Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney #2)(73)
Milton Buck went on. “I want every scrap of information you have about him. I want dates, I want times, I want details. On every job. And I want to know where he is right now.”
“You can have the name and the details. But I don’t know where he is right now.”
Agent Buck stiffened. “Are you for real?”
“I haven’t seen him face-to-face in almost three years.”
“You’re a liar!”
Elizabeth shrugged. “We’re all liars when we need to be, Agent Buck. But this happens to be the truth. We communicate by e-mail and occasionally by phone. It’s business. We aren’t friends. If we were, I wouldn’t be talking to you. I am capable of loyalty, you know, whatever the saintly Miss Whitney may think.”
Tracy looked away.
“In any case, that’s my offer. You can take it or leave it.”
Jean Rizzo was getting antsy. “For Christ’s sake, Buck. We don’t have time for this.”
“Fine,” Milton Buck barked. “Give me the name.”
Elizabeth glanced at her attorney, who nodded.
“My partner is actually an old acquaintance of Tracy’s. Funny how closely our lives have become intertwined, isn’t it?”
Despite herself, Tracy looked up.
“His name”—Elizabeth paused for effect—“is Daniel Cooper.”
PART THREE
CHAPTER 19
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.