“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.”