It had been a risky play, with Zane. Hopefully the man was the dirtbag Cooper believed.
He swung south, downtown. The skyline was half lost in clouds. He passed a row of shops, a car dealership. The El banged by overhead, sparks showering down where it banked.
Streeterville was a high-rent district, the kind of place that before he’d never have thought to stay. It was all boutiques and hair salons, shrill dogs and expensive women. He pulled down Delaware and stopped in front of the gleaming opulence of the Continental Hotel. A tall, pale guy in a dark jacket opened his door. “Welcome back, Mr. Eliot.”
“Thanks, Mitch.” He left the car and strode into the hotel.
The lobby was the definition of modern opulence, all clean lines and lush furniture. A huge paper chandelier glowed above. Cooper strolled to the elevator and swiped his keycard. It slid into motion without him touching a button. His ears popped as they rose.
“Forty-sixth floor. Executive suites,” the recorded voice purred. He pictured her tall, with sleek blond hair and a skirt that showed a little thigh and a lot of shadow.
Cooper keyed into his suite and slid out of his suit jacket. It was gray and Italian and cost more than his entire previous wardrobe. The staff had cleaned the room and drawn the curtains. Outside and far below, Lake Michigan churned silently against the shore. The sky was slowly turning to amber. He called down for smoked salmon and a bottle of gin.
In the bathroom he splashed cold water on his face then dried himself on a thick towel. Looked in the mirror. The same face looked back, as it always did; only the setting changed. He remembered the first apartment he and Natalie had shared, a dim, narrow space above a Chinese restaurant. That had been back in their early days, before time and his gift went to work on them. Todd had been conceived in that apartment, on a couch that smelled like egg rolls. They’d had their first Christmas together there, and Cooper could still remember Todd sitting wobbly amidst a pile of wrapping paper, a bow stuck to his head. Could remember—
Don’t. Just don’t.
Back in the bedroom, he dropped his d-pad on the desk, his gun in the drawer. The armchair was where he’d left it, pulled out of place and turned to face the floor-to-ceiling windows, a stunning panorama of lake and skyline. He sat down and sighed.
“Home sweet home,” he said.
Six months ago, when he’d shown up at Drew Peters’s door with a plan and a stomach full of reckless energy, his main concern had been convincing his boss. He’d known there would be costs, and he’d accepted them. But it was only after everything was in motion that he first got that pit-of-the-stomach what now? feeling.
It wasn’t as though he could just e-mail John Smith and say he wanted to change sides. Any attempt to reach out directly would be seen for the trap it was. And so instead, Cooper had to ask himself what he would do if he couldn’t do what he’d always done. If he wasn’t the good guy who believed that the system, for all its flaws, was the only way to survive; that it was the route to a better tomorrow. If he really had been cast out by the department, if they had pinned the explosion on him, had betrayed and hunted him, what would he do?
And thus began a startlingly lucrative life as a criminal.
There was a knock at the door. He let the waiter in, asked him to put the tray on the desk by the window, signed the check and a tip without processing the numbers. The salmon was perfect, the smoky sweetness offset by the sharp salt of the capers and the brightness of fresh lemon. He washed it down with icy gin, watching the sky slowly change colors.