It happened just like that. One moment, the opposite chair was empty, the next, there she sat. Like she’d formed from sunlight.
Shannon looked good. Not fit and healthy good, but make a man think wicked thoughts good: a fitted black top that bared her shoulders, hair slipping past her ears, her lips quirked in that half smile. “Hi,” she said. “Miss me?”
He leaned back, regarded her. “You know, when I asked you on a date, I meant soon. Not a month later.”
“I had some things to take care of.”
Cooper read her, not just the words, but the subtle tensing of her trapezius muscles, the sideways dart her eyes wanted to make but didn’t, the alert readiness with which she took in the room. Still a soldier, and not sure if you’re on the same side. Which was fair. He wasn’t sure himself. “Okay.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust—”
“I get it.”
“Thanks.”
“But you’re here now.”
“I’m here now.” She leaned across to help herself to half of his sandwich. “So, Nick. What are we going to do today?”
The answer, it turned out, was perfectly obvious to both of them, and they spent the afternoon knocking pictures off the walls of his apartment. Funny, it was only the second time they’d made love—and the third and semi-fourth—but they had an unselfconscious comfort that normally required long intimacy. Maybe it was because he’d been thinking about her all month, waiting for her to appear, and the anticipation had been akin to actually being together.
Or maybe it was just that their relationship already had enough complications. He was an abnorm who had spent his career hunting other abnorms for the government. She was a revolutionary whose methods verged on terrorism. Hell, the day they’d met, she’d held a gun on him, and that hadn’t been the last time.
On the other hand, she also saved your children’s lives and helped you bring down a president.
As the top agent at the Department of Analysis and Response, Cooper had built a career on intercepting terrorists, usually before they struck. But the one who had eluded him—had eluded the whole country—was also the most dangerous. John Smith was a charismatic leader and a strategic mastermind. He had also been blamed for the slaughter of countless innocents.
After a particularly horrifying attack in Manhattan that cost more than a thousand lives, Cooper had gone undercover to find Smith. It was during that time that he and Shannon had first connected, first as mortal enemies, then reluctant companions, and finally lovers. But when Cooper had finally tracked Smith down, the man opened his eyes to a horrifying truth—the real monster was Cooper’s mentor Drew Peters. The proof was a video in which Peters and the president of the United States planned a massacre in a popular Capitol Hill restaurant. It was a political maneuver, a way to polarize the country and place more power in the hands of the government. By blaming the attack on abnorm terrorists, Peters and those like him gained enormous power to control and even assassinate brilliants.
And all it cost was the lives of seventy-three innocent people, six of them children.
After Cooper discovered the truth, Drew Peters kidnapped his children and ex-wife as leverage. Shannon had helped Cooper rescue them. He had no doubt, none, that without her his kids would be dead.
So, yeah, complicated. He and Shannon were like those diagrams of overlapping circles. Parts of them might always be held back, but that middle intersection, oh man.
Regardless, the sex had been great, the shower had been great, the shower sex had been great. The conversation had been easy. She’d filled him in on her last month: time in New Canaan Holdfast, the enclave in Wyoming where abnorms were trying to build a new world. The mindset there, how people were getting worried. They talked about the tagging that was slated to begin next summer, the government’s plan to implant a tracking device against the carotid artery of every abnorm in America. Starting with tier ones like Shannon. Like himself.
Near as anyone could figure, the abnorm phenomenon started in early 1980, though it wasn’t detected until 1986, when scientific study revealed that for unknown reasons, one percent of all children were born “brilliant,” possessed of savant abilities. These gifts manifested in different ways; most were impressive but unthreatening, like the ability to multiply large numbers or perfectly play a song heard only once.
Others were world-shifting. Like John Smith, whose strategic gift had let him defeat three chess Grandmasters simultaneously—at age fourteen.
Like Erik Epstein, whose talent for data analysis had earned him a personal fortune of $300 billion and prompted the shuttering of the global financial markets.
Like Shannon, who could sense the vectors of the world around her so completely that she could move unseen, just by being where no one was looking.
Cooper’s own gift was for recognizing patterns in people. A kind of souped-up intuition. He could read body language, know by the motions of subcutaneous muscles what someone might be about to do. He could look at a target’s apartment, and based on the books they’d read and the way they organized their closet and what they kept on their nightstand, he could develop a good notion of where they might try to run. It had made him an exceptional hunter, but it came at some cost. The things he had seen haunted him. There was an irony to being an elite soldier desperate to prevent war.
You’re not a soldier anymore. And it’s not your war.
A mantra he’d been repeating for a month. But repetition hadn’t made it seem like fact.
“Did they interrogate you?” They were on the couch at that point, naked and sore, a blanket draped over them. Shannon had her head on his shoulder and one hand toying with his chest hair. “Your old agency?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you tell them about Peters?”
“They didn’t ask.”
“Seriously? The director of a DAR division goes off a twelve-story building, and they’re willing to let bygones be bygones?”
“I’m sure they knew it was me. But Quinn took care of that.” Cooper’s old partner had been the third member of the team that night. His friend had commandeered the building’s security center and erased all trace of their presence. “If there’d been explicit proof, they wouldn’t have had a choice. But without it, they’d rather avoid the scandal right now. They even offered me my old job back.” He felt her tense. “Relax. I declined.”
“So you’re unemployed?”
“We’re calling it a personal leave. Technically I’m still a government agent, but I’ve done enough for God and country. I need time to sort things out.”
Shannon nodded. His gift, never idle, never under his control, put a thought into his head. She has something to ask you. There’s an agenda here, besides this.
But when she spoke, all she asked was, “How are your kids?”
“Amazing. They both had nightmares for a while, but they’re so resilient, it seems like it’s behind us. Kate is in a nudist phase, keeps stripping off her clothes and running around the house giggling. And Todd has decided he wants to be president when he grows up. Says that if the last one did these things, we need a better one.”
“He’s got my vote.”
“Mine too.”
“And Natalie?” she asked, too casually.
“Good.” Cooper knew enough to leave it at that.
Later, they went for a walk. Magic hour, the sun almost down and the light coming from everywhere at once. It had been a mild autumn, the trees a riot of color that had only started to fall in the last week. Blue jeans weather, leaves crunching beneath their shoes, red cheeks and her hand warm in his. DC in the fall, was there anything better. They strolled the Mall, past the Reflecting Pool.