She stared at him for a long moment, and then one corner of her lips quirked up into a smile. “Gimme the drink already.”
The world’s tiniest ice tray was in the freezer. He cracked it, shook the cubes into a plastic cup, splashed Smirnoff over them. He passed it to her, then poured his bourbon. The soothing warmth went right to work on his aches and shakes.
“So how long do we need to hang out here?”
“A couple of days.”
“A couple of days?”
“I’ve got some canned soup in the closet, we’ll eat it cold. But I was only planning for one, so we’ll have to ration our provisions.”
Her eyes went so wide they seemed to bulge. He cracked, smiled, said, “I’m kidding. Just till the evening rush, so we can get lost in the crowd.”
The Girl Who Walks Through Walls laughed. It wasn’t a throaty or sultry thing, a laugh as a pose; it was an honest sound of amusement. Cooper said, “That’s better.”
“Than what?”
“Than calling each other names. Which reminds me—”
“My name is Shannon.”
“Nick Cooper.”
“I’ve heard,” she said dryly. “So what, we just walk out of here and that’s that?”
“Were you thinking we’d pick flower arrangements, send out invitations?”
“Thing is, Nick—”
“Cooper.”
“—you’ve put me in a bit of a bind.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re not dead.”
“Pardon?”
“I came to kill you. But you’re not dead. And to anyone watching, it wouldn’t have looked like I was trying to kill you. It would have looked like we were working together.”
“So?”
“So the DAR already has me marked as a target for the Exchange. Now that they’ve seen us together, I’m probably higher priority than you. And now they know I’m here. Not only that, but until I can get to my people, they’ll assume I’ve switched over.”
“Why? Didn’t they know you were coming for me?”
She shook her head. “This was personal. I didn’t tell anyone. And now it’ll look like just as the bad guys were descending, I hooked up with Equitable Services’ top gun and we made a daring escape. What am I going to do, say, don’t worry, all Cooper and I did was talk poetry and revolutionary politics?”
“How would they even know you were there?”
“We have people in the DAR.”
“Really.” He sipped his drink. He’d known that, worked it out by her appearance on the platform, but there was no reason to let her know that. “And your moles will report that you joined up with me.”
“That’s right. This burns me. In both directions. You burned me.”
Cooper shrugged. “Sorry?”
“Listen, you smug—”
“Lady, I didn’t burn you. You came to kill me. Not my fault you picked the wrong time. Besides, I could have left you. If it weren’t for me, you’d be shivering in a white, well-lit room right now.”
“And if it weren’t for me, you’d be bleeding out on the platform at LaSalle and Van Buren.”
They stood on opposite sides of the bed, both tense and braced, bickering like an old married couple, and there was something so backward about it all, about this woman—this terrorist—having saved his life from his former colleagues, about her referring to them as the bad guys, and about the fact that in terms of his continued survival she had a point, and it was all so absurd that he found himself chuckling.
“What?”
“Long day.” He took another sip of whiskey and then crossed to the television—it was an old flatscreen, not a tri-d—and turned it to CNN. There was no way to know if this would make the news, and even if it did, it probably wouldn’t be for hours yet.