Cooper had never met Elizabeth; she’d died the year before Peters recruited him. In the photos he’d seen, she had that inner glow that made her seem much prettier than she objectively was. One shot in particular had caught him, Elizabeth in the midst of a laugh, her head thrown back, eyes shut; given over entirely to the moment.
“Forty-one years old, and one Wednesday morning she found a lump. Eighteen months later, she was gone, and I was raising three daughters. She’s buried in her family mausoleum in Oak Hill. They’re wealthy from way back; her however-many-times great-grandfather was in Abe Lincoln’s cabinet. Her father, Teddy Eaton, handled the private fortunes of half of Capitol Hill. God, he was a bastard.” Peters’s usually quiet voice hit the word with inflection. “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.’” Peters stared out at the middle distance.
“I’m sorry, Drew.”
“The day we buried her in Oak Hill, I thought that was the worst day of my life.” Peters’s eyes focused. He locked them on Cooper’s with an almost audible click. “Were my children were tested? Of course. And I was wrong. The day I buried the woman I loved in a place where I won’t get to lie next to her, that wasn’t as bad as it gets. When my daughters got tested, that was the worst day of my life. Both times. And when Charlotte turns eight this spring, that will be the worst day of my life.”
A numb feeling crept up Cooper’s body. He had a flash of a sleepless night years ago, when Kate was a newborn, seven pounds of tiny helplessness, crying by Christmas lights as he tried to soothe her. All that time. All those hours. All the pain and pleasure of fatherhood.
There has to be a way.
“I know this is difficult, Nick. But you’re Equitable Services. Focus on that.”
“You think I don’t—”
“I think,” Peters said, “that when family comes up against duty, it’s hard to choose. But never forget that there are people who believe a war is coming. Some of them want it to. And we’re all that’s standing against that.”
Cooper drew a deep breath. “I know.”
“There’s one thing you can do to help Kate.” The director’s eyes were pale blue and sharp edged. “Your job. Do your job, son.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lacking any better ideas, Cooper did just that. There was still an attack imminent, still lives on the line.
Besides. You have a chance to catch John Smith. You want leeway? Catch the most dangerous man in America. Then see if the answer is the same.
He went looking for Valerie West—there’d been no need to snap at her that way, especially when it sounded like she had something—and found his whole team together and frenetic. The monitor in front of Valerie had a live satellite image, a rectangle maybe half a mile by a mile of tightly packed houses and narrow streets. Luisa Abrahams leaned over her shoulder, talking fast into the phone. Bobby Quinn, bulky with a vest, was checking the load on his weapon. As Cooper approached, all three turned to look at him. Then all three started talking at the same time.
Twenty minutes later he was in the back of a helicopter, the rotors thumping as the pilot flew over fields and forest, suburbs and golf courses. To the east the Chesapeake was a thin blue ribbon nicked by diamond sparkles of sunlight.
“It’s thin,” Cooper shouted over the noise. He’d unfolded his datapad from his pocket and snapped the display fabric taut. On the screen was a transcript of a conversation recorded three hours earlier between a man named Dusty Evans and an unknown caller.
DE:
“Hello?”
UNK:
“Good morning. How are you?”
DE:
“Great. Looking forward to the fishing trip.”
UNK:
“Everything ready?”
DE:
“Got all our gear packed. Everything you asked for.”
UNK:
“How’s the water?”
DE:
“Clear as glass.”
UNK:
“Glad to hear it. We’re going after the big one today.”
DE:
“Yes, sir. It’s going to be a thing of beauty.”
UNK:
“Yes. Yes, it will. Good work.”
DE:
“Thank you. It’s an honor.”
UNK:
“The honor’s mine. We’ll talk again later.”