Marcus Sakey - Brilliance

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 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 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.