once patterned targets for the man.

So. What did he know?

If Smith was right—if he was telling the truth—the video was some sort of insurance policy. Something that could protect Peters if the facts about the Monocle ever came out. That narrowed the search immensely.

It wouldn’t be at DAR headquarters. Too exposed. Plus, if Peters were burned, the agency might be closed to him.

Which was a relief. If it had been at the office, there was no chance Cooper could reach it. Might as well have been on the moon. It was an odd synchronicity, but if Peters needed his insurance policy, he’d likely be in the same position Cooper was, a renegade hunted by all.

The same logic ruled out Peters’s house. Or any property in his name: his lake house, his car, any athletic clubs.

Of course, this was the director of Equitable Services. He could easily have false documents. But owning property under a false identity was a big risk. Property meant a paper trail, and a paper trail could be followed. Especially one that smelled like corruption.

Okay, what about registering a safety-deposit box under a fake identity? Minimal chance of discovery. On the other hand, banks were closed at night and on the weekend. That delay could mean the end.

One of the safest ways to hide something was in a hotel. Check into a room, bring a few minimal tools. Remove a baseboard or the cover to a heating vent, and hide gear there. As long as Peters kept half an eye on the hotel, made sure that it wasn’t about to undergo major renovations, it would be a perfectly anonymous hiding place.

Thing was, that presented the same difficulties in retrieval. Unless you rented the room in perpetuity, which negated the point, you couldn’t count on being able to get back to it at a moment’s notice. A hotel would happily book you in a specific room with a little notice, but if it was occupied, things got complicated. Yes, Peters could break in, but it would be clumsy, and Peters abhorred clumsy tactics.

A lawyer? Trusted family counsel, retained for years. That same person could be instructed to release it if Peters disappeared…

…only, this wasn’t a private eye movie. Peters didn’t want the threat of vengeance after his death; he wanted to protect himself. And no employee could be trusted, not with something this important.

Out the window, the clouds had broken into clumps, the gold-green quilt of Nebraska or Iowa below him, that boxy and startlingly regular geometry only visible from above. He wished he had someone to bounce this off of, Bobby Quinn, or Shann—

Put her out of your head.

Which was like telling himself not to think about elephants. Immediately he was flashing back to the previous night, the way she had tasted, that mental Polaroid of her rocking back, sweat-slick skin outlined against the Milky Way. Had that been part of her mission, too? Smith had planned everything else, had plucked him up from an El station in Chicago and brought him to Wyoming. Was it possible that he’d sent Shannon to seduce him? To plant the seed of a mission, and then comfort him, tie Cooper to them?

It was possible. He didn’t want to believe it, tended not to—he thought he knew Shannon, couldn’t see her going with that—but it was possible. She could have been step two after all.

“Even if there is a step two, step one was tell you the truth.” Her words in his head. And if she had lied to him, well, he’d lied to her, too. The whole time they’d been together, it had been under false pretenses. But though he’d been lying to her about his mission, he hadn’t been lying about who he was. Maybe she hadn’t either. Maybe, like him, she was both a pro and a person, both a job and a life. Had it been a mistake not to include her? Until her, Cooper had never worked with anyone who could match him. And she would be a huge asset if he had to sneak into…

Enough. It was done.

So it wouldn’t be at a hotel, wouldn’t be with a lawyer. How about a friend, or a family member? Not his daughters, but a brother, say, or an old school friend. Someone who could be counted upon, who would never willingly betray him.

Problem was, willingly. If Peters was in trouble, then his friends and family were, too. If someone suspected a friend had what they were after…well, normal people didn’t resist torture.

Funny to be back on a private jet. It had started this way, the jet returning from San Antonio, where he’d followed Alex Vasquez. Alex Vasquez, who had told him a war was coming. He’d had no idea how right she’d been. He wondered, idly, if she had.

Cooper yawned. The seat was comfortable, and the last days had been long. The few hours of sleep he’d gotten had been on the cold ground, and not much good.

Okay, so figure it out. This is what you do.

Only, as always, his gift was something he couldn’t control. Sometimes it made a wild intuitive leap that he knew was true before he had proof. Sometimes it just lay coiled and quiet, processing at its own speed.

Still, he had a sense that he was close, that he had the data he needed, he just needed to look at it from the right vantage point.

Tell you what, self. Figure this out, and you can go to sleep.

Peters’s insurance would be geographically close. It would be somewhere he could get to it night or day. Somewhere that no one would stumble on it, ever; where the risk of that was essentially zero. It would not be in his name, or anywhere someone would think to look. Getting to it wouldn’t require the help of another person.

What kind of place was essentially unchanging, always available, perfectly secure, and close at hand?

Cooper smiled.

Two minutes later, he was sound asleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Full circle. Funny how life had a way of doing that.

He wasn’t just back in DC; he was back in Georgetown, a couple of blocks from his old apartment, on his old jogging route. Cooper could picture that version of himself, a faded army tee clinging to his soaked chest as he rounded this stretch of R Street. This had been his favorite part of the run, a particularly scenic corner of intensely scenic Georgetown. The black wrought-iron fence on his right, the thick shade of old trees, the tidy, expensive row-house mansions on the south side of the street…and the elegant grace of Oak Hill Cemetery along the north.

He’d wandered through it a few times back then, read the pamphlet. It was old, dating to something like 1850. A gorgeously landscaped spread of gentle hills and quiet paths along the Potomac, dotted with old marble, monuments, and headstones for the gentry of two centuries past. Congressmen, Civil War generals, captains of industry…and bankers.

It was perfect. A brief walk from Drew Peters’s house, completely unchanging, always accessible. The grounds might close, but Cooper doubted that meant more than an elderly watchman drawing a chain across the iron gate. Easiest thing in the world to find a patch of darkness and climb over. Kids probably did it all the time.

There was a map on a signpost near the entrance, with sections laid out in muted color: Joyce, Henry Crescent, Chapel Hill. The chapel was one of the cemetery’s main destinations, and he remembered it being lovely, draped in ivy like a Romantic daydream. The map also marked some of the more famous dead.

Including Edward Eaton, “financier and attorney, under-secretary of the treasury to Abraham Lincoln.”

Cooper started walking. The stonework and paths were marked by age, dignified like a worn patrician. He’d never really put much thought into where he’d be buried—had some loose notion of being cremated—but he could see the appeal in laying a loved one to rest here. It would be a pleasant place to imagine them.

Most of the grave sites were simple monuments, weathered stones with names and dates and often military rank. But here and there stone mausoleums nestled into the side of a hill or beneath a spread of branches. The one with EATON carved across the top had a stolid, bunkerish look. No elaborate statues or intricate carvings, just a pair of pillars flanking the door and a couple of small stained-glass windows. It spoke of stability and eternity, no doubt what Edward Eaton had in mind when he bought this house for the bodies of great-grandchildren whose parents hadn’t even been conceived.

Cooper stood outside, his hands in his pockets. He wondered how often Drew Peters had come here, if he’d stood in the same place. Staring at the mausoleum where his wife lay.

Geographically proximate, unchanging, undisturbed, always accessible, and perfectly safe.

It fits. But would Peters really use it like that?

One way to find out.

The door was oak, dense and heavy, mounted on massive forged hinges that looked like they might date back to the founding of the cemetery. The lock was newer, a deadbolt that looked out of place. Cooper paused, glanced around. Some distance away, an elderly woman limped down the path, a bouquet of flowers dangling from one hand. There was the sound of a lawn mower, and, more distant, a siren.

He knelt in front of the door and took a closer look at the lock. A year ago, when Cooper had needed to get through locked doors, he used a ram. Lock picking was for thieves, not DAR agents.

Then he became a thief. It hadn’t taken long to learn; once you understood the fundamentals, the rest was just a matter of practice, and he’d had time. The lock was stiff, but he had it popped inside two minutes.

Cooper gripped the iron handle and pulled. With a rusty screech, the hinges gave. The door opened slowly. Sharp sunlight spilled into the crypt. The floor was stone, thick with dust, and the air smelled stale.

Here’s another first.

He stepped inside the crypt and tugged the door closed behind him.

The bright sun vanished, but watery light filtered through the stained glass. If the light had been a sound it would have been a requiem, slow and quiet and full of loss. Cooper stood still and let his eyes adjust. The mausoleum was one room, thirty feet on a side, a bench in the center, ledges carved like bunk beds in the wall. Four high and three across, on all but the entrance wall, where the door took up one of the columns. Forty-four stone berths, all but two of them filled. Forty-two coffins, laying in orderly rest, names and dates carved beneath each one. A house for the dead. He felt a chill to think it, a primal shiver down the lizard part of his brain.

The light was too dim to make out the inscriptions, and he pulled out his datapad, uncrumpled it, and let the digital glow flood across the stone. The act felt strangely more offensive than breaking in had. Something wrong with introducing the modern world to this tomb, with using a device that couldn’t have been conceived of when this place was built.

And then he saw that he wasn’t the first to do it.

The box was about the size of a pack of matches, matte gray metal mounted just inside and above the door. No label, no LEDs glowing, nothing to reveal its purpose, but Cooper recognized it. It was government technology. Most of the box was a battery. The rest was a motion sensor and a transmitter. The thing was a long-term monitoring device, the kind you could put in a safe house for a decade and never think of again, just let it sit and watch, passive until it caught a hint of motion and broadcast its signal.

The monitor meant two things. First, that he was right in his hunch. The evidence was hidden here. The family might think to install a motion alarm in the crypt, but it wouldn’t be DAR technology.

Which led to the second thing. The moment Cooper had opened the door, the monitor would have sent a blast to the director. His phone would be ringing, his d-pad pinging, sending one message:

Someone is where you don’t want them to be.

Cooper’s heart kicked up a notch. Peters was a man with astonishing power. The moment he got the alarm, he would dispatch a team, faceless most likely, heavily-armed men and women sent hurtling to this place. And because Peters couldn’t risk a subject talking, that team would have shoot-to-kill orders.

On the upside, it does mean your brain is working. The evidence is here.

So get it and get the hell out. You’ve already lost about a minute. You’ve got…call it two more.

Shit.

He leaned in close, read the first inscription. “Tara Eaton, faithful wife, 1812–1859.” The next for her husband, Edward Eaton, buried two years later.

Cooper spun, hustled to the other end of the crypt. Bodies would have been laid to rest in the order of their deaths, which meant that Director Peters’s wife should be near the end.

The third to last, it turned out. “Elizabeth Eaton, beloved daughter, 1962–2005.” Above the inscription rested an elegant mahogany coffin, the wood still lustrous, though the top was covered with a thin layer of even dust. Cooper stared at it, struck by what he was looking at, a box with the remnants of a person in it, a woman he’d never met, mother to children who jokingly called him Uncle Nick, whom he’d tickled and wrestled and teased.

There was no time to wince over it. He started feeling his way around the coffin, fingers running over every inlaid detail, tracing the curves and edges. Tapping along the edges, feeling blindly on the sides. Nothing. He grimaced, then angled his head, and leaned in over the box, feeling the cold stone above it, the dust in his eyes and nose as he ran his hands through darkness. He checked every edge, dragged his hands through the narrow space between the coffin and the berth wall.

Nothing.

Cooper stepped back. A spiderweb stuck to his hair, and he brushed it away.

There’s one place you haven’t checked…

He flashed to a fantasy of Natalie dead, hidden away in a room like this, and him sneaking in, breaking open the box, facing what lay inside…

The thought was repellent in every way. But it was possible.

Cooper had no tools, nothing to break the top open with. He’d have to throw it around, maybe slam it against the bench until the wood splintered, the remnants of Elizabeth Eaton jarring and tossing inside. An abomination, but the only way.

Except—

Would Peters have done the same?

No. He’d have brought tools. Cracked it open just enough, but still, cracked it open.

Has it been?

—that the seal on the coffin was perfect, the lid fitting the base so smoothly it was hard to see where one ended and the other began. Not only sealed; there were no signs of tool marks. Breaking the lid open would have left a mark.

His first thought was relief.

His second was frustration. Peters hadn’t hidden what he was looking for in his dead wife’s mausoleum. He’d been wrong.

Only, no. The monitor on the wall gave it away. The evidence was here. It just wasn’t in her coffin.

Cooper stepped back, glanced at his watch. One minute left. He whirled, looked around the room. Forty-two coffins. A stone bench. He dashed to it, dropped down, checked the underside. Smooth. Same with the legs and the edges. Panic starting now. There was an iron crucifix above the door. He checked it hurriedly. Nothing.

Forty-five seconds.

It had to be here. Nothing else made sense. His gift had predicted it, the motion sensor had proved it, he just had to find it.

One of the other coffins? There were forty-one of them. No time to do even a cursory examination.

He stood in the center of the room, spinning slowly. Come on, come on. Willing his intuition to strike. Thirty seconds. He rubbed his hands together, dust flying.

Dust—

There’s no way to hide anything here without disturbing the dust.

And no way to smooth dust out evenly.

So the best thing to do is clear it off entirely. Still a tell, but a less obvious one, especially as more dust settles.

—flying.

He sprinted back to the coffins. Elizabeth was third from last. The two after read “Margaret Eaton, 1921–2006,” and “Theodore Eaton, 1918–2007.”

There was dust atop both of them. Not a lot, but it hadn’t been that long.

A half-forgotten conversation, one he’d probably never have remembered at all if it hadn’t taken place the day his life exploded, the day he’d begged Drew Peters to protect his child. The director had told a story about his wife, the story that had triggered Cooper being here in the first place. But he’d also talked about her father. What had he said?

“Her father, Teddy Eaton, he handled the private fortunes of half of Capitol Hill. God, he was a bastard. As his daughter was dying, the old man begged her to let him bury her with them. ‘You’re an Eaton, not a Peters. You should be with us.’”

Cooper smiled. It had nagged at him, the idea that Peters would abuse his wife’s memory this way. It hadn’t fit the pattern. But the old bastard who made sure Drew would never rest beside Elizabeth?

He dropped to a knee and felt around the back of the coffin. Spiderweb, brass hinge, old wood…and a strip of duct tape. He yanked it off, and a small object came with it. A memory stick about the size of a postage stamp.

A fine screw-you from the land of the living. Cooper would have admired Peters for it, but didn’t have the time. He folded the tape over the drive, stuck it in his pocket, and ran for the door. Hit the heavy door at speed, his shoulder singing along with the hinges. Sunlight, sky, the wave of trees.

And a team of black-clad soldiers with automatic rifles, sprinting across the cemetery, moving between gravestones with no regard.

Cooper kept his momentum, spinning through the thin gap into the outside world. Made four steps before he heard the first shots. Something above him exploded, stone from the mausoleum raining down. He winced, pushed into a full-on run, everything he had. Reached the edge of the crypt, used a hand on the lip of it to spin himself around, trying to get the building between himself and the commandos.

He wanted to get his bearings, move tactically, but couldn’t risk it. The graveyard was hilly and filled with trees, and the crypts would provide occasional cover. At least it wasn’t night; the helmets the faceless wore included thermal optics, and against the cool of the evening his body heat would have shone like a laser.

A window shattered above him, the stained glass on the Eaton crypt. He hurled himself forward, stumbled for half a heartbeat on a root, felt more than heard a bullet pass above him. Darted left, then right, trying to present as tricky a target as possible. A sniper in a steady position wouldn’t have trouble zeroing on him, but the agents had been running.

There was a gentle rise ahead of him, a nightmare, but the other side would provide a little cover. No choice. He slammed forward, boots rattling against the ground, the impact jarring up his legs. Breath coming hard, and panic sweat soaking his armpits. Sprinted diagonally across a row of headstones, leaped a short one, more gunfire behind, reached a tree, centripetally spun around the other side of it—careful, do the same move too many times and they’ll anticipate it—but it worked this time, the thud of a round hitting the bark above him, and then he made the edge of the ridge and flung himself forward in a soccer slide tackle, low to the ground, stones and branches ripping at him.

Behind him, he heard the men yelling, knew they’d be spreading out in an arc, moving fast, trying to narrow his options. Cooper had his pistol, but the assault rifles they carried were capable of full auto and accurate to a mile.

Still.

He turned and fired twice directly at the roof of the crypt, then paused, fired again. Stone cracked and bullets ricocheted. The threat would slow them down, force them to move more carefully. It wouldn’t buy much, though. He needed a plan.

The far side of the cemetery was bounded by the Potomac. If he could make it there, climb the fence, then…

Then what? A swimmer in open water was an easy target. Besides, it was the obvious move. Chase, and the target flees. Flee, and you can’t think.

Cooper pictured the map he’d noticed at the entrance, the graceful regions nestled against one another, the famous dead, the chapel.

Worth a try.

He set off at a dash, keeping as low as he could without slowing down. Leaving the path behind and heading directly perpendicular to his previous course, not something fleeing people did. Adrenaline electrified his every nerve. The physical weight of the pistol in his hand and the emotional weight of the drive in his pocket. The smell of dirt. A gust of wind that lifted the tree limbs to dance.

A gunfight in a graveyard, Jesus Christ.

There was a row of tall tombstones with dates from the Civil War, and he angled behind them, moving fast. Through the trees ahead, a small hill, too perfectly proportioned to be natural, and the ivy of the chapel. He leaped a bench, landed moving, passing a tombstone with a slender angel beseeching the sky. Intuition made him glance over his shoulder.

The man was alone, probably the far edge of the arc. Fifteen yards away, atop the ridge. Black body armor and a good stance, weapon at the ready. The black helmet with its visor down, a blank-faced predator. His attention was focused on where Cooper was supposed to be, but intuition or his helmet optics must have screamed a warning, because he turned to look right at Cooper.

For an instant, they stood frozen. Then the faceless swung his rifle to bear, rocking his weight to his back leg, sighting down the barrel, zeroing in, gloved finger moving, and Cooper could see the path of the bullet, see it like it was drawn in the air, a line right to his chest, and without thinking he flung himself sideways.

Heard the crack of the bullet as he hung in the air, and heard its brothers, the man firing to follow him, the rush of air, the ground rising to meet Cooper, the angel staring at the sky, Cooper’s hands coming up even as he fell, the pistol steady, the man in his sights. They both fired.

The angel wept stone tears.

The commando in black staggered as a hole spiderwebbed his visor.

Cooper hit the ground, the impact uncushioned by grace, knocking the wind from him. Kept the gun up as he watched the man fall.

He’d killed a DAR agent.

It was the first time. He had a sinking feeling it wouldn’t be the last.

Then he was scrambling to his feet and running in a crouch, the chapel nearby now, the ivy waving in the breeze, the stained glass bloody in the evening light. He reached the edge of it, panting, ran around the far side, the bulk of it between him and the assault team, and only a fraction of a mile to the street.

To find Bobby Quinn leaning against the far side of a gravestone, most of his body out of sight behind the stone, a submachine gun braced on it. Leveled straight at Cooper’s chest.

His former partner betrayed no surprise to see him. Had been expecting him. Of course. They’d worked together enough. He knew Cooper liked to double back, to misdirect. So he’d sent the team to cover the obvious routes, and then staked out his hunch.

“Drop the gun. Now.”

Cooper considered making the same play he just had, a wild leap and a midair shot. But the situation was different. The faceless had been exposed and surprised. He’d telegraphed his intent with every muscle. Quinn, on the other hand, was ready and steady, with most of his body—and more important, his body language—hidden. No way to read him if Cooper couldn’t see him.

Besides. Are you going to shoot Bobby Quinn?

“I mean it. Drop the gun.”

Cooper froze. Nervous energy crackling through him, his body rubbery. Had a weird desire to laugh. He dropped the gun. “Hi, Bobby.”

“Lace your hands on your head, then get down on your knees with your ankles crossed.”

Cooper stared at his colleague, his partner in a hundred missions, remembered the dark sense of humor of the man, the way he’d hold a cigarette for two minutes before he’d light it. How many times had they gone in a door together?

“Bobby.” He struggled for words, wanted to explain the situation, the whole thing: going undercover, chasing John Smith, everything he’d learned since. Wanted half an hour in a pub, somewhere with oak and worn stools, coasters with the Guinness logo. Wanted to explain, to lay out everything that had happened, to make the man understand.

And then the laugh did hit him, nothing he could do about it. How many times had his targets wanted the same thing? How many times had he heard them say…

“Do it now!”

Cooper said, “I didn’t do the things they say, Bobby.” The colossal humor of it almost overwhelming him. What was the phrase the Irish used?

You want to make God laugh, you make a plan.

“Lace your hands behind—”

Cooper shook his head. “Can’t do it.”

“You think I won’t shoot you?”

“I don’t know.” But I do know that if I let you take me, I’m a dead man. And this evidence, whatever it is, it will vanish. Drew Peters will go on fostering a war. And I can’t live with that.

Even if it means I have to die with it.

“I guess we’re going to find out.” Slowly, hands at his sides, he started walking. Not toward Bobby, at a tangent. No time to talk, no time to explain. The rest of the tactical response team would have heard the gunfire, would be closing in on their dead comrade. They’d be here in seconds.

“Goddamn it, Cooper—”

“I’m sorry.” He kept walking but met his partner’s eyes as he did. “I promise you, I’m not who they say I am. But I can’t stay to explain.”

Quinn lowered the barrel of the gun a notch, pulled the trigger. A chunk of turf an inch in front of Cooper’s foot detonated. “I know you can shoot out my legs, Bobby. But that’s the same as killing me. You know those men won’t hesitate. And if it’s going to happen, I’d rather it was you.”

“Cooper—”

“Make your choice, Bobby.” He stopped then. Stared at the man. Trying to read his fate in the set of his partner’s eyes, the twitch of the muscle in one cheek, the tension in his neck.

Finally, Bobby said, “Goddamn you.” He turned, straightened. Put up his gun. “You’ve got three seconds.”

A rush of emotion swept through Cooper. For a moment, he wondered if he would have made the same choice if their situations had been reversed. If he’d have had the courage to be a person instead of an agent.

A question for another time. He took the head start and set off at a sprint.

It was more like five seconds before Quinn started yelling that Cooper was over there, that he was by the chapel, and by that time the fence and the street and the wide world was in front of him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Cooper stalked the DC night with a bomb in his pocket and his head on fire.

Overhead, faint, he could hear the sound of an airship, flying low. Looking for him. There would be a sniper on board, and a high-res camera package, and if they spotted him, he’d never hear the shot.

Relax. You’re just a man walking down the street. Just like all the others in this crowd. Don’t run, don’t call attention to yourself, and the odds of them spotting you are nil.

Well. Slim.

Any gunfight you walked away from was at least a partial success. But this one felt more partial than he’d like. Until he’d found the drive, he’d harbored hope that maybe Smith had lied, that the things Cooper had done were justified.

He couldn’t shelter that hope any longer. Peters had sent a hit team. No hesitation, no orders to arrest. Just kill and clean it up later. Drew Peters was the bad guy. Which made John Smith…well, who knew what it made John Smith.

Worse, Cooper had hoped to get in and out unspotted. To have time to review the video before the DAR even knew he was back in town. But now Peters would not only know that his precious insurance had been taken—he would know who had taken it.

What would that mean? What would a man like Peters do next?

Cooper froze, every muscle locking like stone. Someone bumped into him from behind, and he spun, hands ready. A sad-looking man in a business suit jumped, his eyes wide. “Hey, man, watch where you’re…”

But Cooper was already moving. Sprinting, despite the risk. A mini-mall was ahead on the right, one of those indoor places with a dozen fading businesses that never seemed to quite go under. He yanked open the door and stepped inside.

Muzak, and the multilayered reek of the candle shop by the entrance. A handful of shoppers wandering like zombies. His boot heels rang on the polished floor. A tanning place, a convenience store, a hair salon, a bright hallway leading to the bathrooms. Opposite them he found a payphone with a frayed cord, the phone book stolen long ago. He dug in his pockets. No change.

Back to the convenience store. He threw a ten at the vigilant-eyed Pakistani behind the register. “Quarters. I need quarters.”

“No change—”

“Give me four goddamn quarters and keep the rest.”

The man stared at him, shrugged, and opened the register in slow motion. Dipped in the drawer like he was pushing through water to do it. “Crazy, you are crazy.”

Cooper snatched the coins and ran back to the payphone. Almost knocked over a suburban-looking chick with big hair, didn’t slow.

He slotted two coins, then dialed Natalie’s number. Held the phone to his ear, his heart going wilder than it ever had in the cemetery, his hands shaking, control slipping. Ring. Ring. Ring. Come on, come on, come—

“Hello, Cooper. Welcome home.”

The world seemed to spin. He planted a hand against the wall. That voice. He knew that voice. “Dickinson.”

“Got it in one.”

“Where are my—”

“Children? They’re safe. Safe as can be. Your ex-wife, too. All three are in the loving arms of Equitable Services.”

Whatever happens, I’ll take care of your family.

Cooper wanted to rage, to scream threats down the line. But it wouldn’t do any good, he knew that.

Did it anyway. “Listen to me, you piece of shit, you let my children—”

“Shut up.” Dickinson calm as the eye of the hurricane ravaging the countryside, calm as the iceberg ripping open the Titanic. “Just be quiet. Okay?”

He started to reply, managed to stop himself.

“Good. Now. This is simple. We’re not gangsters, and this isn’t a B movie. This is a situation you created. And it’s a situation you can resolve.”

Cooper bit his tongue, literally bit it, jamming his teeth down and relishing the pain and focus it brought.

“Here’s how,” Dickinson continued. “Just come in. Come in, and bring what you stole. Simple as that. I’m not going to bullshit you. You won’t walk out again. But it will be quick, I’ll promise that. And we’ll let your family go.”

“Listen to me, Roger, listen. Drew Peters is not what he says he is. He’s a criminal. What I stole, it’s a drive, and it’s got evidence to back me up—”

“Listen to me, Cooper. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“I. Don’t. Care.”

The second of silence that followed sounded like an earthquake.

“Get me? I don’t care. It’s not my job to care.”

“Roger, I know you’re dedicated, I know you’re a believer, but what you believe in, it’s all a lie.”

Through the phone, a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “Don’t you remember what I said that morning, after Bryan Vasquez died?”

Cooper forced himself to think back. “You said you didn’t hate me because I was an abnorm. You hate me because you think I’m weak.”

“I don’t hate you at all, Cooper. That’s the point. But I believe. And you don’t.”

Cooper rubbed at his face with his hand. “Roger, please—”

The line was dead. He stood holding the phone to his ear, Muzak in the background, the scuff and squeal of dress shoes on the floor, the faint odor of disinfectant from the bathroom, his family held hostage by monsters.

You decided a long time ago that you’d lie down in traffic for your children. Every parent does. Time to pay that piper.

He dropped the phone and started for the exit. Felt relief, honestly. He was tired, so bloody, stoop-shouldered tired, and he’d been on his own too long. Die for his children? No problem. One dead twist, coming right up.

Do you really believe Peters will let them go?

Why not? It’s me he wants. Me and his precious insurance, whatever it is. What harm can an environmental lawyer and two children do him?

He froze. What harm indeed?

Cooper turned and walked back to the men’s room. Pushed open the door. A janitor was leaning against a mop.

“Get out.”

“Say what?”

“Now.”

The janitor took another look, then rolled his cart out, muttering something about crazy-ass people, he had a job same as anybody else. Cooper opened the middle stall and shut and locked it behind him. From one pocket he took his datapad, from the other the drive, still encased in duct tape. He peeled that off, dropped it on the floor. The chip he’d found on the back of Teddy Eaton’s casket was a standard stamp drive, a terabyte storage, the kind you could buy in any drugstore. He slotted it, then sat down on the toilet.

The screen brightened, then started playing automatically.

The video showed two men talking in a bland room. One of the men was Drew Peters. The other he’d never met, but knew. Everybody did.

Cooper watched the video all the way through.

And when it was done, he hung his head, pressed his fingers into his eyes hard enough that black-and-white patterns danced. But not hard enough to erase what he had just seen.

He’d thought things were bad before. Bad last night, in Wyoming. Bad this afternoon, in the cemetery. Bad half an hour ago, on the phone with Roger Dickinson.

It turned out he’d had no idea what bad was.

There was no chance, none at all, that Peters would let his family live.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

He might have cried, sitting in that smelly toilet stall in the shitty mall in the heart of DC. He might have. He couldn’t really say.

There seemed to be a few moments missing from his personal history. And he was having a hard time wanting them back.

What he did know was that at some point, he’d stood up, opened the stall door, and walked to the sink. Held his hands under the faucet until it finally came on, then splashed lukewarm water on his face. Again, and again. Paper-toweled dry.

Stared in the mirror. At a dead man, most likely, the father of murdered children.

But not a man who would go quietly.

Cooper tossed the towels in the trash, walked back to the payphone, inserted his last coins, and dialed another number.

Forty-five minutes later he walked into a pub called McLaren’s. Oak and worn stools, coasters with the Guinness logo. A smallish crowd of post-work drinkers, mostly men, mostly watching the game. He’d been there once before, years ago, some work party of Natalie’s. Cooper walked to the bar, signaled the man behind it.

“What can I getcha?”

“You guys have a back room, right?”

“Yeah. Not open now, but if you want to rent it for an event, I can get you the manager’s—”

“I’ll give you…” He opened his wallet and took out a handful of bills. “Three hundred and forty bucks to let me use it for an hour.”

The man looked left, then right. Shrugged, folded his hand around the bills. “Right this way.”

He followed the guy around the end of the bar. The bartender jangled out a ring of keys, found one, and turned the lock. “You want anything?”

“Just privacy.”

“Don’t mess it up, okay? I’m the one who cleans.”

Cooper nodded, said, “Privacy,” then pushed into the back room.

It was a smaller twin of the main room. A bar along one side, the taps unscrewed, pitchers racked, washcloth dangling. Without anyone there, it had an air of sad expectation. Cooper flipped on the lights, then sat down at the abandoned bar. He laid his datapad down, then spread his arms, put them palm first on the polished surface, and waited.

Ten minutes later, he heard the door open. Very slowly, moving only his head, he turned to look.

Bobby Quinn had on the same suit as earlier. His posture radiated fight-or-fight, and screw the other option. One hand rested on his weapon, the holster unsnapped.

“I’m not moving, Bobby. Legs crossed, hands on the bar.”

Quinn glanced around the room. Didn’t relax, but did step inside. He let the door click behind him, then drew the gun. Didn’t point it, which was something.

“Half an hour,” Cooper said. “Like I said on the phone. Then you’ll understand.”

His partner moved to the end of the bar. With his off hand, he reached around his back and came out with a pair of handcuffs. Slid them to Cooper. “Keep your right hand on the bar. Use your left to lock it to the rail.”

“Come on, Bobby—”

The gun came up. “Do it.”

Cooper sighed. He picked up the cuffs, careful to move slowly. Snapped them around his right wrist.

You do this, you’re helpless. If you’re wrong about Quinn, then it’s all over.

He fastened the other end to the brass rail. Gave an experimental tug. A clang and a bite. “Better?”

Quinn holstered his weapon. Walked closer. His face was unreadable, too many things happening at once. “I’ll give you your half hour, because I said I would. But when time is up, I’m going to call a team to bring you in.”

“Like I said on the phone, if you do, I won’t resist.” He tried for a grin. “Much.”

“You resist at all, and I’ll kill you.” It was a simple statement of fact, and all the more jarring for coming from Bobby Quinn, to whom sarcasm and irony were akin to oxygen. “Start talking.”

Cooper took a breath. “I’ve been in deep cover for six months. Since March 12th, when you and I almost stopped the bombing of the Exchange. I was inside. No idea how I survived, but I woke up in a triage tent. When I could walk again, I hitched a ride with a bunch of Marines and went to see Drew Peters. I pitched him a crazy plan: I’d go rogue. Everyone would blame me for the explosion. I’d become a bad guy. Be hunted.”

He talked fast, didn’t waste time on embellishments, just laid out the facts. His time on the run. Building a reputation as a thief. His coming-out party on the El platform. The trip to Wyoming. Meeting Epstein.

“Why? Why do all this?”

“I told you, so that I could get to John Smith and kill him.”

Quinn shook his head. “That’s the goal. I asked why.”

“Oh. My daughter.”

“Kate?”

“She was about to be tested. She would have been sent to an academy. Peters promised to keep her out.” His stomach soured. I’ll take care of your family. “Everything I’ve done, I did for her.”

“Did you find Smith?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Ah-so.”

Cooper started to lean back, stopped when the cuff bit his wrist. He said, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“No. And in twenty minutes, I’m going to bring you in.”

“Jesus, Bobby. I’ve been a DAR agent for the last six months. I mean, teams came after me four times. Four. And in that time, I never killed one agent. Never even hurt one, more than his pride. Why do you think that is?”

“You just killed one.” Quinn’s eyes hard. “In the cemetery.”

“Yeah,” Cooper said. “Well, I’m not an agent anymore. And once you take a look at that,” he jerked his head toward the datapad, “I don’t think you will be either.”

“What is it?”

“Drew Peters’s dirtiest secret. It’s what I was picking up in the cemetery.”

“I thought you were after Smith.”

“So did I. Turns out, I was wrong.”

Quinn wanted to pick up the datapad. Cooper could see it, could read it on him clear as morning sunlight. “Go ahead.”

Bobby looked at him, and Cooper said, “Jesus, man, I’m handcuffed to the bar. What do you think I’m going to do, turn into a bat and fly away?”

A muscle twitched in Quinn’s cheek, and Cooper realized his partner had been about to make a joke. He didn’t, but Cooper knew the man, had sat alongside him for hours, days, years. You’re getting through to him. “Okay, look, I’ll do it. Okay?”

“Slowly.”

Slowly, Cooper picked up his d-pad. Propped it on the rail so they both could see. Clumsy with his left hand, he activated it. Then started the video.

The same room he’d seen before, a hotel or a safe house. Matching furniture with no sense of style, walls painted putty. There was a window, and through it trees.

Director Drew Peters paced. He was younger here. The man’s hair and style hadn’t changed in the whole of the time Cooper had known him, but the lines on his forehead, the sagging beneath his eyes, those had deepened with time.

“When is this?” Quinn asked.

“Five years and between eight and nine months ago.”

“How can you be so—”

“Watch.”

On the screen, Peters walked to the table, picked up a glass of water, sipped at it. There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

Two men in plain suits entered. The kind of men who looked like they were wearing sunglasses even when they weren’t. They nodded at Peters, then checked the room. Finally, one spoke into a middle distance. “We’re clear, Mr. Secretary.”

A man walked into the room. Average height, good smile, conservative suit.

“Hey,” Quinn said. “That’s—”

“Yes.”

That had been Cooper’s first clue as to the age of the video. It had to be at least five years old, because the man who walked through the doors was, at the time, the secretary of defense. A connected man, a savvy politician, the kind people treated respectfully not only because he knew where the bodies were buried, but because he’d put his fair share in the ground himself. Secretary Henry Walker.

Only now, his title was different. It had been for five years. Since 2008…when he’d won his first presidential election. The first of two. Cooper had voted for him in both.

Even watching it again, knowing what was coming, how much worse things got, Cooper felt like he couldn’t breathe. The president’s famous March 12th speech echoed in his inner ear.

Let us face this adversity not as a divided nation, not as norm and abnorm, but as Americans. Let us work together to build a better future for our children.

A cry for tolerance, for humanity. A call to all people to work together.

A lie.

On the screen, the two men shook hands, exchanged pleasantries. Walker dismissed his security. Quinn said, “Okay, Cooper, other than the fact that I feel a little dirty watching this, what’s the point?”

“I’ll show you.” With his left hand, he scrubbed forward to 10:36.

Cooper tapped the pause button. A freeze-frame of the two men shaking hands, the director leaning out of his chair to reach across the table.

Bobby Quinn looked like a man desperate to rewind his life. To go back and make a left turn instead of a right. “I don’t believe it.”

Cooper stared at him. At the topography of his facial musculature, the zygomatic major and minor, the buccinator driving the corners of his mouth. “Yes, you do.”

“It’s not possible,” Quinn said heatedly. “You’re saying that Director Peters planned the massacre at the Monocle?”

“The murder of seventy-three people, including children. Yes.”

“But… why?”

Cooper sighed. “Because all the talk about preventing a war is bullshit. What they really want is to control it. They want to generate and maintain war at a low simmer. They want us all wound up and mistrusting each other. Norms and abnorms, left and right, rich and poor, all of it. The more we fear, the more we need them. And the more we need them, the more powerful they get.”

“He’s the president, Cooper. How much more—”

“That’s right. He went from secretary of defense to president of the United States. What does that tell you? And remember Equitable Services before the Monocle? Limping along in an abandoned paper plant, no funding, no support, rumors of congressional investigations that could send us all to jail? Then an activist who had never been violent before all of a sudden walks into a restaurant and murders everyone. And poof, the rest of the country starts seeing things Drew Peters’s way.”

“But what about the video from the restaurant?”

“The security footage is real. But Peters had an abnorm edit John Smith in later. The shooters work for Peters. Or did. I assume they’re dead now.”

“There you go,” Quinn said. “If that video is fake, why is this one real?”

“Who could fake it?”

“John Smith—”

“No.” Cooper shook his head. “The Monocle could be faked because Smith was relatively unknown, and the footage quality is poor, and especially because it was the DAR that did the investigation. But you can’t fake footage of the president. There’s too much of it available, too many ways to check it, too many people eager to. And why go to such lengths to hide a fake video?

“Besides. How many meetings have you sat in with Drew Peters? You really going to tell me that wasn’t him?”

Quinn said, “So why isn’t it encrypted?”

“I wondered that, too. But then I realized—it’s an insurance policy. No doubt Peters has some sort of fail-safe that tells people where to find this if he dies mysteriously. If it were encrypted, it would defeat the point.

“This whole thing,” Cooper said. “Everything we’ve done for the last years. All the actions, all the terminations. None of it was about truth, about protecting the public. They were just moves in a game we didn’t know about, made by players who don’t even want to win. No one wants to kill all the gifted. They just want to control them. And the rest of the country. And you know what? They do.”

Quinn said, “The terminations?” Going through the same thing Cooper had the night before, the first nibbles of a horror that would soon sink its fangs deep. “You’re saying that some of the people we killed, they—”

“Yeah,” Cooper said. He pitied the guy, wanted to give him time to process it, to begin to deal with the enormity of everything. But that risked Quinn freezing up, and there wasn’t time for that. “And I’m sorry to say this, but it gets worse.”

“How the hell can it get—”

“They have my children.”

“They—who?”

“Peters.”

“Come on, Cooper. That’s paranoid.”

“It’s not. I called home. Roger Dickinson answered.”

“Oh.” Quinn stared. “Oh shit.”

“What?”

His partner played with an imaginary cigarette and looked away. “I couldn’t figure out why they’d put me in charge of the faceless at the cemetery. After all, Dickinson is the one with a hard-on for you. But just before Peters ordered me there, Dickinson left his office like his ass was on fire. Wouldn’t talk to anyone, just bolted out. He must have been—”

“Going to my house. To kidnap my children.”

“Yeah.” Quinn turned to look at him. “I’m sorry, Coop. I didn’t know. I would have stopped him.”

“I know.”

“So what, they want you to turn yourself in? Dickinson will kill you.”

“If I thought it would save Natalie and the kids, I’d sacrifice myself. But they won’t. By going undercover, I’ve given them too good a hand.”

He watched Quinn work it out. “You’re thinking that from the beginning, Peters let you do this because he’d win either way. Either you found Smith and killed him, or else…”

“Or else I volunteered to be the fall guy for real. Yeah. Everything I’ve done the last six months, it looks guilty. And now that I know about this?” Cooper gestured. “No, if I go in, they’ll claim my cover story as true. Peters really will blame me for the March 12th explosion. He’ll serve up my corpse to the media. A huge win for Equitable Services. Proof that the nation is in good hands. Billions of dollars in additional funding.”

“And he can’t have your ex going on CNN, saying that it’s all a lie. Even if she’s not believed, it spoils the PR value.” Quinn nodded. “But how can he get rid of them? Kind of convenient if they just disappeared.”

“Easy. I came back to kill them. Equitable Services tried to stop me, but they were too late. A tragedy, but at least they took down the bad guy. And perhaps if they had more resources…”

“But why would you kill your own—”

“Because I’m a crazy abnorm terrorist. Who knows how those people think. They’re not even people.”

Quinn said, “Jay-sus.” He blew a long breath. “I don’t want to believe this.”

“But you do.”

“I…” Quinn hesitated. “Yeah. I do.”

“I need your help, Bobby. I need to get my children back. And then we have to make sure that this gets out. They can’t get away with it. We can’t let them.”

“Do you know what you’re saying? You’re talking about taking on the president.”

“I’m talking about two terrified children. And I’m talking about telling the truth.”

“Coop, I want to help, but…”

“I know. But remember how I said I wasn’t a DAR agent anymore? Well, are you? After seeing that? You’ve only got two choices, Bobby. You can pretend you don’t know that everything you’ve served is a lie. Or you can help me.”

It really was as simple as that, and Cooper made himself stop. All he’d wanted, back in the cemetery, was half an hour to make the man understand. Now he’d had it. There was no selling Quinn, no convincing him. No rhetorical flourish would make the difference, no appeal to emotion.

Either Bobby Quinn was a good man, or Cooper and his family were dead.

Quinn jammed the pads of his fingers into his eyes. “Shit.” The words were muffled by his hands. Then he straightened and blew a long breath. “So what do we do?”

“Well, to start,” Cooper smiled and tugged at his wrist, “do you think you could unlock me?”

His partner laughed. “Sorry.” He pulled the cuff key from his belt and tossed it over. “The truth shall set you free, right?”

“Something like that. That’s our play, too. We use the video to set a trap for Peters.”

“Sounds like you have a plan.”

“The beginnings of one.”

“Well, that’s a relief. Sure, we’re facing the most powerful covert organization on the planet, and in possession of stolen information that the president would nuke DC to keep private, but at least you have the beginnings of a plan. I was worried for a second.”

“Hey,” Cooper said, “the way I see it, the chance of success just doubled. Now it’s the whole government against two of us.”

“Three,” said a voice behind them.

They both whirled. Quinn went for his weapon, but Cooper caught his partner’s arm.

She stood with her hip popped, one hand leaning on the other side. A pose, cocky and capable, her lips quirked in that sideways grin. “You left without saying good-bye, Nick. A girl might take that wrong.”

Quinn said, “Who the hell are you, and how did you get here?”

Cooper said, “Hello, Shannon.” She looked good. Damn good. He met her gaze, saw all the levels in it, strength, determination, and, beneath it, some hurt. He smiled in a way he hoped was apologetic, then said to Quinn, “She does that.” To Shannon, he said, “When did you get here?”

“About an hour after you.”

“Smith sent you?”

“No, asshole. I came because you need help. John just provided the plane.”

“How did you find me?”

“I didn’t. I found him.” She jerked a thumb at Quinn.

“You’re the girl from the Exchange,” Quinn said. “And the thing with Bryan Vasquez.”

“And you’re Cooper’s playmate.” She pulled out a stool and took a seat. “So. What are we doing, boys?”

Cooper said, “Bringing down the head of Equitable Services and the president of the United States.”

“Oh good. I was afraid this was going to be dull.”

“I try to keep life interesting.”

“Any train rides planned?”

“If I tell you, it’ll spoil the surprise.”

“Don’t do that. I love surprises.”

“Time out.” Quinn looked back and forth, forth and back. “Would you two quit flirting long enough to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Bobby, meet Shannon Azzi. The Girl Who Walks Through Walls.”

“Hiya,” she said, and stuck out a hand.

Looking baffled, Quinn took it.

Cooper laughed. For the first time since he’d heard Dickinson’s voice on the phone, he felt something like hope.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“Jimmy’s Mattresses.”

“This is account number three two zero nine one seven. I need to talk to Alpha.”

“Hold, please.”

The speaker of the disposable cell phone was tinny, but it would serve. They’d picked up a couple of them at a mini-mart en route to Quinn’s apartment, a single in a Mount Vernon Square low-rise. Cooper had been there more times than he could remember, knew the furniture and the layout, had crashed on the couch. Quinn stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the night sky; Shannon splayed in a chair, one lithe leg up on the arm.

“Hello, Nick.” Drew Peters sounded the same as ever. Calm, in control. The same as he’d sounded in the video, proposing the murder of innocent civilians. “Are you on your way in?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“I found the drive, Drew. Taped to the back of Teddy Eaton’s coffin. And I’ve watched it. A nasty little snuff film.”

“Omelets and eggs, Agent Cooper.”

“Just Cooper. I don’t work for you anymore.”

“As you like. You understand the situation, though, yes? Roger was clear in his explanation?”

“Very clear. But we’re not going to do it that way.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“An exchange. The drive for my family.”

“I don’t think so. The drive is worthless. You’ll have made copies by now.”

“No. I haven’t, and I won’t.”

A pause. “Why would I believe that?”

“Because you know that I know that even if this video got out, you could make sure that my family died. I mean even after you let them go. This would ruin you, but you’d still be able to act. Not all of your resources work for the DAR.”

Another pause. “That’s true.”

“So here’s the deal. We meet somewhere we both feel safe. You bring my family; I bring this. We all walk out. You get to go on running your evil empire. And my children get to grow up.”

“I’m not sure you’re in a position to negotiate. For now, your children are perfectly safe, as is your ex-wife. But Dickinson is a true believer. If I give the order, he won’t hesitate to visit a host of violations on them.”

Fire licked his belly and his knuckles went white, but Cooper kept his voice under control. “You’d suffer quite a few in prison, Drew, while your daughters grew up alone. And this posturing is pointless. We both know that you’ll do anything to get the video back. And I’ll do anything to know my family is safe. So let’s cut the bullshit.”

“All right. How about we meet at the Washington Monument? A public place.”

Cooper laughed. “Yeah. And I’ll never hear the shot from the airship. I don’t think so. No, let’s meet at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station.”

“Where you can have a news crew at the ready to film everything. I’m afraid not.”

“Okay. We don’t trust one another. So we set it up so that neither of us has time to prepare a surprise. You name a major street downtown. I’ll pick an address. We’ll meet in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes? No.”

“I’m not going to give you time to get set up, Drew.”

“I understand that. But I’m busy cleaning up your mess right now. There was a firefight in a cemetery in broad daylight. It will take time to make sure there’s no connection to the agency.”

“No connection to you, you mean.”

“Those are the same thing. Let’s meet in two hours.”

“Fine. But we don’t pick a location until the last minute. I’ll call you. Have a street in mind, and don’t mess with me. And if anyone in my family has so much as a bruise, deal’s off and I burn you down.”

“If you call this off, your family will suffer more than bruises.”

“So we both better behave. I’ll call in two hours. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“One last thing.”

“What’s that?”

Cooper said, “How the fuck do you sleep at night, Drew?”

“With a prescription. Grow up. This is the way the world works.” The director hung up the phone.

“Two hours.” Quinn shook his head. “Just like you predicted.”

“Peters is the head of Equitable Services and thinks like it. That makes him easy to anticipate. He wants enough time that he can use his resources, see if he can track me down without the hassle of meeting. There’s always the chance that I screwed up, that someone caught my face on a camera, or that I was calling from a known phone number. A long shot, but worth checking, especially for a man with his own security force. But at the same time, he can’t risk giving me enough time that I start to second-guess myself, decide to go to the media with the video. One hour isn’t enough time, three is too long.”

“What’s to keep him from showing up at the meet with an army?”

“He knows I would spot them. He can’t risk spooking me. And since he won’t know the location in advance, he can’t get snipers set up or teams in place.”

“Still. He’s got to know he’s walking into a trap,” Shannon said.

Cooper shook his head. “That’s what we’ve got going for us. He thinks I’m working alone. He knows my capabilities, what advantages my gift offers. He can plan for that. Counter it.”

“So because he thinks you’re alone, he’ll bring a small force, just enough not to scare you. And because you’re not alone, you think we can take them.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Gee,” Quinn said. “It’s a good thing you’ve got two other assholes wrapped up in this.”

“Yeah,” Cooper said. He locked eyes with his partner, his friend. He knew what it was Quinn was risking, the same as the rest of them. But while Cooper had no choice, and Shannon had her own reasons, Quinn was doing this because it was the right thing to do. And because he’s your friend. Cooper fiddled with the edge of a cushion. Looked out the window. “Look, I want you to know—”

“Stow it,” Quinn said. “Just make sure you pick up the check from now on.”

“Beer’s on me. Forever.”

“You boys are adorable,” Shannon said. “But this is stupid. If Peters picks a street and you pick an address, we won’t be able to plan either. We’ll be walking in blind.”

“No, Ms. Mysterio,” Quinn said. “That’s where I come in.” He glanced at his watch. “Speaking of. I better go to headquarters and gear up. Gimme that burner, I’ll toss it in the river on the way.”

“Be careful, Bobby. They don’t know you’re in this, but Peters will be on high alert. No wrong moves.”

“I’ll be in and out. Hell,” Quinn smiled. “I’ll channel her.”

Two hours.

A hundred and twenty endless minutes to pace.

He’d been moving ever since he left the mall bathroom, and that motion had given him something to think about. Now, though, there was nothing to do but wait. And in that stillness, his imagination kept painting pictures of his children. Of how scared they must be.

Dickinson won’t have hurt them. He’s dangerous, but he’s not a psycho. He probably explained the situation to Natalie, let her manage the children. No point dealing with extra drama.

Even if that was true, it meant Natalie would be the one suffering all of it. No idea what was going on, what deals were being made, maybe even why they’d been taken.

Natalie was strong and smart. If things went the way he planned, she and the kids would be free in a couple of hours. She would be able to handle it.

But his daughter would know something was wrong. Kate was only four, but her gift was powerful. She would know that her mother was scared, would know that Dickinson was not a friend.

How will a four-year-old girl deal with that?

He couldn’t think of an answer he liked.

“You should get some sleep,” Shannon said from the kitchen, where she was rifling through Quinn’s fridge. “Big night ahead.”

“You too.”

“I think your boyfriend is twelve. All he has in his fridge is chocolate milk, mustard, and beer.”

“Yes, please.”

She pulled out two bottles, twisted the caps off, and tossed them toward the trash. The kitchen had a pass-through to the living room, and she set his on the counter. They faced each other, the counter between them. Something always between them, it seemed like.

Shannon took a sip, tipping the bottle up and then wiping her lips with the back of her hand. She looked at him, and he could see her trying to decide what to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For leaving like that. It was stupid.”

“Yeah. Why did you?”

“I don’t know.” He gestured with the beer. “I was confused.”

“And now you’re not?”

“No, I still am. I just don’t care as much. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Because I can help you.”

“Not only for that.” Cooper paused. “While we’re on the subject, though. Why are you doing this? Helping me?”

“Same reason I’ve given you every time you’ve asked. I’m more than willing to fight for my right to exist.”

“Is that the only reason?”

She gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Let me try again. I’m sorry. I panicked. Everything happened fast, and Smith, the way he plays people. I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t using you to play me.”

“You think I slept with you because he told me to?” Her voice was a knife wrapped in tissue paper.

“It occurred to me, all right? It seemed possible.”

“Screw you, Cooper.”

“But then, on the plane here, it hit me. The real reason I’d panicked. Yes, you’d been lying to me since we met. But I’d been lying to you, too. The difference was that you knew that, and I didn’t. And I guess I just felt…stupid. Embarrassed.”

“You’re terrible at apologies, you know that?”

“Yeah. My ex said something about that.” He tried for a smile, but it died on his lips. “Okay, truth?”

“Please.”

“I really like you, Shannon. It’s been a long time since I felt this way about someone. Years. Since Natalie and I split up. And this thing with you, whatever it is, it feels different. You understand parts of me that no one else does. And you’re amazing at work. I’m not used to someone being able to match me.”

“Arrogant much?”

“Come on. Tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t have to. You’re the one apologizing, not me.”

Cooper took a pull on the beer, set it on the counter. “All right. Last try. You know last night when I asked you about the diner, about you saying you hoped I started fresh? I really, really wished I could do what you were suggesting. Walk away. Start a new life. And you were the reason.”

Something in her softened.

Cooper said, “What we’re about to try is insane. It’s unlikely that we’ll get out alive. But if we do, would you like to have dinner with me?”

Shannon quirked that smile. Took a sip of her beer. “Takes you a while to get there, but in the end you do okay.”

“Is that a yes?”

“You think I’m amazing, huh?”

“Is that a yes?”

She shrugged. “If we’re still alive later, ask me then.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

For all the frenetic activity of the day—the tourist-mobbed streets, the abrupt traffic jams, the motorcades that backed everything up, the eternal construction—at night, downtown Washington DC was calm. Restaurants did a steady business, cabs buzzed between hotels, men in suits and women in dresses strolled the sidewalks, but it felt like the pilot light of the city’s furnace. Quinn returned with gear about nine; by nine thirty, the three of them were atop a parking deck in the heart of downtown. The skyline glowed three-sixty, the most famous buildings in the world, bright white and spotlit. Bobby sat cross-legged on the hood of his car, laptop open. Shannon had climbed up on the concrete lip of the deck, was walking it back and forth like a tight rope, a five-story drop on one side and pure calm in her posture.

Cooper was reassembling his weapon. Quinn had brought it along with the rest of the gear. His trip to headquarters had gone without incident; he regularly requisitioned supplies like these, and the guards hadn’t blinked. The gun was a Beretta, Cooper’s preferred manufacturer. An agency weapon, and thus perfectly cleaned and maintained, but the army taught you not to fire a weapon you hadn’t taken apart and put back together, and it was a habit he’d never tried to break. If nothing else, it passed the time.

Speaking of…

He glanced at Quinn, saw the man already looking at him. Nodding.

Cooper took out the second burner cell phone and dialed. Gave his code to the operative who answered, “Jimmy’s Mattresses.” Waited for Peters. When his former boss answered, Cooper said, “Couldn’t find me, huh?”

“I told you, I was cleaning up your—”

“Yeah. What’s the street?”

“7th Avenue, Northwest.”

“Stand by.” He muted the phone. “7th Avenue, Northwest.”

Quinn began typing immediately, his fingers flying across the keys. “Let’s see…”

Cooper stared out at the night, tapped his fingers. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. “Bobby…”

“Here we go. 900 7th Avenue. Hingepoint Productions, tenth floor. Give him…ten minutes exactly.”

Cooper unmuted the phone. “900 7th Avenue Northwest. Hingepoint Productions, on the tenth floor. 9:48. If you’re not there by 9:49, deal’s off.”

“I need more time—”

“Negative.”

Peters sighed. “900 7th Avenue, Northwest, confirmed.”

Cooper hung up the phone. “Let’s roll.”

The parking deck had been at 10th and G, about a third of a mile away. Bobby had been right on the money. He’d been perusing buildings within a narrow radius for the last half an hour, preparing options on every street. The downtown was a snarl of one-ways and traffic lights, and since Peters would have to be driving—no other way to handle Cooper’s family—Bobby had suggested turning that to their advantage, picking somewhere they could get to faster on foot. When it came to planning the logistics of an op, the man was unmatched.

The building was the tallest nearby. An office complex, and despite the hour, a number of the windows were lit up. Made sense. Official business hours might end at six, but in this town someone was always working late.

The lobby was at once attractive and bleak, a place meant to impress without creating the desire to linger. A janitor hunched over a floor buffer, polishing away the day’s scuffs. Broad hallways branched off to elevators. Behind an information desk, a security guard in a navy suit straightened as they entered.

“Can I help you folks?”

“Department of Analysis and Response,” Quinn said, and held up his badge. “Where’s your security office?”

“Sir? I—”

“We don’t have time to explain. Move.”

“Yes, sir. Right this way.” He slid off the chair, a little stiff but obviously fit. “What’s this in regard to?”

“It’s in regard to none of your business, son,” Cooper said.

The man didn’t like that, but didn’t question it, either. Former military, Cooper could read in his posture, and used to following orders. Good. A building that hired soldiers and cops should have the security they needed.

The guard pulled a badge on a retracting clip, used it to open a low barrier, and held it in place while they all walked through. They strode past a bank of shining elevators, down a narrow hall that ended in a door that read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. A closed-circuit camera was mounted above it, pointed down. The guard knocked twice, then used his badge to open the door without waiting for a response. “This is our command center—”

Cooper chopped him at the base of the neck and stepped over his body as it fell. Took in the room without stopping, twenty feet square, two men in chairs in front of a glowing projection screen. He got to the first as he rose, punched him in the throat, then grabbed his lapels and hurled him into the other, the two colliding and tangling, an office chair rolling sideways at the impact, banging into a trash can, paper spilling. Cooper followed, dodged through the mess of arms and legs, and delivered a quick left jab and right cross to the other guard’s chin. The man’s head snapped back, cracked into the tile floor, and his eyes fluttered as his body went limp.

“Freeze!”

The third guard had been by a row of file cabinets at the back, out of his line of sight. Eating dinner, apparently, half a sandwich abandoned atop wax paper. The man had a Taser out and held in steady hands, aimed at Cooper, finger inside the trigger.

Quinn is standing behind me. I can dodge the electrodes, but he can’t. A Taser is nonlethal and doesn’t guarantee loss of consciousness, but it will scramble him, take him off his game.

And without him, this is over.

Cooper straightened slowly. Kept his hands up. “Listen—”

The guard twisted the Taser, pointed it at his own stomach, and pulled the trigger. Electrodes leaped from the barrel and jammed into his white dress shirt. There was a loud crackling and a flash of sparks. He went rigid, every muscle straining at once, and then toppled like a mannequin.

Suddenly revealed behind him, Shannon smiled. “Oops.”

Amazing.

She winked at him, then dropped, took cuffs from the guard’s belt, and locked him up. Cooper secured the others the same way. “Sedatives?”

“In the bag. Ten cc.”

Cooper dug through and found a small black satchel with a hypodermic. He removed the cap, tapped out the bubble, then injected each of the guards in turn. By the time he’d straightened, Quinn was already in front of the projection screen, his fingers dancing through the air. “All right, all right.”

“What have you got?”

“I got art, boss. I’m now the supreme commander of a nice suite of cameras and remote override on the door locks.” The projection was four feet across, a glowing display hanging in midair. As Quinn moved and gestured, the screen responded, displaying video from various cameras: hallways, elevators, the lobby, all of it high definition and bright as a mirror. Satisfied, Quinn opened his laptop and propped it on the table. Dug in his gear bag and pulled out a small case. Inside, cradled in foam, was a row of tiny earpieces. He handed one to each of them. “Testing.”

Cooper gave his partner the thumbs-up. Shannon said, “You boys do have good toys.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has entered the building,” Quinn said. On the screen, two men Cooper didn’t recognize stepped into the lobby. They wore jump boots instead of dress shoes, and they moved in graceful sync, checking the room, each knowing where the other would be looking. Each had a hand inside their suit jacket.

The next people through the door were his family.

Natalie was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, probably the same outfit she’d been wearing when Dickinson came for her. She looked lovelier than he remembered, but her face was pale and her shoulders tight.

Their children stood on either side of her, each holding one of her hands.

The world slipped and wobbled. Cooper felt a sick-sweet nausea, a blend of emotions competing at full force. It was the first time he’d seen them since the night everything changed, and he was shocked at how much they had grown. Todd was a full inch taller and ten pounds heavier, and Kate’s face was losing the round softness of baby fat.

Six months, gone. The firsts that would have happened in that period, the laughter, the questions and fears and the ever-disappearing hours of them napping in his lap. The loss was palpable, tugged at him with physical weight.

Worse was the terror. To see them here, in the care of monsters, and to know that it was his fault. If anything happened to either of them, my God, the world would crack, the sky would shatter, the sun would wink out, and all that would be left was a howl of wind across the emptiness.

As if to focus that fear, two more men stepped in behind them. Roger Dickinson, wary and alert, his quarterback good looks hiding a ruthless devotion that would make anything permissible. And Drew Peters, trim and neat as ever, cool gray as a winter morning. He carried a metal-backed briefcase that looked heavy.

I’ll take care of your family.

“Okay,” Quinn said, hands swirling in the air. The screen broke into quadrants showing external views. “No sign of other teams. And I’m monitoring DAR transmissions…” he looked at the laptop, “got no notable action within half a mile. Looks like Peters didn’t want to risk spooking you.”

Cooper didn’t respond, just stared. The two in front were good, he could tell. No surprise, but the fact that he didn’t recognize them meant that Peters was using assets who weren’t part of the conventional Equitable Services structure. Probably part of his private team, the men he uses to clean up messes. They’ll know what you can do and be ready for it.

Two more men followed. One took up a position by the door; the other started toward the empty information desk. The advance guards headed for the elevator. Natalie stopped, turned over her shoulder to look at Peters. Said something.

“What’s she saying?”

“Sorry, boss. No audio.”

On the monitor, Peters shook his head. Dickinson stepped forward and put his hand on Natalie’s arm. His fingers curled tight. Cooper fought an urge to punch the wall. The group began moving again, heading toward the elevator.

The janitor shut off the floor buffer and straightened. By his posture, it was clear he was asking them what they were doing. Without releasing Natalie, Roger Dickinson turned, pulled a gun from inside his suit, pointed it casually, and shot the janitor in the head.

At this distance, through the door, the bullet sounded like a firecracker.

On the screen, blood and gray matter spattered across the clean marble floors. The janitor crumpled.

Cooper was almost to the door before he realized he’d started moving. But Shannon was in front, wrapping her arms around him and planting a shoulder in his chest. “Nick, no!”

“Get out of my—”

“No. He’s dead, and if you go out there, so are your children.”

Cooper put a hand against her shoulder and—

Two men in front, ready. They’ll be the first. Slide on the floor and fire, they won’t be expecting it, you can take both.

Then stand up, run to the corner, take aim on…

Dickinson, a gun in his hand, standing beside your family?

Peters, behind them?

Two additional shooters in widely-spaced positions?

—let it slip down her arm. He took a deep breath. Facing them now was suicide. Hell, that was probably even part of the point; Dickinson knew he was nearby, wanted to goad him into a stupid move.

“Cooper?” Quinn asked dryly. “We good?”

“Yeah.” He shook himself free of Shannon, but gently, and she let him. “Yeah. What’s happening?”

“Rear guard is moving on the body. Everyone else is heading for the elevator.”

“All right.” He took another breath, turned back to Quinn. His partner had cycled the images to follow the group’s motion. The time code read 9:46. “You’ve got full control?”

“Just as God intended.”

“Good. You can call the ball from here. Do you have a layout of the office?”

Quinn turned to the laptop, pulled open an architectural drawing, and made a few motions. “Hingepoint Productions. A graphic design firm. Their tagline is ‘Technology folds into art.’ Cute, huh?”

Shannon said, “You can get a floor plan of any place? Just like that?”

“That’s why we’re Equitable Services, sweetheart.”

Cooper leaned in. The diagram was simple enough, showed an open-plan office, rows of cubicles, the basic layout. “Can you pull it up on the cameras?”

“No. Building security covers common areas only. But I was able to remotely unlock the door.”

“Okay. Shannon, you go up the stairs, I’ll take the elevator. They’re expecting me to be alone. They’ll be keyed up and focused on me. Should make it easy for you to do your thing.”

“They’re heading up.” Quinn typed in the air, and the whole screen filled with the inside of an elevator. The two shooters in front, then Natalie and his children, with Peters and Dickinson in back. One of the shooters pressed the button for the tenth floor.

There was no predicting the janitor. But everything else is going as you hoped. With Quinn watching from here and Shannon walking through walls, you can turn a losing situation into a winner. Let them get into the office and take position. You go in, draw their attention. Shannon gets behind, turns the tables. You finish it.

Drew Peters, you die tonight.

The elevator rose, the numbers changing. Second floor. Third. Fourth.

One of the shooters leaned forward and pressed a button.

The elevator stopped on the fifth floor.

“What are they—”

The two shooters stepped out. One turned and gestured to Natalie. She shook her head. The shooter drew a pistol. Pointed it.

At Todd.

There was probably only a hundred feet of distance between Cooper and his son, but it may as well have been a continent. Five floors of concrete and steel.

Natalie stepped between the man and their son. And then as Cooper watched, she wound up and slapped him. Then she turned, took their children’s hands, and led them off the elevator and into the hall.

Drew Peters pressed the button to close the elevator doors.

Cooper’s brain was razor blades and electricity. Everything whirling and cutting, crackling and snapping. Distantly, he could hear Quinn saying what he already knew, that they were splitting up.

Peters has a plan of his own.

“Can you shut down the elevator?”

“I’ll try, but I don’t…” The floor numbers continued changing. Sixth floor, seventh floor, eighth floor…

Cooper wanted to scream, wanted to explode, wanted to flex his muscles and shatter the world. His family so close, and him helpless.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do it, not before they…”

Ninth floor.

“Stop trying. Follow the others. Where are they going?”

Quinn gestured frantically, cycling through cameras so fast Cooper could barely process them, elevator, lobby, parking garage, rooftop, landing on an image of a hallway. The shooters moved away, one in front, one behind, his family in the middle. They walked to the end of the hall, turned the corner.

And were gone.

“Get them back!”

“That’s the only camera we have on the fifth floor.” Quinn’s voice grim. “Cooper, I’m sorry. Looks like one camera in the elevator lobby of each floor, but that’s all. Security for the common areas only. The offices would want privacy.”

“How many offices on that floor?”

“Umm…ten suites.”

Ten suites. Each with multiple places to hide.

“Let’s go.” Shannon’s voice sounded pinched. “We can get to the fifth floor, work together. They won’t be expecting both of us.”

The elevator reached the tenth floor. Drew Peters and Roger Dickinson stepped off. They appeared in another monitor, the elevator lobby for that floor, and started walking. Peters transferred the briefcase to his other hand.

Cooper looked at the clock: 9:47. “No.”

“What?” Quinn and Shannon together.

“I’ve got two minutes to get to that office. If I don’t show up for the meeting, if I’m even a minute late, Peters will know something is happening. Best-case scenario, he’ll call his team and they’ll all abort. Worst case, he’ll kill my family and take his chances calling down an army on this building.”

“So…what do we do?”

“I need to you to go after them.” He turned to her. “You have to save my family.”

Her eyes were wide. Scared, he realized, an expression he hadn’t seen on her before. “Nick, I—”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Please.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Meet Peters. I’ll buy you the time you need.” Something dark and heavy slipped inside of him. “Get my family out of here.”

He wanted to say more, to both of them, but there wasn’t time. He just headed for the door. Shannon followed a moment later.

They moved swiftly down the hall to the elevator corridor and paused just before it.

In his ear, Quinn said, “One man by the elevator. The other is in the lobby behind the desk, pretending to be security.”

Shannon said, “Is the elevator guard looking this way?”

“No.”

She slid around the corner.

Cooper stood still, his body raging. The clock in his head counted down. His thoughts whirled, Natalie and Kate and Todd and men with guns and Drew Peters and President Walker.

This ends tonight. One way or the other.

“Shannon is in position. Go in two, one, now.”

Cooper stepped around the edge of the corner. Shannon had shifted in where the guard wasn’t looking, on the far side, and as Cooper started forward she coughed and pressed the call button. The guard whirled, one hand flying to his coat, and Cooper could read his thoughts, see him wondering how the hell this girl had gotten here without him noticing. Shannon smiled, just an office worker waiting for the elevator. The guard studied her, first relaxing and then stiffening when he heard Cooper’s footsteps. He started to turn.

Too late.

Cooper grabbed his head in both hands and wrenched savagely, put all the anger into it, and the man’s neck snapped and his body went limp and dead.

The elevator dinged. Cooper dragged the body on, pulling by the man’s lolling head. Shannon pushed the buttons for five and ten.

“You two are scary together,” Quinn said in both their ears. “Looks like the lobby guard didn’t hear a thing. Good hunting.”

The doors closed, and the elevator began to rise. Shannon said, “Nick, look—”

He cut her off. “You can do this.”

“I just—”

“Listen,” he said and then kissed her. She was briefly startled but returned the kiss, the elevator pinging off floors as their tongues danced. A kiss for luck and a cry for help and as clear a statement as he could think to make, and then the elevator stopped. He put one hand on her cheek. “I trust you.”

She straightened her shoulders. “Buy me the time.”

“Whatever it costs.”

Shannon stepped off the elevator and turned right. Cooper pressed the door close button, come on, come on, and then the elevator was in motion again.

Nothing to do now but wait for the future to arrive.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

The doors slid open. Cooper took a deep breath and walked through them.

The hallway was corporate chic, gray carpet with a subtle pattern, beige walls, recessed lighting, a backlit glass display board listing the company names. Quinn said, “Turn right, third office on your left.”

Cooper started down the hall. “Any sign of backup?”

“Negative. Local DAR frequencies are quiet, and the only phone I’ve monitored out of the building is on the third floor. A woman explaining to her husband that she’ll be home late.”

The office doors were heavy glass with bright metal handles, business names etched in the glass. He passed a lobbyist’s office and a real estate firm, rounded the corner, saw the third. Hingepoint Productions, the first word spelled out lowercase and boxed in a design. A faint double-chime pinged as he stepped through the door.

Quinn had said this was a graphic design firm, and the décor looked it. The near walls were painted a risky shade of orange that worked, and in place of paintings, skateboard decks were bolted to the wall, each a miniature work of art, robots and monsters, graffiti and skylines.

The floor plan had shown cubicles, but now he saw they were half-cubes, coming up maybe four feet. The ceiling was exposed, conduit and air-conditioning hanging from the girders. Quinn said, “I’ve unlocked all offices on the fifth floor. Shannon has checked the first, no luck. She’s moving on.”

Cooper moved down the aisle and stepped into the office proper. He could see clear across it in all directions. The studio took up a corner of the building, the exterior walls glass from floor to ceiling. With the overhead lights on, they were dark mirrors, bouncing the space back upon itself. In the precise center of the office there was a long conference table surrounded by chairs.

Beside it stood Drew Peters and Roger Dickinson.

Cooper strolled forward. Calm and steady. Taking his time; the longer he could stall, the longer Shannon would have.

Dickinson looked the same as ever. Handsome, good posture, an alert readiness. His right hand was itching to jerk the pistol from his shoulder holster.

“Hello, Nick,” Peters said. For the first time, Cooper noticed that Peters had a rodent-ish look. Something in his neat bearing and small mouth, his rimless glasses. The briefcase he’d been carrying sat on the table in front of him. “Nice to see you again.”

The conference space was wide open. Cooper walked to the table. Stood opposite the two of them.

Remember, they don’t know that you know, or that you have help. If they suspect either of those things for a second, this all comes crashing down. “Where’s my family?”

“They’re nearby.”

“Not good enough.” He took a step back, eyes forward.

“I’ll prove it to you,” Peters said, “but I’ll need you to put down your gun.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Of course you do. But it’s okay. I’ll go first.” Peters reached for the briefcase, opening it slowly. The inside of the lid was a monitor, which glowed to life. The screen held white for a moment, then cut to a video feed.

Natalie sat in a leather chair at one end of a small room, Todd to her left, Kate to her right. The kids had pads of paper in front of them and appeared to be drawing. Kate, younger, was lost in it, but Natalie was leaning into Todd, trying to encourage him. Distracting them, Cooper realized, trying to keep them calm. The wall behind them was glass, the Capitol dome glowing in the distance. The two gunmen stood nearby, weapons out. One looked at the camera, the other at Natalie.

“That’s quite a woman you divorced, Nick. A wonderful mother. And your children. Beautiful.”

Cooper stared at the image, at his children, the reasons for every action he’d taken. Reason enough to set the world on fire. Natalie glanced up, directly into the monitor, as if she was staring at him.

How?

The camera, he realized. They would have set that up in front of them, and she was smart enough to know it would be for his benefit. It wasn’t “as if” she was looking at him; she was staring at him. The look in her eyes a plea. Not for her, but for Kate and Todd.

A plea, and something else. What?

“Now. Your gun. Gently, please.”

It wasn’t that Natalie’s eyes moved. They didn’t. It was that she thought about moving them, thought about flickering them to the left. That thought translated into the tiniest subdermal motion, the kind of thing he could see.

The kind of thing she knows you can see.

She’s giving you a hint.

Warmth bloomed in his chest. The women in his life were amazing.

“All I see is a conference room with the Capitol in the background,” he said. “They could be anywhere.”

“Let’s not play games, Nick. You know how far I’m willing to go. Your gun.”

In his ear, Quinn said, “Checking.”

Cooper hesitated as if thinking about it. Then, slowly, he reached around his back and took out the pistol. Dickinson tensed, a coiled spring begging to explode. Using just his thumb and forefinger, Cooper set the weapon down and pushed it to slide across the table.

Quinn said, “Got it. Suite 508. The conference room is in the southeast corner.”

Shannon said, “On my way.”

Cooper said, “There. Now how about Roger does the same?”

Dickinson laughed. Peters gave his thin smile. “I don’t think so. We’re both aware of your abilities. Now, where’s the drive?”

“It’s safe.”

“How nice to hear. Where?”

“If I tell you, how do I know you won’t kill them anyway?”

“You have my word.”

“That’s not carrying as much weight with me as it used to, Drew.”

“It’s going to have to do. I told you, you’re not in a position to negotiate. Give me what I want and I’ll let you all go.”

Dickinson said, “I bet it’s in his pocket. Let me take him.”

Shannon said, “Nick, I’m in the office, outside the conference room. Going now.”

“No, Roger.” Peters paused. Then he said, “Shoot Cooper’s son on the count of three.”

On the monitor, one of the guards raised his gun, pointed it at Todd—

The guards can hear him.

The speakerphone. The call light is on. They’re listening in.

Shannon is stepping into that room now. She can take the guards…unless Peters or Dickinson yell a warning from up here.

Which they will if they’re watching the monitor.

—as Peters said, “Three. Two.”

“Okay!” Cooper took a quick step forward, and both Peters and Dickinson jumped, turned their full attention on him. “I’ve got it here.” He reached in his pocket, felt the slim profile of the stamp drive. He didn’t want to risk losing hold of it, even for a moment. It was the only proof he had of the monstrosity he had helped create. Once he let it go, everything could change. The only chance for some sort of justice could vanish.

It’s justice or your children.

Cooper pulled the drive from his pocket. It took all his effort not to glance at the monitor. His children, helpless, and him up here, powerless, and Dickinson right there, hungry, his hand already flexing. Cooper kept his fingers curled around the drive, didn’t let them see it. They wouldn’t risk making a move until they were sure he wasn’t bluffing. He held the moment as long as he dared, his heart pounding. Stepped forward, lowered his hand over the table. Opened his fingers.

The drive fell to the table.

Peters zeroed in on it, eyes hungry and triumphant.

A flash of movement on the monitor. Cooper told himself not to look, but it was too late, his gift beyond his control, needing data, reading situations.

Dickinson staring at him. Tracking his eyes. Following them.

They both watched as, on the monitor, Shannon threw an elbow into the throat of a gunman.

To the guards, Dickinson yelled, “Kill them!” as his hand flew inside his jacket.

Cooper spun and bolted for the nearest cubicle, leaving the drive on the table. A shot from behind, and drywall exploded. He kept moving, feeling Dickinson tracking him, firing again and again, not quite catching him, and then he was out of sight behind a low cube. He dropped to his knees and quickly crawled for the next one, bullets punching through the fabric walls.

Peters will go for the drive.

Nothing he could do about that. The conference room would be lethal. He wasn’t a superhero who could dodge bullets. Being able to see where someone intended to shoot gave him a leg up, but against a professional like Dickinson, in an open space, it wouldn’t be enough.

Had Shannon taken out both gunmen? No way to know, and no time to wonder. There was another shot, and another ragged hole blown in a fabric wall. A monitor exploded.

Cooper stayed low, hurried along the aisle between the cubicles. Pictured the floor plan, trying to place himself on it. The design studio was large, maybe fifty employees. The open plan meant that if he stood up, Dickinson would be able to see him. On the other hand, if he didn’t stand up, his own gift was nullified. Without being able to see what was going on, he was just prey, scurrying from cover to cover.

He looked around. Two cubes near him, one stacked with papers and folders, the other neat and decorated, someone making an effort to turn a gray fabric cage into a cozy living room: a recliner, a lamp, framed photos on the desk. Nothing resembling a weapon in either, at least not a weapon he’d match against a handgun. Glanced upward: girders, pipes, hanging banks of fluorescent lights.

At some distance, a faint double ping. The door chime.

Quinn would have warned him if any more threats had come into the building. Which meant that sound was Peters leaving. With the drive.

Everything was falling apart.

Cooper crept into the well-decorated cube, took one of the photos off the desk. The glass was bright and reflected a ghostly image of himself. He eased it up above the edge of the fabric wall. It was a long way from a mirror, but it gave a hint of what was going on, the overheads glowing in it, and motion, Dickinson somehow ten feet tall. The table. The agent had climbed on top of it for a better view. Cooper pulled the picture down before the man spotted it.

“Come on, Cooper,” Dickinson said. “Come out and I’ll make it quick. Just like your children.”

Bile surged in his throat. He whispered, “Shannon? You okay?”

No response.

Quinn said, “Coop, I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve got no feed, and she’s not answering.”

“I recognized your terrorist girlfriend,” Dickinson said, “but I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”

It was a bluff. A way to taunt him into the open. It had to be.

“And that little stunt cost your family’s lives. Sorry about that, but we did warn you.”

He closed his eyes, leaned back against the cubicle wall.

“Ahh, don’t sweat it, Cooper. Kids are replaceable. What’s one or two gone?”

Nothing from Quinn. Nothing from Shannon. He’d caught only the tiniest flash of her on the monitor, a move to disable one of the guards, but there had been two in the room. Skilled killers on high alert.

His gift ran ahead of him again, collated the data, jumped to its conclusion.

Your family is dead.

Cooper had been at a scene once where a car had collided with an agent and pinned him against a metal barrier, shattering everything from the ribs down, severing both legs at midthigh. Massive physical damage, unsurvivable. What had haunted him most, though, was that the man was calm. He didn’t scream, didn’t seem to feel any pain.

Some wounds were too enormous to feel.

A strange dark purity flowed through him. It was almost sweet. If his family was gone, there wasn’t much point in going on. Not many reasons to live. Just one.

You’re going to die, Roger. And so is Peters.

He ducked low, left the cubicle, and scurried down the aisle. Kept his shoulder against the near wall, visualizing the angle Dickinson could see. Climbing on top of the conference table would give him the high ground, generally a tactical advantage. But it came with limitations, too.

A gunshot, and then another. Nothing exploded near him, though. Dickinson was blind-firing, trying to draw him out.

I’m coming out, Roger. Don’t you worry.

He moved along the aisle back toward the entrance. On the wall between two mounted skateboards he saw what he’d been looking for. But it was a long exposed sprint to reach it. No way to get there without being seen.

He dropped to a runner’s crouch, ready to sprint. Then, with a looping toss, he threw the picture frame as far behind as he could.

Dickinson reacted immediately, twin gun blasts. Cooper didn’t pause, just launched himself into a sprint for the far wall, covering a dozen yards in seconds. He heard glass shatter behind him, the picture frame hitting something. Dickinson would have processed it for the distraction it was. He’d have his gun up and be tracking, looking for motion.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except killing. Killing, and the fact that Cooper had made it to the bank of light switches he’d spotted on the lobby wall. He smacked them all in one swiping blow. The fluorescents died.

Darkness fell, pure as fury.

Cooper turned and stood up. No need to hide now. When the lights had been on, Cooper had been prey, and Dickinson had been a predator.

With the lights out, Cooper was a shadow in the dark. And Dickinson was a silhouette standing on a conference table, bathed in the glow of the monitor Peters had brought. He may as well have been in a spotlight.

The agent had a gun in each hand, his own in the right, Cooper’s in the left, and he raised them both and fired in the general direction of the light switches. But Cooper was no longer there.

And the twin muzzle flashes would only make things worse for him. Rob him of what limited night vision he’d have.

Cooper moved steadily, not running, not risking tripping or making a sound. Just watching Dickinson as he spun and flailed in the dark. By the time he reached the conference table, the other agent had realized his mistake. Dickinson jumped down, landing hard.

Cooper stepped forward and twisted the guns from the man’s hands.

Then he put them both against Roger Dickinson’s chest and pulled the triggers until the slides locked back.

What was left of the agent fell limp and wet. Cooper dropped the guns on top of him.

He walked to the table. To the monitor.

His family was dead.

Now he just had to face it. To look at the monitor and see the end of the world.

Cooper forced himself to face it.

The screen showed a conference room, the Capitol dome glowing in the distance.

It showed one of the shooters on the ground, splayed flat.

It showed the other pulling himself to his feet, woozy, his fingers scrabbling at the table for help.

What it did not show was the bodies of his family.

God bless you, Shannon. My girl who walks through walls.

“Coop?” Quinn’s voice in his ear. “I just picked up Shannon in the number three elevator. She’s got your family with her. She’s bleeding pretty bad from the right side of her head—must have taken a hit that disabled the transmitter. But she’s giving a thumbs-up to the camera, and everyone else looks fine.”

For a moment he let himself feel it. A feeling as if he could flex and blow the roof open, a feeling like his heart might burst.

Quinn said, “Bad news is, I’m getting a lot of traffic on law enforcement frequencies. A small army is headed our way. Time to go.”

“Where’s Peters?”

“He’s not with you?”

“No. And he’s got the drive.”

“What? How?”

“No time to explain. Has he shown up on your screens?”

“No. He didn’t go through the elevator lobby.”

The smart thing to do was get out, escape with Quinn and Shannon and his family. Hide somewhere and think of their next move. Let Peters walk away with the only evidence.

Cooper turned and ran for the exit. Through the lobby, out the door, the chime ringing behind him. “Quinn, are there cameras in the stairwells?”

“Negative.”

Turned left on a hunch, kept going, found the stairwell at the end. He pushed open the door, stepped into a brightly lit concrete space. “Do they exit to the outside?”

“Yeah, of course, that’s code in case of fire,” Quinn said, and then, “Oh shit.”

Cooper started down, jumping a flight at a time, his hand trailing down the metal railing. Peters would have made it to the street by now. Vanished into—

He couldn’t be sure that Dickinson would take me. If he were, he’d have stayed to help.

Since he didn’t, he suspected I might win.

And he knows that if I did, I’d come after him.

He won’t do what you expect.

—the night. Cooper caught himself on a handrail, turned the other way, sprinted upward. His calves burning and lungs screaming. Past the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth.

Quinn said, “Shit. Cooper, I’ve got a helicopter inbound, ETA forty-five seconds.”

Sneaky, Drew. Very sneaky. Cooper said, “Good.”

“Huh?”

“Get out of here. Get Shannon out, get my family out. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous.”

“Cooper—”

“Now. That’s an order.”

The flight above the twelfth ended in a door. Cooper hit it at a run, the thing flying open to expose the roof. Gravel and the bulk of industrial air conditioners, the sudden cool of the evening air and the buzz of the city all around, and faint but growing louder, the whap of helicopter rotors.

The director was at the southeast edge of the building, in a clear space just barely broad enough for a helicopter to land.

A flash of an image, San Antonio, the rooftop with Alex Vasquez. Chasing her to the edge of the building, her body a silhouette against the night sky.

Peters heard him when he was about ten feet away, whirled. He said, “No,” and reached around his back. Cooper caught his arm, twisted it forward, then spun to bring the force of his other forearm down against the director’s elbow, which snapped with a sick pop. Drew Peters screamed, and the gun dropped from his limp fingers.

Cooper held him up with one hand, then used the other to dig in the man’s pockets. The stamp drive was in the front right. He took it, then gripped the man by his lapels and marched him backward. Three steps took them to the edge of the building. The skyline burned behind, a wash of lights on marble and monuments. The White House was lit from below, regal and imposing. He wondered if President Walker was there right now, if he was sitting in the Oval Office, or putting on a bathrobe and crawling into bed.

The chopper grew closer. A spotlight speared down from it, swinging back and forth, playing across the buildings. Hunting.

Peters’s face was sheened with shock-sweat, his eyes wide. But his voice was strangely level as he said, “You want to kill me? Go ahead.”

“Okay.” He marched Peters a half step back.

“Wait!” The heel of the man’s dress shoe slipped and scuffled at the edge. “This is bigger than me and you. If you do this, the world will burn.”

“Still hoping I’m a true believer, huh?”

“I know you are.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I still do believe. But not in you, and not in your dirty little game.”

“It’s not a game. It’s the future. You’re going to have to choose sides.”

“Yeah,” Cooper said. “I’ve heard that.” He yanked his old mentor close, then shoved outward with all his strength.

As Drew Peters flew off the edge of the roof, he crossed the beam of the helicopter searchlight. A flailing rag doll a hundred feet above the concrete. And for a fraction of a second, the dazzling beam seemed to hold him up.

But only for a fraction of a second.

CHAPTER FORTY

It took him an hour and a half to get clean.

If done directly, the walk from the office building at 900 7th Street NW to the bench overlooking the Lincoln Memorial would only take about twenty minutes. Thirty if you strolled, enjoyed the route, which was one of the most famous in the world. Past the East Wing of the White House, the lights burning inside the windows at all hours. The Washington Monument, a spear in the heart of the night, the airplane warning light blinking slowly. The rippling reflections of the pond in Constitution Garden. The shiny black scar of the Vietnam Memorial bisecting the hillside. And finally the epic neoclassical bulk of the Lincoln Memorial itself. The broad marble steps leading up to the fluted columns, the colonnade glowing from spotlights within, somber old Honest Abe staring out in contemplation, as if weighing the country he had led.

But Cooper hadn’t gone directly. His first priority had been getting out of the building. The stairwell had given him access to the street. From there, he’d headed north and then east, hearing the telltale sounds of converging force. Quinn hadn’t been kidding about a small army; Peters must have summoned all nearby law enforcement. This being Washington DC, the most heavily policed city in the nation, that meant not only DAR teams, but also metropolitan police, Capitol police, transit police, park police, Secret Service uniformed division, and God knew how many others.

And as none of them seemed to know what was going on or for whom they were looking, the best description of it was “train wreck.”

Cooper assumed that might have been part of the point, that Peters was focusing on getting maximum manpower in place and then quarterbacking from the air. The confusion would give him plenty of latitude to write the story however he liked; probably, that rogue-agent-turned-abnorm-terrorist, Nick Cooper, had kidnapped his family before being cornered in this building by Equitable Services. All the extra force would look good, a blow for interagency cooperation that still assured the real credit went to the DAR.

Sorry about that, Drew. I guess falling a dozen stories onto concrete is going to mess up your plan.

The good news was that without a quarterback, all those forces spent most of their time tripping over one another. Sirens and lights, SWAT teams and the faceless, barricades and badges. Cooper used the confusion to get a little distance, and after that, the rest was routine. He tracked in and out of buildings, rode the Metro one stop north and then two south, circled the same block twice in each direction, and then finally set off across the Mall.

An hour and a half later, he was sitting on the park bench, staring back at Abraham Lincoln. Still twenty minutes before he could rendezvous with Quinn and Shannon.

Twenty minutes before he could see his children.

Twenty minutes to decide the fate of the world.

Cooper had his datapad out, the stamp drive slotted. He’d logged on and prepped the video file for distribution. He’d learned from John Smith’s mistake; instead of sending it to a handful of journalists who could be silenced, he’d prepped it for upload to a public video sharing system. All he had to do was press send and it would spread like wildfire. In an hour it would have propagated to thousands of people; by morning it would be everywhere, on every news channel, every website. The whole world would know the ugly truth.

All he had to do was press send.

What had Peters said? “This is bigger than me and you. If you do this, the world will burn.”

It would certainly mean the end of this administration. A president caught on tape authorizing the murder of innocent citizens? He’d be crucified, face jail time, maybe worse.

All of which was fine with Cooper. But the problem with striking sparks was that fire wasn’t easy to control. How far would this one go?

Faith in the government, already at an all-time low, would plummet. In their hearts, Americans already didn’t believe that their leaders cared about them. People thought of politicians in the most jaded and cynical terms, and with some good reason. But it was a big step to discover the government was ordering their murder.

And Equitable Services. To have even a chance at survival, it would have to disavow Peters, claim he was a fanatic operating outside of bounds. But even then, the agency might be destroyed.

Which wasn’t entirely a good thing. Yes, Peters had misused the agency. But the threat from violent abnorms was real. Maybe not every person Cooper had terminated was dirty. But plenty were. Without Equitable Services, there would be no one to contain them.

Not only that, but the video cleared John Smith of the Monocle. It turned him from a terrorist back into a freedom fighter, maybe even a hero. There were plenty of people who would look up to him. See him as a brave new voice. Maybe even a potential leader.

A scary thought. Smith had the intellect and acumen to lead. But Cooper didn’t trust the man’s heart. He’d admitted to planting bombs, to seeding viruses, to assassinating civilians. Smith was innocent of the Monocle, but he was plenty guilty.

Peters might well be right. Sharing this might well set the world on fire.

Of course, there’s another option.

Cooper could put the video to work for him. By threatening to leak it, he could blackmail President Walker. Take over Equitable Services himself, run the agency the way it was supposed to be run. He could sit in Drew Peters’s chair and make decisions the right way. Fight to prevent a war, instead of to prolong one.

It was a tempting thought. All his adult life, Cooper had fought to protect his country. First from external threats, in the army, and then from a much greater danger—its future. If straights and brilliants came to open conflict, it would be an unthinkably bloody affair, one that would literally turn fathers against sons and husbands against wives.

That would turn brothers against sisters. Would Kate and Todd someday have to take up arms against one another?

He couldn’t let that happen. That was why he had done everything he had done. The good and the bad, the righteous and the misdirected. It had all been for that one belief—that somehow, some way, the children of this brave new world had to find a way to live together.

And if he used this instead of sharing it, he could help make that happen. Change the system from within.

Cooper looked up and out, at the velvety darkness of the Washington night. Low-bellied clouds shaded purple with light reflected off marble and monuments, off the machinery of government. Off a city that was supposed to stand for something.

From between massive columns, Abraham Lincoln stared out with a troubled expression. The bloodiest war in American history had happened on his watch, under his command. Could the country survive a second civil war?

He glanced at the clock on his d-pad. Time to go.

Truth or power?

Cooper thought of his children.

Then he pressed send, set the datapad on the bench, and left it there.

Maybe the world would burn. But if truth was all it took to start the fire, maybe it needed to.

Regardless, his part in this war was over.

Five minutes later, a cab dropped him in Shaw, on a quiet block of small row houses. Founded out of freed slave encampments, the neighborhood had once been the Harlem of DC—both the good Harlem and the bad Harlem—but in the last decades, gentrification had mixed things up, white professionals edging out blue-collar blacks. For good or bad, everything changed.

Cooper paid the driver and got out in front of a tidy Victorian. The ground floor windows were bright, and he could see shapes moving inside. Quinn was leaning against his car, spinning an unlit cigarette. “You made it.”

“Yeah. Took the scenic route.”

“And Peters?”

“His route was scenic, too. But a whole lot faster.”

“Been waiting to say that?”

“Little bit. My family?”

“Inside. I’ve been out here the last hour, haven’t seen any signs of trouble.”

“Shannon? You said she was hurt.”

“Yeah, a nasty hit to the side of the head. Her ear’s all bloody, but she’s okay.” Quinn smiled. “She’s pretty pissed off about it, actually. I think the girl really believed she was invisible.”

“She’s damn close.”

“That she is. Speaking of which.” Quinn reached into his pocket, pulled out a stamp drive similar to the other one. “The security footage from 900. All cameras from half an hour before we arrived through departure. I wiped the local drives before I left. We’re invisible too.”

“You’re a goddamn wonder, Bobby.”

“Don’t you forget it.” His partner put the cigarette between his lips, then took it out again. “So what do you think? Will the agency cop to what happened?”

“I doubt it. I’m sure some public relations bright boy is working on the cover story now.”

“‘Director Drew Peters, infuriated by modern aesthetics, in protest shot up a graphic design company before hurling himself off the roof.’”

“Something like that.” Motion caught his eye. The front door opening, and two figures stepping out. “We’re safe here?”

“The house belongs to a friend of a friend, no connection.” Quinn followed his gaze, saw Shannon and Natalie on the porch. The two women were talking, but even from here Cooper could read the stiffness in their postures, the awkwardness between them. Ex-wife and new…whatever she is.

Quinn seemed to see the same. “Yikes. That looks awkward. Better go before the knives come out.”

“Yeah.” He started up the walk, turned back. “Bobby? Thanks. I owe you one.”

“Nah,” Quinn said, and smiled. “You owe me a lot more than one.”

Cooper laughed.

On the porch, Natalie tensed to see him. He could read her thoughts, same as ever. Could see the happiness in her, the relief that he was safe, and the anger over what she’d been put through in the last six months. Shannon had gauze on her ear and blood on her shirt. Her usually fluid posture was rigid.

“Hey,” he said, looking from one of them to the other.

“Are we safe?” Natalie asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s over?”

“Yes.”

“You’re coming back to us?”

“Yes,” he said, and saw Shannon stiffen further. “I guess I don’t have to introduce you two?”

“No,” Natalie said. “Shannon took care of that. She’s amazing.”

“I know.” He let his eyes linger on the fine bones of her face. “You both are. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

He didn’t really know what to say after that, and apparently neither of them did either. Natalie crossed her arms. Shannon shifted her weight from one foot to the other. After a moment, she said, “Well. I’ll get out of here, let you be with your family.” She held out a hand to Natalie. “It was nice to meet you.”

Natalie looked at her, and at her outstretched hand. Then she stepped past it and wrapped her arms around the other woman. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Shannon nodded, returned the embrace a little awkwardly. “Yeah. Your children are beautiful.”

“And alive, thanks to you.” Natalie held the hug a moment longer, then stepped back and said, “If you ever need anything, anything, don’t hesitate. Okay?”

“Okay.” She looked at Cooper. “See you around, I guess.” Then she slid off the porch and started down the walk.

Cooper watched her and then turned back to his ex-wife. To most people, her pose wouldn’t have given anything away, but he could read it all, a book he knew thoroughly. The honest gratitude coupled with the discomfort. It made sense; for the last six months, she had been living a nightmare, too, doing it for their children, the same as he had, and in some way, she must have been thinking of him as her partner in it. As a husband again, despite everything. It must have cut her to see the hints of his relationship with Shannon. And hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do. He’d explain, make it clear…

“The kids are all right?”

“They’re…they will be. Want to see them?”

“Oh, God yes.” He started for the door, then froze. “One second, okay?” Cooper didn’t wait for an answer, just hurried down the steps, caught Shannon’s arm. “Wait.”

She turned to him. Her face unreadable. “What?”

He opened his mouth, closed it. Then said, “We survived.”

“I noticed.”

“And we saved the world.”

“Hooray for us.”

“So…”

She looked at him, quirked that half smile. “Yes?”

“Well, you said if we survived, you’d go out with me.”

“No. I said if we survived, you could ask.”

“Right. Well.” He shrugged. “What do you say? Want to go on a date that doesn’t involve gunfire?”

“I don’t know.” She struck a pose, paused. “What would we do without it?”

“We’ll think of something.” He smiled, and she smiled back.

“All right, Nick. But it better not be boring.”

“Deal.”

“Deal. Now go.”

He nodded, started back for the house. Thought of something, turned. “Hey, wait, I still don’t have your…”

Shannon was gone.

How does she do that?

He shook his head, grinned to himself, started for the house. The door was open, and he heard Natalie’s voice, and then the three of them stepped out into the light.

Todd and Kate were both pale, and both had been crying. In that instant, he saw what had happened to them, all that had happened. The months he’d missed, and the pressure on them. The horrors the world had wrought. And worst of all, the things that had happened since yesterday, things they didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, but things that would mark them. They were wounded, he suddenly understood. Not physically, but not all wounds were.

The moment tore the heart out of him. A frozen instant that he would never shake.

Then they saw him. For a moment, they didn’t know what they were looking at. It was dark, and it had been six months, an eternity at their ages, and for a second they didn’t recognize him.

Kate was first, her eyes going wide. She looked up at Natalie, and then back at him, and then Todd said, “Dad?”

And then they were hurtling down the steps and across the walk and into his arms, and he was hoisting them up, all of them laughing and crying and saying each other’s names and the warmth of them, the smell, the primal comfort, an emotional rush like he’d never known and always known, the thing that made everything worthwhile, and in that instant he realized he’d been wrong.

His part in this war wasn’t over. Not even close.

His children needed a world to grow up in, a future worthy of them, and until that day his fight would never be over. As long as there was a war, he’d be in it.

But for a moment, as he hugged them so hard their bones pressed his, as Todd clutched his chest and Kate buried her face in his neck, as Natalie came down the steps and wrapped her arms around them all, as he smelled his son’s hair and tasted his daughter’s tears, the rest fell away.

The future could wait. For a little while, at least.