“Isn’t he? A hit man with a sense of humor.”
“I heard a hilarious story,” Cooper said, “about a building that blew up. Killed a thousand people. Regular civilians just going about their day.”
Something tightened in Shannon, her body clenching like a fist. The reaction fast and deep and uncalculated. “I told you,” she said. “I. Did not. Do that.”
Either she was one of the all-time great liars, or she really hadn’t blown up the Exchange.
Cooper thought back to that day six months ago. Her single-minded focus as she went into the building—into it, not out of it—and her surprise at seeing him, the way she had proclaimed her innocence. What had she said? Something like, “Wait, you don’t—” and then he’d hit her, not liking it but not daring take the risk.
Was it possible she really had been there to stop it?
No. Get your head straight. Just because she’s telling the truth as she believes it doesn’t mean that she knows what really happened. Smith is a chess master. She’s a piece.
“All right,” Cooper said. “But I’m not a hit man. So how about a truce?”
She opened her mouth, closed it. Nodded slightly.
Samantha looked back and forth between them. “What are you caught up in, Shannon?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Why are you with a former DAR agent?”
“That’s complicated.”
“Do you trust him?”
“No,” she said. “But he could have left me to be arrested, and he didn’t.”
“Ladies?” Cooper smiled blandly. “I’m standing right here.”
“I need your help, Sam.” Shannon leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “I’m in trouble.”
The smaller woman looked back and forth between them. Her fingers were tight on the medicine bottle. Finally, she set it down on the counter and moved to the opposite couch. “Tell me.”
Shannon did. Cooper sat beside her, listening but also taking in the details of Samantha’s room. The novels were all paperbacks, a double-stacked riot of cracked spines and worn pages. Science fiction, fantasy, thrillers. There were no personal photos, and the knickknacks looked like they’d been bought at the same time as the furniture rather than collected across a lifetime. A perfect cover apartment, the kind of place you could walk away from. The kind a spy would favor.
Or an assassin.
The leap was intuitive, but he knew it was correct. She was an assassin.
My God, how good she must be. A woman who could sense whatever a guy wanted, any guy? There was no one she couldn’t get close to. No one she couldn’t get alone and vulnerable. How many men has this sweet little thing seduced and murdered?
Shannon finally reached their shaky bargain: Cooper would see her safely to Wyoming, and in trade she would get him a chance to speak to Erik Epstein.
“That’s dangerous,” Samantha said. “Both sides are going to be after you.”
“Cooper knows DAR protocol. And he’s got as much reason to avoid them as I do.”
“Are you sure?”
“Still sitting right here,” Cooper said.
“This afternoon was no act,” Shannon said. “Those agents were trying to kill him.”
The other woman nodded. “And you want me to convince our side of it.”
“Just tell them,” Shannon said, “that I came to you, and what I said. That I’m coming in. Tell him.”
Samantha’s reaction to that last was subtle but sure. A tiny lean. A relaxing of the muscles in her crossed thighs. A stall in her exhale.
She cares about John Smith. Loves him, maybe.
And she knows how to reach him.
It took all his will and all his skill to keep that recognition from his face.
“You don’t have to believe me,” Shannon said. “Just tell him. Will you do that?”
“For you?” Samantha smiled. “Of course.”
“Thank you. I owe you.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Well then, can I ask another favor?” Shannon’s lips quirked up in what he was starting to recognize as a trademark expression. “Can I use your bathroom?” She jerked a thumb at him. “You should see the one in his hotel room.”
Cooper leaned back. Put his hands at his side. It felt weird. How did he normally hold his hands?
From the other couch, Samantha watched him, something feline in her pose, a languorous, predatory note. Her legs were crossed at the knee, and she was kicking one idly, muscles rippling beneath the smooth skin of her calf. She was barefoot, her toes painted that clear color. Nude, he thought it was called.
“Do I make you nervous?”
“No,” he said. “I just don’t like being read.” He folded his hands. That felt weird, too. Was this how other people felt around him? How Natalie had felt every day of their relationship?
“Have you ever been with a reader, Nick?”
“Cooper,” he said. “I’ve known lots of readers.” He stood and walked to the window. Her apartment was on the thirty-second floor, and the view was a partner to the one he’d had at the Continental Hotel, only hers faced east. He could just make out the tracings of waves on the lake, gray on midnight blue. Layered atop it, the ghostly reflection of the room.
“I didn’t say known.” In the glass, she rose, smoothing her skirt as she walked over. “I said been with.”
Cooper didn’t respond. She moved in behind him, small enough that his bulk blocked her reflection. But he could smell her and sense her. “Listen.” He turned. “I appreciate what you’re doing for us. But drop the sex-goddess act.”
“It’s not an act. You want the real me?” She traced the outline of her body with her hands, not quite touching. “This is it. I’m the fantasy. What do you want, Cooper? Whatever it is, I’ll be it. Hard or soft, helpless or jaded, ashamed or wanton or anything in between. I can be the pliable young innocent or the Amazon only you can conquer.” She stepped closer. “You don’t even have to tell me, to ruin the fantasy by saying it out loud. Just let me see you.”
“You’re serious. You want to go off to the bedroom right now?”
“Shannon won’t mind. She and I have fooled around before.”
That image was almost enough to make his control slip. He took a deep breath, pushed aside the hastily assembled fantasy. “See, I think this is just a game to you. You want to win.”
“No games. I want to know you.” She put a hand against his chest. “You turn me on. It’s your strength. You’re so contained. Show me who you are. No one needs to know. I can be your second-grade teacher, or your daughter’s girlfriend, the one you won’t even admit to yourself that you want.”
“My daughter,” Cooper said, “is four.”
“Just open up to me. I’ll sense what your body needs. I know it before you do. I know it even when you don’t. What’s reality compared to that?”
He looked down at her, at her deep brown eyes and soft skin, at the swell of her breasts and the way the skirt caught at the line of her thigh, at her tumble of golden hair and her pedicured feet. She was stunning, the distilled image of desire, Aphrodite writ in miniature with the corner of her lip caught between bright teeth.
But beneath it all, he could see the need curling inside her, slippery and fanged as an eel.
“Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll pass.”
She had been stretching up, offering pouting lips, and for a moment didn’t process his words. When they hit it was like electric current, her face clenching and eyes sparking. “What?” When he didn’t respond, she said it again, angrier this time. “What?”
He saw it coming, but he let her have the slap, her hand whistling through the air to smack his cheek.