"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 cafe 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 h.e.l.l. 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 s.e.xual, 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 eggsh.e.l.ls, 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 b.u.t.ton on the remote and followed the honk to a truck, not one of the electric cars but an honest-to-G.o.d 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 doc.u.ments 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 disa.s.sembled 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 s.h.i.thead 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sing NO TRESPa.s.sING 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.