Brilliance (21 page)

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, B
ILL TO MICROCHIP GIFTED PASSES
H
OUSE
301–135; P
RESIDENT
W
ALKER 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.”

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.

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.