by Marcus Sakey
Flashes: the moon cutting silver swathes through swaying trees.
A branch he stumbled on cracking, the dry white interior like bone.
His hands, pale against pine bark.
Finally, a tiny stream glowing in the moonlight, the water burbling clean over rocks worn smooth. His knees in the water, the shocking cold of it.
If what they had shown him was true, then Equitable Services was a lie.
An extreme arm of a government agency asking for powers never granted another. The power to monitor, hunt, and execute American citizens.
An agency that was hobbling along. Barely surviving. About to be investigated. And then, suddenly, vindicated.
Granted enormous power. Unspecified funds. Direct access to the president.
Because of a lie.
John Smith didn’t kill all those people in the Monocle.
Drew Peters did.
You have spent the last five years working for evil men. You have done what they asked you to do. You believed. Truly.
John Smith isn’t the terrorist.
You are.
“Cooper?”
He heard her now. At a distance, looking for him. The sound of breaking twigs, the shuffle of dirt. She wasn’t a ghost after all.
He knelt there, in the stream, the water soaking through his pants, the moon glowing above. Didn’t want to be found. Didn’t want to hear any more.
“Nick?”
“Yeah,” he said. Coughed. “Here.”
He scooped up double handfuls of water, splashed them on his face. The cold shocking, clarifying. Knee-walked out of the stream, dropped on the bank. Listened to her approach, and for once saw her coming, sliding lithely between the trees.
Shannon hesitated for a moment when she saw him there, then adjusted her course. She splashed through the stream, then dropped down beside him. He saw her think about putting a hand on his shoulder, and decide against it. He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. For a long moment they sat side by side, listening to the trickle of the water, burbling like an endless clock.
“I thought you were still in Newton,” he said, finally.
“I know,” she said. “Sorry.”
“That thing you said. In the diner. About hoping I took the chance for a fresh start.”
“Yeah.”
“You knew I was coming here.”
“He did. I was hoping…” She shrugged, didn’t finish.
Somewhere nearby, a bird screeched as it dove, and something squealed as it died.
“A couple years ago,” Cooper said, “I was tracking a guy named Rudy Turrentine. A brilliant, medical. A cardiac specialist at Johns Hopkins. He’d done some incredible stuff in his early career.”
“The Turrentine valve. The procedure they do now instead of heart transplants.”
“Yeah. But then he’d gone over to the other side. Joined John Smith. Rudy’s latest design had this clever new gimmick. It could be remotely shut off. Send the right signal, and bam, the valve quit working. It was hidden deep in the coding, some sort of enzyme thing, I never really understood it. Point was, it gave Smith the power to stop the heart of anyone who’d had this procedure done. Potentially tens of thousands of people.”
She knew enough not to say anything.
“Rudy ran, and I found him. Hiding in a shitty apartment in Fort Lauderdale. A multimillionaire, this guy, and a brilliant, and he was holed up above a payday-loan place in the part of town tourists don’t go to.” Cooper rubbed at his face, a trickle of water still left there. “My team surrounded the building, and I kicked in the door. He was watching TV, eating pork fried rice. It was greasy, I remember that. You could smell it. It struck me as funny, this heart specialist eating heart-attack fare. He jumped, and it went everywhere. A short guy, shy. He looked at me, and he…”
After a long pause, Shannon said, “He?”
“He said, ‘Wait. I didn’t do what they say.’” A sob came from somewhere. It took him by surprise, a sob like a hiccup, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried.
Shannon said, “Shh. It’s okay.”
“What did I do?” He turned to look at her, his gaze locked on her eyes glowing in the moonlight. “What have I done?”
She took a long moment before she spoke. “Did you believe it? That he could turn off people’s hearts?”
“Yes.”
“Then what you did, at least you thought you had a reason for it. You thought you were doing good. It’s the people who lied to you that you should blame.”
Cooper had a flash of Rudy Turrentine’s arms, flailing in wild punches as he stepped closer, as he moved where the man wasn’t swinging, as his own hands reached for the doctor’s head, as they twisted, sharp and hard, fast, always fast, never making it take longer than it had to.
“I’ve done things, too, Nick.” Her voice flat with effort. “We all have.”
“What if he was telling the truth? What if he hadn’t done it? What if, I don’t know, some competitor had pledged millions in campaign contributions if Rudy Turrentine died?”
“What if you killed an innocent man.”
“What if I killed an innocent genius. A doctor who could have saved thousands of lives.”
It seemed there was nothing to say to that. He didn’t blame her; he couldn’t come up with a reply either. The water trickled, trickled, trickled away.
“I’ve been used. Haven’t I?”
She nodded.
He made a sound that wasn’t much like a laugh. “It’s funny. All my life, the thing I’ve hated most was bullies. And it turns out, I am one.”
“No,” she said. “Misled, maybe. But you meant to do the right thing. I know that much about you. Believe me,” she said, and did laugh, “I didn’t want to think so. Remember on the El platform, I told you that you’d killed a friend of mine?”
“Brandon Vargas.” The abnorm bank robber who’d killed a mother and her two-year-old. Reno, Vargas smoking a Dunhill behind a biker bar, his hands shaking.
“Once upon a time, Brandon and I were close. So I wanted revenge. John had told me that you were a good man, but I didn’t believe it. I wanted you to be a monster, so I could get payback.” She brushed hair behind one ear. “But then you turned out to be, well, you.”
He weighed those words, the freight behind them. “Brandon. Was he really—”
“Yes. He really did rob those banks, and he did kill those people. The Brandon I knew was a sweetheart. He’d never have done that. But…he did.” She turned to him. “Not every moment of your life has been a lie. Some of the things you did for good really were for good.”
“But not all.”
“No.”
He rocked forward, hugging his knees. “I want it not to be true.”
“I know.”
“And if it is, then I want to die.”
“What?” Her body tensed and her face changed. “You coward. You don’t want to make it right. You don’t want to fix it. You want to die?”
“How can I make it right? I can’t take it back. I can’t bring Rudy Turrentine—”
“No. But you can tell the truth.”
It tripped alarms up and down him, a tingle and vibration up his spine. “What are you talking about?”
“Your boss, your agency—they’re evil. They are everything you say you’re against. You hate bullies? Well, guess what Equitable Services is?”
“And you have an idea how to fix that.”
“Yeah. I do.” She brushed the hair again. “There’s evidence. Of what your boss, Peters, what he did. At the Monocle.”
Now the laughter did come, though there was no humor in it. Of course.
“What?”
“That’s why you really came out here, isn’t it? You’re step two. Step one, make me see the truth. Step two, set me on some mission for John Smith.”
It was hard to gauge the full depth of her reaction in the darkness, but he could see her eyes change. Recognition, and mayb
e a sense of being caught. But something else, too. Like he’d wounded her.
“I’m right, aren’t I? He wants me to do something.”
“Of course,” she said, and stared at him unblinking. “Why else would he take these chances? And I want you to do it, too. And if you’re done with the woe-is-me bullshit, so do you. Because even if there is a step two, step one was tell you the truth.”
He’d been about to reply, to talk about how he didn’t work for terrorists, but that hit like a kidney punch. The truth. Right. Cooper scooped up a handful of pebbles, shook them. Tossed them, one at a time, to plunk in the stream.
After a moment, Shannon said, “You remember what I said in that shithole hotel? We were watching the news. They were reporting on what we’d just done, and none of it was true.”
Only a week or so ago, and yet it felt like a lifetime. The memory was clear, the two of them bickering like an old married couple. “You said maybe there wouldn’t be a war if people didn’t keep going on TV and saying there was.”
“That’s right. Maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t that there are normals and brilliants. It isn’t that the world is changing fast. Maybe the problem is that no one is telling the truth about it. Maybe if there were more facts and fewer agendas, none of this would be happening.”
There was something in the way she said it, clean and no bull, just fire and purity of purpose. That and the way the moonlight glowed on her skin, and the way his whole world had turned upside down, and the animal need for comfort, and the way she smelled, and the way she’d felt against him that night in the bar, and, tired of thinking, he just leaned over.
Her lips met his. There was no surprise and no hesitation, maybe just the hint of a smile, and that gone in the moment. Cooper put a hand on her side and she wrapped both of hers around his back and their tongues flickered and touched, the warmth against the chill of the night as sensual as it was sexy, and then she shoved him.
He fell, landed on his back on the hard ground, pebbles digging into him. Surprise took his breath, and for a moment he wondered what she intended, and then she climbed on top of him, her knees straddling his hips, her body writhing against his. Light and strong, delicate and fierce, her breasts raking his chest, those clavicles like the wing bones of birds, the taste of her.
She broke the kiss, pushing away a playful couple of inches. A knowing smile and a fall of bangs. “I just remembered something else you said.”
“Yeah?” His hands slid down her back, cradled her midriff, slim enough his fingers almost touched.
“I said you must be a hell of a dancer. And you said, maybe if somebody else led.”
He laughed at that. “Lead on.”
She did.
CHAPTER 33
“Wake up.”
Cold. It was cold. He heard the words through a haze, far away. Ignored them, grabbed at the covers and found—
“Wake up, Cooper.”
—a clump of something like pine needles in his hands, and the bed hard. Cooper’s eyes snapped open. He wasn’t in a bed, and there weren’t covers, just half-discarded clothing piled atop them. A pine grove, and the trickle of a stream, and Shannon making sleepy murmurs. A shape above him, a man.
John Smith said, “Come on. I want to show you something.” He turned and started walking.
Cooper blinked. Rubbed at his eyes. His body had gone stiff and sore.
Beside him, Shannon stirred. “What is it?”
“We fell asleep.”
She sat up suddenly, and the jacket they’d been using as a blanket slipped down, revealing her breasts, small and firm, the nipples dark. “What’s going on?”
“He wants me to go with him.” He gestured after the figure. The sky had lightened enough to bring faint color to the trees.
“Oh,” she said. Still coming round. “Okay.”
“I can stay.”
“No.” She rocked her neck to one side, the vertebrae cracking. Winced. “This is twice we’ve woken up badly. We’re going to have to work on that.”
“I’m willing to practice if you are.”
She smiled. “You better go.”
Smith had kept walking, wasn’t looking back to see if he would follow. Because he knows I will. Cooper looked at her, saw that she knew it, too.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Really.”
He stood creakily. Remembering the way they’d moved, like partners who had been dancing a long time. Her riding him under the moonlight, her head thrown back, hair flying free, Mediterranean skin gone pale against the spill of stars, the Milky Way. Both of them delaying, taking their time, slow fast slow, going until they were exhausted, and when they were spent, her collapsing against his chest. The feel of her sweet and warm, they wouldn’t fall asleep, they’d just take a minute…
“Well, that was a first.”
She quirked her sideways grin and said, “Imagine the second. Now, go.”
He found his pants, pulled them on. She said, “Hold on.” Reached a hand up and grabbed his shirt. The kiss was deep and sweet. His eyes were mostly closed, and when he opened them, briefly, he saw that hers were, too.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m done with you.”
He barked a laugh and stumbled after John Smith, buttoning his shirt as he went.
It was maybe four thirty, five in the morning. A thin mist hung low, and the sky had softened enough to hide the stars. His breath was fog. His head, too. He didn’t push it, focused on motion, working out the cramps in his legs, getting some blood flowing. He knew the thoughts would come, and the memories, and they wouldn’t all be of sexual abandon.
And by the time he’d caught up to Smith, he was…what? Not himself. He wasn’t sure what that meant anymore. The self-assured agent? The idealist willing to kill for his country? The father who taught his children to hate bullies?
The most wanted man in America had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the peaks Cooper had noticed the day before, the spires rising from the ridge like fingers. “How’s your balance?”
Cooper looked at him, auditioned a dozen smart-ass remarks. Then he started moving, heading for the base of the tallest spire. Smith joined him. They didn’t speak, just walked, the ground rapidly growing steep, tree cover falling away. At first Cooper’s mind ran in a loop, replaying everything he’d learned the night before, looking for holes, desperate for them. Within half an hour, though, the incline had grown intense enough that thought was replaced with action, step step step breathe, step step step breathe. Soon he was using hands as often as feet, the rock rough against his fingers. The base of the towers was a scree field, loose flat stone that skittered and slipped beneath his feet. It was noisy and treacherous, every step holding the risk of picking the wrong rock and surfing it down, a sure ticket to a broken leg at the least. They were both panting now, Cooper’s shirt soaked with sweat.
The fingers turned out to be towers of blocky boulders fifty yards high. Smith started on one side; Cooper pulled himself up the other. The grips were solid and broad, and he climbed with confidence as the ground fell away. There was a heart-stopping moment when a foothold crumbled, but his arms held, and he jammed his toes in a narrow crack and continued up. After a few minutes Cooper tilted his head back and saw that the top was only twenty feet above. Energy surged through him, and he pushed into motion. No way was Smith beating him there.
If it had been a race, they’d have needed a replay to confirm the winner. Cooper thought it had been him by a nose, pretty much literally, hauling himself face-first onto the rocky peak. And then they were sitting on top of the world and, for just an instant, grinning at each other, no thought behind it, no promises, just two men recognizing the essential stupidity and joy of what they had done together.
The summit was about eight feet wide. Cooper crawled to the other side and looked over, felt vertigo twitch in his belly for the first time. On this edge the ridge fell away dramatically, a sheer drop of four hundred feet. He pushed back and sat
cross-legged. Dawn now, the sky bright, though the sun still played coy. “Nice view.”
“Thought you’d like it,” Smith said, looking at his hands. There was blood on them, a scrape, and he wiped them on his pants. “You okay?”
Cooper heard the multiple meanings in the question, had a flicker of insight into the man. There would never be just one thing happening here. Always levels. He couldn’t turn off his gift for tactical thinking any more than Cooper could turn off his patterning.
Even now, patterning the man. “I just got it.”
“Got what?”
“Helen Epeus. Epeus built the Trojan horse. And Helen, she was the reason for the war. There was no woman waiting for you. It was a joke.”
Smith smiled. Layers of meaning. Who knew how deep they ran?
“So we’re here,” Cooper said, “for symbolic reasons, right? Two guys waiting for the sunrise. No baggage up here. Can’t climb with it.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“What you told me last night. It’s true?”
“Yes.”
“That’s how we’re going to do this. I want truth. No agendas, no goals, no manipulation. No underlying reasons, no rationalization. Just truth.”
“Okay.”
“Because, John, I’m in a ragged place, emotionally speaking. And it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that I decide to throw your ass off this rock.”
He saw the words hit, saw that Smith believed him. To his credit—whatever else he was, he wasn’t a coward—Smith said, “Okay. But it goes both ways. You ask a question, I ask a question. Deal?”
“Fine. Did you blow up the Exchange?”
“No. But I was going to.”
“You planted the bombs.”
“Yes. I also had Alex Vasquez set to cripple military response at the same moment, and a few other strikes that I aborted.”
“Why?”
“Because I got beaten.” Smith scowled, and goddamn if there wasn’t embarrassment behind it. “I hate to say it, but it’s true. I underestimated the ruthlessness of my opponent. Fatal mistake.”
