Brilliance. Part 40

...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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.set 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-gla.s.s 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 ma.s.sive 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 gla.s.s. 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 s.h.i.+ver 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, pa.s.sive 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.l out. You've already lost about a minute. You've got...call it two more.

s.h.i.+t.

He leaned in close, read the first inscription. "Tara Eaton, faithful wife, 1812a1859." 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, 1962a2005." Above the inscription rested an elegant mahogany coffin, the wood still l.u.s.trous, 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 s.p.a.ce 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, 1921a2006," and "Theodore Eaton, 1918a2007."

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. G.o.d, he was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d who made sure Drew would never rest beside Elizabeth?

He dropped to a knee and felt around the back of the coffin. Spiderweb, bra.s.s 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 gla.s.s on the Eaton crypt. He hurled himself forward, stumbled for half a heartbeat on a root, felt more than heard a bullet pa.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 a.s.sault 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, pa.s.sing 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.