Halfway down the extravagantly decorated hallway, Shannon said, “Thanks, Cooper, way to help out.”
There didn’t seem to be any response to that, or at least none that wouldn’t lead to a fight, and he didn’t want to fight. So they walked side by side, the sound of their footfalls muffled by the carpet. She thumbed the button for the elevator while he thought back over what he’d seen. He was missing something. It was like a sore in his mouth that he couldn’t leave alone.
Her gift had made it impossible to pattern her. The constant chameleon shifting was clearly something she’d done all her life, and half an hour wasn’t enough time to break through it. But maybe it was a clue in itself; here was a woman who drew her identity from the wants of others, so much so that she had thrown herself at him just to confirm her own irresistibility. A woman delighted to receive the Shadow, a drug designed to scramble memories of pain.
It didn’t make sense. What kind of assassin would a junkie with ego issues make? The pieces didn’t add up to the sum.
That usually means that you’ve got the wrong sum.
The elevator arrived, and they climbed aboard. By the time it drew to a stop in the subterranean parking garage, he had the answer.
A junkie with ego issues that compelled her to fulfill anyone’s fantasy would make a lousy assassin.
But a very successful prostitute.
Cooper rubbed at his eyebrow. “I’m sorry,” he said. The way Shannon looked over at him, it felt as if she understood that he meant on more than one level. She started to say something, changed her mind.
After the raid on the hospital they’d picked up his car, and now he beeped the locks and climbed into the driver’s seat. Two concrete revolutions saw them to the surface. A heavy gate pulled aside, and then they were merging with Lake Shore Drive, Samantha’s expensive high-rise in the rearview.
“It’s not her fault,” Shannon said, her eyes locked on the road ahead. “She didn’t used to be like this. It’s getting to her.”
“She’s a call girl, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.” The word exhaled slow. City lights danced on her features.
“I thought she was…well, an assassin.”
“Samantha?” Shannon asked, startled. “No. I mean, she’s got a lot of powerful clients, and I’m sure if John asked her, she’d do it. She’d do anything for him. But he’d never ask.”
“Why does she do it?” He checked his mirror and changed lanes. “She’s obviously tier one. A reader like that, she could…”
“What? Work for the DAR?”
He looked over, but she kept her eyes ahead. Cooper turned back to the road. An image of Samantha kept appearing to him, that first moment she’d started on him, her tiny step forward and change of posture. There had been such strength in it. But of course, that was all part of the act. He wondered if between her need and her addiction, there was anything left of the real woman.
“Sorry,” Shannon said. Her hands were in her lap now, rubbing against one another. “It just gets to me, you know? Seeing her like that. You’re right, she’s tier one. And she’s sensitive, emotionally sensitive. Always was. So that gift for reading others, it translated to empathy. True empathy, trying to imagine what the world was like for others. She wanted to be an artist, or an actress. And even though she was at an academy, she wasn’t targeted the way some of them are, the way John was. She might have made it through okay. But then she turned thirteen.”