Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

Chapter 1
    Joel Basher crashed through the front doors of the Library of Congress. The gnawing chill in the night air hit him like a raw slap. As he hit the stairs running, he tightened his grip on the stolen parcel inside his coat.
    The door burst open behind him. Joel heard the cop shouting, but the voice in his head was louder: You’re supposed to get caught .
    He tore through the first landing, exploded down the next section of stairs, but then halted on the next landing. The cop did the same on the landing above him. Joel clenched the icy granite railing in front of him. He hurled himself over it. His shoes cracked the water’s surface in the fountain below. He turned, saw the policeman with his gun raised, and knew it was time to dump the package.
    “Freeze!” the cop barked as he raced down to the landing above the tank.
    That’s exactly what Joel was doing, standing here in the shin-deep water next to Neptune and his two fishy henchmen.
    “Hands up!” the cop shouted as he braced himself against the railing, his outstretched pistol pointed at Joel’s chest.
    Joel nodded. He spread his jacket wide to show he had no weapon. As he did, the book inside tumbled down his body into the water.
    The cop’s eyes exploded. Joel knew what he was thinking. Water. Paper. A deadly combination.
    The cop made the mistake of trying to keep his gun on Joel as he stiff-armed the railing. His hand slipped on the ice, and gravity took care of the rest. By the time the cop’s flailing body crashed into the water, Joel was gone.
    He sprinted across First Street into the awaiting darkness behind a cluster of spruce trees. As soon as he nestled in their shadows, he turned to watch the show. The shivering policeman sat down on the edge of the fountain and opened the book. He plucked out the leather pouch and studied it a moment before an older man dressed in an elegant suit, who showed incredible agility for his age, flew down the stairs. He ripped the pouch from the cop’s hands. Even from his distance, Joel saw the concern consume the old man’s face.

Chapter 2
    Simon Shilling, the obsessive, overly protective chief of staff, shook President Jack Butcher awake.
    “What the hell is it? The goddamn place on fire?” Butcher was disgusted, but he was also fully awake. “Simon? Christ, man, don’t you ever sleep?”
    “I’ll sleep when I’m—”
    “Don’t,” Jack interrupted. “You’ll be working even harder without a body slowing you down.”
    “There’s been an incident, Mr. President,” Simon said.
    Jack instinctively glanced at the other side of the bed, where the First Lady’s spot was empty.
    “It’s not the First Lady,” Simon said, reading the president’s concern about his wife. She was in the middle of a goodwill trip to the Middle East. “She’s fine.”
    Jack felt the presence of others in the room. The hallway light dug into his eyes as he peered into the open doorway. Peter Devon, his spit-shined Secret Service chief, eclipsed much of the glow. He dwarfed the man standing next to him.
    “What is it?” Jack uttered.
    “There was an attempted robbery at the Library of Congress,” Simon replied.
    Jack blinked to clear his vision. “Attempted robbery? What’s so important about—” He stopped as he finally recognized Julius Brennan. Brennan was the Library of Congress’s head librarian. Jack rose, strapped on his bathrobe, and stepped into his slippers. He motioned for Pete to hit the lights. Jack waited for his eyes to adjust and then approached Brennan.
    “Mr. President,” the librarian said, outstretching his hand.
    “Julius, what happened?” Jack asked, shaking hands.
    “There was an attempt to steal documents from the Rare Book Reading Room, sir.”
    “You all keep saying it was an attempt. So was the thief caught?”
    “One of our library police officers was able to retrieve the documents,” Julius replied. “But the thief got away.”
    Jack turned to Simon. The two had long ago mastered the ability to read each other’s faces.
    “Let’s not beat around the bush, Julius. Please show the president what’s so important about these documents to wake him in the middle of the night.”
    Jack hadn’t noticed the briefcase hanging at Julius’s side until now. Julius crossed to Thomas Jefferson’s coffee table. It usually provided visitors with a place to set their drinks inside the mayor’s office at Philadelphia’s city hall, but it was being loaned to the city’s