A marble entrance, broad and bright. Sunlight poured in the windows. People milled about, holding champagne glasses and chatting. A string quartet played in the corner, the notes bouncing off marble and glass. Stepping out of the crowd was like surfacing for air. He glanced around, saw the woman vanish around a corner to the right, and hurried after her. Figure thirty seconds, tops, before the cops had caught their breath, radioed in, and come after him.
Ten steps took him to the corner. He rounded it, blood singing in his veins. The woman stood halfway down the corridor, in front of a painted metal door. In one hand she held a ring of keys. In the other, a cell phone.
No.
Cooper abandoned all attempts at subtlety for a headlong sprint. Time drew out like a blade. His eyes caught details: the smell of fresh paint, the buzz of the lights. At the sound of his footfalls, the woman looked up. Her eyes, already huge with mascara, widened further. She dropped the keys but raised the phone. Cooper pushed as hard as he could. Everything came down to his hurtling progress, that against-the-wall feeling that he simply could not go any faster, his mind replaying yesterday and the explosion in DC, the slow-motion spill of fire, the way Bryan Vasquez had melted into a red mist; she was doing it again, only this time it wasn’t one man she was executing, it was hundreds of people on national television, and the phone had reached her face and her eyes locked on him and her lips parted to speak just as Cooper’s arm lashed out in a forehand slap that knocked the cell phone from her fingers. The device hit the floor and broke on the bounce, plastic pieces skittering across the marble.
She said, “Wait, you don’t—” and then his fist slammed into her belly and doubled her over. He didn’t like punching women, but damned if he was going to take a chance with this one.
“I got her,” he said. “Target in custody.” Bobby Quinn hooted in the earpiece.
A wave of relief washed over Cooper. Jesus, but that had been close. He spun the woman around, pulled one arm behind her back, and dug for his cuffs with the other.
“Listen,” she said, gasping between the words. “You have… to let… me go.”
He ignored her, snapped the cuff on one wrist, reached for the other. Spoke for his partner’s benefit. “Bobby, I had to take out a couple of cops on the way in. Can you reach out to NYPD and calm them down real fast? I don’t want to—”
But before he could finish the sentence there was a crack of planets colliding, and the ground vanished beneath him, he was flying, his arms out and twisting, and everything—
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The noise came first. An overlapping mishmash of sound. Cries of pain. Urgent, indecipherable yells. Rasping, scraping. Solemn voices counting. Sirens farthercloserfarther.
He wasn’t aware of it, really. It was the water he floated through.
Then, slowly, the formless syllables began to shape themselves into words. The words had taste and heft. Hemorrhaging. Amputate. Crushed. Concussed.
The scraping became the wooden legs of a chair or table dragged across concrete.
The men counting backward punctuated the arrival of zero with an exhalation of effort, as though they were heaving something.
The sirens stayed the same. He just came to realize how many he was hearing, some moving, some still, some nearby, some a good distance away.
Cooper opened his eyes.
Canvas stretched above him. The pattern was indistinct, and the colors moved and swirled. For a moment he faulted his vision, then realized it was active camo; smart fabric that chameleoned to match the environment. Military issue. He blinked eyes dry and swollen. The noises around him took no notice, just kept insistently on, each cutting across the other.
“…need more O over here…”
“…breathe, just breathe…”
“…my husband, where is…”
“…it hurts, God, it hurts…”
Cooper took a deep inhale, felt tings and stabs of pain as his chest swelled. Nothing too bad. He raised his right hand and gingerly patted the back of his head. The flesh was hot and swollen and sore, the hair sticky. He must have hit it. How?
Slowly, he rolled onto one side, then swung his legs off the edge of the cot. Also military, he noticed. This was an army triage tent. For a moment the world swam. He clamped down on the edge of the cot with both hands. The pain came now, a whirling thumping, dull and looming.
“Go slow.”
Cooper raised his head and opened his eyes. A trim man in scrubs spattered with blood stood beside him. Where had he come from?
“How did I get here?”
“Someone must have brought you. What hurts?”
“My—” He coughed. His throat was full of dust. “My head.”
“Look at this?” The doctor had a penlight out. Cooper obediently stared into it, followed as the man moved it back and forth. A triage center, he was in a triage center of some sort. But how? He remembered fighting through the crowd, the surging, roiling chaos of all those people. Stalked by two o’clock when…the bombs. He had been trying to stop bombs from going off. He had seen—
“Where is she?” Cooper whipped his head around, felt the pain as a promissory note, ignored it for now. He was in a large field tent packed with rows of cots, the beds nearly touching. Men and women in scrubs pushed across the rows, speaking insistently to one another as they tended the wounded. Maybe twenty racks in here, he couldn’t see all of them, she could be in one.
“Hey.” The doctor’s voice was firm. “Look at me.”
The pain paid what it owed, a crushing feeling like there was a vise in the middle of his skull. Cooper groaned, looked back at the doctor. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the man said, fitting a stethoscope to his ears, “but I’m sure she’s fine. Right now I need you to relax so I can see how badly hurt you are.”
It all clicked together, finally, the scattered pieces coalescing into a whole. He had been chasing John Smith’s agent, the woman who could walk through walls, the cell phone bomber with the big eyes. He had caught up with her inside the Exchange. But not in time.
“How bad is it?” Cooper felt like something was falling through his chest.
“That’s what I’m checking. Deep breath.”
Cooper did as he was told, the air rattling in his lungs. “Not me. I mean. How bad is it?”
“Oh. Deep breath.” The doctor stared into the distance as he listened to Cooper’s chest. Whatever he heard seemed to satisfy him. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“How many people…”
“I’m focused on the ones in front of me.” The doctor looped the scope around his neck and glanced at his watch. “You have a mild concussion. There was a lot of smoke and dust inhalation, but nothing I’m worried about long-term. You’re very lucky. You should avoid sleep for a while, eight, ten hours maybe. If you start to feel dizzy or nauseous, go to the hospital immediately.” He started away.
“Wait. That’s it?”
“You can stay if you feel weak, but if you think you can walk, we could really use the space.”
“I can walk.” Cooper took a deep breath and a look around. “Can I help you?”
“Do you have medical training?”
“Basic first aid.”
The doctor shook his head. “Too many people trying to help already. Best thing you can do right now is get out of the way.” And then he was gone, on to the next cot.
Cooper sat on the edge of the rack for a moment, letting his whirling thoughts slowly die down. Collecting himself, rebuilding the memories. He’d had her, hadn’t he? Slapped her cell phone away, had cuffs in hand. He’d won. He’d caught the bad guy. Girl.