Written in Fire

CHAPTER 22

When Natalie opened the door, her eyes, red and sunken, brightened with relief. “Oh thank God,” she said, and then, “Come here,” even as she opened her arms and came to him.

Cooper clutched at her, the familiar scent of her hair mingling with a faintly humid whiff of tears. Natalie always smelled different when she’d been crying. There was a permission in it, and he felt tears of his own close to the surface. When was the last time he’d cried? When Dad died?

“I was watching the news,” she said into his shoulder. “I knew you weren’t there, but I couldn’t help it, when I saw that building, the same complex you went to work in every day, I just lost it.”

“I’m okay,” he said.

She heard the things he couldn’t say, and stiffened. Leaned back without breaking the contact of their bodies, her eyes widening. “Bobby?”

“And Val, and Luisa.”

Both her hands went to her open mouth, as if to contain the sound. But the cry made it through anyway. “Are they—are you sure?”

“I was talking to them when it happened. I . . . I saw . . .” He closed his eyes, sucked air in.

“Oh God, baby. Oh, Nick.” She pressed herself against him, hands tightening around his back, strong fingers digging in. He heaved a gasping exhale that felt like it tore something. She held him, rocking slightly. “Come with me.”

Cooper let her lead him into the apartment, through the kitchen, and down the hall to the bedroom. He was strangely aware that they’d made love the last time he’d been here, and then he realized he’d never get the chance to tell Bobby about that, to share his confusion and hear his old friend make an inappropriate joke, something funny and wrong that would get them laughing, and that was when he did start crying. Natalie climbed onto the bed and leaned against the wall and gestured him into her arms, and he crawled up after her and put his head in her lap and clutched her legs while she stroked his hair and knew better than to tell him it was all right.

It hadn’t been all right for a very long time, and he was starting to doubt it ever would be again.

The tears didn’t last long—he’d never had a problem with crying, he just didn’t very much—but after they ceased he stayed where he was, head on her thighs, staring at her feet and the gauzy curtains beyond which the day died slowly. She ran her hands through his hair and waited, infinitely patient and present.

“It’s wrong,” he said at last. “It’s just wrong. You know how many times Bobby and I were in danger? How many doors we kicked in, how many suspects we took down? Hell, the day of the stock exchange, he took a shotgun blast to the chest, broke two ribs. I was there, I knocked him down and . . .” He trailed off.

Natalie just ran her hands through his hair. After a moment, he said, “We were agents. We knew the risks. But . . . not like this. Not a bomb in the middle of the workday. No warning, no fighting back. Just boom, dead. He deserved better than that. A better death.”

“There’s no such thing as a better death, baby. There’s just death.”

“Yeah, but for Bobby Quinn it should have meant something. He should have been doing something that mattered.”

“He was,” Natalie said. “He was at work, trying to protect the country.”

“It’s not the same. He wasn’t prepared.”

“Who is?” She shrugged. “Bobby was a hero, and so were Luisa and Val and all the rest of them. But it’s only in movies that heroes get to count on the big moment of glorious sacrifice. Real life is messier than that.”

“I know, but . . . In a second. I mean, we were joking around when it happened. He said that beer was on me. Those were his last words. ‘Just remember, the beer is on you.’”

Natalie made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Sorry, I just . . .” She paused, and this time she did laugh, though it was thick with sorrow. “If you asked Bobby, he’d have said those were pretty good last words.”

The sentiment caught him off guard, and he found he could picture it, could picture his partner sitting at a bar, spinning a cigarette he didn’t intend to light, and saying, Hey, man, top that.

“I don’t mean to laugh.”

“No, you’re right. He’d have liked that.” They lay quietly for a moment, his face mashed against her leg, his own pulse echoing in his ear.

“God,” Natalie said. “His daughter.”

“Shit.” Bobby had been divorced, and not on the same terms with his ex that he and Natalie maintained. His daughter lived with her mom, and Cooper hadn’t seen her in a while. “Maggie must be . . . eleven now?”

“Twelve,” Natalie said. “Her birthday’s in June.”

“How do you remember that?”

“I loved him too, Nick. So do the kids.”

Worse and worse. He’d have to tell them that Uncle Bobby was dead. Like they hadn’t been through enough. “Kate and the academy. Todd in a coma. Maggie without her dad. All the way back to the kids in the Monocle restaurant. Why is it always children that suffer?” A thought struck him, and he turned his head. “Wait, where are—”

“Playing with friends. They’re fine.” She paused. “Was it John Smith?”

“Yes.”

“He’s never going to stop, is he?”

The words hit him with physical force. Something in his chest, not his biological heart but his metaphorical one, seemed to grow brittle and hard as cooling lava. “Yes,” he said, and pushed himself up. “Yes he is.”

“Nick—”

“I have to get going.”

“Stay. There’s no rush. I wasn’t trying to . . .”

“No, I . . .” He wiped snot with the back of his hand. “Thank you. It’s nothing you said.”

“It’s okay to let someone help, baby. To let me help.”

“You have.” He looked at her, the kind of long and naked stare that came with knowing someone so well it was hard to say where the boundaries between you lay. “Now it’s my turn.”

“To do what?”

Cooper thought about the preparations Epstein was making right this moment, about Samantha being kidnapped—a sudden motion and a hood over her head and the smell of chemicals before she lost consciousness. About a fist of smoke smashing a window and killing his friends and a thousand others. About a teenage corpse spinning at the end of a rope while Soren counted the holes of his cell. “What I have to.”

She gazed back at him, her expression darkening. “You don’t want to tell me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I’m not proud of it.”

“Will it get you John Smith?”

“It has to.”

“Then do it.” Natalie’s voice was steady. “Whatever it is.”

For a long moment they stared at each other in the twilight room. Then he cupped her cheek and nodded.