She must have set this up after checking in. The hatch had probably been locked; Vasquez must have cut it or broken it, leaving herself a neat little escape. Clever. The hotel was a squat two-story in a row of similar buildings, and it wouldn’t be hard to move from one to the next, then climb down a fire escape and stroll away.
He reached for one of the slender rungs and hauled himself up. Spared a moment to be sure she wasn’t waiting at the top to brain him with a rock, then grabbed the lip and crawled onto the roof. Sludgy tar clung to his feet. Even through the wash of city lights, stars spilled across the horizon. He could hear traffic from the street below, and yelling as his team moved into the bar. Staying low, he glanced left and then right, saw a slender figure with her back to him, hands planted on a three-foot abutment that marked the edge of the roof. Vasquez pushed herself up, hooked a knee on the ledge, then rose to stand.
“Alex!” Cooper drew his sidearm as he stood but kept it low. “Stop.”
The programmer froze. Cooper took a few careful steps closer as she turned slowly, her posture conveying a mix of frustration and resignation. “Goddamn DAR.”
“Get off the ledge, then put your hands behind your head.”
Light from the street revealed her face, eyes hard, lips set in a sneer. “So you’re gifted, huh?” Another glint of gold from her necklace, a delicately wrought bird. “What is it for you?”
“Pattern recognition, especially body language.” He moved up until only half a dozen paces separated them. Kept the Beretta lowered.
“That’s how you moved so fast.”
“I don’t move any faster than you. I just know where you’re going to hit.”
“Isn’t that sweet. And you use that to hunt your own kind. Do you like it?” She put her hands on her hips. “Does it make you feel powerful? I bet it does. Do your masters pat you on the head for every one of us you catch?”
“Get down, Alex.”
“Or you’ll shoot me?” She glanced across the narrow alley at the building opposite. The leap was far but doable, maybe six feet.
“It doesn’t have to go this way. You haven’t hurt anyone yet.” He read the hesitation in her body, the tremble in her calf and the tension in her shoulders. “Get down and let’s talk.”
“Talk.” She snorted. “I know how you DAR boys talk. What’s that term the politicians like? ‘Enhanced interrogation.’ Very pretty. It sounds so much nicer than torture. Just like the Department of Analysis and Response sounds so much nicer than the Bureau of Abnorm Control.” Her body told him she was making up her mind.
“It doesn’t have to go this way,” he repeated.
“What’s your first name?” Her voice soft.
“Nick.”
“The man on the radio was right, Nick. About a war. That’s our future.” A strange resolve came over her, and she slipped her hands into her pockets. “You can’t stop the future. All you can do is pick a side.” She turned, glancing back at the alley.
Cooper saw what she intended and started forward, but before he’d taken two steps, Alex Vasquez, hands tucked deep in her pockets, dove off the roof.
Head first.
CHAPTER TWO
Cooper spent all night and most of the following day cleaning up.
The broken body of Alex Vasquez was the least of it. The medical examiners took care of that, joking about cause of death as they loaded her onto a gurney. He and Quinn had watched, the other agent holding an unlit cigarette, spinning it, sliding it between his lips, tucking it behind his ears. It wasn’t that he was trying to quit. He just savored the tension between holding the cigarette and the moment he lit it. Cooper watched facial muscles as Quinn finally took a deep drag and was pretty sure that the smoke itself was a letdown.
“I always wondered if someone would be able to do that.” Quinn looked up at the roof of the hotel thirty feet above. “Must be hard to fight the survival reflexes, keep her skull leading the way.”
“She put her hands in her pockets before she jumped.”