Marcus Sakey - Brilliance

“Yeah. Until the brother of someone I killed sets my house on fire. No, if I have to spend my whole life watching my back, I’ll do it somewhere prettier than Wyoming.” He glanced at the clock, then closed his eyes. “I’m gonna crash for a few.”

A long minute passed, and then another, as he stared at the back of his eyelids. Come on. Come on.

“There might be a way,” she said.

Gotcha. He opened his eyes. “Yeah? What, take a jackknife to my nose, call it plastic surgery?”

“Hear me out. You could be safe in New Canaan, even as yourself.” She raised her hands to forestall his objections. “Not as you are now. But if the right person vouched for you, that could change everything.”

“I am not a terrorist.” He said the words flat and hard. It couldn’t look like he was eager. Even the tiniest hint of his true intent and this would all crumble. “I will not work for John Smith.”

“I wasn’t thinking of him.”

“Who were you—”

“Erik Epstein.”

Cooper stiffened. “The billionaire? The King of New Canaan?”

“Only straights call him that.”

“Why would he speak for me?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to convince him. But he’s a better chance than a scumbag like Bobby Z. And if you really want a fresh start, well.” She shrugged. “He might understand that.”

“I just knock on his door?”

“No. You’d need help.”

He sat up, spun his legs to the floor. The radiator kicked on, clicking and banging.

“What would you get out of it?”

“Until I square things with my people, which I need to do face-to-face, I can’t use any of my old resources. Not my credit, my IDs, my contacts. And meanwhile, your old friends are going to be chasing me as hard as they’re chasing you.”

Cooper pretended to think it over. “So I get you into Wyoming, and you get me to Erik Epstein.”

“Yeah.”

“And how do I know you won’t bail the moment we’re in New Canaan?”

She shrugged. “How do I know you won’t sell me out to the DAR to get them off your back?”

“You’re saying we trust each other.”

“God, no,” she deadpanned. “I’m saying we make it worth each other’s while.”

Cooper chuckled. “All right. Deal.” He held out his hand, and after a flicker of hesitation, she shook it.

“Deal,” Shannon said. “So. First thing.”

“What’s that?”

“We need to get some drugs.”

“Neurodicin,” he’d said, when she explained what she was looking for. “It’s a semisynthetic opiate derivative.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“On the street they call it Shadow or Nada. It’s academy-developed newtech, supposed to replace fentanyl. Instead of numbing you, it messes with your memory, so that you forget the pain as it’s happening.”

“How’s it do that?”

“How should I know? Ask the twist who designed it. Anyway, if you want something special for the discerning junkie, Shadow’s the trick.”

“Where do we get it?”

Which was how they’d found themselves walking north when five o’clock hit and the streets filled with commuters. Before leaving the hotel he’d changed his shirt, and at a tourist shop he bought a Cubs hat and a pair of oversize movie-star sunglasses for her. As disguises went, they were pretty rudimentary, but their real camouflage was the crowd. They stuck to Michigan Avenue: lanes of cabs and buses on one side, towering skyscrapers on the other, and between, a rush of people.

“This woman, she’s a friend of yours?”

Shannon nodded. “And she and John have been friends a long time. Since they were in the academy.”

So strange to hear him referred to that way. Not John Smith, the terrorist leader; John, the friend from a long time ago. “If she’s a friend, why do you need this stuff?”

“You don’t show up at somebody’s house without a bottle of wine. It’s not polite.”

“This is some wine.”

“Well, it’s some favor I’m asking. It’s not like I can phone John.”

“How does that work?”

She glanced over sharply. “You digging for operational details, Agent Cooper?”

“No, I just—” He shrugged. “I don’t understand how he leads people if they can’t find him.”

“This isn’t like the army. There’s no chain of command, no rear echelon. No orders.”

“What, he just asks nicely?”

“Yes. He’s a very nice guy. Anyway, Samantha won’t know where he is, but she’ll be able to get word to him.”

“I hope you’re right. This is a big risk,” Cooper said. Thinking, Lady, I will help you steal all the drugs you like if it gets me closer to your boss.

If anything, the crowd grew denser as they started down the Magnificent Mile. Tourists joined the mix, and shoppers loaded with packages. Crowds were always frustrating to Cooper, but it was worse with Shannon. The concept of a straight line was utterly foreign to her. She slipped and slid and quicksilvered along, finding holes where there weren’t any, sometimes stopping dead for no reason he could see. It was unmistakably graceful—Shannon moved the way water flowed—but not easy to walk beside.

He was glad when they reached the gray-and-glass bulk of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The front entrance was about as inviting as a hospital could be, which was to say not very. The cafeteria was on the second floor. It had fake plants and fake wood trim and smelled like soup and disinfectant. Cooper bought himself coffee, and they took a table in a corner near the door.

“Did you see the cameras on the way in?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Cameras are a problem. I can’t shift if I can’t see the people looking for me.”

“You can’t what?”

“Shift.” For a moment she looked girlishly self-conscious. “It’s what I call it. What I do.”

“Shift. I like that.” The coffee was better than he expected, dark and strong. “The cameras shouldn’t be a problem. They’ll record us, but I doubt anyone is monitoring the live feed. This isn’t a black-ops facility; mostly the security is to foil junkies and keep hospital staff out of the candy jar.”

Shannon leaned back, began to run her hands through her hair, letting it fan out between her fingers. “There are two doctors at the corner table.”

He glanced at their reflection in a framed poster. “No.”

“Why not?”

“White coats and expensive pens. They’re administrators. Maybe they have the access to open the dispensary, maybe not.”

Cooper took in the room. About fifty people, with more coming in. There were a few scattered patients. A handful of nurses laughed at one table, but they presented the same problem as the administrators. And residents were out.

“There,” he said.

Still toying with her hair, she followed his gaze to a middle-aged man in pale-blue scrubs crumpling his napkin and tossing it atop the remnants of a cheeseburger. “How do you know?”

“The hair on his arms thins out at the forearms, and the skin is pinker. That means he washes his hands all the time, washes them hard. Plus, his nails are cut to nothing. Taken together, that tells me he’s in surgery a lot. A surgeon will have the access we need. And look at the circles under his eyes. Exhaustion. Probably working a twenty-four-hour shift. Makes him an easier target.”

“You got all that from a quick glance across the room?”

“Yeah, I know, weird way to look at the world.”

“No,” she said. “No, it was hot.”

“Right.” He felt oddly self-conscious and gave an aborted laugh.

Shannon leaned back, her expression quizzical. “You need to spend more time with your own kind, Cooper. The straights have you thinking twisted.” Before he could reply, she rose and started walking in one smooth motion. It wasn’t that she was fast, so much as that she was calculated; as if for every motion she applied the exact force needed. It was like watching a cat jump to a table, instinctively determining the precise force and angle needed to land without an inch or calorie wasted.