Brilliance (40 page)

You get one chance. There’s too much at stake to rush it.

He took a deep breath, calmed his nerves. Turned back to watch the man smoke. Despite the fact that he had been waiting for this moment, had been planning for it, he was staggered by the emotional punch of it.

Here was the reason, Cooper realized, that he existed himself. That he had done the things he had done and slept soundly despite them.

Smith was everything he had fought all his life. Not just a murderer, not even a terrorist; a hurricane in human form. A tsunami, an earthquake, a sniper at a school, or a dirty bomb in the water supply. A man who didn’t believe in anything beyond his essential rightness, who killed not because it would make the world better but because he strove to make the world more like him. Standing barefoot under a stunning Wyoming sky, smoking a cigarette.

When he finished, he flicked the butt into the night, the ember wild and loose and momentarily bright. Then he turned and walked back inside. A moment later the light in the bedroom went out. John Smith—

It’s only nine o’clock. Hours before he’ll go to bed.

Smokers never stop at just one.

Who locks the door of a second-story balcony behind them? Especially when they know they’ll be back soon?

—was done.

Cooper hung his binoculars over a branch. He wouldn’t need them again. Moving carefully, he began to climb. When his boots crunched dry soil, he dropped to a heel squat, his back against the tree, and waited for the guard to come around again.

When he did, Cooper started counting Mississippis.

At 100, he rose and started walking. He wanted to run, but couldn’t risk either the noise or a turned ankle. It took the guard about eight minutes to walk a complete circuit of the fence. 480 Mississippi.

He kept his eyes down so that the light from the cabin wouldn’t wreck his night vision, and checked his footing with each step. The moon was bright, which was good and bad. Good because he could keep a decent pace, bad because it meant he’d be easier to spot. A flush of energy ran through him, the world dropping away. It was just him and the silvered ground and the breath in his lungs and the pressure of the Beretta in his waistband. At 147 Mississippi, he reached the split-rail fence. The guard was out of sight on the other side of the property. Holding onto a post, Cooper slung first one leg and then the other, and stepped into Helen Epeus’s yard.

That name, it meant something, but damned if he could remember what. No time. He took a moment to assess the situation—

The guard is a professional. A soldier of sorts.

Soldiers learn to work as a team. A team that divides responsibilities and then trusts each man to fulfill his part is far more effective than one where every man is trying to cover every angle.

He’ll leave the security
of
the cabin to the security
in
the cabin.

—then dropped to his elbows and knees and started a fast army crawl toward the cabin.

At 200 Mississippi, the guard rounded the far side of the building. Moonlight danced down the barrel of his submachine gun. Cooper kept crawling. Rocks jammed into his knees, and something thorny tore at his gloves.

He could go faster, but didn’t dare. It felt to him as if he was making a lot of noise as it was, scraping the ground with each move. He locked his core and checked his breath and pushed.

240 Mississippi. The guard was half a football field away. Cooper had made it about fifty feet, not quite halfway between the fence and the cabin. He lowered himself prone. The hard ground was cold through his camouflage. With an effort of will, Cooper closed his eyes. Even in the dark, few things were more recognizable to one human than another human’s face, especially the eyes, which could catch any spare glint of light.

If he was right about the guard, if the man trusted his team, then his attention would be focused outward. He’d be looking for motion in the woods, not for suspicious shapes lying between him and the cabin.

250 Mississippi. A shuffling of footsteps. Rocks and dirt beneath combat boots. The man couldn’t be more than twenty feet away.

A pause. A scrape. Cooper’s nerves screamed to move, to roll on his back and pull the pistol and fire. Lying prone, unable to see, he was completely helpless; he was rendering his own abilities moot.

There’s more to you than just your gift, soldier.

He lay still.

265 Mississippi.

270 Mississippi.

The footsteps resumed. Cooper began to breathe again.

At 340, he opened his eyes and rolled to a crouch. The guard was out of sight. After the total darkness, the cabin seemed ablaze with light, light streaming out the windows, light leaking under the doors. Light framing the balcony. He rose and walked toward the house, no longer worried about being seen. Even if the interior guards happened to glance at a window, night would turn the glass into a mirror.

He rolled his shoulders, shucked his gloves, and dropped them. Then he pushed into a hard run, straight at the wall of the cabin. At the last second he leaped, planting one boot against the cedar siding and pushing upward as he strained and turned.

His hands caught the lip of the balcony. He hung for a moment to combat the lateral inertia, and then he pulled himself up, first to the spindles, then the handrail, and finally over, crouching in the same spot John Smith had smoked his cigarette.

His breath came easy. His senses were sharp. He felt powerful and free and alive.

Cooper drew the Beretta and moved to the glass door. The bedroom beyond still swam in darkness. So far, so good. He’d made a little noise against the wooden siding, but not much. If you lived in a cabin in the woods, you got used to unexpected noises: animals on the hunt, windblown branches scraping the eaves, long-dead trees finally giving way.

Of course, everything depended on the glass door being unlocked. He was confident in the logic of his patterning, but as always with his gift, it came down to intuition, not certainty.

So stop stalling and find out if you win a gold star.

He put his free hand on the handle and tugged.

The door slid easily.

Pistol in hand, Cooper slipped inside.

The bedroom was dark, but his eyes were ready. A queen bed with plush linens and too many pillows. Unruffled; if Smith and his lady friend had been at it, they’d done it somewhere else. Nightstand by the bed, rocking chair in the far corner, hardwood dresser. Master bath off the west side. A painting, big, something abstract in dark colors.

He held the gun low and in two hands, his finger resting gently on the trigger. It felt good, molded for his hands.

Sounds: his own breathing, a little faster than normal, but steady. A television from below, laugh track to a joke he couldn’t hear. The ticking of the clock on the bedside table. He hated clocks that ticked; every click a moment gone. Couldn’t imagine sleeping in a room with one, drifting into unconsciousness to the sound of life slipping away.

No alarm, no sounds of panic.

He moved to the bedroom door, which was closed but not all the way. Slid along the near wall and glanced through the crack. A hallway. Keeping his right hand on the gun, he used his left to inch the door open. It swung in silence. The hallway was hardwood, new-ish. Good. Old hardwood creaked.

Light on his feet, joints supple. The hall ran a handful of feet and then one wall fell away, a railing with cables instead of wooden spindles. Light from below, and the television louder. A great room, connected by a spiral staircase. Three doors: one open, he could see tile on the floor, a guest bathroom. Cooper eased down the hall, setting each step with care. The next door, also open. He squatted low, glanced around the edge. Guest bedroom, dark. The last door was closed, a trickle of light glowing at the bottom. He moved to it, stood outside. No noise he could hear. He gave it a twenty count with breath held, then another thirty breathing. Nothing.

He put his left hand on the knob. Moved to the side of the door. Gently spun the handle, weapon up and sweeping the room as it was revealed inch by inch.

Bookcases, a leather couch, soft and expensive looking. Two chairs facing it. A lamp and an ashtray on a table beside the couch. A door in the far wall, closed, no light from below. A gas fireplace halfway up the wall, the flames dancing; twin flatscreens mounted above it.

Both monitors showing the same video.

Cooper slid into the room, weapon up, eyes forward as he closed the door behind him, and then moved to look at the flatscreens.

The video was taken from a high angle, and showed men walking through a restaurant. Something squeezed inside him as he recognized it. The footage from the massacre at the Monocle on Capitol Hill. He’d seen it a thousand times, knew every frame. What was—

Wait. The flatscreens weren’t showing the exact same video.

At a glance, yes. The motion was the same, the angle, the footage of the bar and the patrons, the judge with his young mistress, the family from Indiana. But in the leftmost monitor, there were four men walking through the crowd. One in the lead, and three behind.

In the right monitor, it was only the three behind, all wearing trench coats.

In the left, John Smith wound his way through the crowd, his soldiers following behind.

In the right, the soldiers walked alone.

In the left, John Smith walked to the back booth where Senator Max “Hammer” Hemner sat.

In the right, the three men approached his booth, but at an odd, indeterminate distance. As though there was a ghost in front of them.

In the left, Hammer Hemner smiled at John Smith.

In the right, Hammer Hemner smiled at three men who had approached his table.

In the left, John Smith raised a pistol and shot the senator in the head.

In the right, a hole just appeared in the man’s head, as if fired from elsewhere in the restaurant.

In both monitors, the three bodyguards shrugged out of their coats, revealing cross-slung Heckler & Koch tactical submachine guns. Each took the time to extend the retractable metal stock and brace the weapon against his shoulder. The red light of an exit sign fell like blood against their backs.

In both monitors, they began to fire. Their shots were precise and clustered. There was no spraying, no wide sweeps.

A vein thumped in Cooper’s neck, and his hands were slick with sweat.

In both monitors, the video froze. Then it scrubbed back ten seconds.

In the left, John Smith raised a pistol and shot the senator in the head.

In the right, a hole just appeared in the man’s head, as if fired from elsewhere in the restaurant.

In both monitors, the three bodyguards shrugged out of their coats, revealing cross-slung Heckler & Koch tactical submachine guns. Each took the time to extend the retractable metal stock and brace the weapon against his shoulder. The red light of an exit sign fell like blood against their backs.

The video froze, and scrubbed backward.

Cooper had the sudden sense he was being watched, whirled, gun up. Nothing. Turned back to the monitor in time to see the action again.

To watch the three shrug out of their coats, the red light of an exit sign falling like blood across their backs. Their weapons rising.

Pause. Scrub back.

The three shrug out of their coats, the red light of an exit sign falling like blood—

There’s something wrong.

Not just that John Smith isn’t in one of these.

Something else.

You were meant to see this. He knows you’re here. This is for you.

But there’s something
else
wrong.

—across their backs.

Pause. Scrub back.

The three shrug out of their coats, the red light of an exit sign falling like blood across their backs.

Pause. Scrub back.

The three shrug out of their coats, the red light of an exit sign falling like blood across their backs.

It was the same. The red light was the same in both videos.

But in the one on the left, the one he knew, John Smith was between them and the exit sign. His body should have blocked some of the light. Not enough to throw an obvious shadow, but still, the red shouldn’t have reached them. Certainly not the one nearest him.

But if that was true…

Cooper stared, feeling as if the ground had slipped away beneath him, as if he had turned to fog and could slip insubstantial through all that he thought solid.

Then he heard the door open behind him.

He spun, reflexes taking over, the gun coming up, right arm straight, left cradling the butt of the gun, both eyes open and staring down the barrel at the man who stood in the doorway. His features were balanced and even, strong jaw, good eyelashes. The kind of face a woman might find handsome rather than hot, the kind that belonged to a golf pro or a trial lawyer.

“Hello, Cooper,” John Smith said. “I’m not John Smith.”

Cooper stared down the barrel. Instinct had framed the sights square on the man’s chest. John Smith stared back at him, one hand on the doorknob, the knuckles white. His pupils were wide and his pulse throbbed in his throat.

Pull the trigger.

From behind and to one side, Cooper heard an unmistakable sound. What his old partner Quinn had once described as the best sound in the world, provided you were the one who made it.

The racking of a shotgun.

Smith made the tiniest head nod. Without lowering the pistol, Cooper risked a fast glance.

Somehow, Shannon stood in the corner of the room. She looked small behind the pump-action, but had it braced perfectly, the butt against one delicate shoulder. The barrel had been cut down to almost nothing; it was more scattergun than shotgun. Even at this distance, with the right load—and it would be, he had no doubt—there was nothing he could do to avoid it. Shannon’s gaze was steady and her finger had pressure on the trigger.