The announcers were talking over one another, and he muted two of them, left CNN running.
“—a terrorist attack on Davis Academy, an institution for advanced study located in West Virginia. The academy is an elite facility for the most powerful gifted—”
Davis. No wonder it looked familiar. That was the academy he had visited last year. The one where he had seen children manipulated into brutal fistfights. Learned that the kids were bugged so that their deepest secrets could be used against them. Where names were taken away and identities destroyed and personalities turned more docile, more fragile, and more compliant.
Where his daughter, Kate, would have ended up.
Holy shit. Shan. I should have trusted you.
“—terrorists stormed the gates and subdued the personnel, killing an undisclosed number of guards and teachers, including Charles Norridge, the facility director. Whereabouts of the more than three hundred students of the school are unknown at this time.”
Cooper’s hand flew to his mouth, a laugh bursting free. He remembered the anger that had pumped through his veins the day he listened to Norridge, the fantasy he’d had about hurling the director through the window. That was the day his eyes had started opening, the day he’d realized that the DAR wasn’t all he had hoped it might be.
He swapped the audio feed from CNN to the Tesla pirate station.
“—liberating more than three hundred kidnapped children before planting explosives and blowing the shit out of the symbol of horrific oppression that was Davis Academy. The chief torturer, Charles Norridge, was killed in the attack, and we all feel real sad about that. Bravo to the brave freedom fighters who pulled this off. You’ll never pay for a drink again. Mama! Daddy! Your babies are free!”
As a representative of the government, he knew he was supposed to be horrified. Knew that this was an attack on the status quo. An act of terrorism that would further upset the already delicate balance of the country.
And he just didn’t care. The Tesla pirate station had it right: bravo. And it was Shannon’s doing. What had she said last night, in the midst of their fight? “I’m going to West Virginia. I’m going to do the best thing I’ve ever done.”
My God. What a woman.
Right, Coop. But remember what she said next? “Watch the news. And fuck off.”
The first reaction was bile in his throat and an oh shit feeling, a sense that he’d screwed up. But the second was—
Before that. You were accusing her of trying to steal bioweapons—which, by the way, you know Shannon wouldn’t do—and she said she was there for something else.
A magic potion.
The phrase must have stuck in your head, because that’s what you said this afternoon.
That was what made Millie laugh.
—more important. He muted the news.
“Daria. Retask. Do you have access to the information stolen from the DAR earlier this week?”
“Nick, I have a topical list, but no details. That information was sequestered—”
“Yeah, I know. It was primarily information about research facilities, right?”
“Nick, that’s correct.”
“Run a correlation pattern against all Epstein Industries expenditures. I want to know if Epstein was funding any of the labs that Shan—that the terrorist stole information about.”
“Nick, there’s one match. The Advanced Genomics Institute.”
He leaned back, feeling that tickle in his brain that told him his gift was close to finding a pattern. “Tell me more.”
CHAPTER 26
The last time he’d been in New Canaan it had been the height of summer, and even so the evenings had been chilly. Now, midnight in late November, it was twenty degrees. Even standing in a crowd, the wind on the airfield cut through the leather jacket he’d brought, and he stomped his feet and blew into his hands.
Too bad you ditched your security detail. They probably could have lent you a proper coat.
It had not been the most diplomatic move, slipping out the second-story window of his loaner office and hailing an electric cab. But he wasn’t on the airfield as an ambassador.
With a last roar, the 737 came to a stop on the runway. Ground crew drove a stair car up to the side of the plane as the engines wound down. Around him, the crowd surged with barely restrained desire.
“Can you believe it?”
The man who’d spoken was in his midfifties, his face leathery and lean. No one had water fat in Wyoming, but it was more than that. The guy looked like someone who had fallen asleep and woken up in misery every day for a long time. Cooper said, “Son or daughter?”
“Son,” the man said. “Peter. He’ll be fifteen now.”
The more Cooper looked, the more he realized he’d been wrong about the man’s age. Biologically, he was probably forty. It wasn’t hard to figure out why he looked so ragged. The Treffert-Down test that identified abnorms was administered at age eight. The man hadn’t seen his son for seven years.
“We never gave up. Every year on his birthday we’d have a cake, try to sing. Last year my Gloria died.” The guy’s voice was soft. “After that, it got harder to believe.”
It got harder to believe. Truer words. Seven years ago, Cooper had just been promoted to agent status in Equitable Services. He had been a believer then, eager to hunt the targets Drew Peters had given him. While he’d never been affiliated with the academies—hadn’t seen one until last year—it would take the worst kind of self-deception to suggest that his work hadn’t landed children in them.
For all Cooper knew, he had been instrumental in stealing this man’s son.
The thought was a railroad spike of guilt. For a moment, Cooper’s defenses fell away, and he realized the full weight of the stakes he played for. Even striving every day to do the right thing, working to create a better world for his children, he had made unforgivable mistakes, caused unimaginable pain. And meanwhile, despite his best efforts, every day the world had gotten more complicated, the solution farther out of reach. It was, indeed, getting harder to believe.
With a clunk, the door of the 737 opened. The crowd chatter died, leaving just the whine of the dying jets and the howl of the wind.
A figure stepped out onto the stairs. Shannon wore the same black fatigues he’d seen in the news footage and held a little girl in her arms. Even from a distance, something about her looked different. When he saw the girl’s face, Cooper understood.
It might be getting harder to believe, but Shannon had found a way.
The scene was happy chaos, and even desperate as he was to talk to Shannon, Cooper waited. Children streamed off the plane, the little ones first. Their reaction was uniform; they froze at the doorway of the jet, staring, hoping, straining. Some of them saw parents in the crowd and raced down the stairs into their arms, mothers and fathers openly weeping, crushing their stolen children to their chests, swearing never to let go.
Others milled, the hope in their eyes draining slowly. Of course—not every parent would be here. At least, not yet. Cooper had a feeling several hundred families were about to uproot their lives and join the NCH, and screw the consequences.
It was the older ones he really felt sorry for. The teenagers had spent half their lives in that academy. It had become their reality, and they had the darty eyes and nervous bearing of felons released from prison.
Except felons are allowed to keep their names.