DANIEL COOPER WAITED PATIENTLY for the captain to turn off the seat-belt sign. Then he pushed his economy seat back as far as it would go and snapped off a single square of Lindt chocolate in celebration, closing his eyes and savoring the sweetness as it melted on his tongue.
All pleasure was sin, of course. Over the years, Daniel Cooper had learned to rein in most of his baser human desires. I am a vessel of justice, a pure servant of the Lord. And yet he knew he was still not worthy. Not yet. When he became worthy, when he’d fully atoned for his sins, the Lord would deliver Tracy Whitney to him. He felt sure that that day was moving ever closer. Tracy—his Tracy, his soul mate—was coming to him at last. All those years he’d thought she was dead! Or if not dead then disappeared, gone, lost to him forever. But he’d been wrong. The Lord had given him another chance. Daniel intended to grab that chance with both hands.
Beneath the cover of his airline blanket, Daniel Cooper started to touch himself.
God had called Daniel Cooper to hunt down lawbreakers and bring them to justice, but society had other ideas. When Daniel tried to join the New York City police force he had been rejected. Officially he was deemed too short, but in reality Daniel knew that his assessors simply didn’t like him. They found him creepy. When the FBI also rejected him, but accepted far less qualified candidates in his class, Daniel hacked into his psychiatric evaluation. Highly intelligent. Lacking empathy. Deceitful. Someone had added a handwritten note: borderline psychotic?
With law enforcement closed to him, Daniel Cooper worked first as a private investigator and later as an employee of an insurance company, tracking down defrauders. It was in this latter capacity that he first crossed paths with Tracy Whitney.
Daniel Cooper believed he could save Tracy Whitney. God had told him so in dream after dream, even as the devil tempted him with unclean thoughts about Tracy’s body. Daniel made it his personal mission to catch Tracy and bring her to justice. But throughout her long career as a con artist, she had eluded him time and time again. First by herself, and later with the appalling Jeff Stevens, she mocked all her would-be captors. In their arrogance, police forces across the globe underestimated Tracy Whitney. Daniel Cooper tried to warn them—in Madrid, in London, in New York, in Amsterdam. But like the Pharisees, they remained blinded with pride. And so the evildoers triumphed.
It was Amsterdam that changed everything.
Tracy and Jeff had stolen the Lucullan Diamond, smuggling it out of the city by homing pigeon. Weeks of surveillance and planning by Daniel Cooper had been for naught. This time it was the moronic Inspector van Duren who had let Whitney slip through Cooper’s net. Daniel would never forget the way Tracy stopped at the boarding gate at Schiphol Airport, turned to him and waved. Waved. Tracy Whitney had looked right into his eyes and seen his secrets. It was in that moment that the bond between them had been cemented.
What God has joined together, let no man cast asunder.
Daniel Cooper had looked back at Tracy Whitney on that fateful day and seen something in her eyes that he could neither forgive, nor forget: pity. Tracy Whitney—thief, goddess, whore—had dared to feel sorry for him.
It was not to be borne.
God was sending him a message that day. Clearly, he had not atoned sufficiently for his sins. He had not paid a high enough price. Tracy was to be his salvation and he hers, but he did not yet deserve her. There was more work to be done.
Daniel Cooper resigned from the insurance company the next day. He would begin by humiliating the police and authorities who had allowed Tracy to escape so many times through their arrogance and pride. And lo, the proud will be made humble and the humble raised high. From his years spent chasing Tracy across Europe, Daniel Cooper knew better than anyone just how easy it was to outwit dummy local law enforcement. As for Interpol, the entire organization was a joke! Just like the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude. Daniel would enjoy outsmarting them, just as Tracy had done. Only Daniel’s heists would be even bigger, even grander, even better executed than Tracy’s.
Tracy Whitney and Jeff Stevens had taught him how useful a woman could be as a lure in scams, disabling weak, carnally corrupted men. Preferring to work in the shadows himself, Daniel Cooper began scouting around for a suitable female partner.
He found Elizabeth Kennedy by chance, through a contact in London. She was very young, perhaps nineteen, sexually alluring and utterly amoral. Perfect, on paper. When Daniel Cooper met her in person, in a café in Shoreditch, he found her devoid of human emotion or at least of feminine frailty. Fresh out of Youth Custody, where she’d been sent for credit-card fraud—rather an ingenious case in Daniel Cooper’s opinion, in which she’d been unlucky to get caught—Elizabeth was mature, intelligent and focused. Of equal importance, she was willing to accept Daniel Cooper’s authority in exchange for a steady stream of work and a fifty-fifty share of the profits.
For the first couple of years, the partnership worked flawlessly. Daniel and Elizabeth planned and executed a string of jewel and art thefts around the globe, closely following the successful Whitney-Stevens model. But they were better than Tracy and Jeff. They worked harder, aimed higher and made more money. It was astonishing how quickly they became rich.
Elizabeth bought herself diamonds and cars and vacations and invested in real estate. Daniel Cooper saved every penny in a string of safe, untraceable Swiss bank accounts. He had no need for material comforts, nor, he felt, did he deserve them, preferring to live simply. Besides, the money was for him and Tracy. One day, once the other part of the Lord’s work had been completed and Daniel’s soul had been washed clean of his mother’s blood, he and Tracy would be married. Daniel Cooper would treat Tracy Whitney like a queen and she would worship and adore him, and live to please him, and tell him every day how much better a lover he was than that vacuous popinjay Jeff Stevens.
It was Daniel Cooper’s hatred of Jeff Stevens that led him to make his first mistake: using Elizabeth as a “honey trap” to break up Jeff and Tracy’s marriage. The plan had worked. All Daniel Cooper’s plans worked. He was a genius. But success came at a cost. The first, tragic consequence was that Tracy Whitney went to ground, disappearing so effectively that not even Daniel Cooper could find her. For nine long years Daniel had believed she was dead. Just thinking about that time made him shiver.
The second consequence was the effect of the job on Elizabeth. Much to Daniel Cooper’s surprise, it turned out that the aloof Miss Kennedy did have feelings after all. She had begun to care for Stevens and to fall under his spell, just as Tracy had done before her. Daniel and Elizabeth continued to pull off spectacular heists together across the globe. But after the honey-trap episode, and Tracy’s disappearance, the dynamic between the two of them was never quite the same. Elizabeth began to grow restless, and to tire of her partner’s demands. Inevitably, her standards began to slip.
Things came to a head last summer in L.A. when Elizabeth screwed up the Brookstein job. But, as Daniel now knew, it had all been part of God’s plan. For it was in Los Angeles, miraculously, that the Lord had brought Tracy Whitney back to him. Back from the dead.
Once again, God had sent Daniel a message, and he had used Tracy Whitney as the messenger.
I am pleased with you, My son, God was saying. Through your sacrifices, you have appeased My wrath and atoned for your sins. Now you shall win your bride, and achieve eternal redemption.
Elizabeth Kennedy’s arrest in New York had been a surprise to Daniel Cooper, but not a problem. Elizabeth had outlived her usefulness anyway. She was no longer Daniel Cooper’s concern. God’s plan for him had moved into a new, and a final, phase.
It was all about Tracy now.
Beneath the blanket, Daniel Cooper was about to reach climax. Reaching lower, he grabbed his scrotum and dug his fingernails into his own flesh so hard he drew blood. Tears of agony streamed down his face. He bit his tongue to stop himself from screaming as his erection collapsed in his hand.
“I’m sorry, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’m so sorry!”
The plane soared upward into the night.
THE RESTAURANT WAS OFF Bleecker, and quaint and European in feel. There were gingham tablecloths and old wicker chairs with floral cushions and mismatched china. Christmas carols were playing on low in the background. Under different circumstances, it would have been romantic. As it was, Tracy and Jean Rizzo were both exhausted.
It had been three days since Elizabeth Kennedy’s arrest and the breakthrough in Jean’s case. Three days of relentless debriefing about Daniel Cooper, overshadowed by gnawing anxiety: the Bible Killer had not struck again, at least not in the expected time frame. If it was Cooper, he was changing his MO, perhaps in response to Elizabeth’s arrest. Or perhaps, as Milton Buck repeatedly and smugly reminded both Jean and Tracy, Daniel Cooper had better things to do than waste his time bumping off hookers. Perhaps Jean Rizzo’s theory of a connection between the murders and the thefts was no more than a fantasy, a castle in the sky.
Jean ordered a bottle of Bordeaux and poured a large glass for Tracy.
Tracy said, “I’m still angry with you. You do know that?”
“I know.”
“You promised me Elizabeth would be put away.”
“And she will be. Just not for as long as we would have liked.”
“A year! That’s a joke, Jean, and you know it. You realize you may never find Cooper? You and Buck had Elizabeth, and you traded her for what? A name. A shadow.”
Jean Rizzo took a big slug of wine. “We’ll find him. We have to.”
He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.
Tracy looked at his heavy-lidded gray eyes and the traces of salt and pepper in his once-dark hair and thought, He looks tired. Defeated. Though she wouldn’t admit it, even to herself, she’d grown fond of Jean. She hoped for his sake, as much as for the murdered girls’, that Daniel Cooper was the man they’d been looking for. Deep down she still found it hard to reconcile her own memories of Cooper with this image of a ruthless, sadistic killer.
“You knew him,” said Jean, once their appetizers arrived, two Caesar salads with extra anchovies. He and Tracy had remarkably similar tastes. “I know we’ve been grilling Elizabeth for days. But what were your perceptions?”
Tracy rubbed her eyes. She was tired too. “I really didn’t know him. He was a shadow to me. Always a step or two behind. Never really a threat. I guess I thought he was kind of . . .”
“What?”
She searched for the right word. “Pathetic? I don’t know. He was smart. Jeff used to think he was in love with me,” she added, laughing.
“And was he?”
“He never gave me any reason to think so. In fact he spent years of his life doing everything he could to send me back to jail, so I’m gonna say no! Jeff thought he was dangerous.”
“But you didn’t?”
“Not really. Which is weird because I had a lot more reason to hate him than Jeff ever had.”
Rizzo raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Daniel Cooper knew I was innocent of the crime I went down for. He actually came to see me in that hellhole in Louisiana and told me as much.”
“Cooper came to the penitentiary?”
Tracy nodded, an involuntary shiver running through her. She never spoke of her time in prison. Never. Those were the darkest days of her life. It had taken her decades to stop dreaming about Big Bertha and Ernestine Littlechap and Lola and Paulita. The beatings. The terror. The hopelessness.
“The insurance company sent him. He sat there and told me he could prove I never took that Renoir. That Joe Romano framed me for the insurance money. But when I asked him for help, he refused. He left me in that filthy prison to rot.”
Jean digested this information. “Why do you think he did that?”
Tracy considered. “I don’t know. It was as if . . .” She struggled to put her impressions into words. “I got the sense it wasn’t personal. He was like a machine. I guess he and Elizabeth have a lot in common in that regard. I honestly don’t think it occurred to him that he should have gotten me out of there.”
“That’s very forgiving of you to say,” Jean observed.
Tracy shrugged. “You asked me my impressions of Cooper. I’m telling you. When I got out of jail there were a long list of people I needed to get revenge on. Joe Romano, Anthony Orsatti, Perry Pope, that bastard judge, Lawrence. They were so corrupt, so wicked, and they thought they were untouchable.” Tracy’s green eyes flashed with anger at the memory. Not for the first time Jean Rizzo thought how beautiful she looked when her blood was up. “Daniel Cooper was many things but he wasn’t corrupt. Quite the opposite in fact. There was something of the zealot about him.”
“And yet he’s spent the last decade as a world-class art and jewelry thief,” said Jean. “Isn’t that corruption?”
“It depends on how you look at it,” said Tracy. “I doubt he sees it that way.”
“So you’re not surprised Cooper turned to crime?”
“To be frank with you, I haven’t given Daniel Cooper a thought in the last ten years.”
“Do you think he killed those girls?”
The question was so direct, Tracy was taken aback.
“I don’t know.”
She watched Jean’s face crumple, like a paper bag with the air sucked out of it.
“I know that’s not the answer you want. You want me to have a gut instinct on this, but the truth is I just don’t know. Part of me always felt a little sorry for him. Now that I know all that stuff from the FBI files, about his mother being murdered when he was a kid and him finding her body . . .” She trailed off. “I don’t know. He seems to have led a sad and lonely life, that’s all.”
“A lot of killers do,” Jean Rizzo said darkly.
His phone rang. Tracy watched him answer it. Then she watched the blood drain from his face. She knew what had happened before Jean said a word.
“It’s happened again, hasn’t it? They found another girl.”
Jean Rizzo nodded grimly. “Let’s get out of here.”
EIGHT HOURS LATER, TRACY was in her hotel room, packing, when Jean Rizzo knocked on the door.
He’d been at the crime scene all night and was still wearing the same shirt he’d had on at the restaurant. He looked close to tears.
“You need some sleep,” Tracy told him.
“It’s our man, no question.” Jean collapsed into a chair. “The girl’s name was Lori Hansen and she’d been dead at least thirty hours by the time anyone found her. Raped, tortured, strangled. The apartment was immaculate, the corpse too. And that damned Bible . . .”
Tracy put a hand on his shoulder. “There was nothing you could have done.”
“Of course there was,” Jean exploded. “I could have stopped him! I could have found him and stopped him in time. It is Daniel Cooper, it has to be. Elizabeth told Buck the guy was always spouting religion at her.”
“I’ll admit, it is starting to look more likely.” Tracy closed her suitcase.
“She also told him Cooper was obsessed with you and Stevens. That he deliberately planned their jobs to copy your methods. It was Cooper who paid Elizabeth to seduce Jeff and break up your marriage.”
Tracy had pulled a picture of Nicholas out of her wallet and was staring at it like it was a talisman, trying to block Rizzo out. Her son represented peace and goodness and sanity. She longed to return to him, to feel his small, strong body in her arms, to smell the clean, soft smell of his cheeks. She did not want to hear about Daniel Cooper anymore, or about Jeff friggin’ Stevens. This morning at breakfast she’d seen a report in the newspaper about a stolen Byzantine coin collection—some Russian girl had been robbed while she was at the Winter Wonderland Ball. Tracy knew it was Jeff who’d been the thief, and the report had made her feel momentarily close to him again, and then angry and then bereft. She had to get out of here, out of this city, away from Jeff and all of the madness that she’d worked so hard, so very hard, to escape.
Jean Rizzo said, “I think Jeff Stevens was dead right. I think Daniel Cooper was in love with you.”
Tracy lifted her case off the bed.
“I think he still is in love with you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Tracy moved toward the door, but Jean put a hand out to stop her.
“No, it’s not. It’s not ridiculous. I knew you were at the heart of this, Tracy. I knew it and I was right. He’s going to come for you, you know. Eventually.”
“I have to go.”
“Go? No. You can’t go,” Jean told her. “You have to stay, now more than ever. We’re so close! Please, stay in New York, at least for a few more days. Cooper may still be in the vicinity.”
“He may also be anywhere else on the planet.”
“Tracy, please. With your help we have a chance of—”
“Jean.” Tracy spoke kindly but firmly. “I’m not staying. Not another day, not another minute. You can threaten to tell Nicholas till you’re blue in the face. Who knows, maybe you’ll even carry out on your threat. But it’s Christmas and I’m going home to my son.” Pushing past him, she opened the door. “You have my number if you need it.”
Jean Rizzo stood and watched her go. He felt bereft, and not just because of the case. With Tracy around, he felt hopeful, energized, empowered. Without her, all the despair and emptiness came rushing back. How the hell had Jeff Stevens let a woman like that slip through his fingers?
“Don’t you have a home to go to?” Tracy stopped at the door. “You have kids, right?”
Jean thought about Luc and Clémence. He realized guiltily that he hadn’t given them a thought in days.
“I’ll call you,” Tracy said.
She was gone.
BLAKE CARTER DRIED THE dishes slowly and carefully. It was the same way he did everything else, the way his father had taught him. Blake’s father had a saying he was fond of. “God made time, but man made haste.” William Carter had been a good man, the best. Blake had often wondered what he would have made of Tracy Schmidt. Would he have understood Blake’s love for her, with her warmth and kindness and beauty, her secrets and sadness and pain? Probably not. William Carter had lived in a world of moral absolutes, of right and wrong, black and white. There was much that Blake didn’t know about his employer, the woman whom he’d loved silently and steadfastly these past ten years. But he did know that the world Tracy had come from before they met her was a world of gray. Nothing was black and white with Tracy. Nothing was what it seemed.
Jean Rizzo had come from that world. Ever since Tracy took Nicholas to L.A. in the summer, Blake had watched the gray world of her past come back to haunt her. But since the day Rizzo had shown up at the door, things had gotten exponentially worse. Blake had watched Tracy grow tense and fearful, jumping every time the telephone rang. She’d returned from her “Christmas shopping trip” to New York looking haggard and thin—and without any purchases. Blake knew he had to say something. He just didn’t know what, or when, or how.
It was nine P.M. on Christmas Day, and Tracy was curled up on the couch in the family room with Nicholas watching The Polar Express for the nine hundred and eighty-eighth time. That’s another paradox about her, Blake reflected. She’s practical and tough but she’s wildly sentimental too. Blake Carter’s own mother had died when he was young. That was probably one of the reasons why he’d never married, and learned to rely only on himself. Tracy’s maternal side exerted a huge pull over Blake. Who am I kidding? Every hair on her head exerts a huge pull. Blake Carter had never been in love before. He was not enjoying the experience.
Tracy caught him staring. “You okay in there?”
“I’m fine. Almost done.”
Leaving Nicholas wrapped up in a faux-fur blanket, Tracy came over to join Blake in the kitchen. “You don’t have to do all that, you know.”
“Sure I do.” Blake smiled. “You sure as hell ain’t going to.”
“True. But Linda’ll be in tomorrow.”
“Never put off till tomorrow what you could do today,” said Blake. “Close that door, would you?”
He dried the last of the dishes. Tracy closed the door to the family room and opened a box of chocolates.
“Want one?”
“No thanks. Tracy, listen. There’s been somethin’ I’ve been meaning to say for a while now.”
Tracy noticed that Blake’s hands were shaking. He was always so calm. She began to feel nervous herself.
“You’re not sick, are you?”
“Sick?” Blake frowned. “No. I’m not sick. I’m . . . well, fact of the matter is . . . I’m in love with you.”
Tracy stared back at him with naked astonishment.
“I’d like you to consider becoming my wife.”
For a long time, Tracy said nothing. Once she’d had time to think about it, she came back with the impressively articulate: “I . . . wow.”
“Now, I know I’m older. Too old for you, really,” Blake continued in his quiet, comforting, gentle manner. “But I reckon we get along pretty well up here. And I love the boy like he’s my own.”
“I know you do,” Tracy said. “Nicky loves you too. And so do I.”
Blake’s heart soared.
“But I can’t be your wife, Blake.”
The old cowboy took two deep breaths. “Is there someone else, Tracy?”
She hesitated. “Not in the way you mean. But in my heart, yes. There is.”
“Is it Nick’s father?”
Tracy felt utterly miserable in that moment. Because the answer to Blake Carter’s question, the answer she could never admit to, was yes.
She’d told Jean Rizzo that she needed to leave New York to get back to her son, and that was true as far as it went. But there was another need, equally strong, another force propelling her to take the first plane out of the city and never look back. Being in New York, talking to Elizabeth, reading about the theft of the Byzantine coins, Tracy was forced to face the truth. She was still in love with Jeff Stevens. She’d never stopped loving Jeff, and never would stop. She hated herself for it, and she cried and screamed and railed at the heavens. But the feelings were still there, as deep and true as they had been the day she married him in that tiny Brazilian chapel, years ago.
Blake saw the torment in her eyes. His compassion trumped his disappointment. He took Tracy’s hand.
“Nick’s father isn’t dead, is he?”
“No.”
“You can talk to me, you know. I know you aren’t who you claim to be. I know you’ve got some kind of past. I’m not stupid, Tracy.”
“I never thought you were,” Tracy said vehemently.
“It’s that Rizzo character, isn’t it?” There was a bitterness to Blake’s voice that Tracy had never heard before. “He’s the one that’s sucked you back in. To whatever it was you came here to forget.”
“Jean Rizzo’s a good man,” Tracy said. “It may not seem that way. But he is. He’s doing what he has to do.”
“And what about you?” said Blake. “What do you have to do? For God’s sake, Tracy, what hold does that man have over you?”
Tracy said nothing. A heavy silence hung in the air between them.
When Blake next spoke he’d regained his composure. Looking Tracy steadily in the eye, he said, “I don’t need to know who you were before, Tracy. Not if you don’t want to tell me. I’m in love with who you are now. I’m in love with Tracy Schmidt. I want Tracy Schmidt back.”
“So do I.” Tracy started to cry. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed onto the chocolate box. “But it isn’t that simple, Blake.”
“Isn’t it? Marry me, Tracy. Choose this life, our life, not your old one. You’re happy here in the mountains with Nicholas and me.”
Tracy thought, He’s right. I am happy here. At least I was.
Will I ever be happy again?
“Don’t say no,” said Blake. “Think on it awhile. Think about what you want the rest of your life to look like. Yours and the boy’s.”
Blake left. The movie finished and Nicholas went to bed.
Tracy followed suit, but she couldn’t sleep.
She thought about Jeff Stevens and Daniel Cooper and Jean Rizzo and Blake Carter. The four of them weaved in and out of her consciousness like dancers around a maypole, their ribbons becoming tangled and entwined as the music played on and on and on.
