“That part I’ll buy.” Cooper clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I’m going to check on Vasquez.”
“Calm him down, will you? He’s sweating so bad I’m afraid he might somehow shake that tracker loose after all.”
“And thank you for that image.”
“Here for you, boss.” Quinn yawned and put his feet up on the polished wood table.
Cooper strolled down the hall, passing a gold logo with the names of three white guys followed by LLC. The law office was in a building overlooking the Metro station where the meet was to take place. Quinn had reached out to them yesterday, and the partners had been delighted to help Equitable Services. Cooper had met one of them earlier, a trim guy with a halo of white hair who had wished him good hunting.
Good hunting. Shit.
Two guards stood outside the corner office, their tactical blacks today replaced by bland business suits. The submachine guns were still ready-slung. He nodded at them. One said, “Sir,” and opened the office door.
Inside, Bryan Vasquez stood by the window, his hands against the glass. At the sound, he jumped, turning with an expression that was part guilt and part nerves.
Fever Orange, Cooper decided to name the color. He thanked the guard, then stepped inside.
“You startled me,” Bryan said. He had one hand pressed against the glass, the other to his chest. Ghostly white dots of condensation marked where the pads of his fingers had rested on the window. There were sweat stains at his armpits, and his chest rose and fell swiftly. He licked his lips as he shifted his weight from right to left.
Cooper slid his hands into his pockets and—
He’s dedicated to his sister, but he’s also a believer. He’s worried about his own safety but would never admit it. He’s attracted to the idea of plots and secret worlds, to comrades in arms.
He needs a strong hand, but not so strong he shatters. He needs to be pumped up and sent out to do his piece for a better world.
—stepped into the room. “Sorry about that. I always get jumpy before these things, too.” He pulled out the chair, spun it around, then sat with his arms on the back. “This part drives me crazy.”
“What part?”
“The waiting. Too much time in your head. Once things start, it gets better. You know what you have to do, and you just do it. It’s easier. Don’t you think?”
Bryan Vasquez cocked his head and turned to lean against the window with his arms crossed. “I don’t know. I’ve never had to betray something I believe in to save my sister before.”
“Fair point.” He let the silence hang. Bryan looked like a man who expected to be punched; slowly he realized the blow wasn’t in the air. A faint wind howled along the edge of the glass, and somewhere far away, a car horn. Finally, he moved to the desk and slumped awkwardly in the chair on the other side, all angles and elbows.
“I know this is hard,” Cooper said. “But you’re doing the right thing.”
“Sure.” The word drifting across the table.
“Can I tell you something?” He waited until the other man looked up. “Everything you said the other day about the way gifted are treated? I agree.”
“Right.”
“I’m an abnorm.”
Bryan’s face crinkled in conflicting directions: surprise and disbelief and anger. Finally the guy said, “What is it for you?”
“Pattern recognition, a sort of souped-up intuition. I read intention. That can be really specific, like knowing where someone is going to throw a punch. But personal patterns work, too; I get to know somebody, my gift forms a picture of them, helps me guess what they’ll do.”
“So if you’re gifted, what are you doing—”
“—working for the DAR?” Cooper shrugged. “Actually, pretty much the same reasons you helped your sister.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not. I want my children to live in a world where abnorms and straights coexist. The difference is, I don’t think you get there by blowing things up. Especially when one group vastly outnumbers the other. See, normal people, like you,” he gestured with palms together, “if you decided to, you could wipe out all the people like me. Every one of us, or close enough it wouldn’t matter. It’s a numbers game. You have ninety-nine to every one of us.”
“But that’s exactly why—” Bryan Vasquez stopped. “I mean.”
“I know how you feel about the way Alex is treated. But you’re an engineer. Think logically. The relationship between norms and brilliants, it’s gunpowder. You really want to strike sparks?”
He pulled the stamp drive from his pocket, set it on the desk, halfway between them. “Don’t forget,” Cooper said, “you’re not doing this for me. You’re doing it for Alex.”
It was a calculated play, backing up the philosophical get-out-of-jail-free card with a personal imperative. And it was far from the first time he had lied to a suspect.
So why am I feeling guilty about it?
The academy. Seeing that place had stirred up issues he thought he’d made peace with. Cooper pushed away thoughts of the playground, of the woman with the placard, and locked down his expression.
Bryan Vasquez took the stamp drive.
Cooper said, “Let’s go.”
“This is Quarterback. The ball is in play; repeat, Delivery Boy is moving. Headquarters, confirm.”
“Confirmed,” Bobby Quinn’s voice crackled in his ear. “Both signals are strong.”
The square across the street looked as planned and uninviting as ever, the black branches of manicured trees tossing in the wind. A couple of hardy souls huddled around the entrance to the nearest building, rocking from foot to foot as they sucked on cigarettes. The entrance to Metro Center Station had a steady stream of traffic. A row of newspaper dispensers, bright red and orange and yellow, ran along a low wall; at the end of it a man in a wheelchair shook a paper cup at passersby.
Cooper kept his stance casual, pitched his voice low. “God, what have you got?”
“Delivery Boy is heading north on 13th.”
“Clear view?”
“God sees all, my son.”
Everything is in place. You’re about to be a step closer to catching the most dangerous man in America.
Across the street, the agent at the FedEx truck finished loading his dolly and started for the near building. In a bench on the square, two women in business casual chatted as they picked at salads. One looked like the assistant principal of a middle school; the other was petite and lithe as a soccer player.
“How you doing, Luisa?”
“Never thought I’d say this,” dabbing at her lips with a napkin to cover the motion of her lips, “but I actually wish I was back in that cow-humping Texas backwater we just left.”
Luisa Abrahams was barely over five feet, pretty but not beautiful, famous for talking like a trucker, and perhaps the most stubborn person he knew. He’d picked her for his team after a mess of an op where her agent in charge had lost communication with her. The AIC hadn’t realized that her cover was blown and she needed support, so Luisa had chased a target two miles on foot, finally run him down, finished the job, and then called the AIC using her target’s cell phone. The insults she’d hurled at him circulated the agency for weeks.
Now she sat on a bench alongside Valerie West, the two of them pretending to be on their lunch. Val was a whiz with data analysis, but nervous in the field. Cooper was watching her shred her napkin, and weighing whether it was worth it to say something when Luisa touched the other woman’s knee, said something off-mic. Valerie nodded, shrugged her shoulders back, and tucked the napkin in her pocket. Good. Normally Cooper would have discouraged a romantic relationship between teammates, but the two often seemed better agents because of it.