And then the darkness, close and heavy, as the hood slid over her head.
He had seen it, had heard the crowd and felt the gas, and yet he still barely believed it. How could that mission have been authorized? Why take Lee and Lisa and Alice? Why take them that way?
“It had to be us.” His voice thin and hollow against the weight of an hour’s accumulated silence. “They were there for us.”
Shannon didn’t respond. She sat at the edge of the passenger seat, shoulders turned away, as if trying to get as far from him as possible.
“I can’t believe it,” he said.
“Why not?” She spoke to the side window. “This is what it looks like.”
“Not normally. Somehow they knew we’d been there. They wouldn’t come in like that otherwise.”
She turned to look at him then, pure scorn on her face. “Are you serious?”
He searched for a response, but none of the words that came to mind were right. Everything he believed made a lie by the image of a hood going down over a child’s face.
“This is how it works, Cooper. Don’t you know that? Of course you do. You’ve ordered that before.”
“No. Never.”
“You’ve never sent faceless out? Top DAR agent, and you never ordered a mission?”
“Not like that.”
“Like what, then? Did your team bring flowers and cake?”
“My teams were called in on criminals. Terrorists. Abnorms who had hurt someone, or were about to hurt someone.”
“I’m sure that’s what those men were told, too. That Lee and his family were terrorists. Same way the Gestapo believed the people they rounded up were plotting against the state.”
“Come on. You can win any argument with the Gestapo or the Nazis. The DAR is not the same.”
“It look like it’s heading in the right direction to you?”
“Okay, first, I’m not with the department anymore, remember? Second, maybe this wouldn’t have happened if you guys would stop blowing up buildings and assassinating people. I hate what I just saw. It makes me physically sick. But you can’t throw a bomb and then get upset if people don’t like you very much. Those men thought they were going to catch the people responsible for an explosion that killed more than a thousand people.”
“Whatever,” she said, and turned away again.
A thought struck him. “Wait a second. I didn’t know Lee and Lisa. But you did.”
“So?”
“So how would the DAR know unless they were tipped off?”
“By who?”
“How about Samantha? Or…” He paused, let her work it out.
“You’re suggesting John called the DAR and told them where to find us?”
“Did he know about Lee and Lisa?”
“It doesn’t matter. He would never have done that.”
“Maybe Samantha hasn’t gotten the message to him yet. Maybe it was his attempt to take you out.”
“Not a chance.”
“Shannon—”
“I mean it, Cooper. Drop it.”
He opened his mouth, wanting to fight. Wanting to burn out the anger inside of him in a battle, the two of them going for blood. He wanted to tell her about a pink stuffed animal he’d seen amidst the rubble in New York. But then he imagined the scene in Lee’s apartment, the door blowing open without warning, the faceless streaming in, his former colleagues shouting, throwing the family down, shackling them on their kitchen floor, the same kitchen he’d stood in last night and chatted with friendly strangers.
It’s on John Smith. If there wasn’t terrorism, there wouldn’t be tactical response teams. Smith’s hands were stained with the blood of thousands. Lee and Lisa and Alice were just the latest.
He found himself remembering the evening of March 12, President Walker’s speech to the nation. Cooper had caught it the next day, in a hotel outside Norfolk, already on the run. He’d watched it with an edgy stomach, afraid of what he might hear, that the president would be preaching fire and brimstone against abnorms. Instead, the man had urged tolerance. What were the words?
“It’s said that the strongest partnerships are formed in adversity. Let us face this adversity not as a divided nation, not as norm and abnorm, but as Americans.
Let us work together to build a better future for our children.
And let us never forget the pain of this day. Let us never yield to those who believe political power flows from the barrel of a gun; to the cowards who happily murder children to achieve their aims.
For them, there can be—will be—no mercy.”
He’d listened to that with a swell of pride, the patriotic equivalent of a hard-on. And the words still moved him. They represented the reason he was undercover now, the reason he hadn’t seen his children in six months.
He had to find John Smith. And for him, no mercy.
The words were old, a mantra he’d repeated every night. What surprised him was the small voice that followed it. The one that said, And then what? Back to the DAR? Call in more tactical response teams? Can you really return to that?
Shannon said, “What will happen to them?”
“They’ll be taken to the local field office. Questioned.”
“Questioned.”
“Yes,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ll tell the agents about us right away. That will make things go easier. They might get off with a warning.”
“Don’t lie to me, Cooper.”
He glanced at her, saw the intensity in her eyes. Turned back to the road. “They’ll be charged. The bar and apartment will be seized. One or both of them will go to prison for harboring fugitives.”
“And Alice?”
Cooper gritted his teeth.
“Oh Jesus.” Shannon buried her face in her hands. “An academy?”
“It’s…it’s possible. It depends if she tests as tier one.”
“And even if she doesn’t, she’ll be marked. They’ll track her. Now that the microchip bill passed, they’ll put a tag in her throat. Embedded up against the carotid, so even micro-surgery can’t remove it. She’ll never be safe again.”
He wanted to say something comforting, something to make it better, but he couldn’t think what that would be.
“My God. This is my fault. I should never have brought you there.”
“There’s nothing we can do for them now. We just have to get to Wyoming and get this settled. Get ourselves clear. Then maybe.”
“Right.” Her laugh had no humor in it. “God damn it.” She stared out the window, but he doubted she saw anything. “I sure hope you’re worth it.”
“What?”
The hesitation was tiny, a clenching in her trapezii, a flutter of the fingers. Tiny, but there. “I said I hope it’s worth it. Getting to Wyoming.”
Cooper held his own reaction back, tapping the steering wheel. Had she just misspoken? Possible. But that hesitation…she was holding something back. Hiding something.
Yeah, well, she’s on the other side, remember?
He thought about calling her on it, decided against it. The events of the last twenty-four hours—my God, was that all it had been?—had generated a camaraderie between them. And yeah, she was attractive, in every sense of the word. But their friendship, or whatever it was, wouldn’t survive this mission. It wasn’t as if he could betray her, kill John Smith, and then see if she wanted to grab a cup of coffee sometime.