He looked around. Two cubes near him, one stacked with papers and folders, the other neat and decorated, someone making an effort to turn a gray fabric cage into a cozy living room: a recliner, a lamp, framed photos on the desk. Nothing resembling a weapon in either, at least not a weapon he’d match against a handgun. Glanced upward: girders, pipes, hanging banks of fluorescent lights.
At some distance, a faint double ping. The door chime.
Quinn would have warned him if any more threats had come into the building. Which meant that sound was Peters leaving. With the drive.
Everything was falling apart.
Cooper crept into the well-decorated cube, took one of the photos off the desk. The glass was bright and reflected a ghostly image of himself. He eased it up above the edge of the fabric wall. It was a long way from a mirror, but it gave a hint of what was going on, the overheads glowing in it, and motion, Dickinson somehow ten feet tall. The table. The agent had climbed on top of it for a better view. Cooper pulled the picture down before the man spotted it.
“Come on, Cooper,” Dickinson said. “Come out and I’ll make it quick. Just like your children.”
Bile surged in his throat. He whispered, “Shannon? You okay?”
No response.
Quinn said, “Coop, I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve got no feed, and she’s not answering.”
“I recognized your terrorist girlfriend,” Dickinson said, “but I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”
It was a bluff. A way to taunt him into the open. It had to be.
“And that little stunt cost your family’s lives. Sorry about that, but we did warn you.”
He closed his eyes, leaned back against the cubicle wall.
“Ahh, don’t sweat it, Cooper. Kids are replaceable. What’s one or two gone?”
Nothing from Quinn. Nothing from Shannon. He’d caught only the tiniest flash of her on the monitor, a move to disable one of the guards, but there had been two in the room. Skilled killers on high alert.
His gift ran ahead of him again, collated the data, jumped to its conclusion.
Your family is dead.
Cooper had been at a scene once where a car had collided with an agent and pinned him against a metal barrier, shattering everything from the ribs down, severing both legs at midthigh. Massive physical damage, unsurvivable. What had haunted him most, though, was that the man was calm. He didn’t scream, didn’t seem to feel any pain.
Some wounds were too enormous to feel.
A strange dark purity flowed through him. It was almost sweet. If his family was gone, there wasn’t much point in going on. Not many reasons to live. Just one.
You’re going to die, Roger. And so is Peters.
He ducked low, left the cubicle, and scurried down the aisle. Kept his shoulder against the near wall, visualizing the angle Dickinson could see. Climbing on top of the conference table would give him the high ground, generally a tactical advantage. But it came with limitations, too.
A gunshot, and then another. Nothing exploded near him, though. Dickinson was blind-firing, trying to draw him out.
I’m coming out, Roger. Don’t you worry.
He moved along the aisle back toward the entrance. On the wall between two mounted skateboards he saw what he’d been looking for. But it was a long exposed sprint to reach it. No way to get there without being seen.
He dropped to a runner’s crouch, ready to sprint. Then, with a looping toss, he threw the picture frame as far behind as he could.
Dickinson reacted immediately, twin gun blasts. Cooper didn’t pause, just launched himself into a sprint for the far wall, covering a dozen yards in seconds. He heard glass shatter behind him, the picture frame hitting something. Dickinson would have processed it for the distraction it was. He’d have his gun up and be tracking, looking for motion.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except killing. Killing, and the fact that Cooper had made it to the bank of light switches he’d spotted on the lobby wall. He smacked them all in one swiping blow. The fluorescents died.
Darkness fell, pure as fury.
Cooper turned and stood up. No need to hide now. When the lights had been on, Cooper had been prey, and Dickinson had been a predator.
With the lights out, Cooper was a shadow in the dark. And Dickinson was a silhouette standing on a conference table, bathed in the glow of the monitor Peters had brought. He may as well have been in a spotlight.
The agent had a gun in each hand, his own in the right, Cooper’s in the left, and he raised them both and fired in the general direction of the light switches. But Cooper was no longer there.
And the twin muzzle flashes would only make things worse for him. Rob him of what limited night vision he’d have.
Cooper moved steadily, not running, not risking tripping or making a sound. Just watching Dickinson as he spun and flailed in the dark. By the time he reached the conference table, the other agent had realized his mistake. Dickinson jumped down, landing hard.
Cooper stepped forward and twisted the guns from the man’s hands.
Then he put them both against Roger Dickinson’s chest and pulled the triggers until the slides locked back.
What was left of the agent fell limp and wet. Cooper dropped the guns on top of him.
He walked to the table. To the monitor.
His family was dead.
Now he just had to face it. To look at the monitor and see the end of the world.
Cooper forced himself to face it.
The screen showed a conference room, the Capitol dome glowing in the distance.
It showed one of the shooters on the ground, splayed flat.
It showed the other pulling himself to his feet, woozy, his fingers scrabbling at the table for help.
What it did not show was the bodies of his family.
God bless you, Shannon. My girl who walks through walls.
“Coop?” Quinn’s voice in his ear. “I just picked up Shannon in the number three elevator. She’s got your family with her. She’s bleeding pretty bad from the right side of her head—must have taken a hit that disabled the transmitter. But she’s giving a thumbs-up to the camera, and everyone else looks fine.”
For a moment he let himself feel it. A feeling as if he could flex and blow the roof open, a feeling like his heart might burst.
Quinn said, “Bad news is, I’m getting a lot of traffic on law enforcement frequencies. A small army is headed our way. Time to go.”
“Where’s Peters?”
“He’s not with you?”
“No. And he’s got the drive.”
“What? How?”
“No time to explain. Has he shown up on your screens?”
“No. He didn’t go through the elevator lobby.”
The smart thing to do was get out, escape with Quinn and Shannon and his family. Hide somewhere and think of their next move. Let Peters walk away with the only evidence.
Cooper turned and ran for the exit. Through the lobby, out the door, the chime ringing behind him. “Quinn, are there cameras in the stairwells?”
“Negative.”
Turned left on a hunch, kept going, found the stairwell at the end. He pushed open the door, stepped into a brightly lit concrete space. “Do they exit to the outside?”
“Yeah, of course, that’s code in case of fire,” Quinn said, and then, “Oh shit.”
Cooper started down, jumping a flight at a time, his hand trailing down the metal railing. Peters would have made it to the street by now. Vanished into—