“I know.”
“You’ll be more hated than John Smith ever was. Because you were one of us, and you betrayed us. Every resource in the department’s power will be aimed at you. There will be thousands of people hunting you. Literally thousands. If you’re captured, I can reveal the truth. But—”
“But no one is going to try to capture me. If they have a shot, they’ll take it.”
“That’s right. And meanwhile, you’re going to be on your own. No resources. No requisitioned helicopters, no phone taps, no surveillance teams. No backup. Nothing.”
Cooper just sipped his scotch. Nothing Peters was saying was a surprise to him. He’d had time to think it out on the flight down.
All commercial flights had been grounded, so he’d badged his way onto a Marine Corps C-130 and ridden in with a squad of jarheads. The boys were extra gung ho under the circumstances, but he could see the hurt under the oo-rah. America wasn’t used to being hit this way, to an attack in the heart of its strength.
The response would be devastating. There would need to be a blood payment. The country would demand it.
It wouldn’t be long before it got out that the bombing was John Smith’s work. And in America’s overwrought state, most people wouldn’t make the distinction between abnorms and abnorm terrorists.
After all, it was abnorms who had forced the stock market to close in the first place. Abnorms who were taking the lead in every field. Abnorms who were making the rest of humanity feel small and secondary.
You can’t stop the future. All you can do is pick a side. Alex Vasquez’s voice in his head.
Not an easy choice. And more complicated than she would have admitted. Was he a government agent hunting terrorists, or a father whose daughter was in danger? Was he a soldier or a civilian? If he believed in America, did that mean he had to accept the academies?
All right, Alex. I’ve made my choice. But right now, this hour in the sky, this hour is for me. He’d leaned against the metal skin of the airplane, felt the thrum of the turboprops, the cold of the air rushing past, and he let himself think of what he was about to risk. All that he might lose. The staggering costs of the plan he was proposing.
And when he landed, he’d pushed that kind of thinking aside and begun to act. Now he stared across the table at the director, at the man’s pale, calm eyes, and he said, “I can do this.”
“There will be no going back. None. You succeed or you die.”
“I know.”
“Even a chance to get rid of John Smith is worth a gamble. If we don’t, he may well tip this country into outright civil war.” Peters looked away and tapped his fingers lightly on his desk. The news channels were playing footage of the explosion, and reflected in his rimless glasses, the Exchange fell again and again.
Finally, he said, “Last chance, son. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. I’ll kill John Smith for you.” Cooper set his glass on the desk and leaned forward. “But there’s one condition.”
Natalie’s house.
A tantalizing hint of silhouette flickered across one of the curtains. The lights were on, and the windows glowed buttery warm. Del Ray was too much part of the city for the sky to be truly black, but the queasy purple of light pollution was lonelier than night. It made those windows, and the life within them, all the more attractive.
Cooper stared out of the windshield. Took a deep breath, blew it out. There was an emptiness in his stomach, a hollowness he hadn’t felt in years. A childish sort of yearning pain, the way he’d felt when he was twelve and all the rewards he’d ascribed to adulthood—love, freedom, certainty—seemed a million years away. The emptiness of the morning bed after a glittering dream of girls and adventure.