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, 1921–2006,” and “Theodore Eaton, 1918–2007.”
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. God, he was a bastard. 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 bastard who made sure Drew would never rest beside Elizabeth?
He dropped to a knee and felt around the back of the coffin. Spiderweb, brass 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 glass on the Eaton crypt. He hurled himself forward, stumbled for half a heartbeat on a root, felt more than heard a bullet pass 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 anticipate 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 assault 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, passing 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.