Brilliance (45 page)

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?