Brilliance. Part 37

Drew Peters, saying that he needed believers.

Oh G.o.d- "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.

PART THREE:.

ROUGE.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

Out of the room, down the hall, through the bedroom, onto the balcony, over the railing, through the air, hitting hard. Behind him voices he was barely conscious of, a man, shouting something, something like Stand down! Let him go!, and the guard with his MP5 up but frozen, looking over his shoulder, Cooper thinking slide-tackle to drop him, spin, elbow to the solar plexus, right-hand chop to the throat, doing none of it, just sprinting past the stunned guard, the cold air slicing in and out of his lungs, his legs scissoring fast, feet slamming the ground, trying to outrun the things he'd heard, the pattern that formed in front and behind and all through him, the gift that he couldn't turn off, the gift that had become a curse, the cold and relentless intuitive leap that put the pattern together, the pattern that had been right in front of him all this time but in the dark, brought into sharp relief by the illuminating influence of a handful of facts and a little nudging, all of which he could have done himself but never had, and the consequences of that, the unbelievable, horrifying, consequences- "I need true believers."

Drew Peters had said that to him the first time they met, and several times since, never so many that Cooper had thought it more than a call for a certain kind of loyalty, a loyalty Cooper possessed, a willingness to do hard things for a greater good. That was all it had ever been, never a delight, never. In the power, sure, and the freedom, the position, but never the act itself, not the killing but the cause. He had done what he'd done to stop a war, not to start one, to save the world, not to- 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 s.h.i.+tty 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." 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 compet.i.tor 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 maybe 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 bulls.h.i.+t, 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 s.h.i.+thole 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 s.e.xy, 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s raking his chest, those clavicles like the wing bones of birds, the taste of her.

She broke the kiss, pus.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.l of a dancer. And you said, maybe if somebody else led."

He laughed at that. "Lead on."

She did.