“When will we be down?”
“About three minutes.”
“Okay.” Cooper tried to flex the bandaged wreck of his right hand. The palm felt like it might split, and ribbons of flame shot up his fingers, but he gritted his teeth and did it anyway. “I’m going to need two things.”
“Name it. Mr. Epstein said carte blanche.”
“First, I need a secure telephone line the moment we land.”
“And second?”
“A really fast car.”
It was a tribute to the sheer muscle of billions that despite the fact that they were in Akron, Ohio, at a small airport Cooper had never heard of, fifteen hundred miles from New Canaan, a man in a jumpsuit was hustling across the tarmac holding a bulky phone before their engines had even spun down.
Cooper unbuckled himself from the copilot’s seat and met the guy at the top of the rolling stairs. He started to reach for the phone with his right hand, caught himself just in time. “This is secure?”
“Yes, sir. Epstein Industries executive-level encryption.”
Which is probably safer than anything the DAR has. Cooper looked at the pilot until the guy said, “Right. On my way.” He closed the cockpit hatch behind him.
Cooper dialed the number, one of a few he had memorized. There had had been a time he called it a dozen times a day. It rang twice, three times, Cooper thinking, Come on, pick up, and then there was the sound of connection and a familiar voice.
“Quinn.”
“Bobby, it’s me.”
Silence. A long beat of it. Then, an edge to his voice, Quinn said, “Whoever this is, you should know that I have initiated trace algorithms. Enjoy whatever cute little game you’re playing, because in a few seconds, when I find you, I’m going to direct a drone strike.”
What? Oh. Right.
“Bobby, I’m not dead. Erik Epstein pulled a medical rabbit out of his hat, an illegal newtech surgery, saved my life.”
“Keep talking, asshole. How long do you think your encryption can hold up against the DAR?”
Cooper sighed. “You’re divorced. Your daughter’s name is Maggie. Three months ago, you, me, and Shannon threw Director Peters off a roof in midtown DC.”
A pause. “Cooper and I went out for drinks not long ago. Where did we go?”
“I don’t remember the name of the bar, but it was a dim place, Christmas lights. We drank beer and whiskey and talked about kidnapping John Smith.”
“Jesus Christ! Cooper? Is that really you?”
“It’s really me, man.”
“Oh God. Oh shit.” The man’s voice was fast, relieved, an overflow of emotion. “What the hell, Coop? I thought you were dead. We all did.”
“I was.”
“Huh?”
“Apparently, medically, I was. They did some kind of suspended animation thing, repaired my heart. Something to do with stem cells, I don’t know, but listen, I really don’t have time—”
“What about Todd?”
A rush of warmth for his friend hit at the same time as a terrible stab of guilt and pain. “He’s . . . they say he’s going to be okay.”
“Thank God. I was so scared—my God. Coop! You’re alive.”
“Hey, keep your voice down, would you?” He pictured Bobby’s office, how many people might walk by at any moment. “That’s not public knowledge.”
“Why not?”
“There are advantages to being dead. If I’m alive, I should call the president and follow orders. But dead men can do what they want.”
“Oh crap.” Bobby was suddenly serious. “What are you up to?”
“Saving the world, same as always.”
“How’s it going?”
“Same as always. Listen, we’re on the clock. That night in the bar, you said you’d just gotten back from Cleveland. That you’d been working a target there, a scientist who had run.”
“Yeah?”
“It was Dr. Abraham Couzen, right?”
More silence. “I’m not sure I can confirm—”
“I know it was Couzen, and I know you were there to work his number two, a guy named Ethan Park. Right?”
A sigh. “Yeah.”
“I know what Couzen developed. And so do you. He found the root cause of the brilliants, and he was working on a way to replicate it.”
“You know I love you, man, but this is way, way above—”
“Bobby, no kidding, this is not the time. I can be your old boss, or a special advisor to the president, or just your best friend, whatever you need to cut the crap right now.” He put steel in his voice, let Quinn hear the desperation. “Can you do that?”
A long pause. “What’s going on?”
“Couzen faked his kidnapping. I was trying to figure out why he would do that, and it finally came together. He did it because the DAR came looking for him, right? Somehow you found out what he was working on, and you wanted it.”
“Shit, man, everyone wants it. Thing like that could change the world. Maybe even stop what’s about to happen.”
“My thinking exactly. That’s why I need to find it, and right now.”
“Good luck. Couzen may not be much at faking a crime scene, but he’s turned out to be aces at lying low. I’ve been running every protocol we have to catch the guy, but no luck.”
“And now Ethan Park is on the run too. He’s my target.”
Another pause. “Is that right?”
Cooper hated the phone. In person, he could have read the layers of conflict behind what Bobby was saying, parsed it. But without the tiny physical cues, the twitches of muscle, the hint of nerves, his gift was useless. Second time that’s happened recently. Maybe you’re relying on it too much, Coop.
Maybe it’s time you used your brain instead.
“In Cleveland, you said that you’d braced Park. My guess, you put him under surveillance, right?”
“Sure. But then things got stupid in Cleveland. When the riots hit, my men were pulled off to help. That’s when he bolted.”
“You think he knew about your team?”
“Nah. Just dumb luck. A lot of people tried to leave Cleveland then. Once I realized what had happened, we ran a video scan, found his car. I got drone surveillance on it, found him and his family hiking south. The National Guard was supposed to pick him up, but some hothead shot a refugee, and then it was chaos.”
“You lost him?”
“For a while, then picked him up in a bank, lost him again, got him robbing a gas station.”
“Seriously?” That was way out of character with the pattern he’d built. “I thought he was a geek. He turned criminal?”
“Yeah, well.” There was a note of embarrassment in his friend’s voice. “I took a risky play, called him at the bank and tried to talk him in. He panicked.”
“Where was the gas station?”
“Place called Cuyahoga Falls, outside of Akron.”
Cooper laughed. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. Why?”
“Guess where I’m calling from?”
“No shit? Huh.”
“What does ‘huh’ mean?”
“Well, our boy Ethan is smart. He took the gas station attendant’s truck, but he didn’t try to run. Laid low instead. It took some time to scan satellite feeds, but we found him. He’s in a cabin not far from there. I was just about to send cops in to pick him up.”
“Local PD? No way. Bobby, we can’t lose him. If some rookie sees he’s got a gun and takes a shot—”
“Yeah, I know, but I got no choice, Coop. I have no resources, none. Have you turned on a tri-d? Everything is focused on Wyoming. Right now, I couldn’t order a pizza.”
“So sit on him. You’ve got him tagged; he can’t go anywhere.”