The world had gone wobbly and fast, everything blurring and blending. He felt like his life had become the video loop, pause, scrub back, pause, scrub back, nothing certain, everything changeable. The man was locked in his sights. Smith was nervous, that was clear. He might hope that Cooper wouldn’t do it, but he wasn’t certain.
Everything in Cooper screamed to pull the trigger, to take the shot and drop John Smith and be done with it. To end this before…what?
Smith spoke as if finishing Cooper’s thought. “The thing is, if you do, you won’t find out what happens next. You won’t learn the truth. Though you’ve already figured out the first bit. Haven’t you?”
One gentle squeeze of the trigger, then another as swiftly as possible. Hollow-point ammunition tearing through soft flesh, lead splintering to shivering razor blades, wide gaping wounds. John Smith dead. Mission accomplished.
That was all he had to do.
Pull the trigger!
He tried to speak, but only raw sound came out.
“Haven’t you?”
Cooper said, “The video is fake.”
“Yes.”
“You were never at the Monocle.”
“I was, actually. Half an hour earlier. I met Senator Hemner. I had a gin and tonic, he had four scotches. He agreed to support some changes to a piece of legislation, an early bill limiting testing of gifted. I thanked him, and I left.”
Take the shot take the shot take the shot take the…
“Look at me,” Smith said. “I know you can tell when someone is blatantly lying to you. Am I lying?”
A thousand times he’d watched that massacre. Looked for every clue, for any hint that could lead him to the man who had perpetrated it. He’d noticed the red light, but not that it should have been blocked. And how would he? It was only when compared to another version that it even seemed odd.
His version could be a fake. He’s had time to do that, nothing but time—
But the official version is the one with the problem.
“There’s more,” Smith said. “A lot more. But you’re going to have to put that down to hear it.”
“Nick,” Shannon said, her voice low but firm, tinged with a note of hope, maybe, or regret for something that hadn’t happened yet but might. “Please.”
He glanced at her. Saw that she would shoot him. Saw that she didn’t want to.
A sudden wave of exhaustion swept him. A sense that the props that held him up had been kicked out.
But if this is true, it…
He stopped the thought. But lowered the gun.
“Thank you,” Smith said.
“Fuck you,” Cooper said.
“Fair enough. I’d feel the same, in your position.”
Shannon said, “Cooper, how about you set the gun on the table? I’ll set mine down, too.”
He looked at her. She was back to calling him Cooper, he noticed, though it had been Nick a moment before. Funny, only Natalie and Drew Peters called him Nick. And now Shannon, exactly twice.
“How about,” he said, “you go first?”
He waited for her to look at Smith. Told himself that if she did, he would snap the gun up and fire, execute his target.
Shannon bit her lip. Her eyes never left his.
She dropped the barrel of the gun, let it dangle from one hand.
Huh.
Like a man in a dream, Cooper figured what the hell, set the safety, then tossed the gun on the table. What was the worst that would happen? They’d kill him?
They already have.
The thought came unbidden, a voice in a dark room. And just what the hell did it mean? He didn’t know.
“Okay,” he said. Trying for something like casual, but not sure he’d hit it. “Fine. Let’s talk.”
Smith seemed almost to sag, the tension streaming out of him. “Thank you.”
“You weren’t sure I wouldn’t kill you, were you?”
“No. It was a risk. Calculated, but a risk.”
“Why take it?”
“I wanted to meet you. No reward without risk.”
“What did you mean when you said you weren’t John Smith?”
“My dad’s last name wasn’t Smith. My mother never named me John.”
“I know, you got it in the academy, boo-hoo. But you—”