by Marcus Sakey
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 to 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 sides. 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 an 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 it 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 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 blow jobs 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 22
“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.