In the end, she settled on, “Be careful, Nick,” and then the video froze on a distorted image of her hand as she turned off the recording.
The call had come in while he chased Abe Couzen through Grand Central. One more reason to backhand the good doctor. It had been two weeks since Cooper had spoken to his family, and though he’d tried every day, he’d never been able to get through. The news blamed the NCH, said that Epstein had severed communication with the rest of America, but Cooper suspected it was the other way around. If the government planned to attack the Holdfast, isolating them would be an important step in the hearts-and-minds campaign.
Just in case, he tried calling them back. “We’re sorry,” the recording announced, “the network is experiencing technical difficulties. Your call cannot be connected at this time. Please try again later.”
Redial.
“We’re sorry, the network—”
Redial.
“We’re sorry—”
Cooper hung up, pocketed the phone, and pictured Abe Couzen dying in a fire. It was a soothing image.
“That your ex?” Ethan asked around a mouthful of gyro.
“Yeah. Natalie.”
“She and Shannon get along?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, ex-wife, current girlfriend.”
Current girlfriend. Cooper pictured the last time he’d seen Shannon, two weeks ago. He’d been about to lose a gunfight, one of John Smith’s soldiers had him cold, and when Cooper heard shots, he’d expected to feel the bullets. Instead, he’d turned to find that Shannon had appeared out of nowhere, a submachine gun braced at her shoulder. She’d flashed him that one-sided grin and said, “Hi.”
Problem is, half an hour later, you were saying good-bye. That was the way it was with them. They were soldiers in a shadow war, both living on the ragged edge of life. In theory that sounded romantic, but in reality it was hell on relationships. She was smart and sexy and incredibly capable, and together they made a formidable team. But they hadn’t actually spent much time together. There was always some reason one of them had to go, some secret mission or desperate struggle. And the way things were going, it was hard to imagine that changing.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“I bet.”
Wanting to change the subject, he said, “You hear from Amy?”
Ethan wiped his lips, nodded, a weary sadness in the motion. “She’s still with her mom in Chicago. Says that things are weird there too, but that they’re okay. Sent a picture of Violet.” He held out his phone, and Cooper took it. The little girl was cute in that shapeless way of young babies, and he had a sense memory of his own daughter at that age, Kate so small and light he could drape her across his forearm, and often did, chattering at her while he made breakfast in the sunlit kitchen he’d once shared with Natalie. A “surprise,” they’d called Kate, never an accident. Her arrival had made them try extra hard for a while, but things had started to wear out between them, and it had been around Kate’s first birthday that he and Nat had agreed it was better to part warmly than stay together and ruin it.
“She’s beautiful.” Cooper returned the phone and flexed his fingers. His joints had that bruised feeling, coupled with a line of fire where his hand had been split to the palm. It had been tissue-melded in the same underground clinic that had repaired his heart after Soren killed him, and while it hurt like a mother right now, and his heart still slip-skipped an occasional beat, his recovery had been near miraculous. Gotta give Erik Epstein that much.
“How you feeling?”
“Good enough for government work.”
“Funny.” Ethan crumpled the tinfoil from his sandwich, winged it at a trash can. “You were pretty rough on them. The guys in Vincent’s apartment.”
“They beat him, smashed everything he owned, and then pissed on him, all because he’s an abnorm.” Cooper shook his head. “I don’t like bullies, Doc.”
The cold of the stoop was creeping through his jacket, and his coffee was weak and acrid. In the window of a greystone opposite them, Christmas lights blinked in sequence, making paper snowflakes glow red and green. It was funny to think that someone had made the effort, had dug out decorations from a hall closet, found Scotch tape and push pins. The world kept turning even as it fell apart.
“How do you do this?” Ethan’s question had the sound of words he’d debated not speaking.
“Do what?”
“This.” Ethan made an everything sort of gesture. “I’ve been away from Amy and Vi for two weeks, and I’m going crazy I miss them so much. I want to hug my girls. I want to get back to work, I want to cook an awesome meal, I want to sleep in my own bed. How do you live this way?”
“Somebody has to save the world.”
“You keep saying that.” Ethan paused. “What if we can’t find Abe?”
“We have to.”
“Yeah, but, it can’t all be on us, right? Things will work out. Like always.”
Cooper understood. A year ago, he would have said the same. That while there were tensions and concerns, there was hope, too—systems in place, and civilization itself, which had a mass and momentum, an inertia that would protect it. That while the world needed defending, it wasn’t so fragile that it might shatter.
A year ago he would have said all those things. Now, he just met Ethan’s gaze and said nothing at all.
“All right,” Ethan said. “So. We know Abe is here. And that he’s tier zero. And that the DAR is after him.”
“That last is the rub.” Cooper sipped his lousy coffee. “There’s a reason the logo for the DAR is an eye. Even with resources stretched thin, Bobby Quinn will be able to tap into surveillance cameras, news drones, traffic cams. There are hundreds of lenses in every square block. Manhattan is a hard place to hide from the DAR.”
“Can we use that? Reach out to your friend, the one who told you about Abe this morning?”
“No. Valerie kept us in the game, but I can’t ask her to play against her own team. Besides, even if she did, that would put us on the same footing as the DAR. We need to get ahead of them.”
“How?”
“The personal angle. You know Abe, they don’t. They won’t know about Vincent. We find him.”
Ethan considered it, as cloud shadows slid across high-rises and the rattle of the subway rose a block away and beneath them. “I don’t see him going back to his apartment. Would he try to leave the city?”
“Maybe. It wouldn’t be easy, though.” Commercial flights had been shut down since Epstein demonstrated he could crash anything with a computer. That was part of the reason there had been such a rush on the trains. That, and the looming sense that an open conflict was coming, and that when it did, cities would be a dangerous place to be.
“He could have a car—”
“Nah,” Cooper said. “Professional piano players, even brilliants, don’t make enough to keep a car in this city.” It felt good to work the problem. Though it seemed a lifetime ago, it had been less than a year since he’d hunted his own kind for the DAR’s most clandestine division. Slipping back into that way of thinking was easy.