“Can you tell me what’s going to happen in the next fifteen seconds?”
“I don’t know what people are going to say, or if someone’s going to spill their drink. You don’t plan to spill your drink, so I can’t anticipate it. But I can see that the guy coming out of the bathroom is going to make it halfway down one row, then he and the waitress will be in each other’s way, and he’ll back around, only the guy sitting down right there is about to get up, so there will be a logjam. The waitress will stand still, because she’s going to the table beyond them, and the others will move out of her way.”
Cooper turned to watch. It played out exactly as she’d said. “That sounds exhausting.”
She cocked her head. “Most people launch straight into how cool it is, how they wish they could do it.”
“Well, it is, and I do. But you must get tired of all of it, all of the time.”
“Yours is on all the time.”
“Yeah, and I get tired of it,” he said. “It’s the dissonance. Between what they say and what they mean. Thank God I’m less of a reader and more about pattern recognition and gauging intent. I mean, I can tell when people are blatantly lying to me, when they’re bothered, that sort of thing, but I’ve met some readers who can tell you your deepest secrets after a two-minute conversation about the weather.”
“I have too. Most of them are shut-ins.”
“Wouldn’t you be? If I were surrounded by the secrets and lies of every person I saw, I’d stay away from people, too.”
“So your patterns. You can tell what people are about to do? Physically?”
“Yes,” he said. “And please don’t test it by tossing that fork at me.”
“Sorry.” She smiled and lifted her hand off the silverware. “No wonder John told us not to engage you.”
The offhand comment hit like a slap. “John—Smith? He knows who I am? By name?”
“Of course.” She was amused. “You thought it only worked one way? He knows all about you. I think he kind of respects you. He vetoed a hit plan on you last year, not too long before the thing at the Exchange. One of our guys wanted to plant a bomb in your car—what was it, a Charger?—to prove that even the DAR’s best wasn’t safe.”
“So what—I don’t understand. Why didn’t he?”
“John said no.”
“I mean, why didn’t John? Kill me?”
“Oh. He said that it would only piss the DAR off. That the cost was greater than the benefit.”
“He was right.”
“He also said that they couldn’t be sure your kids wouldn’t be in the car.”
Cooper opened his mouth. Closed it. Thought about how many times he’d climbed in the Charger, and how he never once checked for explosives. How many times Kate and Todd had ridden with him. Thought about the car in pieces, flames licking through the windows, and two tiny burned shapes in the back.
Shannon said, “So you must be quite a dancer.”
“What? No. No rhythm. I’d be a hell of a partner if someone led, I guess.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” she said, “case we ever end up on the floor.” She folded her napkin atop her half-finished slice of pizza. “So what’s next?”
“We need papers that will get us into New Canaan. Driver’s license, passports, credit cards. I know a guy on the West Side, does great work.”
She gazed at him appraisingly. “Why didn’t you go to him instead of Zane?”
Damn it. Careful, man. “There’s a difference between papers that can get me in the gate, and the power to erase my past, let me start again.”
“This guy a friend of yours?”
“No.”
Some of the neighborhoods and suburbs west of downtown Chicago were lovely, thriving places, tree-shaded and filled with families.