“No one says no. Who do you think you are? Do you know how many men would kill for the chance to be with me?” She planted hands against his chest and shoved ineffectually. “You don’t say no. Not to me.”
She wound up again, and this time he caught it. In the process, he noticed Shannon, somehow standing in the center of the room he’d been sure was empty.
He dropped Samantha’s arm. “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
Her beautiful face had turned red with fury. “Get out. Both of you.”
They did. As the door closed, he took a last glance over his shoulder. Samantha had the pill bottle open and was shaking tablets into one perfect palm.
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.”
Cooper’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Who was he?”
“Her mentor,” Shannon said. “You know how academies work? Every kid has a mentor, always a normal, who is their, well, everything. The academies are all about setting us at each other’s throats. The mentor is the one person you’re supposed to be able to trust. Of course, they’re the real monsters, but you don’t understand that as a kid. They’re just adults who are nice to you. And since you don’t have a mom or a dad or brothers or sisters or even a name anymore…” She shrugged. “All children need to love a grown-up. Normal or twist, it’s in the DNA.”
Cooper had that helpless anger again, the feeling he’d experienced when he’d visited the academy, when he’d imagined throwing the director through the goddamn window. He was starting to wish he had.
“Anyway, around the time she turned thirteen, she started looking like she does now. And she had that gift, right? She knew what people wanted. What men wanted.” She took a deep breath, then exhaled. “He convinced her it was love. Even promised to sneak her out of the academy as soon as he could arrange it. And until then, he gave her things to make it easier to bear. Vicodin at first, but he moved her up the ladder fast. By the time he did take her out, she was snorting heroin.
“He set her up in an apartment, but he didn’t pretend to be in love anymore. Just let her get a taste of withdrawal. Then he introduced her to a ‘friend’ of his, and told her what she needed to do to for her next hit. She’s been doing it ever since.”
“Jesus,” Cooper said. When he’d looked at her before, he’d seen raw need in the shape of a woman. Now he saw a teenage girl, strung out and sold by her father and lover. “Is she—the mentor, is he—”
“No. After John graduated the academy, he went looking for her.” Shannon turned to him for the first time since they’d gotten in the car, and he saw that signature smile, lit brake-light red. “Funny thing, her mentor vanished. Never seen again.”
Good for you, John. You may be a terrorist with hands bloody to the elbow. But you did that right, at least.
“She’s independent now, no pimp or anything. But she never really left her mentor behind. She could have been an amazing artist, or a counselor, a healer, but that’s not what the normal world wanted from her. It’s not what the normal world had trained her to do.
“What the normal world wanted was blowjobs on demand from an abnorm whore willing to be their daughter. They don’t even have to feel bad about it. After all, they never said they wanted to screw their daughter; she sensed it. And as for the women, well,” Shannon shrugged, “she’s just a twist.”
She went silent then, the story hanging between them like cigarette smoke as he navigated the darkened city streets. He wanted to argue with her, to tell her that the world didn’t have to be that way, that not all normals fit the picture she was painting.
But then, enough did to keep Samantha in an expensive, well-decorated prison as long as she lived. Or until her beauty began to fade.
It was the world. The only one they had. No one said it was perfect.
“Anyway,” Shannon said. “Even with that bit at the end, she’ll do what she promised. We should be safe from my side, at least until we get to New Canaan. Speaking of which, that’s going to take shiny new identities.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m on it. There’s just one thing we have to get first.”