“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.”