Brilliance

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In early September, six months after the explosion at the Leon Walras Exchange that claimed 1,143 lives, a Jaguar XKR maneuvered the abandoned streets of Chicago’s warehouse district.

The pavement was cracked by the weight of 18-wheelers and the relentless cycle of Chicago winters. The sports car had a racing frame with tight suspension for maximum road-feel, and every chunk of broken asphalt vibrated through the driver’s teeth. He rode slowly, steering around the worst of the potholes. Unconvincing rain dribbled on the windshield, too much to leave the wipers off but not enough to keep them from catching with a squeak on every backswing.

He passed a series of bland brick buildings screened behind rusting fences. A few blocks north the warehouses had been converted into massive party palaces, the douchy kind of clubs favored by the douchy kind of clubbers. Here, though, the buildings mostly retained their original function. Mostly.

He rolled over a set of long-abandoned railroad tracks, ku-chunk ku-chunk, past a graffitied Dumpster, to a two-story building of faded orange brick with a water tower on top. The fence was topped with razor wire, and a security camera stared down. After a moment the gate slid open. He pulled through and parked next to a polished Town Car with tinted windows.

The gravel crunched under his shoes, and he could smell rain and garbage, and under it, faint, a hint of the river. He took a plain black briefcase from the trunk and left his pistol in its place.

A tortured squeak of metal came from behind, a door opening. A guy in a track suit watched him without expression.

Inside, the warehouse was a wide-open space, cold and unfinished. The light that seeped from the high windows only made the shadows darker. Stacks of unmarked crates took up about half the floor space. A cherry-red Corvette was parked near the roll doors. Someone’s legs stuck out from beneath it, one foot tapping to the beat of a radio playing classic rock.

Track Suit said, “I need to check you.”

“No,” he smiled, “you don’t.”

Track Suit was one of Zane’s muscle guys, not important, but not used to being contradicted. “I know you’re the boss’s new pet, but—”

“Listen carefully.” Still smiling. “You try to pat me down, I’m going to break your arm.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You serious with that?”

“Yep.”

Track Suit took a step forward, favoring his left leg.

“Joey.” The mechanic was out from under the car. A smudge of grease stained one cheek. “He’s okay. Besides, he’s not kidding about your arm.”

“But—”

“Take him to Zane.”

Joey hesitated for a moment, then turned and said, “This way.”

“This way” turned out to be to the back of the warehouse, where a metal staircase ran to a loft. Joey moved heavily, grunting as though each step was a task to cross off. A short hallway ran to a door, and Joey knocked. “Mr. Zane? He’s here.”

It had once been a foreman’s office, with windows that looked not out at the world but in and down to the warehouse floor. Since then it had been cleaned up and decorated. Twin sofas sat atop a lush oriental rug. The lighting was tasteful and low. A tri-d ran CNN, the volume muted.

Robert Zane had come from the street, and neither the Lucy Veronica cashmere sweater or the two-hundred-dollar haircut could change that. He radiated an ineffable sense of dangerous slickness, and around his eyes and in his posture there always lingered a hint of the days when he’d been bad old Bobby Z. “Mr. Eliot.”

“Mr. Zane.”

“Drink?”

“Sure.”

Joey closed the door behind them as Zane walked to a sidebar. “Scotch okay?”

“Fine.” The rug was thick beneath his shoes. He set the briefcase flat on the table, then sat down. The couch was too soft. He leaned back with his hands in his lap.

“You know, I wasn’t sure you were serious. What you were offering? Nobody can get hold of that kind of newtech.” Zane took ice cubes from a mini-fridge and dropped them into the glasses, then poured two inches into each. His movements as he walked back were light and balanced, a fighter’s posture. He passed a glass and then sat on the couch opposite, legs crossed and arms outstretched, every bit the man of leisure. “But here you are. I guess I shouldn’t have doubted, huh?”

“Doubt’s good. Makes you careful.”

“Amen to that.” Zane lifted the glass in a toast. On the tri-d, a reporter stood in front of the White House. The ribbon at the bottom read, BILL TO MICROCHIP GIFTED PASSES HOUSE 301–135; PRESIDENT WALKER EXPECTED TO SIGN. The reporter’s breath steamed in the cold air, rippling toward them, artifacting a little where it reached the limits of the projection field. “So.”

“So.”

Zane nudged the briefcase with his toe. “You mind?”

“It’s your case.”

The other man smiled, leaned forward, and thumbed the locks. They gave satisfying pops as they opened. Zane lifted the lid. For a moment he just stared. Then he blew a breath and shook his head. “Goddamn. Ripping off a DAR lab. You don’t mind my saying, you are one crazy son of a bitch.”

“Thanks.”

“How did you pull it off?”

Eliot shrugged.

“Okay, sure, professional secret. Let me rephrase that. Any trouble?”

—a finger of flame shattering the glass, shards raining sparkling down, the squealing of the alarms lost behind the roar of another explosion, the truck’s gas tank going—

“Nothing that will come back on you.”

“Goddamn,” Zane repeated. “I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sure glad you’re here. People can say what they like about your kind, you get the job done.” He closed the case slowly, almost gingerly. “I’ll have the money transferred, same as before. That okay?”

“How’d you like to keep it?”

Zane had been about to sip his scotch, but the words caught him off guard. He froze, the muscles in his shoulders going tense. Dealings in the criminal world were a dance as regimented as a waltz. Everybody knew the steps, and any improvisation was cause for alarm. Slowly, Zane lowered his glass and set it on the table with a faint click. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’ll give you those,” gesturing at the case, “and you keep your money.”

“And you get?”

“A favor.” Tom Eliot leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, a confessional pose, man-to-man. “My name isn’t Tom Eliot. It’s Nick Cooper.”

“Okay.”

“What I’m about to tell you…” He paused, held it, sighed. “Trust isn’t a big part of our business, but I think I can trust you, and I need your help. You know I’m an abnorm.”

“Of course.”

“What you didn’t know is that I used to work for the DAR.”

“So that’s how you were able to rob their lab.”

“No, actually. I’d never been to one before. The labs are on the analysis side. I was response. Equitable Services.”

Zane almost controlled his reaction.

“Yeah. We don’t exist. Except, of course, we do. Or they do. I left under…well, being gifted at an agency that hunted my kind caused some friction. The specifics don’t matter. What does matter is that once I left, I became a bad guy in their eyes.”

“I know something about being a bad guy.” Zane smiled.

“That’s why I think I can trust you. See, they’ve named me a target. They’re trying to kill me. And sooner or later, they’ll succeed.”

“And you want me to…what? Take on the DAR?”

“Of course not. I want you to help me become someone else.”

Zane picked up his drink. Sipped at it. “Why not go to Wyoming?”

“And live with the rest of the animals in the zoo?” He shook his head. “No thanks. I don’t like cages. And nobody is going to put a tracking device in my throat. Not ever. So I need a new name, a new face, and the documents to go with it.”

“You’re asking a lot.”

“Those semiconductors?” He gestured to the case. “That’s virgin newtech. No one, no one, outside of the DAR has seen that architecture. You play your cards right on those, you can make a fortune. And they won’t cost you a dime. You’re one of the biggest smugglers in the Midwest. You really going to tell me you don’t have a hacker and a surgeon in the family?”

The tri-d switched to footage of the Exchange explosion, the same loop of footage he’d seen on the tri-d billboard back in March. They had played it endlessly for the first months, followed by clips from President Walker’s speech, especially “For them, there can be—will be—no mercy.” Then as it became clear that John Smith wasn’t going to be quickly caught, it had slipped out of rotation. But it still ran every time anyone wanted to say anything negative about abnorms. Which was pretty much once an hour.

“Sure, I have the resources. But if I do this for you, then what?”

“I told you. You get those for free.”

“I could just kill you.”

“You sure?” He smiled.

Zane laughed. “You got balls, man. I like that.”

“We have a deal?”

“Let me think about it.”

“You know how to reach me. Meanwhile, hold onto the money and the semiconductors. Call it a good faith gesture.” Cooper brushed off his pant legs, then stood up. “Thanks for the drink.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The rain had let up, and by the patch of slightly brighter gray in the western sky, it looked as if the sun might even be trying to shine. Cooper retrieved his weapon from the trunk, then steered the Jaguar off the crumbling streets of the warehouse district and into traffic. The car was a beauty, though he missed the raw muscular rumble of the Charger.

It had been a risky play, with Zane. Hopefully the man was the dirtbag Cooper believed.

He swung south, downtown. The skyline was half lost in clouds. He passed a row of shops, a car dealership. The El banged by overhead, sparks showering down where it banked.

Streeterville was a high-rent district, the kind of place that before he’d never have thought to stay. It was all boutiques and hair salons, shrill dogs and expensive women. He pulled down Delaware and stopped in front of the gleaming opulence of the Continental Hotel. A tall, pale guy in a dark jacket opened his door. “Welcome back, Mr. Eliot.”

“Thanks, Mitch.” He left the car and strode into the hotel.

The lobby was the definition of modern opulence, all clean lines and lush furniture. A huge paper chandelier glowed above. Cooper strolled to the elevator and swiped his keycard. It slid into motion without him touching a button. His ears popped as they rose.

“Forty-sixth floor. Executive suites,” the recorded voice purred. He pictured her tall, with sleek blond hair and a skirt that showed a little thigh and a lot of shadow.

Cooper keyed into his suite and slid out of his suit jacket. It was gray and Italian and cost more than his entire previous wardrobe. The staff had cleaned the room and drawn the curtains. Outside and far below, Lake Michigan churned silently against the shore. The sky was slowly turning to amber. He called down for smoked salmon and a bottle of gin.

In the bathroom he splashed cold water on his face then dried himself on a thick towel. Looked in the mirror. The same face looked back, as it always did; only the setting changed. He remembered the first apartment he and Natalie had shared, a dim, narrow space above a Chinese restaurant. That had been back in their early days, before time and his gift went to work on them. Todd had been conceived in that apartment, on a couch that smelled like egg rolls. They’d had their first Christmas together there, and Cooper could still remember Todd sitting wobbly amidst a pile of wrapping paper, a bow stuck to his head. Could remember—

Don’t. Just don’t.

Back in the bedroom, he dropped his d-pad on the desk, his gun in the drawer. The armchair was where he’d left it, pulled out of place and turned to face the floor-to-ceiling windows, a stunning panorama of lake and skyline. He sat down and sighed.

“Home sweet home,” he said.

Six months ago, when he’d shown up at Drew Peters’s door with a plan and a stomach full of reckless energy, his main concern had been convincing his boss. He’d known there would be costs, and he’d accepted them. But it was only after everything was in motion that he first got that pit-of-the-stomach what now? feeling.

It wasn’t as though he could just e-mail John Smith and say he wanted to change sides. Any attempt to reach out directly would be seen for the trap it was. And so instead, Cooper had to ask himself what he would do if he couldn’t do what he’d always done. If he wasn’t the good guy who believed that the system, for all its flaws, was the only way to survive; that it was the route to a better tomorrow. If he really had been cast out by the department, if they had pinned the explosion on him, had betrayed and hunted him, what would he do?

And thus began a startlingly lucrative life as a criminal.

There was a knock at the door. He let the waiter in, asked him to put the tray on the desk by the window, signed the check and a tip without processing the numbers. The salmon was perfect, the smoky sweetness offset by the sharp salt of the capers and the brightness of fresh lemon. He washed it down with icy gin, watching the sky slowly change colors.

He’d been careful. He’d planned his moves with a rigorous devotion. After all, he had nothing else to do. No family he could share his life with. No boss to complicate his work. No friends who needed him. For a little while he tried sleeping with a woman he’d met in the hotel lounge. A magazine editor, smart and chic and very sexy, but neither of their hearts was in it, and the thing petered out on its own.

It had been a surprise—and yeah, okay, a pleasure—to realize how very good he was at being bad. The same skills that made him the best agent in Equitable Services made him an exceptional thief and powerbroker. In the last six months he’d hurtled through the underworld.

There had been some thrills on the criminal end, but far more dangerous than his new friends was his old agency. As they’d planned, Drew Peters had laid the explosion at Cooper’s feet. He was now one of the top targets of Equitable Services. Three times they’d tracked him down—in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Detroit.

Detroit had been bad. He’d nearly had to kill an agent.

Staying in cities was dangerous, but he had to be on the radar. Vanishing entirely might save him from the DAR, but it wouldn’t bring him any closer to Smith.

Six months of hide-and-seek, building his reputation and his wealth. Six months of relentless caution and patience. Six months while his children grew up without him, while Natalie dealt with God knew what, while his former colleagues hunted him. Six months of never making the first step in John Smith’s direction.

Until today. He could only hope that the table he’d set for Zane was tempting enough.

He finished the salmon and licked his fingers. The clouds had broken, and the world outside glowed shadowless Easter colors. Magic hour. The double panes of glass canceled sound, turning the world into a mime show, a bright and dazzling spectacle for his eyes alone. That was the lure of wealth, he’d discovered; a throaty whisper in your ear that you were special, that it was all—this wine, this woman, this world—for you. That it in some way existed only so that you might partake of it. He liked it, a lot. Liked being part of the aristocracy, the one percent who had enough money to do whatever they chose.

He’d trade it in a second to be back in the front yard, spinning his children in a whirling arc of joy.

The phone rang. He rocked the chair back on two legs and stretched for it. Let it ring while he checked the display.

Zane.

Cooper smiled.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Funny thing about Chicago’s business district—it had a faucet.

Most of the day was a steady trickle, tourists, shoppers, and the like. At night, the faucet was cranked down to a bare drip. But there were certain moments when the thing was opened full stream, and the streets and sidewalks transformed to wild rapids of humanity. The first was the morning commute. The third was the evening rush back to the trains.

Cooper sat in the window of a falafel joint waiting for the second. Outside the smudged windows, cars wove slowly south. The concrete chasm effect was even more claustrophobic here on Wells, where the tracks for the El cut the sky into thin slivers. He checked his watch. Almost…

Lunchtime.

The sidewalks were suddenly thronged, people hurrying and jostling in braided vectors. Cooper picked up his plastic shopping bag and joined them. As always, the crowd made him uncomfortable. Too much stimulus, too many intentions.

The day was clear and cold. He craned his neck upward, saw nothing but the towers of industry rising to a pale blue sky. Half a block north he climbed the stairs up to the El, careful to move within a crowd, a cluster of twentysomething businessmen laughing and talking. His right shoe was tight and awkward, but his body felt loose and strong, tingling with anticipated adrenaline. Cooper swiped his card and walked through the turnstile. A portico shaded the platform. Holographic ads for beauty products and movies danced along the railing overlooking the street. The buildings pressed close; ten feet off the edge, people in office buildings did…well, whatever people in office buildings did. He’d never been sure.

Cooper walked halfway down the platform. He tossed the plastic shopping bag at the trash and missed, the bag landing at the base of the metal can. He left it there and took a seat on the third bench. The portico hid the sky.

In five minutes Zane’s hacker would be here, or not. He was betting on not.

A train rounded the curve, ungodly noisy. There had been talk for years of retrofitting the tracks to allow a maglev train, faster and quieter, but the money had never been in the city’s budget. Cooper was glad of it; he liked the El the way it was. Old-world thinking, sure, but the rattle and clank made him happy. He rested his arms on the back of the bench, crossed his legs.

As the Brown Line pulled in, the platform erupted into a mass of motion. People jostled to get off as others fought to get on. Conversations, phone calls, music. Excuse-mes and curses. A man rapped to himself as he walked, completely unselfconscious. The wave of humanity crested with a recorded tone and the announcement that doors were closing. The tide pulled away with the train, leaving the platform suddenly empty.

Except for a very, very pretty girl who had not been there a moment ago.

Cooper blinked, startled. His palms went sweaty and the back of his neck tingled.

The Girl Who Walks Through Walls wore boots to the knee, soft tights to the hem of her skirt, a fitted shirt, and a loose jacket that had plenty of space in the cuff to conceal the snub-nosed pistol she was pointing at his chest.

She said, “Get up.”

Cooper stared—

She is not part of the plan. She’s a surprise on a day with no margin for error. In about sixty seconds, everything is going to explode.

Why is she here? Why now? She can’t be working with Zane.

There must be sources within the department. John Smith has informers.

And how the hell does she do that, anyway?

—at her, conscious, suddenly, that his mouth was open. He closed it. Was this how other people felt about what he could do? Her ability to move unseen was uncanny. He could have sworn he’d been looking right at that spot. “You made it out of the Exchange, I guess.”

“Stand up. I won’t say it again.”

He read her intent in the lines of her shoulder, the set of her mouth, the fury in her eyes, and he stood up. Slowly. “I don’t work for the DAR anymore,” he said. “Shooting me won’t help your boss.”

“I’m not here for that. I’m here for Brandon Vargas.”

His bafflement must have shown on his face. Her lips tightened. “Of course. You don’t remember. He was just another number to you. Walk.” She gestured with her head, not the gun. A pro.

Cooper glanced in the direction she indicated. The nearer exit. She meant to take him off the platform before shooting him. Normally he’d have welcomed that, knowing that every second he was alive he’d have a chance to turn this around. But not today.

Today stepping out from under the roof was a death sentence.

“Listen to me,” he said. “There’s something you need to know.”

“Start moving or I’ll shoot you right here.”

“I don’t think so. You’re not actually invisible. You may know how to be where people aren’t looking, but I’m betting once they’re staring, you’re just as screwed as anyone else who fires a gun on an El platform.”

“Maybe I’ll risk it.”

“For Brandon Vargas?”

“Don’t you say his name. His life was shit because of men like you. Men like you put him in an academy. Men like you made him a slave. And when he refused to join the government after he graduated, you killed him. You’re the boot of the system, Cooper. It’s your job to step on human beings. And you don’t even remember them.”

“I shot Brandon Vargas thirteen months ago,” he said quietly, “behind a biker bar in Reno. We talked first. He smoked a cigarette, a Dunhill Red. Then he made a run for it, a reckless one. Tell you the truth, I don’t think he was trying to escape. I think he wanted me to end things. Wanted me to stop him.”

A spectrum of emotions rolled across her face. The detail about the cigarette had been the clincher. Had Brandon been friend, family, or lover? If it was the former, he might be able to talk her down. If it was one of the latter two…

“I remember everyone I’ve killed,” Cooper said. “I didn’t go after Brandon because he wouldn’t join the DAR. I went after him because he started robbing banks and shooting people. In the last one it was a woman and her two-year-old daughter. The girl was in a stroller. It was an accident, but she’s still dead.” There was motion in his peripheral vision. People coming onto the platform. He desperately wanted to turn and look, but didn’t dare. “Yes, his childhood sucked. But I don’t think that buys him a license to shoot two-year-olds. Do you?”

Her eyes were large to begin with, and the mascara made them huge. He stared at them, trying to read her thoughts, and more than that, her next move, whether she was going to pull the trigger just because that was the plan. He could feel the seconds ticking away, and the motion in his periphery drawing closer, and then he could no longer take it, and he turned and looked at the steps.

Just as he had expected. Zane, thank you for being the traitorous opportunistic piece of weasel shit I thought you were.

He turned back to the Girl Who Walks Through Walls. She was on the train side of the platform. The roof would cover her from one direction, but not both. “Listen to me,” he said. “Take exactly two steps forward and face east. Do it now, or they’ll kill you.”

“Who?”

“Do it now.” She would listen or she wouldn’t. Either way, he had to focus. He turned.

Pouring out of both entrances to the east were men and women with neat hair and good shoes and the chest bulk of people wearing body armor. They carried shotguns and SMGs and pistols, carried them properly, aimed down and left, safeties off but fingers outside trigger guards. Three at the far stair and five at the near. Agents from Equitable Services. His former colleagues. There would be dozens more nearby, scores, covering every block. And for a little salt in the wound, both Roger Dickinson and Bobby Quinn were among them.

Ah well.

They were yelling, telling him not to move, standard law enforcement technique, disorient and overwhelm. Their guns coming up. The handful of civilians on the platform had turned to stone. Slowly, palms out to show he meant no threat, he raised his hands. Showed that he was complying. They fanned out in a precise tactical arc, giving every agent a clean shot. The barrels of eight guns were locked on his chest. No one pointing at his head, no hotshots. If he so much as twitched his finger, they would blow his chest across the platform. He could see it in the white tension of a forefinger curled on a trigger; in the unblinking fish stare framed by submachine gun sights; in the locked shoulder muscles and flared nostrils. Roger Dickinson’s lips were twisted into a snarl that looked almost like a smile. They wanted to shoot. They hated him, and they feared him.

All but Quinn. Quinn wasn’t sure. Cooper locked eyes with his friend and partner. Let the sounds wash over him, their yells and howls and the rumble of an incoming train, all of it static, like the burbling of a river, out of sync with the motion of their lips.

And then he used his toe to trigger the remote he’d jammed into the front of his shoe, and the flashbangs in the plastic shopping bag turned the world into a blazing roar.

Even facing east, with his back to them, the glare left spots in his eyes, and now static really was all he could hear. All of the agents in their textbook-perfect arc had been staring directly into eight million candelas worth of white-hot flare. They reeled back, hands going to eyes, weapons flailing.

Ten seconds.

Cooper turned, saw the girl standing beside him, facing east. She started forward, but he lashed out, caught her wrist. “No!” He was shouting, but could barely hear his own voice. “Snipers!” He let go of her, turned to the west, and began to run.

Eight seconds.

The platform ran another thirty yards. Benches and trash cans were strung along the length. He leaned into the run, hoping she could keep up. The beginnings of a potential next step were assembling in his head, and she was at the heart of it. No time. He reached the end of the portion with a roof.

Here went nothing.

Five seconds.

Something angry and hot burned past his arm, and sparks popped off a trash can ahead. He did a quick zag to the left. A patch of concrete burst. He faked right and then went left again. The hipster he passed collapsed, hands clutching at his leg, which seemed to have exploded from the inside. Cooper never heard the shots, hadn’t expected to. The flashbang was part of it, but also the snipers—there would be at least three—would be on upper floors hundreds of yards away.

Two seconds.

He hit the end of the platform at a dead run, planted his right foot without slowing, leaped upward, got his left foot onto the railing, and flung himself into space, arms whirling, wind on his face, heart in his mouth.

Below him the street. Unforgiving concrete and the buzz of cars. Empty air. He just had time to wonder if he would make it, and then he hit the fire escape of the building opposite. It wasn’t a graceful landing; he pretty much collided with the railing, ribs banging into it. He gasped, then hauled himself up and over. Turned to see if—

—she landed like a cat, flexing her knees down to a squat crouch, her hands catching and pushing her up.

Goddamn.

Cooper pushed aside his appreciation. They were out of time. A flashbang worked by throwing enough photons that it activated all light-sensitive cells in the eye, temporarily blinding anybody nearby and facing it. But ten seconds was as much as he could hope before the team would be able to see enough to start moving. Maybe even to risk a shot. He lunged for the corner railing, ripped off the strip of duct tape, and yanked the crowbar free, then whirled and smashed the window with one blow. Hauled it back across the bottom to clear the worst of the shards.

He turned to gesture to the girl, and found her no longer there. Right. He leaped through the window as gunfire cracked behind. He hit something, her, and the two of them tangled and fell. He landed on top of her, not a suave action hero move but a clumsy, wind-losing collapse. He caught a whiff of female sweat and some spicy sort of perfume, and then they were both squirming to their feet.

A thin man with thinner hair sat on the opposite side of the desk. His mouth was wide open. He stared at them like, well, like they had just exploded through his window. Cooper snorted a laugh—something about a fight, he always found synchronicities and amusements when he couldn’t afford them—and went for the office door. She followed. An office like any other, cubicles and filing cabinets and fluorescent lights. He walked steadily, nodding at people he passed, just another office drone. The stairwell was by the elevator. He hurried in and up. His ears rang and his ribs hurt. He went up one flight and then paused on the landing and checked the time.

“Why are you stopping?”

“Waiting for them to get here. All of the units in the area will be rerouted to this building.”

“What? This is a trap?”

“No. They’ll surround it, secure the exits. Then tactical response teams will move in. That’s when we move out.”

“Screw you. I’m not waiting.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve had this all planned.”

“I figured Zane would sell me out.”

“Then why show up?”

“Because there was a chance that he wouldn’t. Besides, I’ve run a million of these. I know the playbook.”

“Right,” she said, her voice cold. “You’ve run a million of these on other gifted.”

“Yes. And right now there are about a hundred agents converging on this building. You think you can slip past them all, be my guest. Otherwise, do what I say, and we get out of here.”

“Why would you help me?”

He paused, mind racing. He’d figured Zane would betray him; had been depending on it, in fact. The DAR was no doubt paying a hefty bounty. Not only that, but while the agency didn’t care about common criminals, it had pull with agencies that did. Selling Cooper out might buy Zane insurance later. It was simple math to assume he would call the DAR, and that the department would come in full force. Come loudly and publicly. Which had been the purpose of the whole exercise. It was a test balloon. A message. It would show John Smith that Nick Cooper was, beyond a doubt, no longer on the DAR’s payroll. And just maybe it would be the first step toward the terrorist.

What he hadn’t imagined was that the Girl Who Walks Through Walls would come to avenge a man he’d killed thirteen months ago. It presented him with one hell of an opportunity. He wanted to reach Smith? Here was one of the terrorist’s most trusted soldiers. The woman who had pulled the trigger on March 12 and blown up the Exchange, killing 1,143 people. He fought the urge to knock her unconscious and leave her for his old team.

But she was just a piece. He wanted the player.

“I don’t know,” he said. “For Brandon Vargas, I guess.” He gave that half a second to sink in, then said, “Let’s go.”

The door bore a sign that read NO ENTRY: EXIT ON GROUND FLOOR. He put a palm against it and pushed. It swung open. On the way through he pulled off the duct tape he’d applied last night to keep the latch from catching. Wonderful stuff, duct tape.

“Now what?”

He ignored her and strode down the hall. A woman smiled as he passed. A cubicle jock did cubicle jock things. The break room was just a wider space in the hall, a fridge buzzing away, packets of coffee creamer and plastic silverware. The window had been painted a dozen times, thick layers that locked it shut. He slid one end of the crowbar under the sash and jerked downward. The paint cracked, and something squealed. Another jerk, and the thing popped open half an inch. He forced it the rest of the way, then climbed out onto another fire escape, half a block away and two stories up from the one they’d arrived at. A train was pulling into the El station. Perfect.

“You’re kidding.” She leaned over the railing.

“Nope.” He climbed up, balanced for a moment, then leaned forward. Felt gravity begin to take him. At the last second he flexed his legs and leaped off. Below streaked the same unforgiving concrete, the same buzzing cars, the same empty air. Then he hit the roof of the El platform, bending his knees and falling into a roll. The metal bonged and rang at the impact, but the arriving train masked the noise. Behind him he heard the same metallic clatter, softer than his, and then they crouched side by side atop the roof as the silver train drew to a stop. He waited until the flow of riders on and off the train had ebbed, and then, with an easy step, he moved onto the roof of the second car. Lowered himself down and army-crawled to the front, got a good grip on the lip, and braced his feet. The metal was cold and dirty. A moment later, the girl joined him. She looked sideways, shook her head. “Asshole.”

He grinned. “Doors are closing. Please hold on.”

There was a lurch like an elevator starting, and then the train began to move.

Most of the plan he’d been reasonably sure of. His old agency hadn’t yet taken into account the fact that he knew their techniques. They were using the same playbook. So it had been easy to create a situation where the flashbangs would buy him time, where he could use standard protocol to his advantage, where he could lure every available agent to one spot and then double back from it. But he’d never ridden atop a moving train before.

After everything else he’d done in the last few minutes, it turned out to be almost easy. According to his d-pad, on a long straightaway the trains could hit fifty-five miles an hour. He didn’t know if they’d be able to hold on under those circumstances, clinging to the slick metal by lousy handholds. Fortunately, they were in the Loop, where trains made a circle before running back the way they’d come. The greatest risk came as they rounded a corner and the train rocked sideways, but he’d anticipated it and braced for the motion. The wind was exhilarating, and the expressions he saw on the faces of people in the buildings made getting shot at worthwhile. They rode through two stops, and he was almost sad when the third came up.

Goddamn, but I’m good. He stood, started for the edge of the train. The doors had opened, and riders were pouring in and out. He’d wait till they were mostly gone and then jump off just before—

She came from behind, her knee knocking out his as her hands took his shoulders. He was going down, no arguing with physics, but why had he turned his back on her in the first place? They hit the roof of the train, bounced. He slipped her hold, twisted, raised one arm to strike.

The Girl Who Walks Through Walls pointed, alarm in her eyes. Cooper narrowed his, risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Passengers leaving the train, men and women, tourists and businesspeople, a flight attendant, a couple of students…and two men in suits.

Roger Dickinson said, “Damn it. I was sure he’d double back.”

“You want to check the train again, sir?” Bobby Quinn had a dryly insubordinate tone, but it was the “sir” that caught Cooper’s attention. Peters must have promoted the man, probably given him Cooper’s old position. That was bad news. Whatever else he might be, Roger Dickinson was very good at his job.

“No, I don’t want to check the train again, Bobby. You know what I want? To know you’re on the right side.”

“I told you, I don’t believe Coop’s a terrorist.”

“Yeah? Even though he blew up the Exchange?”

“He didn’t blow up—”

“Right. He just went there seconds before it blew up, then vanished and started robbing DAR labs. And that woman he was holding hands with, she’s the one who killed Bryan Vasquez. So tell me again. How is Cooper one of the good guys here?”

“I don’t know.” Quinn’s voice was dogged. “But I still don’t believe he’s with Smith.”

“Get it through your head, Bobby. Your girlfriend, he’s a—”

“Doors are closing. Please hold on.” There was a loud bing-bong, and then the train started moving. Cooper barely had time to grab the lip of the car. A strange and awful heaviness tightened his stomach. He’d been cocky there, had almost stepped right in front of his old colleagues. He’d seen how fast Dickinson was. And Cooper was unarmed. If I’d jumped down, he’d have killed me.

When he turned to look at her, The Girl Who Walks Through Walls met his gaze briefly. Then she looked away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was a far cry from an executive suite at the Continental.

Bland and generic and mildly soul-killing, the Howard Johnson was on the unfashionable end of State Street. The afternoon light through the curtains was funereal. Behind him, the Girl Who Walks Through Walls said, “Now what?”

“We wait.” He moved to the edge of the bed, sat down.

She stepped in as though uncertain whether to stay. Ran a finger along the desk. “Nice digs.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting company.” Cooper began to unlace his shoes. “This is just a place to ride out the storm. Once they realize we slipped past them, they’ll make a last-ditch effort to catch us while we’re close. They’ll fan out across the Loop. They’ll co-opt the CPD video camera system. They’ll get cops to do door-to-doors, popping into every bar and restaurant, looking in the restrooms. They’ll check hotels for new arrivals.”

“Last I looked, this was a hotel.”

“I booked it a week ago. Under the name Al Ginsberg.”

She said, “‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…’” She parted the curtains, looked out at the brick wall opposite, and the street below. “Never really understood the poem, but I like the way the words taste.”

“Yeah.” Cooper pulled the shoe off, shook it until the flashbang remote fell out into his hand. “Me too. Why’d you do it?”

“Huh?” She turned.

“The Exchange. Why blow it up? You killed eleven hundred people.”

“No,” she said. “I tried to tell you then. I was there to stop it.”

“Bullshit.”

“It was supposed to be empty. We’d called earlier that day, announced we had bombs in the building, that we would trigger them if they started searching. I was there to make sure it didn’t blow, not with all those people there.”

“Bang-up job. I noticed on the news how it didn’t explode.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Destroying it was supposed to be a symbol. The Exchange was built to counter us, to exclude us. We wanted to show that they can’t build a future that doesn’t include us. How would killing people have made that point?”

Cooper looked up at her. The width of her pupils, the calm in her fingers, the steady pulse at her neck, none of it suggested she was lying. But this woman could find a way to hide in an airplane bathroom. Controlling her body is part of that.

“Anyway, who are you to talk? You’re the killer. Not me.”

“Yeah? What about Bryan Vasquez?”

Her lips drew into a tight line. “He betrayed the cause.”

“The defense of every terrorist masquerading as a freedom fighter.”

“Said the storm trooper who protects the state by murdering its citizens.”

He started to reply, caught himself. You’ve got three hours to convince her that she should help you. If she vanishes, you lose. He tied his shoe. His fingers were clumsy with post-adrenaline shakes, and his ribs hurt from where he’d hit the balcony. Cooper stood, went to the minibar fridge beneath the television. It opened with a squeal. He pulled out two miniature bottles of Jack Daniels for himself. “You want a drink?” He rifled through. “They’ve got red wine, cheap champagne—”

“Vodka.”

“There’s orange juice, I could make a screwdriver.”

“Just vodka and ice.”

“You want to watch me pour it? Murdering storm trooper and all?”

She stared at him for a long moment, and then one corner of her lips quirked up into a smile. “Gimme the drink already.”

The world’s tiniest ice tray was in the freezer. He cracked it, shook the cubes into a plastic cup, splashed Smirnoff over them. He passed it to her, then poured his bourbon. The soothing warmth went right to work on his aches and shakes.

“So how long do we need to hang out here?”

“A couple of days.”

“A couple of days?”

“I’ve got some canned soup in the closet, we’ll eat it cold. But I was only planning for one, so we’ll have to ration our provisions.”

Her eyes went so wide they seemed to bulge. He cracked, smiled, said, “I’m kidding. Just till the evening rush, so we can get lost in the crowd.”

The Girl Who Walks Through Walls laughed. It wasn’t a throaty or sultry thing, a laugh as a pose; it was an honest sound of amusement. Cooper said, “That’s better.”

“Than what?”

“Than calling each other names. Which reminds me—”

“My name is Shannon.”

“Nick Cooper.”

“I’ve heard,” she said dryly. “So what, we just walk out of here and that’s that?”

“Were you thinking we’d pick flower arrangements, send out invitations?”

“Thing is, Nick—”

“Cooper.”

“—you’ve put me in a bit of a bind.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re not dead.”

“Pardon?”

“I came to kill you. But you’re not dead. And to anyone watching, it wouldn’t have looked like I was trying to kill you. It would have looked like we were working together.”

“So?”

“So the DAR already has me marked as a target for the Exchange. Now that they’ve seen us together, I’m probably higher priority than you. And now they know I’m here. Not only that, but until I can get to my people, they’ll assume I’ve switched over.”

“Why? Didn’t they know you were coming for me?”

She shook her head. “This was personal. I didn’t tell anyone. And now it’ll look like just as the bad guys were descending, I hooked up with Equitable Services’ top gun and we made a daring escape. What am I going to do, say, don’t worry, all Cooper and I did was talk poetry and revolutionary politics?”

“How would they even know you were there?”

“We have people in the DAR.”

“Really.” He sipped his drink. He’d known that, worked it out by her appearance on the platform, but there was no reason to let her know that. “And your moles will report that you joined up with me.”

“That’s right. This burns me. In both directions. You burned me.”

Cooper shrugged. “Sorry?”

“Listen, you smug—”

“Lady, I didn’t burn you. You came to kill me. Not my fault you picked the wrong time. Besides, I could have left you. If it weren’t for me, you’d be shivering in a white, well-lit room right now.”

“And if it weren’t for me, you’d be bleeding out on the platform at LaSalle and Van Buren.”

They stood on opposite sides of the bed, both tense and braced, bickering like an old married couple, and there was something so backward about it all, about this woman—this terrorist—having saved his life from his former colleagues, about her referring to them as the bad guys, and about the fact that in terms of his continued survival she had a point, and it was all so absurd that he found himself chuckling.

“What?”

“Long day.” He took another sip of whiskey and then crossed to the television—it was an old flatscreen, not a tri-d—and turned it to CNN. There was no way to know if this would make the news, and even if it did, it probably wouldn’t be for hours yet.

“—the site of yet another in a string of terrorist attacks in recent weeks.” The woman standing on the El platform was plastic-pretty and overeager, a local reporter getting her big break. “Earlier today, an unidentified man planted a bomb during Chicago’s lunch rush.”

The image cut to her holding a microphone to a man Cooper vaguely remembered from a seminar in DC two years before. The words Terry Stiles, Chicago Bureau Captain, Department of Analysis and Response were printed over the lower third. Stiles said, “We’ve been tracking this individual for several weeks and were able to apprehend him before he could detonate a bomb on the El. However, we were unable to prevent him from firing on the crowd. Several civilians were wounded, as well as two agents.”

“Who is he?”

“I can’t comment on that at the moment,” Stiles said, “other than to say that we suspect he was working with abnorm terrorist groups operating out of Wyoming.”

“Does he have anything to do with John Smith and the March 12th explosion?”

“I can’t comment on that.”

The video cut to footage of an emergency crew wheeling out a gurney. The man on it was the hipster caught in the sniper crossfire. Over the footage, the reporter continued. “Wounded civilians are being rushed to local hospitals and are expected to survive.”

Another cut, and the reporter’s overly concerned expression again filled the screen. “This sort of scene has become familiar in recent months, and abnorm splinter groups warn that the violence will escalate if the government proceeds with the Monitoring Oversight Initiative. The controversial bill, which yesterday passed the House, makes it mandatory for all gifted individuals to be implanted with a—”

Suddenly the television blinked off. Cooper turned as Shannon tossed the remote onto the desk with a clatter. “I was watching that,” he said mildly.

“I can’t stand those lies. They make my skin crawl.”

“You know the game. Stories like that keep people calm. There was a bad guy, and we stopped him. It’s clean and simple. It’s better than the alternative, the mass panic and mob violence that would result if—”

“If what? If you told the truth?” Shannon fixed him with a hard stare. “That news report just talked about an abnorm attack, which there wasn’t. It said the terrorist—that’s you, by the way—shot agents and civilians, when actually the agents shot the civilians. And it said that Big Brother had things under control, when in fact we walked free. The only part of it that was true, literally the only part, was that there was a brilliant on the El platform today. Two, in fact.”

“What’s your point?”

“What’s my point?”

“Yeah. Apart from the idea that the truth shall set you free, and other lines no one believes. People don’t want the truth, not really. They want safe lives and nice electronics and full fridges.” He just couldn’t seem to avoid sparring with this woman. “You think I want abnorms microchipped? You think I like the academies? I hate it, all of it. But we are vastly outnumbered. Normal people are frightened, and frightened people are dangerous. The fact is, we, abnorms, brilliants, twists, we cannot survive a war. We will lose.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But maybe there wouldn’t be a war if you people didn’t keep going on television and saying there was one.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Finally he said, “Maybe you’ve got a point. But watch the ‘you people’ stuff. The department burned me. They needed a scapegoat for March 12th, and so they hung the explosion on me. My old friends are trying to kill me. But let’s not forget. It was your boss’s handiwork they blamed me for.”

“I told you—”

“Yeah, I know. The building was supposed to be empty. But did John Smith plan the attack? Did he arrange the explosives? Did he have them planted?”

She was silent.

“There’s nobody here who’s clean,” he said. The angle was coming to him, the right way to play her. “Not you, and not the DAR. And I’m tired of it. All I want is out of the game.”

He dropped to the bed, lay back with his hands crossed behind his head. The ceiling was stucco, and the low light of afternoon turned every bump into a sundial. Not another word. It’s a lousy salesman who talks too much.

Shannon put her feet up on the bed, legs crossed at the ankle. Leaned back in the chair to pull one drape aside. Her face glowed sunset colors. Still staring out the window, she asked, “What was Zane supposed to do for you, anyway?”

“Get me a new identity.”

“What, fake papers?”

He snorted. “I’ve got a dozen driver’s licenses. To Zane I was T. S. Eliot, and to the front desk here I was Allen Ginsburg, and I could walk out of here Chuck Bukowski. But this is the DAR we’re talking about. If I want a new life, it’ll have to be as a new person. New papers, but also a new history hacked into a hundred places, a new face, the whole thing.”

“Why not just go to Wyoming?”

“Right.”

“I mean it,” she said. “It may not be sovereign yet, but the DAR doesn’t plan raids in New Canaan.”

“It would be a death sentence. If Zane had come through, maybe, but he didn’t.” Let her sell you. Let her think it’s her idea.

“New Canaan is different than the normals’ world. Everyone comes there with a past. Everyone has baggage. You can get a fresh start.”

“Yeah. Until the brother of someone I killed sets my house on fire. No, if I have to spend my whole life watching my back, I’ll do it somewhere prettier than Wyoming.” He glanced at the clock, then closed his eyes. “I’m gonna crash for a few.”

A long minute passed, and then another, as he stared at the back of his eyelids. Come on. Come on.

“There might be a way,” she said.

Gotcha. He opened his eyes. “Yeah? What, take a jackknife to my nose, call it plastic surgery?”

“Hear me out. You could be safe in New Canaan, even as yourself.” She raised her hands to forestall his objections. “Not as you are now. But if the right person vouched for you, that could change everything.”

“I am not a terrorist.” He said the words flat and hard. It couldn’t look like he was eager. Even the tiniest hint of his true intent and this would all crumble. “I will not work for John Smith.”

“I wasn’t thinking of him.”

“Who were you—”

“Erik Epstein.”

Cooper stiffened. “The billionaire? The King of New Canaan?”

“Only straights call him that.”

“Why would he speak for me?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to convince him. But he’s a better chance than a scumbag like Bobby Z. And if you really want a fresh start, well.” She shrugged. “He might understand that.”

“I just knock on his door?”

“No. You’d need help.”

He sat up, spun his legs to the floor. The radiator kicked on, clicking and banging.

“What would you get out of it?”

“Until I square things with my people, which I need to do face-to-face, I can’t use any of my old resources. Not my credit, my IDs, my contacts. And meanwhile, your old friends are going to be chasing me as hard as they’re chasing you.”

Cooper pretended to think it over. “So I get you into Wyoming, and you get me to Erik Epstein.”

“Yeah.”

“And how do I know you won’t bail the moment we’re in New Canaan?”

She shrugged. “How do I know you won’t sell me out to the DAR to get them off your back?”

“You’re saying we trust each other.”

“God, no,” she deadpanned. “I’m saying we make it worth each other’s while.”

Cooper chuckled. “All right. Deal.” He held out his hand, and after a flicker of hesitation, she shook it.

“Deal,” Shannon said. “So. First thing.”

“What’s that?”

“We need to get some drugs.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Neurodicin,” he’d said, when she explained what she was looking for. “It’s a semisynthetic opiate derivative.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“On the street they call it Shadow or Nada. It’s academy-developed newtech, supposed to replace fentanyl. Instead of numbing you, it messes with your memory, so that you forget the pain as it’s happening.”

“How’s it do that?”

“How should I know? Ask the twist who designed it. Anyway, if you want something special for the discerning junkie, Shadow’s the trick.”

“Where do we get it?”

Which was how they’d found themselves walking north when five o’clock hit and the streets filled with commuters. Before leaving the hotel he’d changed his shirt, and at a tourist shop he bought a Cubs hat and a pair of oversize movie-star sunglasses for her. As disguises went, they were pretty rudimentary, but their real camouflage was the crowd. They stuck to Michigan Avenue: lanes of cabs and buses on one side, towering skyscrapers on the other, and between, a rush of people.

“This woman, she’s a friend of yours?”

Shannon nodded. “And she and John have been friends a long time. Since they were in the academy.”

So strange to hear him referred to that way. Not John Smith, the terrorist leader; John, the friend from a long time ago. “If she’s a friend, why do you need this stuff?”

“You don’t show up at somebody’s house without a bottle of wine. It’s not polite.”

“This is some wine.”

“Well, it’s some favor I’m asking. It’s not like I can phone John.”

“How does that work?”

She glanced over sharply. “You digging for operational details, Agent Cooper?”

“No, I just—” He shrugged. “I don’t understand how he leads people if they can’t find him.”

“This isn’t like the army. There’s no chain of command, no rear echelon. No orders.”

“What, he just asks nicely?”

“Yes. He’s a very nice guy. Anyway, Samantha won’t know where he is, but she’ll be able to get word to him.”

“I hope you’re right. This is a big risk,” Cooper said. Thinking, Lady, I will help you steal all the drugs you like if it gets me closer to your boss.

If anything, the crowd grew denser as they started down the Magnificent Mile. Tourists joined the mix, and shoppers loaded with packages. Crowds were always frustrating to Cooper, but it was worse with Shannon. The concept of a straight line was utterly foreign to her. She slipped and slid and quicksilvered along, finding holes where there weren’t any, sometimes stopping dead for no reason he could see. It was unmistakably graceful—Shannon moved the way water flowed—but not easy to walk beside.

He was glad when they reached the gray-and-glass bulk of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The front entrance was about as inviting as a hospital could be, which was to say not very. The cafeteria was on the second floor. It had fake plants and fake wood trim and smelled like soup and disinfectant. Cooper bought himself coffee, and they took a table in a corner near the door.

“Did you see the cameras on the way in?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Cameras are a problem. I can’t shift if I can’t see the people looking for me.”

“You can’t what?”

“Shift.” For a moment she looked girlishly self-conscious. “It’s what I call it. What I do.”

“Shift. I like that.” The coffee was better than he expected, dark and strong. “The cameras shouldn’t be a problem. They’ll record us, but I doubt anyone is monitoring the live feed. This isn’t a black-ops facility; mostly the security is to foil junkies and keep hospital staff out of the candy jar.”

Shannon leaned back, began to run her hands through her hair, letting it fan out between her fingers. “There are two doctors at the corner table.”

He glanced at their reflection in a framed poster. “No.”

“Why not?”

“White coats and expensive pens. They’re administrators. Maybe they have the access to open the dispensary, maybe not.”

Cooper took in the room. About fifty people, with more coming in. There were a few scattered patients. A handful of nurses laughed at one table, but they presented the same problem as the administrators. And residents were out.

“There,” he said.

Still toying with her hair, she followed his gaze to a middle-aged man in pale-blue scrubs crumpling his napkin and tossing it atop the remnants of a cheeseburger. “How do you know?”

“The hair on his arms thins out at the forearms, and the skin is pinker. That means he washes his hands all the time, washes them hard. Plus, his nails are cut to nothing. Taken together, that tells me he’s in surgery a lot. A surgeon will have the access we need. And look at the circles under his eyes. Exhaustion. Probably working a twenty-four-hour shift. Makes him an easier target.”

“You got all that from a quick glance across the room?”

“Yeah, I know, weird way to look at the world.”

“No,” she said. “No, it was hot.”

“Right.” He felt oddly self-conscious and gave an aborted laugh.

Shannon leaned back, her expression quizzical. “You need to spend more time with your own kind, Cooper. The straights have you thinking twisted.” Before he could reply, she rose and started walking in one smooth motion. It wasn’t that she was fast, so much as that she was calculated; as if for every motion she applied the exact force needed. It was like watching a cat jump to a table, instinctively determining the precise force and angle needed to land without an inch or calorie wasted.

The surgeon had risen and was walking his tray over to a garbage bin. Shannon circled the table of nurses, slipped between two sad-faced women, cut back across the floor, and then stepped out of nowhere and into the man’s path. They collided. He almost lost the tray, the plate and cup slipping to the edge, then managed to get it under control as he apologized, stepping back and blushing. Shannon shook her head, assured him it was her fault, laughed, patted him on the bicep, and came back carrying the man’s ID badge.

Cooper smiled into his coffee cup.

They finalized their plan in the elevator. As he understood hospitals, small stores of the most commonly needed medications were kept on every floor. But Shadow wasn’t standard stuff. It would be kept in a single location, well secured and carefully monitored.

After they split up, Cooper paused at the corner and counted ten Mississippis. Then he put on a confused expression and started forward.

The dispensary was part storeroom, part pharmacy. A counter opened to a window behind which a man and a woman counted pills. Cooper went to the counter. “Excuse me, can you guys help?” Saying you guys to be sure he had the attention of both of them, and leaning on the counter, drawing their eyes away from the back. “I am so freaking lost. This place is huge! It’s like a maze. I don’t know how you find anything here.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I mean, my God. I’m trying to visit my niece. I started out just the way they said. Turned right, went straight, turned left. I found the elevators okay, but that was the last time I knew where I was. I feel like I’ve been wandering for weeks. Pretty soon I’m going to have to eat my shoe for provisions.”

“Well, tell me where you’re trying to go and I’ll help you.”

Over the pharmacist’s shoulder, Cooper saw Shannon cross between a row of shelves. She winked at him. He smiled before he could catch himself, then went with it, said, “Sure, sure. That’s just what the last guy said. I think he must have had a bet with someone. See how long he could keep a guy wandering. You’re probably in on it.”

The tolerant expression was starting to slip. “Sir, I can’t help you if you won’t tell me where—”

“I told you, I’m trying to visit my niece.”

“Yes, but where is she?”

Cooper did a double take. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to ask, would I? You don’t listen too good.”

“No, what department. ICU, pediatrics…”

“Right.” He slapped his forehead. “Sorry, sometimes I get to talking, and goddamn if by the time I reach the end of a sentence I haven’t forgotten the beginning. It’s like the trail of tears. Only, you know, without the dead Indians.”

The pharmacist stared at him. It wouldn’t have taken Cooper’s gift to read his thoughts: This guy is a moron.

Not far behind it, though, was, Maybe I should call security. It was a hospital, after all. There were legitimately crazy people here.

“She had her tonsils out.”

“Okay. Recovery.” The man gave him directions, speaking slowly and carefully. Cooper nodded, thanked him, and then went back the way he’d come. He barely kept himself from laughing but let the smile spread.

Until he turned the corner and saw a security guard hurrying toward him, along with the surgeon from the cafeteria. Shit. They’d hoped the doctor might not need his badge so quickly, and that even if he did, he’d waste time retracing his steps. Instead, it appeared he had gone straight to security—

The fact that they’re here means they checked the computer system. They know his badge was just used to access the dispensary.

They won’t waste time talking to the pharmacist. They’ll go for the door.

Which is the only exit. She’ll be trapped.

—which left Cooper with no choice. He’d do the security guard first, a quick combination, solar plexus-kidney-kidney, then the doctor. Sprint back to the dispensary, hop the counter, take out the pharmacists if they got in the way. Get the Neurodicin, get Shannon, get out.

Someone tapped his shoulder, and he whirled.

The Girl Who Walks Through Walls stood behind him. “Hi.”

“You. But.” He turned, saw the guard and doctor hurrying past. Neither glanced at them, focused on their goal. “Oh. Huh.”

“What?”

“It’s just, I thought you were still in there. I was going to…I was about to—”

“Rescue me?”

“Uhh…”

“I’m not a cat up a tree. I can handle myself.” Shannon held up an orange plastic bottle, shook it so the pills rattled. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

She wasn’t what he expected.

Shannon had said that her friend Samantha went way back with John Smith. Cooper had imagined another woman like her, strong, ideologically dedicated, and very dangerous. A soldier.

What he hadn’t expected was this tiny, delicate thing with pale-blond hair. She had a woman’s face and curves, but couldn’t have been more than four foot ten, maybe ninety pounds. It had a strangely erotic effect; she was so small you couldn’t help but imagine what she looked like naked.

“Hey, Sam.” Shannon stepped forward, leaning down to hug the woman. “This is Cooper.”

“Hi,” he said, holding out a hand. As she shook it, he got a whiff of perfume, sweet but clean. Maybe it was that, or the softness of her hand, but he felt himself getting turned on.

“Come in.” She stepped aside.

The room looked like a catalog from an upscale furniture store. Twin white sofas sat atop a thick shag rug. A coffee table holding coffee-table books. The only hint of personality was a bookcase packed to bursting. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, only night and the looming invisible bulk of Lake Michigan.

Shannon said, “Brought you a present.” She held out the pill bottle.

“Wow. How did you get your hands on Nada?” Samantha pronounced it like a lover’s name. “That’s so sweet of you.”

Given the upscale apartment and Samantha’s style and carriage, Cooper had almost forgotten that she was an addict. But watching her as she held the pill bottle, he could see the raw, curling need inside her, the hunger. She started to open the bottle, stopped herself, tapped the label. “Sweet of you both.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, for want of something to say.

Samantha’s eyes were soft brown flecked with gold, and as she looked at him, the addiction was pushed down, replaced by something he couldn’t quite identify. She shifted her pose, one foot slightly forward, her hips cocked and back straight. The move was subtle, but it made her look stronger, gave her a ferocity. “I’m surprised a cop would be okay with this.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“Not anymore, maybe. But you were. Right?” She smiled. “I can always tell. It’s the confidence, the way you hold yourself. Like you could handcuff me if you wanted to.” There was a small gap between her front teeth, and Cooper remembered reading somewhere that was linked to highly sexual tendencies, and that thought led to a visual of what she would look like riding him, how huge his hands would be on her hips, the way her back might arch so that hair would swing down behind to brush his thighs…

Jesus, man. Lock it down.

“You okay, Cooper?” Shannon wore an amused smile. “You look a little nervous.”

He read Shannon’s mocking tone, paired them with the movements Samantha had made, the way she had presented herself to him. She was beautiful, no question, but he’d met a lot of beautiful women in his life. There was something more, something in the way she held herself, the frank flirtation—you could handcuff me if you wanted—coupled with a bit of distance.

Huh.

“That’s a powerful gift you have,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Making men sweaty.”

It threw her, and in that instant he saw through the pose to the calculations. It was like flipping on the lights in a strip club, the illusion of sensuality revealed as misdirection and razzle-dazzle. He watched as she cycled half a dozen responses, each barely signaled, hinted at rather than adopted. Widening eyes to test a vulnerability angle. Stiffened back and shoulders to go the other way, be fierce and angry. The tiniest hint of a slouch to throw out sassy, feisty, ready to play. Each subtle as a poker tell. It was like she was trying a ring of keys, looking for the one that would unlock the secret of who he wanted her to be.

Through it, Cooper kept himself still, gave nothing away. “You’re a reader, aren’t you? Only instead of understanding what people are thinking, you see what they want. And then you become it.” My God. What a talent for a spy. She’s all things to all people.

“So show me.” Samantha took a step forward. “Stop hiding.”

“Why?”

“So I know who to be.”

“Just be yourself.”

“That’s what you want, then? A ‘real woman.’ I can play that.” She laughed and turned to Shannon. “Who is he?”

“DAR. Was, anyway.” Shannon dropped to the couch, spread lean arms on the back of the cushions. “Says he’s done with it.”

“What did he do for them?” The two of them talking like he wasn’t there.

“He killed people.”

“Who did he kill?”

“That’s a good question.” Shannon cocked her head. “Who did you kill, Cooper?”

“Children, mostly,” he said. “I like a baby for breakfast, start the day right. The portions are small, but you can use the bones for soup.”

“He’s funny,” Samantha said, not laughing.

“Isn’t he? A hit man with a sense of humor.”

“I heard a hilarious story,” Cooper said, “about a building that blew up. Killed a thousand people. Regular civilians just going about their day.”

Something tightened in Shannon, her body clenching like a fist. The reaction fast and deep and uncalculated. “I told you,” she said. “I. Did not. Do that.”

Either she was one of the all-time great liars, or she really hadn’t blown up the Exchange.

Cooper thought back to that day six months ago. Her single-minded focus as she went into the building—into it, not out of it—and her surprise at seeing him, the way she had proclaimed her innocence. What had she said? Something like, “Wait, you don’t—” and then he’d hit her, not liking it but not daring take the risk.

Was it possible she really had been there to stop it?

No. Get your head straight. Just because she’s telling the truth as she believes it doesn’t mean that she knows what really happened. Smith is a chess master. She’s a piece.

“All right,” Cooper said. “But I’m not a hit man. So how about a truce?”

She opened her mouth, closed it. Nodded slightly.

Samantha looked back and forth between them. “What are you caught up in, Shannon?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Why are you with a former DAR agent?”

“That’s complicated.”

“Do you trust him?”

“No,” she said. “But he could have left me to be arrested, and he didn’t.”

“Ladies?” Cooper smiled blandly. “I’m standing right here.”

“I need your help, Sam.” Shannon leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “I’m in trouble.”

The smaller woman looked back and forth between them. Her fingers were tight on the medicine bottle. Finally, she set it down on the counter and moved to the opposite couch. “Tell me.”

Shannon did. Cooper sat beside her, listening but also taking in the details of Samantha’s room. The novels were all paperbacks, a double-stacked riot of cracked spines and worn pages. Science fiction, fantasy, thrillers. There were no personal photos, and the knickknacks looked like they’d been bought at the same time as the furniture rather than collected across a lifetime. A perfect cover apartment, the kind of place you could walk away from. The kind a spy would favor.

Or an assassin.

The leap was intuitive, but he knew it was correct. She was an assassin.

My God, how good she must be. A woman who could sense whatever a guy wanted, any guy? There was no one she couldn’t get close to. No one she couldn’t get alone and vulnerable. How many men has this sweet little thing seduced and murdered?

Shannon finally reached their shaky bargain: Cooper would see her safely to Wyoming, and in trade she would get him a chance to speak to Erik Epstein.

“That’s dangerous,” Samantha said. “Both sides are going to be after you.”

“Cooper knows DAR protocol. And he’s got as much reason to avoid them as I do.”

“Are you sure?”

“Still sitting right here,” Cooper said.

“This afternoon was no act,” Shannon said. “Those agents were trying to kill him.”

The other woman nodded. “And you want me to convince our side of it.”

“Just tell them,” Shannon said, “that I came to you, and what I said. That I’m coming in. Tell him.”

Samantha’s reaction to that last was subtle but sure. A tiny lean. A relaxing of the muscles in her crossed thighs. A stall in her exhale.

She cares about John Smith. Loves him, maybe.

And she knows how to reach him.

It took all his will and all his skill to keep that recognition from his face.

“You don’t have to believe me,” Shannon said. “Just tell him. Will you do that?”

“For you?” Samantha smiled. “Of course.”

“Thank you. I owe you.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Well then, can I ask another favor?” Shannon’s lips quirked up in what he was starting to recognize as a trademark expression. “Can I use your bathroom?” She jerked a thumb at him. “You should see the one in his hotel room.”

Cooper leaned back. Put his hands at his side. It felt weird. How did he normally hold his hands?

From the other couch, Samantha watched him, something feline in her pose, a languorous, predatory note. Her legs were crossed at the knee, and she was kicking one idly, muscles rippling beneath the smooth skin of her calf. She was barefoot, her toes painted that clear color. Nude, he thought it was called.

“Do I make you nervous?”

“No,” he said. “I just don’t like being read.” He folded his hands. That felt weird, too. Was this how other people felt around him? How Natalie had felt every day of their relationship?

“Have you ever been with a reader, Nick?”

“Cooper,” he said. “I’ve known lots of readers.” He stood and walked to the window. Her apartment was on the thirty-second floor, and the view was a partner to the one he’d had at the Continental Hotel, only hers faced east. He could just make out the tracings of waves on the lake, gray on midnight blue. Layered atop it, the ghostly reflection of the room.

“I didn’t say known.” In the glass, she rose, smoothing her skirt as she walked over. “I said been with.”

Cooper didn’t respond. She moved in behind him, small enough that his bulk blocked her reflection. But he could smell her and sense her. “Listen.” He turned. “I appreciate what you’re doing for us. But drop the sex-goddess act.”

“It’s not an act. You want the real me?” She traced the outline of her body with her hands, not quite touching. “This is it. I’m the fantasy. What do you want, Cooper? Whatever it is, I’ll be it. Hard or soft, helpless or jaded, ashamed or wanton or anything in between. I can be the pliable young innocent or the Amazon only you can conquer.” She stepped closer. “You don’t even have to tell me, to ruin the fantasy by saying it out loud. Just let me see you.”

“You’re serious. You want to go off to the bedroom right now?”

“Shannon won’t mind. She and I have fooled around before.”

That image was almost enough to make his control slip. He took a deep breath, pushed aside the hastily assembled fantasy. “See, I think this is just a game to you. You want to win.”

“No games. I want to know you.” She put a hand against his chest. “You turn me on. It’s your strength. You’re so contained. Show me who you are. No one needs to know. I can be your second-grade teacher, or your daughter’s girlfriend, the one you won’t even admit to yourself that you want.”

“My daughter,” Cooper said, “is four.”

“Just open up to me. I’ll sense what your body needs. I know it before you do. I know it even when you don’t. What’s reality compared to that?”

He looked down at her, at her deep brown eyes and soft skin, at the swell of her breasts and the way the skirt caught at the line of her thigh, at her tumble of golden hair and her pedicured feet. She was stunning, the distilled image of desire, Aphrodite writ in miniature with the corner of her lip caught between bright teeth.

But beneath it all, he could see the need curling inside her, slippery and fanged as an eel.

“Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll pass.”

She had been stretching up, offering pouting lips, and for a moment didn’t process his words. When they hit it was like electric current, her face clenching and eyes sparking. “What?” When he didn’t respond, she said it again, angrier this time. “What?”

He saw it coming, but he let her have the slap, her hand whistling through the air to smack his cheek.

“No one says no. Who do you think you are? Do you know how many men would kill for the chance to be with me?” She planted hands against his chest and shoved ineffectually. “You don’t say no. Not to me.”

She wound up again, and this time he caught it. In the process, he noticed Shannon, somehow standing in the center of the room he’d been sure was empty.

He dropped Samantha’s arm. “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

Her beautiful face had turned red with fury. “Get out. Both of you.”

They did. As the door closed, he took a last glance over his shoulder. Samantha had the pill bottle open and was shaking tablets into one perfect palm.

Halfway down the extravagantly decorated hallway, Shannon said, “Thanks, Cooper, way to help out.”

There didn’t seem to be any response to that, or at least none that wouldn’t lead to a fight, and he didn’t want to fight. So they walked side by side, the sound of their footfalls muffled by the carpet. She thumbed the button for the elevator while he thought back over what he’d seen. He was missing something. It was like a sore in his mouth that he couldn’t leave alone.

Her gift had made it impossible to pattern her. The constant chameleon shifting was clearly something she’d done all her life, and half an hour wasn’t enough time to break through it. But maybe it was a clue in itself; here was a woman who drew her identity from the wants of others, so much so that she had thrown herself at him just to confirm her own irresistibility. A woman delighted to receive the Shadow, a drug designed to scramble memories of pain.

It didn’t make sense. What kind of assassin would a junkie with ego issues make? The pieces didn’t add up to the sum.

That usually means that you’ve got the wrong sum.

The elevator arrived, and they climbed aboard. By the time it drew to a stop in the subterranean parking garage, he had the answer.

A junkie with ego issues that compelled her to fulfill anyone’s fantasy would make a lousy assassin.

But a very successful prostitute.

Cooper rubbed at his eyebrow. “I’m sorry,” he said. The way Shannon looked over at him, it felt as if she understood that he meant on more than one level. She started to say something, changed her mind.

After the raid on the hospital they’d picked up his car, and now he beeped the locks and climbed into the driver’s seat. Two concrete revolutions saw them to the surface. A heavy gate pulled aside, and then they were merging with Lake Shore Drive, Samantha’s expensive high-rise in the rearview.

“It’s not her fault,” Shannon said, her eyes locked on the road ahead. “She didn’t used to be like this. It’s getting to her.”

“She’s a call girl, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.” The word exhaled slow. City lights danced on her features.

“I thought she was…well, an assassin.”

“Samantha?” Shannon asked, startled. “No. I mean, she’s got a lot of powerful clients, and I’m sure if John asked her, she’d do it. She’d do anything for him. But he’d never ask.”

“Why does she do it?” He checked his mirror and changed lanes. “She’s obviously tier one. A reader like that, she could…”

“What? Work for the DAR?”

He looked over, but she kept her eyes ahead. Cooper turned back to the road. An image of Samantha kept appearing to him, that first moment she’d started on him, her tiny step forward and change of posture. There had been such strength in it. But of course, that was all part of the act. He wondered if between her need and her addiction, there was anything left of the real woman.

“Sorry,” Shannon said. Her hands were in her lap now, rubbing against one another. “It just gets to me, you know? Seeing her like that. You’re right, she’s tier one. And she’s sensitive, emotionally sensitive. Always was. So that gift for reading others, it translated to empathy. True empathy, trying to imagine what the world was like for others. She wanted to be an artist, or an actress. And even though she was at an academy, she wasn’t targeted the way some of them are, the way John was. She might have made it through okay. But then she turned thirteen.”

Cooper’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Who was he?”

“Her mentor,” Shannon said. “You know how academies work? Every kid has a mentor, always a normal, who is their, well, everything. The academies are all about setting us at each other’s throats. The mentor is the one person you’re supposed to be able to trust. Of course, they’re the real monsters, but you don’t understand that as a kid. They’re just adults who are nice to you. And since you don’t have a mom or a dad or brothers or sisters or even a name anymore…” She shrugged. “All children need to love a grown-up. Normal or twist, it’s in the DNA.”

Cooper had that helpless anger again, the feeling he’d experienced when he’d visited the academy, when he’d imagined throwing the director through the goddamn window. He was starting to wish he had.

“Anyway, around the time she turned thirteen, she started looking like she does now. And she had that gift, right? She knew what people wanted. What men wanted.” She took a deep breath, then exhaled. “He convinced her it was love. Even promised to sneak her out of the academy as soon as he could arrange it. And until then, he gave her things to make it easier to bear. Vicodin at first, but he moved her up the ladder fast. By the time he did take her out, she was snorting heroin.

“He set her up in an apartment, but he didn’t pretend to be in love anymore. Just let her get a taste of withdrawal. Then he introduced her to a ‘friend’ of his, and told her what she needed to do to for her next hit. She’s been doing it ever since.”

“Jesus,” Cooper said. When he’d looked at her before, he’d seen raw need in the shape of a woman. Now he saw a teenage girl, strung out and sold by her father and lover. “Is she—the mentor, is he—”

“No. After John graduated the academy, he went looking for her.” Shannon turned to him for the first time since they’d gotten in the car, and he saw that signature smile, lit brake-light red. “Funny thing, her mentor vanished. Never seen again.”

Good for you, John. You may be a terrorist with hands bloody to the elbow. But you did that right, at least.

“She’s independent now, no pimp or anything. But she never really left her mentor behind. She could have been an amazing artist, or a counselor, a healer, but that’s not what the normal world wanted from her. It’s not what the normal world had trained her to do.

“What the normal world wanted was blowjobs on demand from an abnorm whore willing to be their daughter. They don’t even have to feel bad about it. After all, they never said they wanted to screw their daughter; she sensed it. And as for the women, well,” Shannon shrugged, “she’s just a twist.”

She went silent then, the story hanging between them like cigarette smoke as he navigated the darkened city streets. He wanted to argue with her, to tell her that the world didn’t have to be that way, that not all normals fit the picture she was painting.

But then, enough did to keep Samantha in an expensive, well-decorated prison as long as she lived. Or until her beauty began to fade.

It was the world. The only one they had. No one said it was perfect.

“Anyway,” Shannon said. “Even with that bit at the end, she’ll do what she promised. We should be safe from my side, at least until we get to New Canaan. Speaking of which, that’s going to take shiny new identities.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m on it. There’s just one thing we have to get first.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“I have to admit, I figured you were talking about, you know, assault rifles, or some secret newtech spy toy.”

“Disappointed?”

“No,” she said, reaching for another slice of pizza, “I was starving.”

It was more bar than restaurant, a subterranean joint with brick walls and neon signs. Proper thin-crust pizza, not that thick crap only the tourists ate, with pepperoni and hot peppers. The crowd was casual, baseball caps and jeans, and the tri-d was tuned to the Bears game, good old Barry Adams up there making everyone else look silly.

Cooper spun the lid off the shaker of red pepper flakes and dumped a handful in his hand, then coated his slice with them. Greasy, cheesy, spicy goodness, washed down by a long swallow of a hoppy IPA microbrew.

The crowd all erupted in yells at once; the Bears had scored. Chicago did love its home teams. The replay showed Adams stepping through defensive linemen as if he had a hall pass from the Almighty. Shannon gave a little whoop.

“Football fan?”

“No. A Barry Adams fan.”

“I wondered,” Cooper said. “The first time I saw you. Well, the second time, really. The first time I just noticed a pretty girl. It wasn’t until we triangulated the cell signal that I realized you’d waltzed past my perimeter.”

She dabbed at a bit of sauce on her lips. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to pull it off, if you guys had a file on me.”

“No. Nothing.”

“I bet they do now.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’d say so. I think the target order probably goes John Smith, then me, then you.” It was a strange thing to say, and stranger because it was true. Cover didn’t get much deeper than this. He was an enemy of the state. In the last six months he’d raided, robbed, and survived three—no, four, after today—run-ins with agents coming for his life. Earlier tonight he’d stolen experimental narcotics and delivered them to an abnorm prostitute who was a friend and possible lover of the most wanted terrorist in America, and now he was having dinner with one of that terrorist’s best operatives, a shadow woman who had probably killed as many times as he had.

He heard Roger Dickinson’s voice in his head. Tell me again. How is Cooper one of the good guys?

It was an unsettling thought, and he pushed it away. “So what’s it like for people like you and Adams? How does it work?”

“My gift, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

She picked up her pizza—he dug that she wasn’t a knife-and-fork woman—and chewed while staring thoughtfully into some middle distance. “Imagine you’re on one side of a freeway and you want to run to the other side. Cars are blurring by, and big trucks that would totally squash you, and motorcycles weaving in between. So what you do is you look in the direction they’re coming from, right? You see the relative speeds and distance, and you decide when to run and when to stop based on that.”

“Or you use an overpass.”

“Or that. But imagine instead you pointed a camera at it, and you recorded the next fifteen or twenty seconds. You saw where everything went. How one car switching lanes forced the truck to slow down, which backed up the lane, which made the biker step on the gas.”

“You mean twist the throttle. Motorcycles don’t have a gas pedal.”

“Whatever. The point is, you record all of that. Then imagine you could go back in time to the moment when you started recording, only now you know what’s going to happen. You know that the girl on her cell phone is going to change lanes without signaling, and the truck is going to slam on his brakes, and the motorcycle is going around. So avoiding them is easy.”

“You mean you see vectors?”

“Sort of. The cars, they’re just a metaphor. I can’t really do it with them; I can only shift around people. I need the cues from them. I don’t really know how I do it, I just—I look at a room, or a street, and I can see where each person is moving and looking.”

“Can you tell me what’s going to happen in the next fifteen seconds?”

“I don’t know what people are going to say, or if someone’s going to spill their drink. You don’t plan to spill your drink, so I can’t anticipate it. But I can see that the guy coming out of the bathroom is going to make it halfway down one row, then he and the waitress will be in each other’s way, and he’ll back around, only the guy sitting down right there is about to get up, so there will be a logjam. The waitress will stand still, because she’s going to the table beyond them, and the others will move out of her way.”

Cooper turned to watch. It played out exactly as she’d said. “That sounds exhausting.”

She cocked her head. “Most people launch straight into how cool it is, how they wish they could do it.”

“Well, it is, and I do. But you must get tired of all of it, all of the time.”

“Yours is on all the time.”

“Yeah, and I get tired of it,” he said. “It’s the dissonance. Between what they say and what they mean. Thank God I’m less of a reader and more about pattern recognition and gauging intent. I mean, I can tell when people are blatantly lying to me, when they’re bothered, that sort of thing, but I’ve met some readers who can tell you your deepest secrets after a two-minute conversation about the weather.”

“I have too. Most of them are shut-ins.”

“Wouldn’t you be? If I were surrounded by the secrets and lies of every person I saw, I’d stay away from people, too.”

“So your patterns. You can tell what people are about to do? Physically?”

“Yes,” he said. “And please don’t test it by tossing that fork at me.”

“Sorry.” She smiled and lifted her hand off the silverware. “No wonder John told us not to engage you.”

The offhand comment hit like a slap. “John—Smith? He knows who I am? By name?”

“Of course.” She was amused. “You thought it only worked one way? He knows all about you. I think he kind of respects you. He vetoed a hit plan on you last year, not too long before the thing at the Exchange. One of our guys wanted to plant a bomb in your car—what was it, a Charger?—to prove that even the DAR’s best wasn’t safe.”

“So what—I don’t understand. Why didn’t he?”

“John said no.”

“I mean, why didn’t John? Kill me?”

“Oh. He said that it would only piss the DAR off. That the cost was greater than the benefit.”

“He was right.”

“He also said that they couldn’t be sure your kids wouldn’t be in the car.”

Cooper opened his mouth. Closed it. Thought about how many times he’d climbed in the Charger, and how he never once checked for explosives. How many times Kate and Todd had ridden with him. Thought about the car in pieces, flames licking through the windows, and two tiny burned shapes in the back.

Shannon said, “So you must be quite a dancer.”

“What? No. No rhythm. I’d be a hell of a partner if someone led, I guess.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” she said, “case we ever end up on the floor.” She folded her napkin atop her half-finished slice of pizza. “So what’s next?”

“We need papers that will get us into New Canaan. Driver’s license, passports, credit cards. I know a guy on the West Side, does great work.”

She gazed at him appraisingly. “Why didn’t you go to him instead of Zane?”

Damn it. Careful, man. “There’s a difference between papers that can get me in the gate, and the power to erase my past, let me start again.”

“This guy a friend of yours?”

“No.”

Some of the neighborhoods and suburbs west of downtown Chicago were lovely, thriving places, tree-shaded and filled with families.

This wasn’t one of those parts.

Cooper, a military brat before he became military himself, had never really put down roots—at least not geographical ones—and so looked at every place fifteen-degrees askew as a perpetual outsider. He had a theory going about cities, that the dominant industry of the town filtered into every level of the place, from the architecture to the discourse. Thus in LA, a city built on entertainment and fantasy, there were houses in the clouds and dinner conversation about cosmetic labioplasty. In Manhattan, the business of finance reduced everything, at some level, to money; the skyline was a stock chart and the streets pulsed with currency.

Chicago had been born as a working town, a meatpacking town, and no matter how many chic restaurants opened, no matter the lakefront harbors and the green spaces, its most honest parts would always be covered in rust. They would crowd the banks of the sludge-brown river and huddle in the windowless warehouses of industrial districts.

The building he was looking for was three stories of grim cinderblock. A loading dock ran the length of the face; above it, someone had painted the words VALENTINO AND SONS, LAUNDRY AND DRY CLEANING in five-foot letters. Years of Chicago winters had faded and peeled the paint. Cooper parked the car under a streetlight, though there wasn’t much point; no one lived nearby. He popped the trunk and pulled out the duffel bag.

“Dirty laundry?” Shannon asked.

“About six months worth.”

The machinery was audible as they approached the loading dock. A faint sweet humidity radiated from the place. Inside, the room was huge and hot and noisy. Beneath humming fluorescent lights, massive washing machines spun and clanked, men and women moving between them to load the drums or collect clean clothes. The air was soupy and chemical. Although the perchlorethylene used in dry cleaning was supposed to be locked in a contained system, the machines here were old, the fittings bad, and traces of the toxic cleanser were venting into the air. All of the workers had a smallness to them, the mark of people who had spent decades maneuvering narrow aisles and bending beneath heavy loads. Cooper started down the row, pausing to make room for a withered woman pushing a basket piled with suits. It had been chilly outside, but now he could feel sweat gathering in his armpits and the small of his back.

No one paid any attention as he led Shannon to a narrow staircase at the back. The second floor was hotter than the first, and noisier; here were the massive washing machines and enormous presses used for laundry on an industrial scale, napkins and sheets and towels from a hundred hotels and restaurants. There was a brief snatched glimpse of heavy machinery moving with insectile precision, a trace of music, something Mexican and discordantly upbeat, and then they were heading upward.

Steamiest of all, the top floor was a harshly bright hive of narrow desks jammed together. Scores of people were packed in around them, each squinting into a sewing machine or cutting lengths from fabric bolts. The sound was a hundred woodpeckers at once. Most of the men had stripped off their shirts and worked bare-chested or in wifebeaters, their skin glistening. A fan the size of an airplane turbine spun sluggishly, stirring air that reeked of chemicals and cigarettes and body odor.

Cooper started down the aisle, heading for the office in the back. Shannon followed. “Weird,” she said.

“It’s a sweatshop.”

“I know. It’s just, it’s like the United Nations. I’ve seen sweatshops full of West Africans, Guatemalans, Koreans, but I’ve never seen them all at the same place.”

“Yeah,” Cooper said. “Schneider’s an innovator.”

“An equal opportunity oppressor?”

“Not really. It’s still pretty much one subculture being exploited.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re all abnorms. All of them.”

“But…” Shannon stopped. “How? Why?”

“Schneider makes terrific IDs,” Cooper said, shifting the heavy duffel bag from one shoulder to the other. “He specializes in abnorms who want to live as normals. High risk, but big money. Those who can’t pay work it off.”

“Making cheap clothes.”

“Making cheap copies of expensive clothes.” Cooper nodded to a woman three desks down. Hair the color of cigarette smoke was pinned in a rough knot at the back of her head. She wore odd glasses, like two jeweler’s loupes mounted in granny frames. As they watched, she slid a shirt from a basket on her left side, laid it across her table, kept one hand moving to dip into a cardboard box for an embroidered logo half an inch across, which she placed precisely and then affixed with swift, measured stitches before sliding the shirt into a basket on her right side and reaching back to take another from the basket on her left. The whole process took maybe twenty seconds.

“Is that the Lucy Veronica logo?”

“Beats me.” He started moving again, and she followed.

“So how long does it take to pay for a new identity?”

“A couple of years. They need regular jobs to make a living. They’re nurses and plumbers and chefs.” He paused at the end of a row, looked both ways, moved on. “It’s only after they finish that they come here, work six or eight hours off their debt.”

“You’re saying they’re slaves.”

“More like indentured servants, but you’ve got the idea.” He glanced down the aisle and saw Schneider talking to a dark-skinned guy twice his weight. “This way.” No one paid them any attention. Part of the ethos of the place; no one here wanted to be acknowledged. After all, that’s what they’re working toward. Brilliants going blind over menial labor, stitching knockoff clothing so they can earn the right to masquerade as normal.

Max Schneider was a scarecrow, six and a half feet tall and cadaverously thin. His watch was expensive but his teeth were a wreck. Cooper figured that for a choice, believed the forger found an advantage in the discomfort it caused other people. Or maybe he just didn’t give a damn.

The worker he was talking to was big, fat layered over muscles. His skin was Caribbean black, but Cooper read the tension in him as crackling waves of sickly yellow. “But it’s not my fault.”

“You introduced the guy,” Schneider said. “He was your friend.”

“No, I told you, just a guy I met. I told you that when I brought him here, I said I didn’t know him, you asked if I was vouching for him, I said no.”

Schneider waved his hand in front of his nose like he was clearing away a smell. “And now he gets in a bar fight, gets arrested? What if he talks about me?”

“I didn’t vouch for him.”

“I should just cut you loose. End our arrangement.”

“But I’ve only got three weeks left.”

“No,” the forger said. “You’ve got six months left.”

It took a moment to hit, then the man’s eyes widened, his nostrils flared, his pulse jumped quicker in his carotid. “We had a deal.”

Schneider shrugged. If he was cowed by the size or fury of his employee, he didn’t show it. To Cooper, he looked like a man completely in charge, a man who could take or leave the world. “Six months.” He turned and started away.

“I didn’t vouch for him,” the man repeated.

The forger spun back. “Say that again.”

“What?”

“Say that again. Say it.” Schneider smiled with stained teeth.

For a moment Cooper could see the guy was thinking about it, that he was thinking about saying it and then grabbing Schneider by the neck and squeezing, crushing his strong fingers together. He saw the weight of a thousand injustices bearing down on the abnorm, and the urge to throw them all off at once, to surrender to the momentary pleasure of pretending there was no future.

And Cooper had to admit he kind of wanted the man to do it. For his kind and his dignity.

But the moment passed. The big man opened his mouth, closed it. Then, slowly, he dragged the chair out from his workstation and settled heavily in it. His shoulders slumped. Scarred hands reached for a pair of shears and a bolt of denim, and with a practiced cut, he gave away half a year of his life.

“You,” Schneider said, as if he had only now noticed Cooper. “The poet.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t extend a hand.

“You need something?” The forger looked Shannon up and down dispassionately.

“New identities,” Cooper said.

“Already? I made you ten last time. You burn them all?” Schneider’s brow wrinkled. “That’s reckless. I don’t work with reckless people.”

“It’s not that. I need something better.”

Schneider snorted, then started walking, gesturing for them to follow. “My work is flawless. The seal, the microchip, the ink. You can look at the edge under a microscope and swear a brand-new card is ten years old. My code rats match my work to the government d-bases. There is no better.”

“But this time I’m crossing the border.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’ll work. Mexico, France, the Ukraine, wherever.”

“I’m not going to any of those places.”

Schneider stopped. Squinted. He leaned over the shoulder of an Asian girl, maybe twenty-two, watched her fingers spin beads onto delicate filigree. Schneider shook his head, sucked air through his teeth. “Too big,” he said. “Your spacing is too big. Do it right or you’re useless to me.”

The girl kept her eyes down, just nodded, began to unstring what she had done.

Schneider said, “You’re going to Wyoming.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a twist. You don’t need an ID. You can walk right in.”

“I don’t want to be myself.”

“Which self?” Schneider smiled his hideous smile. “Thomas Eliot? Allen Ginsburg? Walter Whitman? Who are you, Poet?”

Cooper met his eyes, returned the smile.

“New Canaan Holdfast is not like other places,” Schneider said. “The security there is very strong.”

“Very strong” was an understatement of epic proportions, Cooper knew. While the NCH had an open-door policy to immigrating gifted, Erik Epstein and the rest of the Holdfast government had a justified paranoia about being infiltrated. And with the planet’s largest concentration of gifted in a single location, they had quite literally the best people in the world securing their borders. DAR agents were allowed in New Canaan—it was still American soil, after all—but only if they identified themselves openly. A few had pretended to go native after badging in; all had been apprehended and politely escorted out by men with prominently displayed sidearms.

“Can you do it?”

“You’ll need complete identities. Supporting information in every major database. Recursive consumer profile generation.”

“Can you do it?”

“They will catch you eventually. The protocols will change or the search functionality will improve or you’ll screw up. And you don’t look right. Too much water fat.”

“Can you do it?”

“Of course.”

“How much?”

The forger sucked his teeth again. “Two hundred.”

“Two hundred?” It was an outrageous price, several times what he had paid before. Paying for these would wipe out most of the cash he’d accumulated over the last six months of being a bad guy. “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“How about one hundred?”

“The price is the price is the price.”

“Come on. You’re screwing me here.”

Schneider shrugged. It was the same movement he had given earlier, when he had added six months to an indentured servant’s term. A move that said take it or leave it, it didn’t matter to him.

Cooper dropped the duffel on an empty work bench, yanked the zipper, and began to count out bundles. Criminal etiquette would have been to do it in private, but he didn’t care. Let one of these people jack the forger. Not his problem.

“Here. These are bundles of ten thousand.” He pushed the stack of twenty across the bench. Then he reached into the bag, pulled out two more bundles, and dropped them beside the others. “And that’s for the other guy. The one you cheated out of six months.”

Schneider looked amused. “A noble gesture.”

“He gets his ID tomorrow. Same as us.” Cooper laid a hand lightly on the stack of money, tapped his fingers. “Yes?”

The man shrugged.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Yes,” Schneider said. “Tomorrow morning. Now,” he waved a smell away again. “There is work.”

Cooper spun on his heel and walked out, Shannon slipping like his shadow. He pushed through the aisle, down the steps, out the door. The night was cool, and he sucked the air deep, stalked to the car. Shannon let almost a mile of pavement slide beneath their wheels before she asked the question he’d seen her wanting to. “Why did you—”

“Because I don’t like the way he doesn’t even hide the way he sees us. As livestock, or slaves.”

“A lot of people do.”

“Yeah. But with Schneider, it’s truly impersonal. He could watch you burn to death and not make a move to pour water. It’s not hate, it’s…” He couldn’t think of the word, couldn’t put his finger on what exactly it was that so pushed his buttons. “I don’t know.”

“So paying for the guy was to show that you were Schneider’s equal?”

“Something like that. Just to make him notice, I guess. Shake him.”

“But it didn’t. You were still livestock. Like a cow learning to dance; it’s amusing, but it’s still a cow.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that, just drove in silence for a moment.

“It’s kind of ironic, actually,” she said. “Those clothes were knockoffs of Lucy Veronica’s new line. You know her stuff?”

“I know her name. She’s gifted, right?”

“Jesus, Cooper, pick up a magazine. Her styles have reinvented the fashion industry. The way she sees things—she’s spatial—changed everything. Her clothes are fetishized by socialite women. And those rich women are fetishized by middle-class suburban chicks, who want to be like the socialites, but can’t afford original Lucy Veronica. So what do they do to get the next best thing to couture designed by a brilliant? They buy a knockoff sewn by a brilliant. In a sweatshop.”

“Yeah, well, Sammy Davis Junior got to be in the Rat Pack, but that didn’t mean we had racial equality.”

Shannon half nodded, a noncommittal sort of gesture. He read her desire to launch into rhetoric, but instead she leaned back, slipped out of her shoes, and put her bare feet up on the glove box. “Anyway. It was nice of you. Paying for him, I mean. A nice thing to do.”

“Well, what the hell, right? Got to help each other out.” Realizing as he said it that he meant it, that it wasn’t just a line to play her. He was finding things murkier out here than he had expected; the relative clarity of his position at the DAR didn’t seem to translate. But you’re still with department. Don’t forget that. “Anyway, it wasn’t really my money.” He looked over at her, putting on a smile. “Turns out, I’m a pretty good thief.”

That got a laugh—he really liked her laugh, full-spirited and adult—which morphed into a yawn.

“Tired?”

“Dodging sniper fire, riding on top of a train, touring a sweatshop—it’ll wear a girl out.”

“Wuss.”

“I rode. On top of. A train.”

It was his turn to laugh. “All right. We’ll find a couple of beds.”

“I know a place we can go. Some friends of mine. We’d be safe.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they’re my friends.” She looked at him quizzically, the exterior lights glowing off her eyes. “Not everyone’s friends shoot at them.”

“Yeah, well, how do I know your friends won’t want to shoot at me?”

She shook her head. “They’re not part of the movement. Just friends.”

He eased the car left and got on the Eisenhower heading east. A low bank of clouds cut the skyline in half, the lights on the tallest buildings bright as a fairytale against indigo skies. The Jaguar’s tires hummed on the pavement. There were moments driving when he felt a perfect calm, as though he were the car, skimming above the road, power and control and distance. But tonight it felt off. The distance part, maybe. The last six months seemed like they had been all about distance: from his children, from Natalie, from the world he had so carefully built and the sensible position he occupied in it. Though he was a man who enjoyed his own company, talking to Shannon, having a partner, it made him realize he’d been lonely, too. It sounded nice to be around people.

Besides. Getting closer to her is getting closer to John Smith.

“Okay. Where to?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Chinatown had given the DAR headaches since the beginning.

Not just in Chicago, and frankly, not just the DAR. Whatever the city, law enforcement always had trouble with Chinatown. The places were closed systems, insular worlds that existed within cities, traded with them, drew tourists from them, but nonetheless were never really of them. Police working Chinatown carried a bubble around, a small radius of American rule that extended only as far as they could see, that moved with them and left the place unchanged in their wake.

Which made law enforcement difficult. There weren’t very many Chinese cops, and the other races stood out like they were backlit. It wasn’t just a matter of not speaking the language; they didn’t even know how to ask the questions, which questions to ask. And in a world that existed within itself, a tight-knit community with its own leaders and factions, its own sense of and system for justice, what good could an outsider cop do? And all of that was before the gifted came along and complicated the picture.

Shortly after midnight, and the river was a ribbon of black. Light industry and warehouses gave way to dense clusters of brick buildings decorated with green awnings and pagodas, up-down shops with a riot of colorful signs, the characters meaningless as a paint squiggle to him. A handful had English subtitles with awkward phrasing: EAT OR TAKE WITH, THE ALL-BEST CAMERAS, NOODLE FRESH SHOP. Overlapping neon lit the night with science fiction colors.

“Where’s your friend’s place?”

“An alley off Wentworth. Park wherever you can, we’ll walk.”

He found a pay lot on Archer. He was about to get out of the Jag when she said, “Leave the gun.”

“Huh?”

“These are my friends. I’m not bringing a gun into their house.”

Cooper looked at her for a moment, wishing he had the call girl Samantha’s gift, that he could read Shannon, see the real her, understand her intentions. Was this some sort of a trick? Get him unarmed and outnumbered? She stared back. Cooper shrugged, unclipped the holster from his belt, slipped the rig under the front seat.

“Thank you.”

Shannon walked half a step in front of him. The windows of shops held a riotous array of crap—waving cats and colorful fans and plastic ninja swords. Tourist junk, but the tourists had gone for the night. Everyone on the sidewalk was a local, and many seemed to know each other. They passed the window of a butcher where the plucked carcasses of birds dangled by their feet. “So how do you know these people?”

“Lee Chen and I have been friends for a long time. He runs a business here.”

“Yeah, but how? How did you meet?”

“Oh, you know, in our mutual abnorm hatred of the world we recognized each other as kindred souls in a long battle.”

“Right.”

She grinned. “We went to high school.”

His gift followed the chain back—school together, but her friend is established here, odds are she grew up in Chicago, a good starting point if he ever needed to track her down. “Funny to think of you in high school.”

“Why?”

“The whole mysterious thing you have going.”

“Mysterious thing?”

“Yeah. You keep appearing out of nowhere, then disappearing. Before I knew your name, I called you the Girl Who Walks Through Walls.”

She laughed. “Better than what they called me in high school.”

“What was that?”

“Freak, mostly. At least until I got breasts.” They passed a restaurant called Tasty Place, another called Seven Treasures, and turned down an alley. The glow of the street faded. Dumpsters overflowed, the smell of rotting trash sweet. At the back of an unmarked brick building she stepped into an alcove, knocked on a heavy door painted green.

There was the sound of a heavy lock, and the green door opened. Within was a small antechamber with a metal folding chair, a paperback book split facedown on it. The guard nodded at Shannon, gestured to a door at the opposite wall, and then leaned on a button. Cooper heard an electronic buzz of a lock.

“What is this place?”

“This is Lee’s. Social club.” She opened the opposite door.

The room beyond was bright with bad lighting, overhead fluorescents battling thick clouds of cigarette smoke. There were eight or nine tables, half of them occupied. No one looked up. The men around the tables—it was all men, mostly older—stared forward, lost in a game played with dominos. Loose stacks of bills were scattered between ashtrays and bottles of beer.

“You mean casino.”

“I mean a social club. They socialize over Pai Gow. It’s part of the culture. Chance and fate and numbers are more important here.” She started around the edge of the room. Sugary pop music played in the background. Reaching a table of seven men, she stopped and stood quietly. The men ignored them, all eyes on the dealer, a younger guy, prematurely balding, who slid stacks of tiles to each of them. The tiles clicked softly as the players arrayed them in sets of two. When the last tiles had been placed, all the players turned them over, revealing patterns of dots, and at once the table exploded in a burst of Chinese. Money moved back and forth.

Shannon touched the dealer’s shoulder. He looked up at her. “Azzi.” His face broadened into a smile that vanished when he saw Cooper.

“Lee Chen,” she said and squeezed his shoulder. “This is Nick Cooper.”

The dealer stood up. The man to his left collected the tiles and began to mix them as the remaining players placed bets.

“Hi,” Cooper said. He held out a hand. “Nice place.”

“Sank you,” Lee said. “You po-rice?”

“No. I used to be.”

“Not po-rice. Now you are fliend to Shannon.”

“Umm. Yeah. Yes, I am her friend.” The man’s pidgin threw him, one of the classic problems of operating in Chinatown. So much nuance could be lost when only the broad strokes of a question were understood. He’d have to keep his answers simple, be sure not to offend—

Shannon was barely holding back laughter.

Cooper looked at her, then at Lee Chen. “You’re busting my balls.”

“Yeah, a little bit. Sorry.” Lee smiled and turned back to Shannon. “Have you eaten?”

“A while ago. Why, is Lisa cooking?”

“Lisa is always cooking.” He gestured at a young man lounging by the bar and barked a short command. The man straightened, hurried over, and took the dealer’s place at the table. The play shifted again, an easy rhythm of long practice. Lee put his arm over Shannon’s shoulder and the two started away. “Alice will be happy to see you.”

“She’s still awake?”

“Her mother made an exception.” Lee released Shannon, opened a door marked with characters that even in another language clearly read DO NOT ENTER, and started up a set of stairs.

“Who’s Alice?” Cooper asked.

“My goddaughter.” She smiled over her shoulder as they climbed. “She’s eight and a beautiful genius.”

“And why did he call you Azzi?”

“My last name. My dad’s Lebanese.”

Shannon Azzi. From Chicago. It sounded so much less dramatic than the Girl Who Walks Through Walls. One was a terrorist operative, a lethal agent of the most dangerous man in America. The other was, well, a woman. Smart, funny, and gifted in both senses of the word. And damned attractive. You may as well admit that, Agent Cooper. “Funny to think of you having a dad,” he said.

“Enough with that.”

Cooper smiled.

The sounds changed as they reached the top, and the smells. Sharp spices, garlic, and fish sauce. A burst of laughter came from down the hall, and a child’s happy shriek.

“You having a party?”

“A play date,” Lee said. “Friends with kids.”

Like most parties, everyone had clustered in the kitchen. A dozen or so men and women, all Chinese, were jammed together around a counter packed with bowls of food. A pot simmered on the stove, a sweet, sour smell rising on wisps of steam. Everyone glanced over as they entered, their smiles slipping only slightly when they saw Cooper, no hostility in it, just surprise.

“You all know Shannon,” Lee said. “This is her friend Nick Cooper.”

“Hello all.” He looked around the room, spotted a slender woman perched on a stool, stylishly dressed, delicately chic in that distinctly Asian-girl way. He read the comfort in her body, said, “You must be Lisa.”

She slid off the stool, held out her hand. “Welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you hungry?”

He wasn’t but said, “Starving.”

“Good. We have way too much food.”

“I wonder how that happened,” Lee said dryly, plucking beer bottles from the fridge. He twisted the caps off, passed them to Shannon and Cooper, and kept one for himself.

Lisa ignored her husband, slid her arm into Cooper’s. “Let me introduce you.”

“Aunt Shannon!” A blur of dark hair and pale skin streaked past him, collided with Shannon, who laughed and wrapped her arms around the girl. The two began firing questions at one another, neither waiting for the answers.

Lisa piled rice on a plate and handed it to him, then began to point out the dishes, saying their names, explaining each as if he’d never eaten in a restaurant. Cooper said how good everything looked and scooped some of every dish, balancing his beer against the plate. Shannon brought the girl over, said, “Alice, this is my friend Nick.”

“Hi.”

“Hi. Can you do me a favor, Alice? Can you call me Cooper?”

“Okay.” The girl took Shannon’s hand and dragged her away. “Come on, come play with us.”

Cooper ate and drank and moved around the room. Most everyone spoke in Chinese until he joined, then shifted seamlessly to English. He spent half an hour making bland party conversation. Everyone was very nice, but he felt the same discomfort he always had at parties. Small talk wasn’t his thing, and he didn’t have the knack for storytelling. There was a skill to organizing your life into neatly bundled anecdotes, and he lacked it.

Besides, what are you going to say? “So this one time, I was tracking an abnorm who had played a loophole in Bank of America credit cards and racked up half a million in microtransactions before killing the bureaucrat who came to his door and fleeing into the backwoods of Montana on a snowmobile?”

A cluster of shrieks echoed down the hall where Alice had led Shannon. Cooper helped himself to a fresh beer and followed the noise. He found Shannon in the family room, standing on top of a sectional sofa, counting down with her eyes closed. “Three, two….one…go!”

Seven children, Alice among them, all shifted from foot to foot, ready to dart. Shannon opened her eyes, glanced around the room, then made a languorous fake to the left before leaping off the couch to the right. The boy she lunged at tried to dodge, but she tapped him with one hand, spun, saw two children running toward each other, held a half a beat, then tagged them both as they collided. The touched kids stood still as statues, while the remaining four dodged around the edges of the room, using the furniture and their frozen friends as cover. Shannon said, “I’m gonna get you,” then turned and tapped a boy who had been sneaking behind her. He giggled and froze.

Cooper watched the game with a broad smile. Shannon stalked the final three children, easing left and right, corralling them. The woman was the indisputable master of freeze tag.

“You have kids?”

“Huh?” He turned, saw Lee had come in behind him. “Two. A boy and a girl, nine and four.” He thought but did not say their names. Took a long swallow of beer.

“Greatest things in the world, aren’t they?”

“Yes. Yes they are.”

“Even when you want to kill them.”

“Even then.”

Shannon tagged out the final three in rapid succession, getting Alice last, then wrapping her in one arm and tickling her with the other. When Shannon finally let the girl breathe again, Alice said, “Me next!” She moved to the center of the room. But instead of beginning a new round of tag, she said, “Chicago places.”

“Navy Pier,” said a pig-tailed girl.

“600 East Grand Avenue.”

“The Zoo!”

“2200 North Cannon Drive.”

The other children began to yell out. “Tasty City!”

“My mom’s house!”

“The airport!”

“2022 South Archer Avenue, 337 West 24th Place, O’Hare Airport is 10000 West O’Hare and Midway Airport is 5700 South Cicero.”

Cooper’s belly tightened as he realized what was happening. As the children kept shouting places, he turned to Lee. “Your daughter is gifted?”

The man nodded. “We started on Goodnight, Moon, but she prefers the phone book. She’ll get on my d-pad and read listings for hours. Not just Chicago, either. She knows New York, Miami, Detroit, Los Angeles. Anytime we go on a trip she reads the phone book first.”

Lee’s pride radiated in every word and every muscle of his face. Smitten with his daughter, and delighted at her abilities. It stood in such sharp contrast to the typical parental reaction, to Cooper’s own reaction. This wasn’t a man worried about what the world would think, afraid that she might end up tested or labeled or living in an academy. This was pure joy in the wonder that was his daughter.

“Now you, Zhi.” Shannon pointed to the boy who had tried to sneak up on her.

“Okay.” He stood ready, a pupil confident before a teacher.

“Use the addresses. Add them.”

“34,967.”

“Multiply them.”

“1.209 times 10 to the 36th.”

“Add them with north and west positive and east and south negative.”

“Minus 243.”

Alice joined in. “The Zoo times Tasty City minus Andrea’s house.”

“4,448,063.”

“Navy Pier divided by the school.”

“2.42914979757085…”

The kids were having a ball, and Zhi stood in the center of it, giving every answer without hesitation. Cooper stared, realization dawning. “They’re all brilliants?”

“Yes,” Lee said. “As I said, this is a play date.”

“But—” He looked at the children, at Shannon, back at Lee. “Aren’t you…I mean…”

“Worried about hiding the fact that they’re gifted?” Lee smiled. “No. Chinese culture sees things differently. These children are special. They bring honor and success to a family. Why wouldn’t we love that?”

Because someone who works for my old agency could call you at any moment. “The rest of the world doesn’t see it that way.”

“The world is changing,” Lee said softly. “It has to.”

“What about the academies?”

The man’s face darkened. “Someday, when this is all over, people are going to look back at those in shame. It will be like the internment camps in the Second World War.”

“I agree,” Cooper said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m an abnorm, too.”

“I assumed. Most of Shannon’s friends are.”

“And my daughter…” He hesitated. Didn’t want to say it even now, even here. Why? Are you ashamed of Kate?

That wasn’t it. It couldn’t be. It was fear, that was all. Fear of what would happen to her.

Right. But all that negative emotion, all that desire to have her hide her ability, isn’t there some part of you that wishes she were normal? If only so she wouldn’t face this risk?

It was an ugly thought. Cooper tilted his beer up again and found it empty. “Aren’t you afraid that someone will make them take the test?”

“That’s where being Chinatown Chinese has advantages. The government doesn’t know about these children.”

“How?”

“Some of us went abroad to have our babies. Others use local midwives who don’t record the births. It’s a risk, because they don’t have the resources of a hospital if things go wrong. A stupid, terrible way to do things. But right now it’s worth it.”

The DAR had long suspected that there was a significant population of unreported abnorms in immigrant communities. It was a loophole the agency meant to close, but like a squeaky staircase in a house on fire, other issues took precedence. These communities rarely made trouble and so had been left alone. But watching the children play—they’d moved to a new game, where a little girl spun once, then closed her eyes and answered detailed questions about everything in the room, down to the number of buttons on Alice’s dress—Cooper saw a whole generation of abnorms growing up right under the noses of the DAR, unreported, untested, untracked. The implications were enormous.

Want to call Director Peters, let him know?

“A lot to take in, huh?” Lee smiled. “I’m so used to it that I forget the rest of the world isn’t. Don’t you love watching them play together? Children who aren’t taught, from the earliest age, that they’re monsters. That they’re abnormal. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Cooper said. “Yes it is.”

Later, after the party had ended, after parents had collected their children and said their good-byes and left with Tupperware containers of leftovers, Lisa led him and Shannon to a small room off the hallway decorated in pastel shades and posters of Disney princesses. A lamp shaped like an elephant glowed on a night table beside a single bed.

“Alice’s,” Lisa said, apologetically. “She can sleep with us tonight. I’m sorry there’s not separate rooms.”

Cooper looked over at Shannon, but whatever she might have felt about the arrangement she didn’t telegraph beyond brushing a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “No problem,” he said.

“I’ll get some blankets.”

She returned with a sleeping bag, set it on the bed with a spare pillow, then said, “I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

“We’ll be fine. Thank you.” Cooper paused, said, “It means a lot to me that you let us into your home.”

“A friend of Shannon’s is a friend of ours. Come anytime.” Lisa looked around the room, hugged Shannon goodnight, and came to Cooper. He waited for her to calculate whether he was a hug or a handshake, but she didn’t hesitate, just gave him a quick hug. Then she stepped out of the room and closed the door.

Shannon tucked her hands in her pockets. The movement tightened the shirt across clavicles delicate as bird wings. “So.”

“I’ll take the floor.”

“Thanks.”

He made a point of facing the other direction as he kicked off his shoes and socks, unbuttoned his shirt. Decided to keep his pants and undershirt on. Behind him he heard the faint rustle of fabric, and his mind flashed an image of her pulling her shirt over her head, imagined a delicate cream bra over caramel skin.

Whoa there, Agent Cooper. Where did that come from?

He chalked it up to a long day of shared adrenaline, underscored by male chemistry, and left it at that. He slid into the sleeping bag, rubbed his eyes. A moment later, he heard the click of her turning off the elephant, and the room went dark. Pale green stars glowed on the walls and ceiling, swirling constellations of an idealized night sky, one where the stars had neat points and sharp edges and were only barely out of reach.

“G’night, Cooper.”

“Night.” He folded his hands behind his head. He was too old to be sleeping on the floor, but too tired to care. As he lay there, staring at the stars of that better sky, he found himself thinking back to the game, the looks on the faces of those kids as they played with toys barely imaginable to most of the world.

It had been six months since last he’d seen his children. Six months of pretending to be someone else, of burying the life he loved in order to fight for it.

When it came down to it, everything he had done was for his children. Even the things he had done before they were born, before he’d even met Natalie. It was a truth he never could have understood until he’d become a parent, and one he would never be able to forget.

The world is changing, Lee had said. It has to.

Cooper hoped he was right.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The man was waiting for them.

He was as big as Cooper remembered, broad-shouldered and muscular beneath pudge; a man who didn’t lift weights because he lifted heavy things for a living. He looked right at home in the loading dock.

“What the hell?” He spat the words as Cooper and Shannon climbed the steps.

“Excuse me?”

“Paying for my ID. You trying to be the big man? You think you know me?” The abnorm shook his head. “You don’t know me.”

“Whatever.” Cooper started past, but the big man grabbed his arm. The grip was stone.

“I asked you a question. What do you want?”

Cooper glanced down at the man’s hand, thinking, Twist sideways, right elbow to the solar plexus, stomp the arch of the foot, spin back with a left uppercut. Thinking, So much for good deeds. “I want you to get out of my way.”

Something in his tone made the man hesitate, and the grip loosened. Cooper brushed his sleeve, walked past.

“I didn’t ask for this. I don’t owe you nothing.”

He stiffened, the irritation growing. Turned. “You do, asshole. You owe me six months of your life. The phrase you’re looking for is ‘thank you.’”

The man crossed his arms. Held the stare. “I’m not anybody’s slave. Not Schneider’s, and not yours.”

“Bravo,” Cooper said. “Congratulations. You’re an island, alone unto yourself.”

“Huh?”

“I’m so tired of people like you. Of twists like you. Schneider claimed six months of your life on nonsense, and you just laid down and took it. Okay, fine, your choice. But then an angel bought you that time back. And what’s your first thought? He must want something. He can’t just be trying to bear his neighbor’s burden. He can’t just be an abnorm who doesn’t like seeing another one treated that way.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Nobody does nothing for free. Abnorm or not.”

“Yeah, well, no wonder we’re losing.” Cooper turned away and walked for the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “I don’t want you to be my slave. I want you to not be one at all.”

Then he yanked open the door and stepped inside. Behind him, Shannon chuckled. “You’re a piece of work, Cooper.”

“Let’s go find Schneider.”

The forger saw them coming, gestured for them to follow without waiting to see if they would. Cooper felt his irritation growing. Just get what you came for and get out. Time to head for Wyoming, find John Smith, and finish this. Maybe it wouldn’t solve all the problems in the world. But it would solve one of them. And it might buy a little time for the world to grow the hell up.

For a man of his means, Schneider certainly hadn’t spent much on his office. Cinderblock walls painted white, a chipboard desk with a lamp and a phone. The only expensive item was a custom-looking newtech datapad, sleek and machined. The forger sat down, opened a drawer, and took out an envelope. “Passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards.” He tossed the packet on the desk.

Cooper opened it, pulled out a passport, and saw his picture above the name Tom Cappello. He flipped the pages, saw that he had traveled extensively, mostly in Europe. The document was faded and worn soft. “The microchip matches?”

“What do you think I am?”

“I’m getting tired of that question. The microchip matches?”

“Of course.” Schneider leaned back, crossed his ankle over a bony knee. “More important, your information has been hacked into all of the relevant databases. A complete profile—spending habits, mortgages, voting record, speeding tickets, all of it.”

Cooper opened the other passport, saw Shannon’s picture. It must have been from a security camera somewhere in the building, but the shot was clean, the background suitably bland. Then he saw the name. “Are you kidding me?”

“What?” Shannon moved beside him, took the document. “Allison Cappello. So what?”

“He made us married.”

Schneider smiled his dental horror show. “That a problem?”

“I didn’t ask for it.”

“The profiles support each other. Minimizes the risk of the data insertion.”

“Yeah, for you. For us, it means we have to be able to play a married couple.”

Schneider shrugged. “Not my problem. Now listen. You both exist, but only at a superficial level. Your new identities have been implanted into the baseline systems. But it will take time for it to propagate. That’s the only way to do it. No way to modify every computer that would have a record. Instead, I plant your identities like a seed, and they grow.”

“How long?”

“You could probably clear a basic New Canaan security check now. But in a few days you’ll have recursive backup, with your identities spread throughout the whole system. Wait till then if you can.”

Cooper didn’t answer. He put the passport back in the envelope and turned to go.

“And Poet?”

“Yeah?”

“Come back anytime. I can always use your money.” The forger laughed.

When they walked back through the loading dock, the big man was gone. Just as well. In his current mood, Cooper might have used him as a practice dummy.

“We could probably stay with Lee and Lisa for a few days.”

Cooper unlocked the car, shook his head. “Let’s get on the road.”

“You want to drive to Wyoming?”

“Might as well. We need the time, and it’s safer than an airport.”

“All right.” Shannon thumbed through her passport. “Tom and Allison Cappello.” She laughed. “If that’s your way of trying to get me into bed, you get points for originality.”

“Cute.” He started the car and pointed it east. “So how did we meet?”

“Hmm?”

“We’re married. If we get questioned, we need to be able to look married.”

“Right. Well, at work, I suppose. It’s true, after all.”

The layers of irony in that made him smile. “Maybe a different job, though. Something boring, so no one asks follow-up questions about it.”

“Accounting?”

“Anybody asks me about their tax return, we’re done. How about…logistics. For a shipping company. No one wants to know how things get from place to place.”

“Okay. I worked there first. We met when you were transferred to Chicago. No, Gary, Indiana. No one wants to know about Gary, Indiana, either,” she said. “You were smitten with me, of course.”

“Actually, I think you chased me. I played it cool.”

“It was totally obvious. You kept pulling puppy-dog faces. And making excuses to come by my desk.”

“You ever actually have a desk?”

“Sure, in my apartment. It does a great job of holding up my fake plant.” She leaned back and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “We went to the movies for our first date. You were a gentleman, didn’t try anything.”

“But you were hot to go. You kept touching my arm and tossing your hair. Fiddling with your bra strap.”

“You wish.”

“And panting. I remember a lot of panting.”

“Shut up.”

Cooper smiled and merged onto the highway. Their rhythm was easy, natural. He wasn’t flirting, exactly, but the banter was fun. They kept it up, kept it light, as he drove back to Chinatown. Lisa had made them promise to have lunch before they left, and it seemed as though they had the time to spare now. He pulled up a mental map of Wyoming. The Holdfast spanned a good chunk of the middle of the state, an ugly sprawl of desert and badlands cobbled together in a thousand real estate transactions, with a border like a gerrymandered congressional district. He figured it was about a twenty-five-hour drive. They could take it slow, get some rest along the way. Stop somewhere and buy a couple of wedding rings. And he could use the time to make a plan. Getting to Erik Epstein wouldn’t be easy, and that was only a stepping-stone on the way to John Smith.

“The Amalfi Coast of Italy,” she said. “That’s where we honeymooned. We rented a room on the side of a cliff, with a balcony where we drank wine. Every day we swam in the ocean.”

“I remember. You looked dynamite in that suit.”

“The red one?” She looked at him through dark lashes. “You always liked me in red.”

“It’s good with your body,” he said, the words spilling out before he could stop them. The memory of last night flashed back, the soft whisper of her shirt sliding off, and the image he’d invented. He felt a little heat in his forehead, glanced over at her.

She wore a half smile. “My body, huh?”

“Your skin, I mean. You said your dad is Lebanese—what’s your mom?”

“French. All burgundy lips and flowing hair. They were quite the couple. He was a businessman, a very sharp dresser with a pencil moustache. The two of them were like something out of an RKO flick.”

“Were?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” She set her shoulders, and he read the active change in topic there, marked it to the pattern that she was becoming in his mind.

He was just about to ask where they lived when he saw the Escalade. Traffic had been getting steadily worse as they’d drawn closer to Chinatown, which he’d chalked up to tourists and the lunch crowd. But the truck—

Late model Escalade, black, tinted windows.

Parked half in, half out of the street. Like it stopped suddenly. Right at the intersection of Cermak and Archer, two of the arteries of Chinatown.

Engine running.

Government plates.

Shit.

—sent a warning tingle down his spine. Cooper sat bolt upright, fingers tightening on the wheel. Shannon picked up the move, followed his eyes, said, “No.”

He glanced in the rearview, half expecting to see black SUVs bearing down on them, but there was nothing but a long line of cars. If it was a trap, the other side hadn’t swung shut yet. A U-turn? Conspicuous, a last resort. It could just be a coincidence, a DAR crash vehicle down here for something else, with a different target.

“Lee and Lisa,” Shannon said, and jerked as if she’d been electrocuted. “No, no, no.”

“We don’t know—”

“The traffic,” she said. “Damn, I should have seen it. Stop the car.”

“Wait, Shannon, we can’t—”

“Stop the car!”

He saw it then—the traffic hadn’t just been slowing. It had been creeping to a stop. This wasn’t a matter of a crowded street or a backed-up stoplight. Something was blocking the flow of cars. It could be an accident. A collision, with police on the scene.

Yeah. And I suppose the DAR is here to write tickets.

Cooper bumped the car up over a curb into a small strip mall. Shannon was out the door before the wheels had finished rolling. He shut off the ignition and followed her, the two of them sprinting through the parking lot.

In the distance, a sound, loud and mixed. Not one source, but hundreds overlapping. His first thought was that it was a parade, some sort of festival, but he knew that was wishful thinking. He’d seen SUVs just like that a thousand times, had called them in a hundred times.

The DAR’s private paramilitary police force, a blend of riot cop and SWAT team. They wore black body armor and helmets with visors that completely hid their features. The visors functioned as a heads-up display, enhancing targeting, displaying map coordinates, and allowing night vision. The department called the units tactical response teams.

The public called them the faceless.

Ahead of him, Shannon dodged past the end of the strip mall, leaped a short fence, and sprinted for Archer. Cooper poured it on, hit the fence without breaking stride, and pushed himself over it. She was halfway across the street, dodging through the snarled traffic. A small green space surrounded an apartment building, and she blitzed through the middle of it. He lost sight of her as she rounded the building, leaning into the run, his breath coming fast with the sudden transition to motion.

Half a block to the north, another black Escalade was parked at the entrance to a bank. The doors were open, and he spotted three faceless in defensive positions. Bulky with armor and with blank glass for a head, they resembled predatory insects. Each man held a submachine gun with a folding stock. Shannon was racing south now, right down the middle of the street. Car horns added their screams to the roar of the crowd, closer with every step. Cooper caught up to her just as she made an abrupt turn. He followed.

And saw what was making the noise. The sidewalk and alley were jammed with people, most Chinese, all facing the other direction. They yelled and shook their fists. The group was densely packed and pushing forward without making any progress. Over their heads, Cooper saw a dozen faceless with riot shields cordoning off an alley.

The alley where Lee’s social club was located.

No.

Shannon had hit the crowd already, slipped into it like an arrow into the ocean, her gift showing holes and vectors. Cooper followed as best he could, shoving his way through. The noise was unbelievable, a fury of anger and fear in a foreign language. As he watched, a man at the front scooped up a stone and hurled it. The rock bounced harmlessly off a shield. The commando stepped forward and snapped the shield into the guy hard enough that Cooper could almost hear the crunch of the man’s nose shattering. He dropped, blood pouring, and the crowd roared louder. Cooper looked around frantically, taking in the low buildings, the fire escapes, the alley farther south, trying to find an opening he knew they couldn’t risk.

DAR Tactical Response Team Protocol 43: In the event of an extraction from a dense and hostile environment, first establish a perimeter operating zone. Limit force application unless targets possess a significant strategic advantage and a demonstrated intent to employ that advantage.

Translation: unarmed people on the ground just get hit, but if anybody climbs on a building, shoot them.

Shannon had made it halfway through the crowd before stalling out. Even her gift couldn’t find a way through the mob. The faceless held the mouth of the alley shoulder to shoulder, with Chinatown’s furious residents layered twenty deep against them. Cooper grabbed a man in front of him and yanked, tangling the guy’s foot as he went. The man staggered back into the crowd, and Cooper slid in behind Shannon.

“We need to go,” he shouted over the roar of the crowd. Right now the primary team would be searching Lee’s gambling den and the apartment above. They’d have thermal scans and dogs, and it wouldn’t take them long to realize that he and Shannon weren’t there. “They’ll search the crowd for us.”

“They’re not here for us,” Shannon said. Her cheeks had paled.

“What are you—” He followed her eyes to a prisoner transport van the size of a delivery truck parked halfway down, the back doors winged open. Riot-geared troopers guarded the rear of the truck, weapons at the ready. Another group was shoving two shackled figures down the alley, a balding man and a woman with chic hair, both of them yelling and fighting.

Lee and Lisa.

Cooper’s stomach seized. As he watched, a commando buried the butt of his gun in Lee’s belly. Lisa screamed, tried to get to her husband. Another grabbed her from behind, stuffed a black hood over her head, and pushed her into the waiting wagon. Seconds later Lee was forced in beside her. Something in Cooper’s chest raged and shrieked, railed against the cage of his ribs. He pushed forward, surging against the crowd, feeling more than hearing his yells. He gained six inches, lost them. It was like being caught in a thundering wave; he was rolled and tossed but made little progress. Shannon made even less, her gift useless here. Overhead there was the rotor of a chopper, and sirens from somewhere far away. Glass shattered, a window or a bottle. That triggered a reaction; the faceless locked shields and braced themselves. From behind them, tossed over their head in a lazy arc, came a smoking canister. The tear gas hit someone in the crowd, bounced downward; billows of white streamed up. A second and third canister followed. People began to gag and retch, the motion of the crowd reversing, sweeping Cooper and Shannon along with it.

The last he saw of the alley, before the gas and the panic consumed everything, was a soldier pulling a black hood over the head of eight-year-old Alice Chen.

Silence. It had been an hour, and the silence was still loud, and in it he could hear the echoes of the mob.

He’d gotten a pretty good huff of gas as the crowd split and surged. The frantic coughing had left his throat raw, and his eyes still stung and watered. He kept having to fight the speed of the Jaguar, his foot wanting to go heavy on the accelerator. Instead, he moved with the steady flow of traffic and saw the scene again and again. He’d been too far to make out details, but his imagination was happy to supply them: the wide-eyed trembling of the little girl, the pure panic she would have felt as men in black pulled her parents away from her. Her mother’s scream as her father was beaten. The stranger’s smooth insect mask reflecting her face as he bent over her.

And then the darkness, close and heavy, as the hood slid over her head.

He had seen it, had heard the crowd and felt the gas, and yet he still barely believed it. How could that mission have been authorized? Why take Lee and Lisa and Alice? Why take them that way?

“It had to be us.” His voice thin and hollow against the weight of an hour’s accumulated silence. “They were there for us.”

Shannon didn’t respond. She sat at the edge of the passenger seat, shoulders turned away, as if trying to get as far from him as possible.

“I can’t believe it,” he said.

“Why not?” She spoke to the side window. “This is what it looks like.”

“Not normally. Somehow they knew we’d been there. They wouldn’t come in like that otherwise.”

She turned to look at him then, pure scorn on her face. “Are you serious?”

He searched for a response, but none of the words that came to mind were right. Everything he believed made a lie by the image of a hood going down over a child’s face.

“This is how it works, Cooper. Don’t you know that? Of course you do. You’ve ordered that before.”

“No. Never.”

“You’ve never sent faceless out? Top DAR agent, and you never ordered a mission?”

“Not like that.”

“Like what, then? Did your team bring flowers and cake?”

“My teams were called in on criminals. Terrorists. Abnorms who had hurt someone, or were about to hurt someone.”

“I’m sure that’s what those men were told, too. That Lee and his family were terrorists. Same way the Gestapo believed the people they rounded up were plotting against the state.”

“Come on. You can win any argument with the Gestapo or the Nazis. The DAR is not the same.”

“It look like it’s heading in the right direction to you?”

“Okay, first, I’m not with the department anymore, remember? Second, maybe this wouldn’t have happened if you guys would stop blowing up buildings and assassinating people. I hate what I just saw. It makes me physically sick. But you can’t throw a bomb and then get upset if people don’t like you very much. Those men thought they were going to catch the people responsible for an explosion that killed more than a thousand people.”

“Whatever,” she said, and turned away again.

A thought struck him. “Wait a second. I didn’t know Lee and Lisa. But you did.”

“So?”

“So how would the DAR know unless they were tipped off?”

“By who?”

“How about Samantha? Or…” He paused, let her work it out.

“You’re suggesting John called the DAR and told them where to find us?”

“Did he know about Lee and Lisa?”

“It doesn’t matter. He would never have done that.”

“Maybe Samantha hasn’t gotten the message to him yet. Maybe it was his attempt to take you out.”

“Not a chance.”

“Shannon—”

“I mean it, Cooper. Drop it.”

He opened his mouth, wanting to fight. Wanting to burn out the anger inside of him in a battle, the two of them going for blood. He wanted to tell her about a pink stuffed animal he’d seen amidst the rubble in New York. But then he imagined the scene in Lee’s apartment, the door blowing open without warning, the faceless streaming in, his former colleagues shouting, throwing the family down, shackling them on their kitchen floor, the same kitchen he’d stood in last night and chatted with friendly strangers.

It’s on John Smith. If there wasn’t terrorism, there wouldn’t be tactical response teams. Smith’s hands were stained with the blood of thousands. Lee and Lisa and Alice were just the latest.

He found himself remembering the evening of March 12, President Walker’s speech to the nation. Cooper had caught it the next day, in a hotel outside Norfolk, already on the run. He’d watched it with an edgy stomach, afraid of what he might hear, that the president would be preaching fire and brimstone against abnorms. Instead, the man had urged tolerance. What were the words?

“It’s said that the strongest partnerships are formed in adversity. Let us face this adversity not as a divided nation, not as norm and abnorm, but as Americans.

Let us work together to build a better future for our children.

And let us never forget the pain of this day. Let us never yield to those who believe political power flows from the barrel of a gun; to the cowards who happily murder children to achieve their aims.

For them, there can be—will be—no mercy.”

He’d listened to that with a swell of pride, the patriotic equivalent of a hard-on. And the words still moved him. They represented the reason he was undercover now, the reason he hadn’t seen his children in six months.

He had to find John Smith. And for him, no mercy.

The words were old, a mantra he’d repeated every night. What surprised him was the small voice that followed it. The one that said, And then what? Back to the DAR? Call in more tactical response teams? Can you really return to that?

Shannon said, “What will happen to them?”

“They’ll be taken to the local field office. Questioned.”

“Questioned.”

“Yes,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ll tell the agents about us right away. That will make things go easier. They might get off with a warning.”

“Don’t lie to me, Cooper.”

He glanced at her, saw the intensity in her eyes. Turned back to the road. “They’ll be charged. The bar and apartment will be seized. One or both of them will go to prison for harboring fugitives.”

“And Alice?”

Cooper gritted his teeth.

“Oh Jesus.” Shannon buried her face in her hands. “An academy?”

“It’s…it’s possible. It depends if she tests as tier one.”

“And even if she doesn’t, she’ll be marked. They’ll track her. Now that the microchip bill passed, they’ll put a tag in her throat. Embedded up against the carotid, so even micro-surgery can’t remove it. She’ll never be safe again.”

He wanted to say something comforting, something to make it better, but he couldn’t think what that would be.

“My God. This is my fault. I should never have brought you there.”

“There’s nothing we can do for them now. We just have to get to Wyoming and get this settled. Get ourselves clear. Then maybe.”

“Right.” Her laugh had no humor in it. “God damn it.” She stared out the window, but he doubted she saw anything. “I sure hope you’re worth it.”

“What?”

The hesitation was tiny, a clenching in her trapezii, a flutter of the fingers. Tiny, but there. “I said I hope it’s worth it. Getting to Wyoming.”

Cooper held his own reaction back, tapping the steering wheel. Had she just misspoken? Possible. But that hesitation…she was holding something back. Hiding something.

Yeah, well, she’s on the other side, remember?

He thought about calling her on it, decided against it. The events of the last twenty-four hours—my God, was that all it had been?—had generated a camaraderie between them. And yeah, she was attractive, in every sense of the word. But their friendship, or whatever it was, wouldn’t survive this mission. It wasn’t as if he could betray her, kill John Smith, and then see if she wanted to grab a cup of coffee sometime.

She was the enemy. Better not to forget that. Play his part, play it to the hilt, and keep an eye on her throughout.

Just get to Wyoming, get to John Smith, and end this.

For all the children.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Three days of green and brown and the road humming beneath their tires, of billboards against endless sky, of seemingly identical gas stations and fading radio stations. I-90 west, a long gray ribbon unfurling through the rolling hills of Wisconsin, the flatlands of Minnesota, the sun-bleached scrub of South Dakota. The cities decreased in size as they rode, from the Milwaukee skyline dotted with church towers and brewery signs to the barely-there hint of Sioux Falls and the low-slung strip malls of Rapid City.

They could have made the whole thing in a mad run but needed to kill time anyway and so drove eight-hour days and had dinner at chain restaurants. The silence hadn’t lasted. By the first evening, they were back to their calculatedly casual routine. They avoided politics, kept things light. Told stories of growing up, of friends and drunken misadventures and favorite books, tales neither intimate nor distant.

Last night they’d stopped at a roadside motel in the Black Hills. Ate delivery pizza and flipped channels on the tri-d, skipping the news networks without acknowledging it. Outside the world was black, just gone, and the sky awash with stars. He’d fallen asleep to the sound of her breathing in the other bed.

This morning they’d risen early and crossed into Wyoming. He’d visited the state only once, a camping trip with Natalie in the Grand Tetons a dozen years before. It had been late summer then, the mountains carpeted in green. He remembered making love in the morning while coffee boiled on the campfire and birds sang in the trees.

Here, though, on the eastern edge of the state, the landscape was low and blasted, thorny underbrush and dry rock. It didn’t look like a place where people could live. The towns were tiny things clutching the highway.

Until they came to Gillette. It had once been a quiet place, twenty thousand people, mostly working in the energy industry. Then Erik Epstein had revealed that the massive portion of the state he’d quietly been buying would be combined into one vast new “commune,” a place he’d named New Canaan Holdfast, a home for people like him. Twist Territory, people had called it, and laughed at the idea of anyone trying to live there. Laughed, that was, until the full weight of his $300 billion came into play, and in a matter of months the world changed completely.

Gillette was the end point of a road into New Canaan. Along with two even smaller towns—Shoshoni on the west and Rawlins off I-80 to the south—it was one of the only ways to enter the Holdfast. Epstein had constructed broad highways, four lanes in each direction, that ran into the center of a wasteland, a rough-edged slash through some of the least desirable land of the United States. He’d bought the land for dollars an acre, bought it through holding companies and at auction, bought it around existing villages of twenty people, bought sprawling cattle ranches and mineral rights for ranges of oil and natural gas that lay too deep or were too sparse to have been tapped. The result was a patchwork of stony desert, largely contiguous land that had been barely touched in all of human history.

And with that move, the previously inconsequential towns of Gillette, Shoshoni, and Rawlins became nationally recognized as the gateways into New Canaan. Massive truck stops had sprung up, and housing for the thousands of construction workers who built the initial stages of the Holdfast. Restaurants and movie theaters and shopping malls swiftly followed. Finally came tourist hotels and trinket shops and storefront museums and all the rest.

As a kid, Cooper had loved science-fiction movies, especially the ones from the seventies, all gaudy colors and neon and people in jumpsuits. There was something so kitschily appealing about them, the world transformed into a metropolis two hundred stories high. But now, as they waited in a sea of trucks twenty minutes past Gillette, it occurred to him that the future hadn’t turned out like that at all. The barren landscape and blinding sun looked more like the past. A cowboy western.

“How long does it take to clear the checkpoint?”

“From here?” Shannon was at the wheel; she craned her neck sideways to see around the 18-wheeler in front of them. “Probably fifteen minutes.”

“Efficient.”

“Has to be. The entrance is basically a massive delivery depot.”

“Yeah, I know.” Like any DAR agent, he’d had numerous briefings on the Holdfast. While culturally it resembled Israel shortly after the Second World War, NCH faced a unique set of circumstances. Because it was American soil, it had to abide by US law. But $300 billion made for all manner of exceptions. Epstein’s lawyers and lobbyists had cobbled together a hundred loopholes, resulting in the Holdfast being declared a separate county, with its own municipal code. And because the entire NCH was privately held corporate land, access could be controlled. “All the inbound trucks drop off their loads here, and then they’re distributed via an internal shipping network. Makes for a lot of jobs.”

“Jobs the Holdfast has plenty of. Unemployment is zero. And not only research—trucking, construction, mining, infrastructure, the works.”

“Sure. Got to have something for the normals to do.”

She laughed. “Not just normals. Plenty of gifted move here to be part of something, but a tier-five calculator or a tier-three musician aren’t exactly leading the charge in biomedical research.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“I’ve had my apartment for three years. I don’t know that I’d say I live here.”

“I know how that is.”

Ten minutes later he got his first look at the border. The four lanes of the highway doubled, then doubled again, and then again. The semis edged to the right, filling the bulk of the lanes, with passenger vehicles heading left. Each lane ran to a checkpoint not unlike a tollbooth. Guards in dun uniforms bearing the blue rising-star emblem of the Holdfast moved like ants, hundreds of them, talking to drivers, running mirrors under cars, walking German shepherds. The canopy over each checkpoint looked simple enough, but Cooper knew that it was packed with the most advanced newtech scanning devices in existence. The joke was that to see next year’s DAR gear, you just went to Wyoming and walked into a bar. That was the true protection of the Holdfast, the trump card more important than the desolate landscape or Epstein’s billions. The best minds in their fields, gifteds who individually jumped technology forward decades, here worked together, and the results flowed outward to the country as a whole.

You don’t need an army to conquer America, Cooper thought. You just need to produce entertainment centers people can’t live without.

Shannon pulled up beneath the canopy, the sudden shadow falling cool into the car. She rolled down the window, and a young guy with a neat moustache said, “Welcome to New Canaan Holdfast may I see your documentation please,” without pausing to breathe. They each dug for their passports—they’d discussed it on the way, the importance of not seeming too ready, too eager—and passed them over. The guard nodded and handed them to a woman behind him, who ran each against a scanner. Cooper knew it would be checking not only the validity of the passport, but also recent credit history, driving and criminal records, God knew what else.

Time to see if Schneider screwed us. The IDs and credit cards had worked fine on the way out, but that meant nothing at all. This was the first real test. Cooper forced nonchalant interest, looking around like a tourist.

“Mr. and Mrs.…Cappello,” the guard said. “What’s your business in New Canaan?”

“We just wanted to see it,” she said brightly. “We’re road-tripping to Portland and thought it would be fun to stop off.”

“Any narcotics or firearms?”

“Nope.” Cooper had left his gun in pieces in a Dumpster in Minnesota, knowing they’d ask. It didn’t matter. He didn’t really like guns all that much, and besides, one sidearm wouldn’t make any difference.

“Where are you staying while you’re here?”

“Thought we’d get a hotel in Newton.” The first town in the Holdfast was one of the largest and largely open to tourists. Deeper in, there would be additional security screenings, and proof of business needed. DAR briefings had compared the Holdfast to layers of sieves; each layer screened out more, using additional legal loopholes, ranging from gated residential communities to high-security mining areas to government-affiliated research facilities. As Cooper watched, another guard held up a device he’d never seen, an unmarked rectangle on a pistol grip, and panned it slowly along the car. Checking for explosives? Taking pictures of them? Reading their auras?

The female guard handed their passports back to the one with the mustache, who passed them to Shannon. “Thank you for your cooperation. Please be advised that the New Canaan Holdfast is privately held corporate land, and that by entering you are agreeing to abide by the bylaws of Epstein Industries, to remain within designated spaces identified in green, and to obey all requests of security personnel.”

“Gotcha,” Shannon said, then rolled up the window and put the car in drive.

And just like that, they were in.

It was different than he’d imagined.

Cooper had reviewed hundreds of photos and simulations. From above he’d seen the massive warehouse districts clustered at each entrance, row upon row of hangars that served as way stations for everything from lumber to ethylene dichloride to whiskey, all the products the Holdfast imported. He’d studied the layout of the region, the network of roads that connected the towns and outposts that had grown overnight. He’d read the specs of the solar fields, where miles of black photoelectric panels glittered like the carapaces of insects, all moving in perfect timing as they tracked the sun across the daytime sky and the moon across the night. He knew the populations of Newton, Da Vinci, Leibniz, Tesla, and Archimedes, knew what the specialized role of each town was. He’d sat in lectures about the unique nature of a preplanned society built with near-limitless funding.

What he hadn’t done was ride the streets of Newton with the windows down, smelling dust and the ionized discharge from the moisture condensers. He’d never watched a woman park her electric car at a charging station outside a bar and heard the hum of the generators engaging. And despite having read the figures a thousand times, he’d never realized how young the place was. It was one thing to know that the oldest recognized gifteds were thirty-three, and another to see a world of teenagers hurrying busily about, kids in construction helmets and driving trucks, children building a new world to a ten-year blueprint. There were older people, too, of course; plenty of families with gifted children had moved here, but they looked oddly out of place, outnumbered like faculty on a college campus.

Shannon’s apartment turned out to be on a second floor above a bar. One room with a Murphy bed tucked neatly in, a kitchen that showed no sign of ever having been cooked in, a desk with a plastic plant bathing in sunlight. It reminded him very much of his own abandoned apartment in DC.

She’d ushered him in, then stood looking around for a moment as if trying to recognize the place, as if someone had been there in her absence and moved things around by inches. After a moment she announced she wanted to clean up. Through the wall he could hear the sound of the shower turning on and off in quick cycles—navy showers only, water too precious here to waste. Cooper opened the fridge, saw nothing but condiments and beer, helped himself to one. He paced the room, then stepped out onto the small balcony.

The Holdfast embodied the latest urban design theory, with wide bike lanes and public squares like Italian piazzas. He winced against the sun and slugged his beer and watched a cluster of twenty-year-olds break into a flirty game of tag, boys chasing laughing girls around, all of them lean and leathery and sunburned, flush with health. He wondered which could dance among the genome, or recall every detail of a face glanced a dozen years ago. He wondered which of them worked for John Smith, which of them were terrorists, which of them might have once been targets for him to pattern and track and maybe murder.

Murder?

He took another sip of beer, leaning on the railing. A moment later she joined him, wearing a sundress now, a cotton strappy thing that bared her shoulders. Her hair was still damp, and she brushed it with steady strokes. She looked good, smelled of some tropical shampoo, coconuts maybe.

“So we made it.”

“We made it.”

He turned and leaned against the railing, the metal hot through his T-shirt. He watched her brush her hair and then watched her watch him. “What?” she asked.

“I was just thinking. You’re safe now.”

“And you’re not. It’s uncomfortable, right? Someone in a uniform doesn’t like the way you look and next thing you know, you end up in a brightly lit room.” She cocked her head. “I know that feeling.”

He didn’t respond, just held a level gaze.

She sighed. “Cooper, we had a deal. That means something to me. You got us here, I’ll get us in to see Epstein.”

“Okay,” he said. “What do we do? Drop by his office and ask for an audience with the King of New Canaan?”

“I told you, only straights call him that.”

“We’re standing in his kingdom right now.” He nodded to a pair of uniforms down in the square. “Those are corporate security guards, and he pays them.”

“That’s right, he does. But there are no sweatshops in the Holdfast.”

Why are you needling her? She was right: He did feel uncomfortable. For years he’d moved through the world with the certainty of power. Here, he was at best a tourist with a fake passport. And at worst, well, he had no illusions about his safety.

That wasn’t what bothered him. He’d expected to feel like a soldier behind enemy lines. Only now that he was here, enemy territory turned out to be a cross between a kibbutz and a campus. It threw him, the feeling that this wasn’t the beating heart of the evil empire.

Far from. What you’ve seen, you like. There was something inspiring about the place, the energy of it, the rational planning and joyful creation. It felt like a place that was building something. Aiming to the future. The rest of the country seemed mired in the past, always longing for a simpler time, even if that simpler time had never existed.

“What’s our next move?”

“Step two is tomorrow. We go to Epstein, as I promised. Step three, we go our separate ways, I find my people and explain the situation.”

“And step one?”

“Step one is you change your clothes and we go drinking. I’m home, and I want to celebrate.”

They started in the bar below her apartment. From the outside it looked like any other, and he played his usual game with himself: country rock on the stereo, neon beer signs behind the bar, scarred wooden tables, the sweaty feel of too-bright sunlight pouring through the front windows, a jaded day-shift bartender with tattoos.

For the first time in a decade, he’d gone one for five.

The place was air-conditioned to just above freezing, and the windows had some kind of polarizing effect that stripped the fury from the sunlight without dimming the outside world. The décor was all smooth lines; the lighting indirect and sourceless, as though the air itself glowed. The music was a sexy, vaguely electronic beat. The bartender was a girl about sixteen years old working on a d-pad, her skin leathery but otherwise unmarked.

At least the tables were wooden and scarred. They looked older than the bartender and probably were. Bought wholesale somewhere, shipped in here.

“Two ciders and two vodkas,” Shannon had said, then turned to him, flashed one of her quirky smiles, and said, “And the same for him.”

At first he’d sipped his drinks, feeling on edge. The second of the icy vodkas had taken care of that, and the cider—distilled here, Shannon told him, apples and pears being two of the handful of things that grew well in Wyoming—was cut with a pleasant bitterness.

“Vitamins,” Shannon said. “Most Bs. We eat a lot of meat here, but vegetables are expensive.” She took one shot right after the other, chased that with one of the ciders. There was a lightness to her that he hadn’t seen before, like she was uncoiling. The security of friendly ground. She laughed and joked and ordered more drinks, and somewhere along the line he’d decided, why not.

“So,” she said. “First impressions.”

“I thought you were very pretty, but a bit explosive.”

“Cute.”

“Thank you.” He took a long pull of the cider. “Honestly? Not what I expected.”

“How’s it different?”

He looked around the bar, at the dozen or so other patrons. Young, all of them, and loud. The tables covered with empty glasses. Laughter that broke like a bomb, a whole table falling apart at a joke, following it with a toast. When was the last time he’d sat in a group like that, been lost in a conversation, lived only for a drink?

The selfish focus, the certainty that this moment was all there was, it was familiar. When he’d been eighteen and a soldier, drinking with his buddies had been pursued with the same relentless energy, the same showy self-determination. But there were differences. Everyone was thinner, with the tight-fleshed look of people who didn’t drink enough water, spent a lot of time in the sun. The clothes were light and similar, very functional. Earlier, at the border, he’d thought that the place looked more like the past than the future, and he’d half expected to see big hats and cowboy boots, a generation playing at an older role. He’d been half right; there were a lot of hats, but the boots were all function and bore the marks of hard wear. None of it seemed to follow a fashion, or at least not one he recognized.

“No beer signs,” he said.

She cocked her head.

“A bar like this anywhere else, there would be beer signs. You know, the old-school logos, the Clydesdales. And even the new beers, they make signs that consciously reflect the ones that came before. Because that’s the way it’s done. You brew a beer, you make a sign for it. It’s like a pool table in a bar, even though no one really knows how to play pool anymore. Our grandparents shot pool; we get drunk and whack at the balls with warped sticks. No one thinks about it, but it’s nostalgia. It’s a sense of the past, of the way things are done.”

“Like classic rock,” she said. “I could go the rest of my life without hearing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ again.”

“There you go. I mean, the Rolling Stones are great. But Credence Clearwater, or the Allman Brothers for the ten-thousandth time? Is anybody moved by their music? Does anybody even hear it? It’s nostalgia.”

“Cars,” Shannon said. “Most people live in cities, don’t drive more than a few miles through traffic. So why do car companies keep making big cars that go fast and use a ton of gasoline? What they should be is light and electric and easy to park.”

“I don’t know about that,” Cooper said. “I like big cars that go fast.”

“Old-world thinking,” she said, smiling. “Another round?”

Outside the windows the world turned gold and orange and finally violet.

When they left he was feeling good, not wasted but certainly on the way, the world slippy around the edges. She hailed them an electric cab and gave the driver instructions. Their knees touched in the backseat of the tiny car. Martinis before dinner, and then steaks, an inch-thick rib eye crusted in rock salt and black pepper and grilled a perfect medium-rare. Every bite made him want to melt onto the plate.

He noticed that people around the restaurant noticed them, marked them as tourists, but there didn’t seem to be any threat in it. Newton got its fair share of tourists, and probably thought of it as exporting goodwill.

She ordered a bottle of wine with dinner and matched him glass for glass. Things got hazier, the world shrinking. He knew he was drunk, didn’t care.

Sometime later they were in a basement club. Sleek plastic furniture and low tables, a smoky haze sweet with marijuana. On a small stage a three-piece band—bongo, violin, guitar—played a strange, highly rhythmic melody somewhere between reggae and jazz, the musicians all heading off on complex tangents like mathematical equations, the sounds nearly, but not quite, discordant. Brilliants, he was sure, musicians who could play anything they’d ever heard once and yet never wanted to play the same thing twice, bored with a pattern explored. Shannon was in the bathroom, and he leaned back, listening to the music. The smarter plan for the night would have been to stay in her apartment, study maps and read Epstein’s biography, but he couldn’t make himself care.

She came back swaying, partly to shift through the crowd, partly a hip swing that fit the beat from the band, her legs strong and toned and two more drinks in her hand. “Here you are, Mr. Cappello. Tom.”

He laughed, said, “Thank you, Allison.”

They were on a couch nestled in a corner, and she dropped beside him. She smelled very good. From behind her ear she pulled a neatly rolled joint, then leaned forward and lit it off the candle on the table. “Ahh. Wyoming Sunset.”

“The bar doesn’t care?”

“The county can’t make it legal, so there’s a twenty-dollar fine. Which you pay upfront when you buy one at the bar.” She took another drag, leaned back into the seat. “You were married, right?”

“Yes.” He had a flash of Natalie that last night he’d seen her, standing under the tree at the house where they’d once lived together. “Seven years, divorced for four.”

“You got married young, then.”

“We were twenty.”

“Gifted?”

“No.”

“Was that the problem?” She offered him the joint.

He started to pass, then figured what the hell. Took a gentle puff, then a deeper one. Felt an immediate rush, a tingle in his toes and fingers that flowed inward. “I haven’t been stoned since I was seventeen.”

“Go easy, then. We grow it strong out here.”

He took another hit, passed it back. For a moment they just sat together, shoulders almost touching. He could feel the warmth of her, and a glow through his whole body.

“Yes,” he said. “That was the problem.”

“Was she jealous?”

“No, nothing like that. Part of the reason we got married was that I was gifted. Her parents didn’t like us dating, and she hated that in them. Used to joke that we were an interracial couple. Then she got pregnant, and that pretty much settled things.”

“Were you happy?”

“Very, for a while. Then less.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, just—life.” He held one hand up, stared at it, taking in the texture of his skin, the flex of the muscles as he wiggled his fingers. “You can’t turn it off, you know? What we do. It wore her down. My fault, a lot of it. I was impatient, always finishing her sentences. The thousand weird ways our differences played out, like the fact that she loved surprises but could never plan one for me. I had her patterned too thoroughly. And when things got tense, I’d respond to her anger before she said a word, and that would piss her off more. The end…it came slowly, then all at once.”

“That’s Hemingway,” she said.

He turned to look at her, the wide dark eyes and heavy lashes. Her face swimming a little in his inebriation. “Yeah.”

On the stage, the violinist went into a ragged solo, the notes jarring and alien, and yet not quite wrong, and more vivid with the impact of the drug. It sounded like an insomniac Saturday night spent staring out the window and not seeing.

“I was engaged once,” she said.

“Really?”

“Christ, Cooper, you don’t have to sound so surprised.”

He laughed. “Tell me about him.”

“Her.”

“Really?” He straightened. “But you’re not gay.”

“How would you know?”

“Pattern recognition, remember? I’ve got spectacular gaydar.”

It was her turn to laugh. “I’m not, really. These days, with everything going on, it just doesn’t seem to make as much difference. I mean, maybe if the gifted hadn’t happened it would be a whole issue, maybe people would care about sexual orientation, but we’ve got much bigger reasons to hate each other.”

“So what happened?”

She shrugged. “Like you said. I’m not gay.”

“You loved her, though.”

“Yeah.” She paused, took another puff of the joint. “I don’t know. It was a lot of things. My gift was part of it, too. It’s hard. Loving someone, but not being able to share the way you see the world. Like trying to explain color to someone who’s blind. They’ll never really get it.”

Part of him wanted to argue with her, but it was more from habit than anything else. An attitude he’d had as an abnorm in a normal world. A twist who hunted other twists.

“It was nice, though,” she said. “Being loved.”

He nodded. They fell silent, leaned back and watched the band. His body felt elastic, pliable and smooth and melting into the cushions. He caught fragments of a dozen conversations, felt a woman’s laugh thrill down his spine. Tomorrow felt far off, and with it all the things he would have to do, the battle he would resume. But for now, right this second, it felt good just to sit here and float in a warm haze. To sit next to a beautiful woman in the midst of a strange new world and revel in being alive.

“This is nice, too,” he said. “Taking a little break. From everything.”

“Yeah,” Shannon said. “It is.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The band started a new song.

Everyone knows the world changed forever with the arrival of the gifted. Now acclaimed social scientist Dr. Donald Masse details what might have been: war with the Middle East, the rise of violent religious fundamentalism, and a planet on the verge of irreversible ecological damage.

• Michael Dukakis would have lost to George H. W. Bush

• The European Union would be facing bankruptcy

• NASA would have abandoned manned space exploration

• American education would have degenerated to standardized testing

• Elephants, whales, and polar bears would be in danger of extinction

• Central America would be embroiled in a brutal drug war

• Heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes would be leading causes of death

Think you know your own world? Think again.

Discover what would have happened… if the gifted had never happened.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Cooper woke with a gasp, a sudden snapping of unconsciousness. Sweaty and tangled and head pounding. Struggled against his bonds, realized it was his clothes, soaked and tight, and a sheet half on him. He blinked, rubbed at his eyes, tried to put things back together.

There was a soft sigh beside him, and he looked over, saw Shannon curled around a pillow, her hair spilling across her bare neck. The bed. They were in bed back at her apartment. Had they…

No, still dressed, both of them. He had a vague memory of more drinks, and finishing the joint. A flash of dancing, the last thing he could remember. She had been a very good dancer, and beside her he’d felt big and clumsy and happy. Then nothing.

Cooper groaned, swung his legs off the bed. He’d managed to kick his shoes off, at least. He rose, head pounding, and wobbled into the bathroom. Peed for about half an hour, then stripped off his clothes and got in the shower. The controls were odd, a temperature gauge and a button. He set it all the way to hot, then pressed the button. A light trickle of water flowed from the showerhead, then shut off ten seconds later.

Right. The evaporators outside of town stripped what water they could from the air, and every building had a catch basin for rain, but water was eternally short here. That was one of the weaknesses of the Holdfast, a tactical advantage he’d seen plans for exploiting: destroy incoming pipes and hit the evaporators with surgical strikes. Estimated population decrease of 17 percent in two weeks, 42 percent by the end of a month, industrial and technical operational ability lowered by 31 percent. He hit the button again, soaked his hair, helped himself to her shampoo when the water cut off. A hit to wash it clear, a hit to soap up, a hit to wash it off. All in all, one of the least satisfying showers he’d ever taken, and no help at all for a hangover.

He toweled dry and put on his clothes. Looked in the mirror. Game on.

Shannon was making coffee when he came out. Her hair was limp, and one side of her face creased with pillow marks. “Morning,” she said, her back to him. “How you feeling?”

“Dead and buried. You?”

“Yeah.” She filled the pot with water, poured it into the machine, her back to him. He watched her hands, the way they fidgeted at nothing. She opened the fridge, stared at the empty shelves. “Breakfast options are limited.”

“Coffee’s fine.” Awkwardness in the air like last night’s smoke. “Thanks.”

Shannon closed the door, turned to face him. “Listen. About last night.”

“Nothing to say.”

“I just, I don’t want you to—It was a good time, and I needed it, but I’m not—It doesn’t change anything.”

“Hey, you got me into bed.” He smiled, let her know he was kidding. “It was good. Things have been tense. It was nice to just, you know, be normal for a night.”

She nodded. Picked up the discarded beer bottles from yesterday, dropped them in the recycling. Opened a drawer, then closed it.

Cooper said, “Why are you second-guessing me?”

Shannon looked up at him. “That the kind of thing that used to bug your wife? Telling her what was on her mind?”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She took a deep breath, let it out. “You’re right. I am.”

“Because we got drunk?”

“Yes. Maybe. You’re different than I expected. And I’m just wondering if any of it is real.” Her gaze was unwavering and unapologetic.

Cooper turned and went to the Murphy bed. Grabbed the edge of the wrinkled sheets, shook them out and laid them smooth. Whacked the pillows, then tucked them in place. He wondered what Natalie would think of Shannon, whether they would like each other, decided that they probably would. “I grew up an army brat. Joined when I was seventeen. Then the agency. All that time, I was trying to fight for something. Trying to protect…everything, I guess. I was one of the good guys. And then when they pinned the bombing on me, I was alone. In a lot of ways I’d been alone my whole life, but this was different.”

He moved to the edge of the bed and folded it into the wall on smooth hinges. Turned to her, not sure where he was going even as he went. “The last months, I’ve been doing things I used to fight against. I’ve been one of the bad guys, and I’ve been good at it. So does that mean I was wrong before?” He shrugged. “I don’t think so. I liked protecting things. I miss it.”

“There are other ways,” she said. “Believe it or not, I feel like one of the good guys too. I am one of them.”

“Everybody is,” Cooper said. “That’s what makes life complicated.” He knew her well enough to pattern her. She was holding something back, lying to him at least by omission. What, though? Hard to say. And besides, he couldn’t blame her. He was lying to her, too.

Ain’t we a pair.

“Look,” he said. “Everybody’s got layers. Nothing’s simple. You thought I would be a humorless government operative without conscience or questions. And I thought you would be a two-dimensional fanatic who didn’t care about hurting people. Now you know that I have an ex-wife, that I love hot sauce, that I dance badly, that I’ve read Hemingway and even remembered some of it. And I know a few things about you, too. But there are things neither of us knows. Things we’re holding back.” He said it lightly. “And that’s okay, too. Doesn’t make anything less real. Especially,” he said, and rubbed at his temple, “my hangover. So how about we let things lie for now?”

For a moment she just looked at him. Then she opened a cabinet, took out two coffee mugs, filled them both. She handed one to him, and when their fingers brushed in the exchange, she didn’t jump. “I’m going to go clean up.”

“Okay.” He sipped the coffee, watched her walk to the bathroom.

She stopped at the door. “Cooper?”

“Yeah?”

“Pills in the drawer by the sink. For your head.”

He smiled at her. “Thanks.”

Two hours later they were three thousand feet up.

An updraft hit, and they bounced a dozen vertical feet. His stomach rolled. “You sure you know how to fly this thing?”

She smiled from the pilot’s seat in front of him. “I saw it on tri-d once. How hard can it be?”

The airfield was on the outskirts of Newton, four smooth runways crisscrossing like a pound sign. They’d left his car parked in a gravel lot, checked in at ground control, and gone to the assigned hangar. The glider was futuristic looking, with broad wings and a streamlined body. Made of carbon fiber, it weighed so little that they pushed it by hand onto the runway, where Shannon hitched it to a thick, twisted cable. Inside she put on a headset, spoke in a soft, fast voice to the tower, and a moment later the cable snapped taut and yanked them almost a mile in thirty seconds, the massive winches hauling with force sufficient to hurl them into the air. Cooper didn’t mind heights, had ridden in helicopters and jets and military aircraft, and had even jumped out of a few of them, but the glider he wasn’t loving.

“How long can this thing stay up?”

“You a nervous flyer?”

“No. I just like doing it in a machine with, you know, an engine.”

She laughed. “Old-world thinking, Cooper. Gliders have no emissions, the winches are solar-powered, and out here, if you ride the updrafts, you can stay aloft for hours. Easiest way to get from town to town in the NCH.”

“Uh-huh.” He looked out the window at the patchwork ground far below. The only sound was the wind rushing beneath the broad wings, whistling over the teardrop body. The hull of the thing was about the thickness of a napkin.

“Look,” she said. “No hands.” She released the stick and held them up above her head.

“Jesus, would you quit? I’m hungover here.”

She laughed again and banked in a slow angle that gave him a better view than he really wanted.

Tesla was in the heart of the state, and tacking from updraft to updraft, the trip took about two hours. Seeing it from the air was oddly familiar, similar to the satellite images he’d reviewed. Midsize by Holdfast standards, it was home to ten thousand people. The town was a grid centered around a complex of mirrored rectangles, energy-efficient buildings that rose four stories higher than anything else.

In one of them sat the richest man in the world.

The landing turned out to be gentle enough, not much different from coming down in any other small plane. Shannon had touched, bounced once, then smoothed the glider into a long slow run. Good flying.

There was another security check at the hanger, this one more intense. The man behind the bulletproof Plexi was affable enough, but he ran their passports with care and spent longer than Cooper liked clicking on his datapad. Tesla was well outside of the tourist sections and protected by several more layers of sieves. The whole town was private corporate land, inside a gated community, inside a high-security municipality, a series of legal classifications that basically amounted to “keep the hell out.” Cooper smiled blandly at the guard.

Half an hour later, they were pulling into Epstein Enterprises, the mirrored buildings, all sun and sky, too bright to look at. There was another security post, but Shannon had made a call this morning, and their fake names were on a list. They got in with little more than a passport check and a scan of the vehicle.

While Epstein’s official headquarters were in Manhattan, this was the true nerve center. From here, the abnorm ran his massive financial empire, not only the development of New Canaan, but the management of thousands of patents, investments, and research projects, the total net worth of which was impossible to calculate. Money at that level was not something that could be counted; it was dynamic, a living thing that swelled and shrank and consumed the money of others, companies buying companies buying companies for fifty iterations.

The top of every building bristled with satellite dishes and security systems, among them batteries of surface-to-air missiles. Defensive, supposedly, and squeaked through on a congressional exemption that must have cost billions. Cooper remembered a plan he’d seen for a coordinated missile launch targeting the compound: expected physical efficacy of 27 percent in an initial barrage, but casualties projected at only 16 percent, less than 5 percent upper managerial.

There were no doubt plans for a nuclear option as well. One thing the DAR had was plans.

“You okay?” Shannon maneuvered the electric car they’d rented into a parking spot in a row of identical vehicles. “You’ve been quiet.”

“The glider,” he lied. “Still getting my ground legs back.”

She turned off the engine. “There’s something you should know. I got us in by dropping John’s name.”

“John?” he said. “Oh. John Smith. Hmm. Will that make him friendly?” Epstein openly and frequently disassociated himself from the terrorist movements, all of them. He had to; any link to someone like John Smith and the loopholes that kept the Holdfast safe would close swiftly and tightly. The DAR assumed that there must be some back-channel connection, but they’d never been able to find evidence of one.

“I don’t know. Publically, Epstein is a pretty vocal critic. But John has a lot of friends here. Using his name was the only way I knew to get a meeting.”

“So what’s their relationship?”

“I don’t really know. John respects Epstein, but I think he feels they’re playing different roles. Some people compare them to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.”

“Lousy parallel. Dr. King fought for equality and integration, not building a separate empire, and Malcolm X may have advocated black rights by any means necessary, but he didn’t run a terror network that blew up buildings.”

“I don’t want to argue about it.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “But I’m not going to pretend to be with Smith.”

“You shouldn’t. I wouldn’t lie to him at all, if I were you.”

“Not much point,” he said. “I can’t ask him for help if I don’t tell him why I need it.” Tough tightrope to walk. You have to convince a man who has everything to lose by admitting a connection to John Smith to do just that. All without telling him too much. He forced a cocksure grin. “Thanks for this. For keeping your end.”

“Yeah. Well, we had a deal.” She opened the car door. “Come on. Let’s go meet a billionaire.”

The grounds were deserted, and given the sun blasting down from the big blue sky, he wasn’t surprised. The complex had more than twenty buildings—twenty-two, if he remembered correctly—but the one they entered was at the center. It didn’t look like much, none of the grand corporate styling he would have expected in Chicago or DC. Though taller than the rest, it was the same featureless solar glass. Of course. Solar glass bounces the sun’s heat, transforms it to energy. Marble is heavy and needs to be shipped in. And ornate carvings are nostalgia.

Old-world thinking.

The lawyer was one of the older people Cooper had seen in the last days. Early fifties, with close-cropped silver hair and hand-tailored suit, he radiated a two-grand-an-hour vibe. “Mr. and Mrs. Cappello. I’m Robert Kobb. If you’ll come with me?” He spun without waiting for an answer.

The lobby was a bright atrium with one wall dedicated to a thirty-foot tri-d screen running CNN in stunningly crisp resolution—Epstein held a 30 percent stake in Time Warner—and they’d barely set foot in it when the man met them. Cooper had expected to be kept waiting for hours if they got in at all. Apparently John Smith’s name carried a lot of weight here. Was the billionaire in league with the terrorist? If so, the situation was worse than anyone had dared believe.

“How was your trip in?”

“Bumpy,” Cooper said.

The lawyer smiled. “Gliders take some getting used to. This is your first visit to New Canaan Holdfast, correct?”

His smile is bullshit. He knows who we are, but he’s keeping to the cover story. A knowledge hoarder. “Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“Very impressive.”

Kobb nodded, led them past a row of elevators to the last in line, and touched his palm to a featureless plate. The doors slid silently open. “It’s growing fast. You should have seen Tesla five years ago. Just dirt and sky.”

The elevator moved so smoothly that Cooper couldn’t say for sure if they were going up or down. He put his hands in his pockets, rocked on his heels. A moment later the doors parted, and Kobb led them out.

One side of the hall was glass floor to ceiling, the sun dialed down from blast furnace to a warm glow. The other side was an ornate garden built into a tiered wall, greenery spilling over the edges of sleek inset planters. The air felt flush with oxygen. “Nice.”

“We use what we have here. And we have plenty of sun.”

“Isn’t it some sort of sin to waste water here?”

“They’re gene-modified, spliced with some form of cactus. The water needs are miniscule. I don’t really understand it,” Kobb said in a way that suggested he understood perfectly well, but suspected you might not. The lawyer led them past several conference rooms, then touched another featureless spot on the wall to unlock a door at the end. “Mr. Epstein’s office.”

Considering the wealth in play, the room was understated. Seamless glass on two sides that gave way to a tumbling view of the city and the desert beyond, a smooth wooden desk, a conference area with comfortable seating. A pale young girl, Cooper guessed she was ten or so, sat on the couch playing a game on a d-pad. Her hair was dyed a sickly Kool-Aid green. A niece? Epstein didn’t have any children.

The lawyer ignored her completely. “Please, have a seat. Erik will join us in a moment. Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

“I’m fine, thanks. Allison?”

Shannon shook her head. Instead of sitting, she glided to one of the windows, stared out at the view.

“Hi,” Cooper said to the little girl. “My name’s Tom.”

She looked up from the datapad. Her eyes were a green almost as startling as her hair, and far too old for her body. “No it isn’t,” she said, then went back to her game.

He felt a snap of embarrassment laced with anger, swallowed it. The girl was obviously a reader; even beyond her casual call-out on his lie, she had all the signs: antisocial tendencies, a hunger for nonhuman stimulus, the need to physically express her difference. And it wasn’t really a surprise to think that Epstein would use the abilities of the gifted around him. He just hadn’t expected a child.

She must be exceptionally powerful. The thought came with a wave of discomfort. To a tier-one reader, the whole world was naked emperors. Her knowledge would go beyond knowing that he was lying about his identity; within a few minutes of listening to him, watching him, she would know things that his ex-wife didn’t.

It was one of the few gifts that he really considered curses. Every moment, every human interaction, readers swam in the river of lies that made up everyday life. Worse, they picked up on the darker elements of personalities, the universal Jungian shadow of the human mind, the part that relished torture and pain and humiliation. Everyone had that shadow. For most people, it was controlled, expressed in subverted ways: pornography, aggressive sports, violent daydreams. It was part of the human animal, and most of the time, a harmless part. Thoughts were only thoughts, after all, and these were held close.

But readers saw them all around, in every person. Every kindness was underscored by it. Daddy might protect you, but a tiny part of him wanted to hold the babysitter down and do things to her. Mommy might wipe your tears, but something in her wanted to claw your arms and shriek in your face to shut the hell up. Unsurprisingly, readers ran to madness. The healthiest usually ended up shut-ins, locked in a tiny controlled world where they could count on the things around them.

Most committed suicide.

Robert Kobb coughed into a closed fist and said, “You’ll have to forgive Millicent. She says what’s on her mind.”

“Nothing to forgive,” Cooper said. “She’s right.”

“Yes, I know.” Robert Kobb gave a bland smile and settled himself on the couch beside Millicent. She shied away from him without glancing from her game. Kobb said, “You’re actually Nick Cooper.”

“Yeah.”

“Erik asked me to clear the time as soon as he heard from you this morning. He didn’t tell me what this was in reference to.”

Cooper flopped in one of the chairs, measured the lawyer. Something about the man bugged him. The pose of authority, calling his boss by his first name. That and his veneer of aw-shucks normalcy. “He didn’t know. Ask you a question?”

“Certainly.”

“What’s it like helping to build New Canaan when you’re not gifted?”

By the window, Shannon swallowed a laugh. The lawyer’s smile curdled slightly. “A privilege. Why?”

“Call me curious.”

Kobb nodded, made an unconvincing it’s-nothing gesture. “What we’re doing here matters. It’s an incredible opportunity. Never in history has there been an initiative like this. A chance to build a new world.”

“Especially with someone else’s money. Sounds like a no-lose.”

Millicent smiled into her game.

“Hmm.” The phone at the lawyer’s belt vibrated, and he unclipped it, read the message. “Ahh. Erik is about to arrive. He’s in Manhattan.”

“He flew in for this?”

“No,” Kobb said, the smugness back. “He’s in Manhattan now.”

“Then—”

Before he could finish the question, Erik Epstein appeared behind the desk.

Cooper was halfway out of his chair with realizing he’d moved, his body on full combat alert. His mind spinning, analyzing the situation—

A gift like Shannon’s? Had he been here all the time, somehow?

No, Epstein’s gift is for data.

Some unheard of piece of newtech? Cloaking? Teleportation? Ridiculous.

But there he is. Live and in the flesh…

Got it.

—and realizing what he was looking at. “Wow. That is something.”

Erik Epstein smiled. “Sorry to startle you.”

Now that he’d had a moment, Cooper could see the faint gauziness at the man’s edges, as if he’d been smeared. The shadows were off, too; wherever Epstein was, the lighting was different from here. He looked like a special effect from a movie in the eighties, completely convincing until you really looked.

“One of our newest developments,” Kobb said. “Fundamentally similar to the technology in a tri-d set, only significantly amplified.”

“A hologram.”

“Yes,” Epstein said. He grinned. “Not bad, huh?”

“Not bad at all.” That’s a decade past the best the DAR has ever managed. Even with the academy graduates.

In person—well, sort of—Erik Epstein looked a little less polished than he did in broadcasts. He still had the boyish good looks, the raffish hair, but he seemed less stiff. Dressed in a summer-weight suit with no tie, he’d have been at home in an expensive country club. “I’d shake your hand, but—” He lifted one arm, flexing the fingers. “One of the limitations. Still, it beats a speakerphone.”

“Thank you for meeting us on short notice,” Shannon said. She was somehow beside him, settling into a chair.

“Your message made sure of that, Ms. Azzi. I don’t like being connected to John Smith that way.”

“I understand,” she said. “Forgive me for imposing. It was the only way I knew to get your attention.”

“You have it,” Epstein said. He laid his hands on the desk. The fingertips penetrated the surface, ruining the illusion a bit. “You must be Cooper.”

“Agent Nicholas Cooper,” Kobb said. “Born March, 1981, second year of the gifted. Joined the army at seventeen with father’s consent. Detailed as a military liaison to what would become the Department of Analysis and Response, 2000. Joined full-time in 2002. Entered Equitable Services with its foundation in 2004. Made full agent in 2005, senior agent in 2008. Generally considered the best of the so-called ‘gas men,’ sporting an unmatched clearance rate, including thirteen terminations.”

“Thir-teen?” Shannon raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Cooper said, “that’s me. On paper.”

“Went rogue following the March 12th attack on the Leon Walras Exchange.” Kobb looked up from his datapad. “Now the lead suspect in that bombing.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Though part of the agreement with Director Peters was that they wouldn’t publicly reveal his identity—a fanatic might have gone after Natalie and the children—most of the DAR would know he’d been designated a target. And the world’s richest man would have access to pretty much any information he wanted. Still. It jarred him. He glared at the lawyer, but spoke to Epstein. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“Did you, Ms. Azzi?” Kobb asked.

“No,” she said. “Not the way it happened.”

“But it was John Smith’s organization that planted the bombs.”

“Yes. But we didn’t trigger them.”

“How do we know that?”

“Enough, Bob.” Epstein spoke with easy command. “They’re telling the truth.”

“But sir, we don’t—”

“Yes, we do. Millie?”

The girl looked up. “They’re both lying. They’re lying to each other, too. But they’re telling the truth about that.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

The lawyer opened his mouth, shut it. Cooper could see the man simmering, his frustration. A leader in his field, no doubt a powerful political player, overruled by a child.

Kobb’s not the only one. Cooper felt like a tennis ball, hammered back and forth across a net. Lying to each other? What did that mean? If nothing else, the girl had clearly made him for what he was, and the nakedness came with fear. She couldn’t read his mind, wouldn’t know about his mission, but picking up on the subcutaneous cues of his loyalty response to the agency, that would be simple for her. No telling how much deeper that could go.

To make it this far and be at the mercy of a ten-year-old girl…

Lock it down.

“So.” Erik Epstein smiled, holding out his hands. “With that out of the way. What are you doing here?”

“Shannon and I had a deal. There was an incident in Chicago, a few days ago, and she needed help. I got her home, and she got me a chance to meet you.”

“I see. Why?”

“As you know, my former agency is hunting me.” Stick to the facts as much as possible. “I’m not safe anywhere.”

“Mr. Epstein,” Kobb said, “you should know that we’re on tenuous legal ground. Now that Mr. Cooper’s identity is out in the open, we can’t claim plausible deniability. This is verging dangerously close to harboring a fugitive.”

“Thank you, Bob,” the billionaire said dryly. “We can take the risk for a few more moments. I don’t think Agent Cooper is here to entrap us.”

“No, sir. In fact, I need your help. I’d like to start over here. In New Canaan.” He forced himself not to look at the girl. She would know he was lying, or at least not telling the whole truth. The best he could hope was that she wouldn’t interject, that she offered an opinion only when asked.

Epstein steepled his fingers. “I see. And for that you need my help.”

“Yes.”

“Because you have a lot of enemies.”

“Yes. But I could be a good friend to you.”

Kobb said, “Mr. Epstein, this is a bad—”

The billionaire silenced him with a look. To Cooper, he said, “Would you give us a moment? I’d like to speak to Ms. Azzi and Mr. Kobb privately.” He turned to face the girl. “Millie, would you bring Mr. Cooper to the executive lounge?”

Cooper shot a glance at Shannon, couldn’t read her response. They’d formed something of a bond over the last days, but she didn’t owe him anything. For a moment he considered refusing. But what would be the point? If he was caught, he was caught.

With exaggerated nonchalance, he stood. “Sure.” Millie slid off the couch, her d-pad clutched tight to her chest. She walked to a blank wall. Part of it slid aside as she reached it, a hidden door he hadn’t noticed. How much else had he missed?

At least the girl was going with him. Whatever she had figured out, she wouldn’t be able to tell. He followed her in and found himself in another elevator. There were no buttons, no control panel. The muscles of his lower back tightened. He wondered if “executive lounge” was code for something.

Something like “interrogation cell.”

You bought the ticket. Time to take the ride.

The last thing he saw as the door slid shut was Shannon looking over her shoulder at him, something inscrutable in her eyes.

Standing in the tiny box, he had a sudden vision of himself as though from a satellite. A close-up that quickly zoomed out: man in a box in a building in a complex in a city in a state in a nation—and an enemy of all of them. Panic slid slick fingers through his stomach. He took a breath, rolled his shoulders. Only way out was through.

Millie stared at the middle distance, her face hidden by bright green bangs. She looked so lost that for a moment he forgot his own situation. He wondered how many meetings she had sat through, how many billion-dollar deals. How many times her insight had led to someone’s death. The weight of it would have been a lot for a soldier to bear. And she was just a child.

“It’s okay,” she said.

Cooper started. He wondered if she meant his situation or hers. “It is?”

“Yes.”

He blew a breath. “All right. If you say so.”

Again, he couldn’t feel which direction the elevator was going, but it could only be down. And given the length of the ride, lower than the ground floor. Odd. And why a private elevator with a hidden door? What kind of executive lounge was accessed through the boss’s office?

Ten more seconds, and the door slid open. Another hallway, but no sunlight or botanical garden here. They were in the basement, huddled beneath the humming power lines that drove the building.

“Go ahead,” Millie said.

“You’re not coming?”

She shook her head, still staring at the floor. “Go to the end. There’s a door.”

Cooper looked at her, then down the hallway. Shrugged. “Thanks.” He stepped off the elevator.

“You should be careful,” Millie said behind him.

“Why?”

For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she raised her head, swatted a lock of green hair behind one ear. Took him in with those strange, sad eyes. “Everybody’s lying,” she said. “Everybody.”

The elevator door slid closed.

Cooper stared at it. Slowly, he turned back and faced the dim hallway. He flexed his fingers. Wondered how deep he was right now. At least as far underground as he’d been above it a moment before. Something nagged at his subconscious, that hint of a puzzle piece that hadn’t fallen into place yet, a pattern he could sense more than see. A hidden door. A private elevator. A child for an escort. A gifted, troubled child.

What was this place?

If this is the executive lounge, I’d sure hate to see the regular one.

He started down the hall. Thick carpet muted his footsteps. He could hear the rush and whoosh of air, ventilation systems of some sort. The walls were undecorated. He ran a hand down them; carbon fiber weave, very strong, very expensive.

At the end of the hall, a door swung open. There was no one standing there, and the room beyond it was dark.

With the feeling that he was entering some sort of a dream, he walked in.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Data. Constellations of numbers glowing like stars, neon swipes of sine-curves, charts and graphs in three dimensions, hovering everywhere he looked. It was like walking into a planetarium, that darkened silence and sense of wonder, only instead of the heavens, it was the world hanging in every direction, the world broken down into digits and sweeps and waves.

Cooper blinked, stared, turned slowly on his heel. The room was big, an underground cathedral, and in all directions, three hundred and sixty degrees, luminous figures hung in the air. Things cycled and changed as he watched, the light seemingly alive, the correlations bizarre: population figures graphed against water consumption and the average length of women’s skirts. Frequency of traffic accidents on non-rural roads between the hours of eight and eleven. Sunspot activity overlaid on homicide rates. A chronology of deaths in the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union mapped to the price of crude oil. Explosions in post offices from 1901 to 2012.

In the center of this circus of light stood the silhouetted ringmaster. If he was aware of Cooper, he didn’t show it. He raised a hand, pointed at a graph, swiped sideways and zoomed to a micro level, red and green dots plotted like a map of the ocean floor.

The air was cold and smelled of…corn chips?

Cooper walked down the ramp in front of him. As he passed through a graph, the projections glowed in his peripheral vision, a neat line that swept across his body. “Ummm…hello?”

The figure turned. The ambient light was too dim to make out his features. He gestured to Cooper to come forward. When they were ten feet apart, the man said, “Lights to thirty percent,” and soft, shadowless illumination sprang from nowhere and everywhere at once.

The man was thick around the waist, the beginnings of a second chin sprouting off the bulwark of the first. His skin was pallid and vaguely shiny, hair a rat’s nest. He ran a hand through it with the jerky speed of a regular twitch. Cooper stared at him, the pattern beginning to come together, the truth of it huge and shattering and suddenly obvious.

“Hi,” the man said. “I’m Erik Epstein.”

Cooper opened his mouth, closed it. The truth slamming home, obvious. The structure of the face, the shape of the eyes, the breadth of the shoulders. It was like looking at the pudgy, nervous double of the handsome, assured billionaire he’d just left.

“The hologram,” Cooper said. “It’s a fake. It’s all you.”

“What? No. Huh-uh. Reasonable intuitional leap based on limited data, but incorrect. The hologram is real. I mean, the man is real. But he’s not me. He plays me. He’s been me for a long time now.”

“An…actor?”

“A doppelganger. My face and voice.”

“I—I don’t—”

“I don’t like people. I mean, I like people, people don’t like me. I’m not good at people. In person. They’re clearer as data.”

“But. Your…doppelganger, he’s been on the news. He eats dinner at the White House.”

Epstein stared at him as if waiting for him to say something else.

“Why?”

“For a while I could just be in the data, but we knew people would want to see me. People are funny that way, they want to see, even when seeing isn’t the point. Astronomy. The important information scientists get from telescopes isn’t visible. Radiation spectra, red-line shift, radio waves. Data. That’s what matters. That’s what tells us something. But people want to see pictures. Supernova in vivid color. Even though scientifically it’s useless.”

Cooper nodded, getting it. “He’s your color photo. What was he, someone who looked a lot like your high school yearbook?”

“My brother. Older.”

That couldn’t be. Epstein had had an older brother, a normal, but he’d died a dozen years ago in a car crash. “Wait. You faked his death?”

“Yes.”

“But that was before anyone knew about you. Before you made your fortune.”

“Yes.”

“Are you telling me you two planned this twelve years ago?”

“Together we are Erik Epstein. I live in the data. And he is what people want to see. Better at talking to them.” Epstein twitched his hands through his hair again. “Here.” He gestured, and a vivid image appeared. The office upstairs, but from a different angle. Shannon in the chair, saying something. The lawyer, Kobb, shaking his head. Millicent hunch-shouldered, lost in her game. A security camera?

No; the angle was wrong. It was the view from behind the desk. The room as viewed by the hologram. By the other Erik Epstein.

“Do you see? We share eyes.”

The enormity of it. For more than a decade, the world had watched one Erik Epstein, heard him talk on CNN, followed his political maneuverings to establish New Canaan, tracked his corporate takeovers, seen him board private jets. All the while, the real Erik Epstein had been out of sight. Living in this basement, this dark cave of wonders.

He wondered if anyone in the DAR knew it. If the president knew it.

“But…why? Why not just stay out of sight?”

“Too hard. Too many questions. People want to see.” He said it nervously. “I like people. I understand them. But it would have been too hard. I didn’t want press conferences. I wanted to work in the data. Do you know what Michelangelo said?”

Cooper blinked, thrown by the change in topic. “Umm.”

“‘In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.’” The words running together. When he finished, again Epstein fell silent, waiting.

Whatever this is, it’s important. One of the most powerful men on the planet is showing you a secret that at best a handful of people know. There’s a reason.

Cooper paused and then said, “The way Michelangelo saw marble, that’s how you saw the stock market.”

“Yes. No. Not just that. Everything. Data.” He turned and waved his arms in an intricate series of gestures. The whole room reacted, shimmering and twisting, a psychedelic light show of charts and numbers and moving graphs. A new set of data appeared. “Here. You see?”

Cooper stared, tracked from chart to chart. Tried to make sense of what he was looking at. Do what you do. Find the patterns the way you can assemble a picture of someone’s life from their apartment.

Population figures. Resource usage. A time-lapse of Wyoming from above, taken over years, the brown wasteland sprouting a neat geometric pattern of cities and roads. A three-dimensional chart of the incidents of violence in Northern Ireland mapped against the number of British pubs and the average attendance figures of churches. “New Canaan.”

“Obvious.” Impatient.

“Its growth. There,” Cooper said, pointing, “that’s about the external resources the Holdfast depends on. External resources are weak points, dependencies that could be used against you. And…” He stared, feeling that intuitional leap, almost tasting it, but not grasping it. He strained, knowing as he did that it didn’t work that way, any more than an artist could force a masterpiece.

New Canaan. This is about New Canaan. Only, most of it wasn’t, at least not explicitly. The historical data. The Sicarii in Judea and the murder of priests in a crowd, the numbers rising, then the intersection of that line and the sudden plummet. Something called the Hashshashin plotted against Shia Muslims in the eleventh century. He didn’t know what the words meant, or knew only fragments. Hashshashin. Wasn’t that the original term for “assassin”? He thought so, but also thought he’d picked that up in a kung-fu movie. He simply didn’t know enough history.

Forget what you don’t know. Look at the patterns. What do they say?

“Violence. This is about violence.” The words came out before the thought had finished forming.

“Yes! More.”

“I don’t…” He turned to Epstein. “I’m sorry, Erik, I can’t see the way you see. What are you showing me? Why?”

“Because I want you to do something for me.”

Favors for favors, sure. He’d watched the meeting upstairs. “You want me to do something in order to get your protection here, start a new life.”

“No,” the man said, his voice thick with scorn. “Not the lie. You don’t want a new life here. That’s not why you came.”

Careful. This could all be a trap. What if he wants you to reveal your real purpose so that he can…

What? This man, this gifted and odd and immensely powerful man, would he really share his secret just to uncover you? Ridiculous. If he cared, he could have had you thrown out of the NCH. Or buried in the desert.

“No,” Cooper said, “it’s not.”

“No. I know what you came for. It’s in the data.” Another whirl of his hands, and the room was suddenly filled with Cooper’s life. A scrolling timeline of every recorded date of importance in his life, from his hospitalization as a teenager to his divorce from Natalie. A geographical chart of the people he had killed. A table marking the frequency his ID had been used to access the DAR bathroom, and at what hours.

A case-file note about Katherine Sandra Cooper, age four: “Subject related details of teacher’s personal life suggesting strong abnorm tendencies. Recommend testing ahead of standard.”

Cooper’s stomach went cold. “You’re looking at my child?”

“The data. I look at the data. It tells me the truth. Now you tell me the truth. Why are you here?”

He turned from the screens. Fixed the man with a hard stare. The feeling he had, it was like getting e-mailed a porn video that turned out to be his wedding night, as if some shadowy freak had been hiding in the closet with a camera. Epstein looked at him, looked away, shot a hand through his hair again.

“I’m here,” Cooper said, slowly, “to find and kill John Smith.”

“Yes,” Epstein said. “Yes.”

“And you’re not trying to stop me.”

“No.” The man tried a smile, his lips wriggling like worms. “I’m trying to help you.”

Cooper walked down the hallway without seeing it. Trod the carpet without feeling it. Stepped into the elevator like a man asleep.

Tuned into Epstein’s dream.

“It was never money. It was art. The stock market was marble and the billions my sculpture.

“And then the world took it away. My art scared them. Upset the way things worked.

“But it was never the money. The data, you see? It’s the data. And so I needed a new project.”

“New Canaan.”

“Yes. A place for people like me. A place where artists could work together. Make new patterns and new data unlike anything ever. A place for freaks,” he’d said, trying that smile again. “But then that upset things, too. Real art does. So I brought that into the pattern. In this new project, integrating with the rest of the world is part of the design. I realized people thought I was taking from them. I never wanted to take. It’s not about the having, or the giving, it’s about the making.”

“What does this have to do with John Smith?”

“Look at the data. It’s all there. Look at the Sicarii.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

The man had snorted, a clever teacher with a dull student. “It means ‘dagger-men.’ In the first century, Judea was occupied by Romans. The Sicarii attacked people in public. Killed Romans, and also Herodians, those Jews who collaborated.”

“They were terrorists,” Cooper said, understanding beginning to dawn. “Early terrorists.”

“Yes. Here.” Erik had flicked his wrist and one graph expanded to fill the room in front of them. It was one Cooper had noticed before, a rising line marking murders. The line grew steadily…then intersected another line and plummeted. “You see?”

“They killed more and more people,” Cooper said, “and then something happened.” On intuition, he said, “The Romans decided they’d had enough.”

Epstein nodded. “The Sicarii were hunted, pursued to the fortress of Masada, where they were either slaughtered or committed mass suicide. But look deeper.”

“The rest of the Jews.” It was coming clear to Cooper. “The Romans punished not just the killers, but the rest of the Jews.” He turned to the man. “You want me to kill John Smith because if he keeps doing what he’s doing, the government may turn against New Canaan.”

“Will turn against. It’s in the data. Extrapolating current terrorist activity and charting it against public countermeasures, mapped against similar historical datasets, there’s a 53.2 percent chance that the US military will attack New Canaan within the next two years. A 73.6 percent within three.”

Cooper had a flash of the briefings he’d seen, the preemptive plans, the missile strikes. One thing the DAR has, he’d thought on the way in, is plans. “So why not kill Smith yourself? You’re the big man here. The King of New Canaan.”

The abnorm had winced. “No. It’s not. It doesn’t work like that. Besides. I like people. But people like him.”

“You want him dead, but you’re afraid that if you kill him, your…artwork…will tear itself apart.” Cooper laughed grimly. “Because no matter how smart or rich you are, he’s a leader, and you’re not.”

“I know what I am.” There was the faintest hint of sadness in his voice. “I’m not even me.”

The whole thing felt vaguely dirty, had the stench of palace politics about it. An odd reaction, Cooper knew, but he couldn’t shake it. Still, the arguments made sense. And Epstein was right—if things kept going the way they were, New Canaan would be destroyed. And it might not stop there. Congress had already approved a bill to implant microchips against the carotid artery of every gifted in America. What was to keep those chips from becoming bombs?

He’d never thought of himself as an assassin. He’d killed when he had to, but always for the greater good. That was a certainty that fueled him. It was the only thing that kept him apart from John Smith. This, though, felt like crossing a line.

What line? You came here to do this.

Yes. But not for him.

So don’t do it for him. Do it for Kate. And then go home.

“You understand?” Epstein seemed nervous on the point, afraid. After all, he had revealed not only his secret, but his agenda. The man might have an unparalleled head for data, but a chess player he was not, Cooper realized.

“Yes, I understand.”

“And you’ll do it? You’ll kill John Smith?”

Cooper had turned, started up the ramp. At the door, he’d turned, taken in the whirling chamber of data dreams, and the man at the center of it. An architect trapped in a palace of his own design, watching a tsunami approach.

“Yeah,” he’d said. “Yeah, I’ll kill him.”

The elevator doors slid open. Cooper shook his head to clear it, then stepped out into the office. The sudden sunlight was bright but not clean, the air beyond the windows thick with dust. Shannon had looked up at him, quirked that grin of hers. The lawyer had twisted his lips. From behind the desk, the handsome hologram of Erik Epstein gestured him in.

It was only Millie who understood, though.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The lawyer ushered them back the way they’d come, down the sun-smeared hallway and the tiered stacks of plants. Cooper paused at the door of “Epstein’s” office, glanced back at the hologram. The thin, handsome doppelganger met his eyes, started a smile, and then canceled it. They stared at one another for a moment. Then, slowly, the faux-Epstein nodded and disappeared.

In the elevator, Kobb said, “I hope you realize what an honor that was. Mr. Epstein is a very busy man.”

“Yeah,” Cooper said. “It was eye-opening to meet him.”

Kobb cocked his head at that, didn’t respond. Cooper had suspected the lawyer didn’t know, felt it confirmed. He wondered how many people did.

The doors slid open on the lobby, the massive tri-d tuned now to a nature show, lush jungle green, monkeys perched in the crooks of tree limbs, gauzy light filtering from a faraway sun. Shannon tucked her hands in her pockets, craning her neck. “Funny. After the display upstairs, this isn’t quite as impressive.”

“That’s for sure.” He turned to Kobb. “Thanks for the time.”

“Certainly, Mr.…Cappello. A pleasure. You can see yourselves out from here?” The lawyer spun on his heel, already checking his watch as he strode to the elevator. Late for something. He seemed the kind of guy who ran through his whole life heading for something more important.

“You okay?”

“Sure,” Cooper said. “What did you talk to, uh, Epstein, about?”

“You. He asked if I thought you were telling the truth.”

“What did you say?”

“That I’d seen you attacked by DAR agents. That you’d had plenty of opportunities to make sure I got arrested, and that you hadn’t.” She grinned. “Kobb stopped just short of advising Epstein to have us both arrested. I don’t think he enjoyed that meeting.”

“I don’t get the feeling Kobb enjoys very much.” They strolled through the lobby, heels clicking on the polished floor. “He must be a kick in bed, huh?”

She laughed. “Three to five minutes of church-approved foreplay, followed by restrained intercourse during which both partners think about baseball.”

“Mr. Cappello?”

He and Shannon spun, easy enough but both shifting weight, softening the knees, positioning themselves back-to-back. They’d grown used to each other already, knew which side to cover if something went wrong. Funny.

The woman who had called his pseudonym wore too much lipstick and her hair in a tight bun. “Tom Cappello?”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Epstein asked me to give you this.” She held up a tan calfskin briefcase, smooth and expensive looking. Cooper took it from her. “Thanks.”

“Yes, sir.” She smiled vacantly and turned away.

“What’s that?” Shannon asked.

He weighed the case and his words. “Epstein is going to help me. But you know. Nothing for nothing.”

“What are you doing for him?”

“Just an odd job.” He gave her a bland smile and saw her read it, understand. She was in the biz, after all. Before she could ask a follow-up question, he said, “Listen, I know we’re all done, but…”

She tilted her head, the idea of a smile crossing her lips. “But?”

“You feel like grabbing a bite?”

After all the whirling forward-thinking of New Canaan, the café seemed downright nostalgic. It wasn’t, of course—he hadn’t yet seen one art deco sign here, one ironic T-shirt—but the place was simple and straightforward, with curved plastic booths and mediocre coffee in stained cups. The change was welcome.

“Are you serious?” He took a swig of the coffee. “Your boyfriend really said that?”

“Cross my heart,” Shannon said. “He said my gift was clearly a sign of insecurity.”

“You may be many things, but insecure ain’t one of them.”

“Yeah, well, thank you, but I spent the next three weeks in my bathrobe, crying and watching soap operas. And then I heard he was dating this stripper chick with huge—” She held her hands out in front of her chest. “I mean, like, water-melons. And it occurred to me, maybe the problem was that he didn’t want to be with a woman who could manage to not be noticed. If his new girlfriend rubbed two brain cells together, she didn’t have a third to catch fire, but she sure got noticed.” She paused. “Of course, that was probably because she was always toppling over.”

He’d been sipping the coffee, and the laughter made him choke and sputter. The waiter arrived and set their orders down, a hamburger for her, a BLT for him, the bacon brown and crisp. He snapped an end off, crunched it happily. In the background, some young pop group sang young pop songs, all heartbreak and wonder you could dance to.

Cooper took a bite of his sandwich and wiped his mouth. Leaned back in the booth, feeling strangely good. His life had always had a surreal quality to it, but that had only grown stronger in the last months, and even more so in the last days. Not two hours ago he’d been in the glowing heart of a temple of sorts, watching the world’s richest man swim currents of data.

The thought brought him back to the briefcase on the floor. He slipped his foot sideways, touched it again. Still there.

Shannon had cut her burger in half and then into quarters, but instead of eating one of them she was picking at her fries.

“What’s on your mind?”

She smiled. “I know that bugged your wife, but I think she was looking at it the wrong way.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. Instead of having to sit here for five minutes trying to think of a way to broach the subject, I can just look distracted until you ask me about it.”

He smiled. “So you gonna tell me what’s on your mind?”

“You,” she said. She leaned back, put one arm across the back of the booth, and hit him with a level gaze.

“Ah. My favorite subject.”

“We’re done, right? We’re square?”

“Square? Are we in a gangster film?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re square.”

“So we don’t owe each other anything anymore.”

“What are you really asking, Shannon?”

She looked away, not so much to dodge his eyes, he could tell, as to stare into some middle distance. “It’s weird, don’t you think? Our lives. There aren’t that many tier-one gifted, and of those, there are fewer who can do the kinds of things we can do.”

He took a noncommittal bite, let her talk.

“And, I don’t know, I guess I’ve just found it nice to be able to know someone like you. Someone who gets what I do, who can do things I get.”

“Not just gifts,” he said.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

He smiled, chewed, swallowed. “It’s not just the gifts. It’s our lives, too. Not many people get the way we live.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, this is sudden, but I accept.”

“What?”

“Oh,” he said, faking dejection. “I thought you were asking to marry me.”

She laughed. “What the hell. Why not. Vegas isn’t far.”

“No, but it’s pretty dull these days.” He set down his sandwich. “Jokes aside, I know what you mean. It’s been good, Azzi.”

“Yeah,” she said.

Their eyes met. A moment before, her eyes had just been her eyes, but now there was more. A weird sort of recognition. A yielding in both of them, an acknowledgement, and, yeah, a hunger, too. They held the look for a long time, long enough that when she finally broke it with a throaty chuckle, it felt like something he’d been leaning against had vanished.

“So what does Epstein want you to do for him?”

He shrugged, the game back on, took a bite of the BLT.

“Right,” she said. “Well, not for nothing, but I hope it’s something you can live with, and if it is, I hope you do it. And then I hope you take advantage of the chance you’ve got here.”

“Here being…”

“New Canaan. I know there’s more on your mind, Nick. Things you’re not telling me. But this place, it really can be a fresh start. You can be whatever you want to be here. And be welcome.”

He smiled—

Does she know?

No. Suspects, maybe. Fear.

And she called you Nick.

—and said, “Well, that’s the plan.”

Shannon nodded. “Good.” She pushed her plate forward. “You know what? I’m not hungry after all.” She wiped her hands on her napkin, tossed it on the plate, and kept her eyes off his. “Tell you what. Once you’ve given Epstein his pound of flesh, if you do start up a new life, maybe you and I can continue this conversation.”

He laughed.

“What?”

“It’s just—” He shrugged. “I don’t have your phone number.”

She smiled. “Tell you what. Maybe I’ll just appear. I know you get a kick out of me doing that.”

“Yes,” he said. “I really do.”

She slid out of the booth, and he joined her. For a moment they faced each other, and then he put up his arms and she slid into them. A hug, nothing sexual, but there were hugs and hugs, and this was the latter, their bodies close, testing the fit, and the fit was good. When she let him go, he felt the absence like a presence.

“So long, Cooper. Be good.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You too.”

She walked out with a sway he could tell was calculated, but no less powerful for that. Didn’t look over her shoulder. He watched her go and felt a tug in his chest, a yearning. She really was something. It was like meeting someone exceptional while you were married; the yank of possibility, the realization that here was another path your life could have taken.

Only, you’re not married. You could be with her. It’s just that she’ll hate you.

He sat back down, feeling heavy. Finished his BLT. When the waiter came round, he thanked him and asked for a refill of coffee. No, nothing wrong with the burger, turned out his friend hadn’t been hungry after all. Just the check, when you get a second.

After the guy filled his coffee and set the bill on the table, Cooper reached for the briefcase. The calfskin was so soft it seemed to hum beneath his fingers. He set the case on the table and took a casual glance about. No one watching. Popped the latches, raised the lid a few inches.

Onion-skin papers, an envelope, a set of car keys. He opened the envelope, discovered it was an itinerary. Someone was arriving at a particular address the day after tomorrow. He had a good guess who that someone was.

The car keys had a tag with an address on it.

The onion-skin was schematics for a building.

And underneath them, nestled in foam eggshells, was a .45 Beretta. The same weapon he’d preferred.

Back when he’d been a DAR agent.

The address on the car keys turned out to be a parking lot on the outskirts of Tesla, a ten-dollar cab ride. When he arrived, he repeatedly thumbed the unlock button on the remote and followed the honk to a truck, not one of the electric cars but an honest-to-God gas-guzzler, a spotless four-by-four Bronco with heavy tires and power to spare. Cooper climbed in, adjusted the mirrors, opened the briefcase, and started reading.

Like everything Epstein did, the information was clear and well calculated. It had all Cooper needed but nothing that gave it away. If someone had looked in the briefcase, they might have guessed he was a secret agent, but they’d have no idea that they were looking at plans for the assassination of the nation’s most dangerous terrorist.

There was a map recommending a route from this parking lot to an address in Leibniz, a town on the west side of the Holdfast. A three-hour drive that seemed to take him out of the way; a closer look at the map showed that it skirted a research facility that no doubt raised the security standard. The itinerary indicated someone arriving in Leibniz tonight and staying in a house nestled up against the Shoshone National Forest. Photos showed a pleasant cabin atop a mountain ridge. A second-story balcony and lots of glass would offer stunning views of pine forests sweeping to cottonwoods at the base. Four tall fingers of rock jutted improbably up a mile down the ridge. No nearby neighbors. Schematics showed that the cabin possessed a few security upgrades—cameras front and back, bulletproof glass, steel-frame doors on the ground level—but nothing startling.

It belonged to a woman named Helen Epeus. He didn’t recognize the name, but there was something there, some connection he couldn’t quite grab. Let it marinate.

The documents suggested Epeus was a lover. The unnamed target had visited before, often arriving at night and leaving in the morning. It stated that a small security team would be there as well, but dryly noted that “their motion within the house seems restricted.”

Translation: Smith doesn’t want his security team watching him get down.

He took out the sidearm. Thumbed the magazine release. A full load, hollow-points. Body armor would stop them, but if they hit flesh, they’d shred on impact, tiny razors spinning inside fragile tissue. Two spare magazines, though why he would need that many rounds he couldn’t imagine.

Cooper had been army, never trusted a weapon he hadn’t disassembled himself, so he took a few moments to break it down. Everything was clean and cared for. He put it back together with practiced ease, then locked the safety, and put it back in the case.

When he was done, the sun had dropped, and the clock read two. He started the truck, revved the engine a couple of times for fun, and rolled out.

It was doable.

The drive had taken a bit under the recommended three hours, Cooper not opening the truck up, but certainly making the most of the smooth, straight roads. The scenery changed as he moved west, growing greener; not lush, but the air was sweet. The sky seemed bigger than it had a right to, and bright, with dramatic clouds forming high above the mountains to the west. He raced from cloud shadow to cloud shadow, watching the world turn colors as he went and trying not to think too much. He had that mission energy, that sense he always used to get when weeks of patterning a target were starting to click together, as though destiny was a bright neon line he could follow down the pavement.

John Smith. The man who had watched as seventy-three people were executed in the Monocle. Who had orchestrated a wave of attacks across the country. Who had planted the bombs at the Exchange in New York that had killed 1,163 in a blast wave that had shaken Cooper free of his real life and cast him adrift on this strange new path.

Even after everything Cooper had read about him, after every speech he’d watched, every friend he’d met, after talking to the shithead administrator of that academy in West Virginia, the real John Smith was a mystery. There were the facts: his gift for strategy, his success as a political organizer, his ability to inspire people. There were the myths, which varied depending on which side you were on. There were the rumors and the whispers. There was Shannon, saying he was a nice guy and believing it.

But the man himself? He was a play of shadows, a dream of a monster or a hero.

And tonight, at long last, Cooper would get to meet him. A guy who apparently had friends and lovers, who visited a woman named Helen Epeus in a lovely house atop a mountain ridge.

He got his first glimpse at it from the highway, though he didn’t stop, just slid to the right-hand lane and stole glances. The town of Leibniz was ten minutes away, and most of the places out here had the look of cabins, people who wanted more separation than even New Canaan offered. It made sense; not everyone had moved to Wyoming because they believed in the cause. Plenty of residents fell in that thin space between libertarians and anarchists, liked the idea of a place where they could be left alone. Where the world wouldn’t meddle. He had a feeling that if he took the Bronco down any of the dusty two-tracks he’d find himself passing NO TRESPASSING and SOLICITORS WARMLY GREETED WITH GUNFIRE signs, eventually ending up at lonely compounds where anything from isolationism to anti-Semitism could be pursued in relative peace.

The cabins this close to town didn’t radiate that vibe, though. They were more luxurious. Private homes for nature lovers.

An hour’s recon told him that the information in Epstein’s briefcase was good. He could see why the man had been nervous, eager to gain his complicity. This was as exposed as a reclusive terrorist was ever likely to be. The forest would provide plenty of cover for a cautious approach; the security detail, while no doubt consummate professionals, shouldn’t have any reason to expect an attack and would be easy enough for Cooper to get past. And while Smith was a strategic genius, and probably a decent fighter, head-to-head he’d be no match.

It was doable. He could get in, and he could kill John Smith.

Getting out was a trickier. If he could manage not to raise an alarm, he should be able to reach Smith easily enough. But the man would doubtless be wearing a biometric alarm. The moment his heart went crazier than sex could account for, and certainly the moment it stopped, the bodyguards would come in heavy. There would be no sneaking out. It would be run-and-gun.

Figure it out as it comes. That’s when you’re at your best anyway.

Besides, doable was more than he’d ever had before. He’d go in tonight, finish his mission, and after that, well, things would take care of themselves.

Yeah? And if you succeed, do you think his organization is just going to announce that John Smith has been murdered? If you don’t make it out, no one at the DAR will know what you’ve accomplished.

That made the next move obvious.

He needed a landline. The DAR monitored all mobile calls within the NCH, the Echelon II software churning relentlessly through a billion bits of data. And he’d be willing to bet that Smith had some routine surveillance of his own; the only way he could have continued to avoid capture was to have a steady stream of good intel. Using a cell phone was too big a risk.

Anywhere else, that would have meant a payphone. They were still around, if you knew where to look: convenience stores, malls, gas stations. Anachronisms, holdovers that no one had bothered to rip out. But this was New Canaan. In this nostalgia-free new world, not only weren’t there payphones outside the gas stations, there were hardly any gas stations.

Cooper ran through and dismissed half a dozen plans: booking a hotel room, offering a homeowner cash to use their phone, breaking into an apartment. All risked drawing attention.

He was cruising Leibniz, just driving for the sake of it, taking the place in. It followed what he was starting to see as a pattern in NCH towns. Wind turbines to the west, massive water condensers on the east. Streets smooth and laid out in a perfect grid. An airfield for gliders, pay lots to charge electric cars. Well-designed pedestrian areas and public squares filled with bright young people moving with purpose. Mixed zoning, commercial and residential side by side; it would be an easy place to live, all the advantages of a city without the congestion and pollution. Come to New Canaan and help build a better world. Lots of ambition and energy, sunshine and sex.

He stopped at a hamburger stand on the outskirts of town, got a burger and a Coke, the latter more expensive. Ate sitting at a picnic bench gilded by the lowering sun. Across the street was a car dealership, small by American standards, the lot packed mirror to mirror with the tiny electric cars he saw everywhere here. His Bronco was unusual, but it didn’t draw stares; the countryside was still pretty rough, and there were limits to what a…

Got it.

Cooper finished his meal, wiped his hands, and drove the truck across the street. The car salesman was the same as car salesmen everywhere: easy smile, quick to get personal, just delighted he’d dropped in. “I’m thinking of making the switch,” Cooper said, pointing a thumb at the Bronco. “Gas is killing me.”

“You’ll never look back,” the guy said. “Let’s take a walk, see what moves you.”

Cooper followed the guy around the lot, letting the patter wash over him. Mileage between charges, top speed, amenities. He sat in a sedan, ran his hands over the hood of a sporty two-seater. Finally settled on a miniature pickup with horsepower that made him snicker.

“I know,” the guy said, “she doesn’t look like much compared to that beast of yours. But she’ll go off-road, handle light hauling. A perfect work truck, and if you ever need something heavier, you can always hire it.”

The negotiations took ten minutes, and Cooper let the guy take him. When they were done, he said, “Mind if I use your phone to call my financing guy? My cell’s dead.”

“Sure thing,” his new best friend said, not quite hiding his delight. “Step into my office.”

His office turned out to be one in a line of desks in the open showroom. Not as private as Cooper might have liked, but private enough; salesmen weren’t supposed to sit down, and the other desks were abandoned. His guy gestured him to his own chair, then left him with assurances that he’d be nearby.

The number he’d memorized six months ago and never dialed. It rang twice, and then a voice answered, “Jimmy’s Mattresses.”

“This is account number three two zero nine one seven,” Cooper said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I need to talk to Alpha. Immediately.”

“Alpha, roger. Hold please.”

Cooper leaned back in the sales guy’s chair, the springs creaking. Out the front glass, he watched traffic pass, watched the clouds shift and change, rays of sunlight stabbing down from between them.

There was a click, and then Equitable Services Director Drew Peters said, “Nick?” The voice was familiar even now, quiet with the assurance of command. Cooper could picture him in his office, slim headset over neatly trimmed hair, the framed photos of targets on the wall, John Smith among them. Is my photograph on that wall as well?

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. I’m on-mission.”

“What was that scene last week?”

“What?”

“Don’t toy with me, son. On the El platform in Chicago. Do you know that civilians were shot?”

“Not by me,” Cooper said, surprised at the anger sloshing in his gut. “Maybe you better talk to your goddamn snipers.” He bit down on the instinctual sir.

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t shoot anybody. And you’re welcome, by the way. For, you know, giving up my entire life and becoming a fugitive. You want to talk scenes? Okay. How about Chinatown?”

“You’re referring to the detention of Lee Chen and his family?”

“Shoplifters are detained. This was a tactical response team starting a riot and kidnapping a family. That little girl was eight.” Heard himself say was instead of is, hated himself for it. “What are you guys even fighting for?”

There was a pause. In a clipped, controlled voice, Peters said, “Are you finished?”

“For now.” Cooper realized how hard he was squeezing the phone and forced his fingers to relax.

“Good. First of all, by ‘you guys,’ are you referring to agents of the Department of Analysis and Response? Because you might want to remember that you are one.”

“I’m—”

“Second, that was your fault.”

“What?”

“You were spotted. What were you thinking? To pull that stunt on the El and then, that very same night, just walk down the street?”

“What are you talking about?” Replaying the night back in his head, the cool air, the Chinatown neon. He’d been wired, alert to any hint of recognition, had caught none. “No one saw me.”

“No. But Roger Dickinson ordered the entire Echelon II network tasked to randomly scanning the video feed from security feeds across the city. More than ten thousand of them. An ATM camera caught you and Ms. Azzi walking side by side through Chinatown. Once he had that, Dickinson pulled footage from every camera for half a mile. Putting it all together took a while, which is the only reason you weren’t caught.”

Cooper opened his mouth, closed it.

“Your rules, Nick. Your fault.” Peters didn’t raise his voice, and somehow that made the words hit all the harder. “You laid out the parameters in the first place, remember? You told me that the only way your plan would work was if we went all the way.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter if you meant it. All the way is all the way.”

Part of him wanted to scream, to bang the phone on the desk, to stand up and grip the chair and hurl it through the plate glass window into the Wyoming sun. But afterward nothing would have changed. Temper tantrums weren’t going to make the difference.

“Roger Dickinson, huh?” Cooper switched the phone again, wiped sweat from one palm.

“He’s certainly risen to the challenge.” Peters gave a brief, clipped laugh. “You may have been right about him wanting your job.”

“I should have anticipated the cameras,” Cooper said. “Damn. Damn, damn, damn.”

“You’re playing against thousands of people. I’d say you’re doing very well.”

“What happened to Lee Chen and his family? Never mind. I know the answer. Can you help them?”

“Help them?”

“They don’t know anything. Truly. He’s just a school friend of Shannon’s.”

“They harbored two of the most wanted terrorists in America. They got caught. They’ll face the penalty. They have to.”

“Drew, listen to me. The girl, Alice. She’s eight years old.”

There was a long pause. Finally Peters sighed. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.”

“Now. What’s your status?”

“I’m.” He took a breath, straightened his back. The anger that had seized him, it was easy to understand. Over the last few days, he’d seen the lie in a lot of the truths he’d held self-evident. But none of that mattered, not right now. “I’m calling because I’ve got my opportunity. I’m going after the target.” A minor risk; even if Smith had a world-class intelligence network, it couldn’t extend to the desk phone of a car dealership. “He dies tonight.”

“So you’ve really done it,” Peters said.

“I’m about to.”

“You have your exit strategy worked out?”

“I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it. That’s why I’m calling. Just in case. I wanted you to know that I’m living up to our deal.” Cooper paused. “And I wanted to hear that you are, too.”

“Of course, son.” Peters’s voice rarely betrayed emotion, but Cooper could hear the hurt in it. “No matter what happens, I’ll do that. You’re a hero.”

“Kate—”

“Your daughter will never be tested. I’ve already taken care of the existing record, and taken measures to make sure that there will never be another. She’s safe. I gave you my word, Nick. Whatever happens, I’ll take care of your family.”

My family. He had a flash of that morning, months ago, whirling his children on the front lawn of their house. One of them clinging to each arm, the weight of trust and love tugging at him with a pull he never wanted to be free of. The green blur of the world beyond them.

What you’ve seen has changed you. Fine. But that doesn’t matter. You’re not doing this for the DAR.

You’re doing it for them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Back in action.

In his life, Cooper had killed thirteen—no, counting Gary on the freeway, fourteen—people. That made him neither uncomfortable nor proud. It was just a fact. He wasn’t a violent guy, didn’t get off on hurting people. He was a soldier. When he acted, it was for a reason, and it was to save lives.

And yet he had to admit it felt good to be back in action.

The last six months had seen plenty of excitement. Some of it he’d enjoyed, testing himself, building a reputation that would allow him a chance to get closer to John Smith. But at the same time, it had felt like a holding pattern, something he was doing while his real life was waiting. His real life as a father, and his real life as a government agent, as a man fighting for a better future.

As of tonight, the holding pattern was over. He’d have this one chance at Smith. Succeed or fail, this phase would be behind him. No more pretending, no more running.

Well, that’s not quite true. If you fail, there will likely be some running involved. He smiled and killed the engine.

The ridgeline the cabin sat on backed up to the Shoshone National Forest. After studying the maps and satellite imagery Epstein had provided, Cooper had settled on a narrow fire lane two miles from the house as a place to leave the truck. Earlier he’d stopped at a hunting goods store in Leibniz and bought supplies, and now he stripped down to his skivvies and put them on. A thermal base layer, camouflage pants and jacket, a pair of Vasque hiking boots, and light gloves. He’d splurged on good binoculars, Steiner Predators, which had set him back two grand. Worth every penny; the newtech lenses would not only let him see in the dark, the chipset analyzed the image and highlighted motion. The guy behind the counter had said, “You looking to do a little nighttime hunting?”

“Something like that.” Cooper had smiled.

“These are the ticket, then. Need ammo?”

“I’m good.”

He checked the Beretta now, then looked at the spare magazines, decided against them. If he needed to reload, he’d already lost. Besides, they could make noise if they knocked into something. Cooper locked the truck, tucked the keys under the bumper, and started walking.

The air was crisp and cool, sweet in the way that air was supposed to taste but rarely did. He savored it and the clean movement of his muscles, the warmth in his legs as he climbed. He moved steadily but without hurry, and by the time he’d hiked up the back of the ridgeline, the sky had faded from indigo to purple and finally a velvety black. The moon cast sleek, wet-looking shadows.

The ridgeline was rocky, the trees old and bent with wind. The towers of vertical stone looked even more like fingers, the hand of a giant pushing up from below. Cooper squatted and glassed the area. It took him a few minutes to pick the right tree: an enormous Ponderosa pine about two hundred yards from the cabin.

Ten minutes later, he was perched on a broad limb twenty feet above the ground. His gloves were sticky with sap, and the rich, sharp smell of pine rang in his nostrils. Through the bunched needles, he had a perfect view of Helen Epeus’s home. It was an attractive place with a boxy Pacific Northwest flavor to the architecture. Lots of glass and stylish cedar siding gapped in clean rows. The windows glowed a homey yellow. A cozy, serene spot…except for the man walking the perimeter with a submachine gun.

The gun was cross-slung, the grip in easy reach of the man’s right hand, and judging by the way he moved, he’d reached for that grip before. The guard had a quiet ease and a ready alertness that Cooper recognized. A man who knew how to handle himself.

No surprise. But is he expecting anything?

A split-rail fence about fifty yards from the cabin marked the boundaries of the property. The guard followed the fence, moving slowly, checking shadows and keeping an eye on the road below. Cooper lay still on the branch, glad of the base layer—the night was getting chilly—and watched. The Predators traced a thin red outline around the man, reacting to his steady motion. It took the guard about eight minutes to walk a circuit, and while he varied his route, he rarely strayed far from the fence. A professional, but not showing any sign of anxiousness.

Good enough. Cooper turned his attention to the house itself.

The Predators went white as they adjusted to the change from darkness to light, and then he could see right in: Shaker furniture, shelves lined with books and pictures, a cottage kitchen with a half-full coffee pot. The second guard reminded Cooper of a drill sergeant: silver crew cut, lean muscles, ramrod posture. Sarge poured himself a cup of coffee, then turned to talk to someone Cooper couldn’t see. That would be guard number three; while John Smith might be chummy with his security detail, tonight was about romance. Smith would be upstairs.

Okay. Three guards. A fourth was technically possible, but it would have been sloppy to have three inside and only one out, and Smith would never tolerate sloppy tactics.

The rest of the house looked as expected. The ground-level doors and frames were steel, and the locks heavy. A camera gazed down on the back entrance. In all, it was solid security, the kind of setup that would make a civilian feel safe. But a long way from unbeatable.

So the question is, how are you going to beat it?

A broad balcony hung off the second floor. A sliding glass door led to a bedroom, probably the master. The lights were off, the queen bed smooth. Unoccupied. He didn’t doubt he could get up to the balcony. Only, what then? The door was likely locked, and the glass bulletproof.

It was too bad Shannon wasn’t with him; he had no doubt she could stroll right past. He, on the other hand, might have to go in heavy. Sneak up on the exterior guard. With a little luck, he could take him down silently. With a lot of luck, the guard would have a key.

What if he doesn’t? Or the doors run off a keypad? Or the security team all wear biometric sensors, so they know if a man goes down?

Risky. He was confident he could do the security team, especially if he took them by surprise. But while that was happening, what was to say Smith wasn’t sprinting out the opposite door?

Still, what choice was there—

The light in the master bedroom snapped on, framing a silhouette. The sound of the glass door sliding on the track seemed loud in the Wyoming night. The figure was backlit. Another guard? Cooper refocused the binoculars.

And nearly dropped them. The figure wasn’t security. It wasn’t a stranger.

It had been seven years since the photograph that decorated Drew Peters’s wall had been taken, a young activist addressing a crowd.

Five years since the massacre at the Monocle, that horrifying video he’d watched countless times, the calm butchery of seventy-three civilians.

Two years since the last confirmed photo, a blurry image taken at a distance as he climbed into the backseat of a Land Rover.

Now, through the wavering lenses of his new binoculars, Cooper watched John Smith step onto the balcony.

He wore jeans and a black sweater. His feet were bare. As Smith reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, it struck Cooper how much older he looked. Like the pictures of presidents before and after their first term, Smith seemed to have aged two decades in a handful of years. His dark hair had salted, and his shoulders had a heaviness to them. But his eyes were sharp as broken glass when he snapped a silver lighter and lit his cigarette. The night vision optics amplified the flame to a halo of fire that seemed to engulf him.

Cooper stared.

The most dangerous man in America seemed at peace. He smoked meditatively, the cigarette pinned between his first two fingers. The night was too cool for bare feet, but Smith didn’t seem bothered. He just stood there, staring out at the darkness.

It was unbelievable. A clean shot, no wind, adequate visibility, the target unaware. If he’d had a rifle, he could have ended a war with one squeeze of his finger.

But you don’t have a rifle, you have a sidearm, and at this distance you may as well try to take him down with harsh language.

Half afraid that if he turned away Smith would vanish like some sort of demon, Cooper panned the binoculars. It took him just seconds to spot the exterior guard. The man was in the worst possible position, almost directly between the pine tree and the cabin. Cooper could go through him, but not without alerting Smith.

You get one chance. There’s too much at stake to rush it.

He took a deep breath, calmed his nerves. Turned back to watch the man smoke. Despite the fact that he had been waiting for this moment, had been planning for it, he was staggered by the emotional punch of it.

Here was the reason, Cooper realized, that he existed himself. That he had done the things he had done and slept soundly despite them.

Smith was everything he had fought all his life. Not just a murderer, not even a terrorist; a hurricane in human form. A tsunami, an earthquake, a sniper at a school, or a dirty bomb in the water supply. A man who didn’t believe in anything beyond his essential rightness, who killed not because it would make the world better but because he strove to make the world more like him. Standing barefoot under a stunning Wyoming sky, smoking a cigarette.

When he finished, he flicked the butt into the night, the ember wild and loose and momentarily bright. Then he turned and walked back inside. A moment later the light in the bedroom went out. John Smith—

It’s only nine o’clock. Hours before he’ll go to bed.

Smokers never stop at just one.

Who locks the door of a second-story balcony behind them? Especially when they know they’ll be back soon?

—was done.

Cooper hung his binoculars over a branch. He wouldn’t need them again. Moving carefully, he began to climb. When his boots crunched dry soil, he dropped to a heel squat, his back against the tree, and waited for the guard to come around again.

When he did, Cooper started counting Mississippis.

At 100, he rose and started walking. He wanted to run, but couldn’t risk either the noise or a turned ankle. It took the guard about eight minutes to walk a complete circuit of the fence. 480 Mississippi.

He kept his eyes down so that the light from the cabin wouldn’t wreck his night vision, and checked his footing with each step. The moon was bright, which was good and bad. Good because he could keep a decent pace, bad because it meant he’d be easier to spot. A flush of energy ran through him, the world dropping away. It was just him and the silvered ground and the breath in his lungs and the pressure of the Beretta in his waistband. At 147 Mississippi, he reached the split-rail fence. The guard was out of sight on the other side of the property. Holding onto a post, Cooper slung first one leg and then the other, and stepped into Helen Epeus’s yard.

That name, it meant something, but damned if he could remember what. No time. He took a moment to assess the situation—

The guard is a professional. A soldier of sorts.

Soldiers learn to work as a team. A team that divides responsibilities and then trusts each man to fulfill his part is far more effective than one where every man is trying to cover every angle.

He’ll leave the security of the cabin to the security in the cabin.

—then dropped to his elbows and knees and started a fast army crawl toward the cabin.

At 200 Mississippi, the guard rounded the far side of the building. Moonlight danced down the barrel of his submachine gun. Cooper kept crawling. Rocks jammed into his knees, and something thorny tore at his gloves.

He could go faster, but didn’t dare. It felt to him as if he was making a lot of noise as it was, scraping the ground with each move. He locked his core and checked his breath and pushed.

240 Mississippi. The guard was half a football field away. Cooper had made it about fifty feet, not quite halfway between the fence and the cabin. He lowered himself prone. The hard ground was cold through his camouflage. With an effort of will, Cooper closed his eyes. Even in the dark, few things were more recognizable to one human than another human’s face, especially the eyes, which could catch any spare glint of light.

If he was right about the guard, if the man trusted his team, then his attention would be focused outward. He’d be looking for motion in the woods, not for suspicious shapes lying between him and the cabin.

250 Mississippi. A shuffling of footsteps. Rocks and dirt beneath combat boots. The man couldn’t be more than twenty feet away.

A pause. A scrape. Cooper’s nerves screamed to move, to roll on his back and pull the pistol and fire. Lying prone, unable to see, he was completely helpless; he was rendering his own abilities moot.

There’s more to you than just your gift, soldier.

He lay still.

265 Mississippi.

270 Mississippi.

The footsteps resumed. Cooper began to breathe again.

At 340, he opened his eyes and rolled to a crouch. The guard was out of sight. After the total darkness, the cabin seemed ablaze with light, light streaming out the windows, light leaking under the doors. Light framing the balcony. He rose and walked toward the house, no longer worried about being seen. Even if the interior guards happened to glance at a window, night would turn the glass into a mirror.

He rolled his shoulders, shucked his gloves, and dropped them. Then he pushed into a hard run, straight at the wall of the cabin. At the last second he leaped, planting one boot against the cedar siding and pushing upward as he strained and turned.

His hands caught the lip of the balcony. He hung for a moment to combat the lateral inertia, and then he pulled himself up, first to the spindles, then the handrail, and finally over, crouching in the same spot John Smith had smoked his cigarette.

His breath came easy. His senses were sharp. He felt powerful and free and alive.

Cooper drew the Beretta and moved to the glass door. The bedroom beyond still swam in darkness. So far, so good. He’d made a little noise against the wooden siding, but not much. If you lived in a cabin in the woods, you got used to unexpected noises: animals on the hunt, windblown branches scraping the eaves, long-dead trees finally giving way.

Of course, everything depended on the glass door being unlocked. He was confident in the logic of his patterning, but as always with his gift, it came down to intuition, not certainty.

So stop stalling and find out if you win a gold star.

He put his free hand on the handle and tugged.

The door slid easily.

Pistol in hand, Cooper slipped inside.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The bedroom was dark, but his eyes were ready. A queen bed with plush linens and too many pillows. Unruffled; if Smith and his lady friend had been at it, they’d done it somewhere else. Nightstand by the bed, rocking chair in the far corner, hardwood dresser. Master bath off the west side. A painting, big, something abstract in dark colors.

He held the gun low and in two hands, his finger resting gently on the trigger. It felt good, molded for his hands.

Sounds: his own breathing, a little faster than normal, but steady. A television from below, laugh track to a joke he couldn’t hear. The ticking of the clock on the bedside table. He hated clocks that ticked; every click a moment gone. Couldn’t imagine sleeping in a room with one, drifting into unconsciousness to the sound of life slipping away.

No alarm, no sounds of panic.

He moved to the bedroom door, which was closed but not all the way. Slid along the near wall and glanced through the crack. A hallway. Keeping his right hand on the gun, he used his left to inch the door open. It swung in silence. The hallway was hardwood, new-ish. Good. Old hardwood creaked.

Light on his feet, joints supple. The hall ran a handful of feet and then one wall fell away, a railing with cables instead of wooden spindles. Light from below, and the television louder. A great room, connected by a spiral staircase. Three doors: one open, he could see tile on the floor, a guest bathroom. Cooper eased down the hall, setting each step with care. The next door, also open. He squatted low, glanced around the edge. Guest bedroom, dark. The last door was closed, a trickle of light glowing at the bottom. He moved to it, stood outside. No noise he could hear. He gave it a twenty count with breath held, then another thirty breathing. Nothing.

He put his left hand on the knob. Moved to the side of the door. Gently spun the handle, weapon up and sweeping the room as it was revealed inch by inch.

Bookcases, a leather couch, soft and expensive looking. Two chairs facing it. A lamp and an ashtray on a table beside the couch. A door in the far wall, closed, no light from below. A gas fireplace halfway up the wall, the flames dancing; twin flatscreens mounted above it.

Both monitors showing the same video.

Cooper slid into the room, weapon up, eyes forward as he closed the door behind him, and then moved to look at the flatscreens.

The video was taken from a high angle, and showed men walking through a restaurant. Something squeezed inside him as he recognized it. The footage from the massacre at the Monocle on Capitol Hill. He’d seen it a thousand times, knew every frame. What was—

Wait. The flatscreens weren’t showing the exact same video.

At a glance, yes. The motion was the same, the angle, the footage of the bar and the patrons, the judge with his young mistress, the family from Indiana. But in the leftmost monitor, there were four men walking through the crowd. One in the lead, and three behind.

In the right monitor, it was only the three behind, all wearing trench coats.

In the left, John Smith wound his way through the crowd, his soldiers following behind.

In the right, the soldiers walked alone.

In the left, John Smith walked to the back booth where Senator Max “Hammer” Hemner sat.

In the right, the three men approached his booth, but at an odd, indeterminate distance. As though there was a ghost in front of them.

In the left, Hammer Hemner smiled at John Smith.

In the right, Hammer Hemner smiled at three men who had approached his table.

In the left, John Smith raised a pistol and shot the senator in the head.

In the right, a hole just appeared in the man’s head, as if fired from elsewhere in the restaurant.

In both monitors, the three bodyguards shrugged out of their coats, revealing cross-slung Heckler & Koch tactical submachine guns. Each took the time to extend the retractable metal stock and brace the weapon against his shoulder. The red light of an exit sign fell like blood against their backs.

In both monitors, they began to fire. Their shots were precise and clustered. There was no spraying, no wide sweeps.

A vein thumped in Cooper’s neck, and his hands were slick with sweat.

In both monitors, the video froze. Then it scrubbed back ten seconds.

In the left, John Smith raised a pistol and shot the senator in the head.

In the right, a hole just appeared in the man’s head, as if fired from elsewhere in the restaurant.

In both monitors, the three bodyguards shrugged out of their coats, revealing cross-slung Heckler & Koch tactical submachine guns. Each took the time to extend the retractable metal stock and brace the weapon against his shoulder. The red light of an exit sign fell like blood against their backs.

The video froze, and scrubbed backward.

Cooper had the sudden sense he was being watched, whirled, gun up. Nothing. Turned back to the monitor in time to see the action again.

To watch the three shrug out of their coats, the red light of an exit sign falling like blood across their backs. Their weapons rising.

Pause. Scrub back.

The three shrug out of their coats, the red light of an exit sign falling like blood—

There’s something wrong.

Not just that John Smith isn’t in one of these.

Something else.

You were meant to see this. He knows you’re here. This is for you.

But there’s something else wrong.

—across their backs.

Pause. Scrub back.

The three shrug out of their coats, the red light of an exit sign falling like blood across their backs.

Pause. Scrub back.

The three shrug out of their coats, the red light of an exit sign falling like blood across their backs.

It was the same. The red light was the same in both videos.

But in the one on the left, the one he knew, John Smith was between them and the exit sign. His body should have blocked some of the light. Not enough to throw an obvious shadow, but still, the red shouldn’t have reached them. Certainly not the one nearest him.

But if that was true…

Cooper stared, feeling as if the ground had slipped away beneath him, as if he had turned to fog and could slip insubstantial through all that he thought solid.

Then he heard the door open behind him.

He spun, reflexes taking over, the gun coming up, right arm straight, left cradling the butt of the gun, both eyes open and staring down the barrel at the man who stood in the doorway. His features were balanced and even, strong jaw, good eyelashes. The kind of face a woman might find handsome rather than hot, the kind that belonged to a golf pro or a trial lawyer.

“Hello, Cooper,” John Smith said. “I’m not John Smith.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Cooper stared down the barrel. Instinct had framed the sights square on the man’s chest. John Smith stared back at him, one hand on the doorknob, the knuckles white. His pupils were wide and his pulse throbbed in his throat.

Pull the trigger.

From behind and to one side, Cooper heard an unmistakable sound. What his old partner Quinn had once described as the best sound in the world, provided you were the one who made it.

The racking of a shotgun.

Smith made the tiniest head nod. Without lowering the pistol, Cooper risked a fast glance.

Somehow, Shannon stood in the corner of the room. She looked small behind the pump-action, but had it braced perfectly, the butt against one delicate shoulder. The barrel had been cut down to almost nothing; it was more scattergun than shotgun. Even at this distance, with the right load—and it would be, he had no doubt—there was nothing he could do to avoid it. Shannon’s gaze was steady and her finger had pressure on the trigger.

How did she do that?

“I don’t have your gift,” Smith said. “But I’m pretty sure what you’re thinking. You’re figuring that there is no way she can fire before you do. And you’re right. You can probably get at least one. Odds are decent you kill me. Of course, if you do, it’s certain that she’ll kill you.”

The world had gone wobbly and fast, everything blurring and blending. He felt like his life had become the video loop, pause, scrub back, pause, scrub back, nothing certain, everything changeable. The man was locked in his sights. Smith was nervous, that was clear. He might hope that Cooper wouldn’t do it, but he wasn’t certain.

Everything in Cooper screamed to pull the trigger, to take the shot and drop John Smith and be done with it. To end this before…what?

Smith spoke as if finishing Cooper’s thought. “The thing is, if you do, you won’t find out what happens next. You won’t learn the truth. Though you’ve already figured out the first bit. Haven’t you?”

One gentle squeeze of the trigger, then another as swiftly as possible. Hollow-point ammunition tearing through soft flesh, lead splintering to shivering razor blades, wide gaping wounds. John Smith dead. Mission accomplished.

That was all he had to do.

Pull the trigger!

He tried to speak, but only raw sound came out.

“Haven’t you?”

Cooper said, “The video is fake.”

“Yes.”

“You were never at the Monocle.”

“I was, actually. Half an hour earlier. I met Senator Hemner. I had a gin and tonic, he had four scotches. He agreed to support some changes to a piece of legislation, an early bill limiting testing of gifted. I thanked him, and I left.”

Take the shot take the shot take the shot take the…

“Look at me,” Smith said. “I know you can tell when someone is blatantly lying to you. Am I lying?”

A thousand times he’d watched that massacre. Looked for every clue, for any hint that could lead him to the man who had perpetrated it. He’d noticed the red light, but not that it should have been blocked. And how would he? It was only when compared to another version that it even seemed odd.

His version could be a fake. He’s had time to do that, nothing but time—

But the official version is the one with the problem.

“There’s more,” Smith said. “A lot more. But you’re going to have to put that down to hear it.”

“Nick,” Shannon said, her voice low but firm, tinged with a note of hope, maybe, or regret for something that hadn’t happened yet but might. “Please.”

He glanced at her. Saw that she would shoot him. Saw that she didn’t want to.

A sudden wave of exhaustion swept him. A sense that the props that held him up had been kicked out.

But if this is true, it…

He stopped the thought. But lowered the gun.

“Thank you,” Smith said.

“Fuck you,” Cooper said.

“Fair enough. I’d feel the same, in your position.”

Shannon said, “Cooper, how about you set the gun on the table? I’ll set mine down, too.”

He looked at her. She was back to calling him Cooper, he noticed, though it had been Nick a moment before. Funny, only Natalie and Drew Peters called him Nick. And now Shannon, exactly twice.

“How about,” he said, “you go first?”

He waited for her to look at Smith. Told himself that if she did, he would snap the gun up and fire, execute his target.

Shannon bit her lip. Her eyes never left his.

She dropped the barrel of the gun, let it dangle from one hand.

Huh.

Like a man in a dream, Cooper figured what the hell, set the safety, then tossed the gun on the table. What was the worst that would happen? They’d kill him?

They already have.

The thought came unbidden, a voice in a dark room. And just what the hell did it mean? He didn’t know.

“Okay,” he said. Trying for something like casual, but not sure he’d hit it. “Fine. Let’s talk.”

Smith seemed almost to sag, the tension streaming out of him. “Thank you.”

“You weren’t sure I wouldn’t kill you, were you?”

“No. It was a risk. Calculated, but a risk.”

“Why take it?”

“I wanted to meet you. No reward without risk.”

“What did you mean when you said you weren’t John Smith?”

“My dad’s last name wasn’t Smith. My mother never named me John.”

“I know, you got it in the academy, boo-hoo. But you—”

“Kept the name they gave me. Yeah. Remember how in the civil rights days, Malcolm X used to talk about giving up his slave name? Claiming his own? Well, I’ll do the same, as soon as people like me aren’t slaves. Right now, I want to remind everyone that I am what they made me.”

“You’re a terrorist.”

“I’m a soldier on the losing side. But the John Smith you’ve chased, the monster that kills children, who murdered seventy-three people in the Monocle, he’s not me. That John Smith wasn’t born. He was created. Because he served someone’s purpose.”

Cooper could feel his gift surging, patterning, building from data. The same way it always did, the way he couldn’t control any more than someone could choose not to be able to think. As always, the intuitive part of it was leaping ahead, building from the pattern, and he wanted it to stop, because if that was true, if this was true—

“If the video is fake,” he said, knowing it was but not wanting to say it out loud, not sure of the reasons, “then who faked it?”

“Wrong question,” Smith said. He slid a hand toward his pocket, froze, said, “I could use a smoke. You mind?” He didn’t wait for a reply, but did move slowly, pulling out the pack and matches. Cooper catalogued the room, remembered the ashtray on the side table. So why had he stepped out before—

Because he wanted you to see.

He knew you were out there, and he gave you a way in.

Smith continued, lighting the cigarette around his words. “It’s not who faked the video,” snap, puff, exhale, “it’s who planned and executed the massacre. It’s who recruited, organized, and armed a methodical, highly skilled hit team and sent them to murder seventy-two innocent civilians and a senator. Faking the footage was just the cover-up. And the payoff.”

It was obvious and new at the same time, a paradigm shift that altered the whole world. Not just a faked video, but an orchestrated massacre. His gift filled in the pattern, dancing with new data—stop.

“Okay, so who…”

Smith walked around the end of the couch, flopped down on it. He ashed the cigarette and gestured to the opposite chair. Cooper ignored him. Smith said, “You play chess?”

“No.” He did, but not the way Smith meant. No one played the way Smith meant.

“The secret to the game is that beginners—actually, intermediate players, too, and sometimes masters—they tend to look at just the one side. But the trick to chess is to be paying more attention to what the other side is doing.”

“Okay.”

“Right,” Smith said. “Get to it. Fine. So, what did the Monocle accomplish?”

“It…a declaration of war. The murder of a senator who opposed you.”

“There are plenty of people who hate abnorms a lot more than Hemner did. And why would I want to declare war? When I was fourteen, I played three simultaneous games of chess against three grandmasters, and won them all. What are the odds that with no chance of victory, I declare war? No, you’re still thinking with your side of the board. Who benefited from the massacre?”

You, Cooper wanted to say, but found that the word stuck. How exactly had Smith benefited? Before the Monocle, Smith had been an activist, a controversial figure but a respected one, and free. Afterward he became the most hunted man in America. He’d had to abandon his whole life, to live for years as a fugitive with a target on his back.

“There you go. You’re getting it.”

“So what, you’re not just a strategic genius, you’re a reader, too?” The old smart-ass side coming out.

Smith shook his head. “I just know people. What happened after the Monocle?”

“You know what happened.”

“Cooper,” Shannon said. “Come on.”

He glanced at her, couldn’t untangle her expression. To her, he said, “Fine. I’ll play. After the Monocle, John Smith became a national figure. A terrorist. He was hunted from one end of the country to the—”

“Yes.” The look John Smith gave him was sad and warm at the same time, like a friend delivering bad news. “Yes. By whom?”

If this is true, it means that…

“No. I don’t believe it.”

Smith said, “Don’t believe what, Cooper? I haven’t told you anything.”

—Drew Peters, the day he recruited you. Saying that the program was extreme, but that it was necessary.

The early days of Equitable Services, working out of the paper plant. The constant rumors of getting shut down. The limited funding. The investigation. The threat of a congressional subcommittee.

Then the Monocle.

Seventy-three people dead, including a senator, including children. At the hands of an abnorm.

A stunning validation of the vision of one man. One man who saw this coming. Who saw that the DAR needed the ability to go further than just monitoring.

That it needed to be able to kill.

Drew Peters, neat and trim, cool gray in his rimless glasses.

Drew Peters, saying that he needed believers.

Oh God—

“If this is true, it means that—that—” He couldn’t say the words, couldn’t let them float in the air. If this was true, it meant that everything else was a lie. That he hadn’t been fighting to prevent a war. That he had been part of starting one. That the things he had done, the targets he had terminated…

The people he had killed…

The people he had murdered.

“No,” Cooper said. “No.” He looked at Shannon, saw nothing but sympathy on her face. Turned from it, recoiled, to Smith. And saw the same expression. “No.”

“I’m sorry, Cooper, I really am—”

And then he was running.