Brilliance Read Online Free PDF Page B

three. Asshole.
    —reinforced glass windows centered in them. Two of the first three were occupied by nervous men and women sitting at plain tables under bright light. There was a rumor—a joke? Hard to tell at the DAR—that the fluorescent bulbs were the result of a multimillion-dollar program specially engineered to offer the most hopeless light possible. Cooper didn’t know about that, but they did make everyone look two-weeks dead. Even Roger Dickinson, who had the kind of strong-jawed good looks of quarterbacks in football movies.
    The heavy door of interview room four muffled the shouting within, rendering the words indistinct. But through the window Cooper could see Dickinson leaning over the table, one hand planted knuckles down, the other up and pointing, inches from the face of a man with the same cheekbones and brow line as Alex Vasquez. Dickinson was stabbing the air with his finger, jamming it back and forth as if he were pushing a button.
    Using the shouting as cover, Cooper gently opened the door and slipped inside, catching it with one hand as it closed and easing it shut.
    “—had better come clean with me, do you hear? Because this isn’t some speeding ticket. It’s not an eight ball of blow. You’re looking at terrorism charges, my friend. I will vanish you. Just,” Dickinson straightened, held his hands out in front of him and stared at them in mock bewilderment, “where’d he go? Wasn’t there a guy here a minute ago? Some twist lover? Poof, he’s gone, no one knows where, never seen again.” He leaned forward again. “Do you hear me?”
    “I hear you,” Cooper said.
    The agent whirled, one hand blurring to his empty holster.
Man, he’s fast.
When he saw Cooper, he looked briefly sheepish, but that faded quickly, buried by naked dislike. “I’m in the middle of something.”
    “Yeah? What?” Cooper spared a glance at Bryan Vasquez, saw no sign he’d try something stupid, so turned his attention back to Dickinson. “What exactly are you in the middle of? Which case? Who’s the target?”
    Dickinson gave a wolfish smile. “Just following a lead. Never know where it’s going to go.” The other agent squared up to him. “Until I get there.”
    Cooper flashed to a schoolyard brawl, one of a hundred. Military brats were always the new kids in town, the outsiders. They always had to fight for their place. But being an abnorm in a world that had only just begun to acknowledge the phenomenon took it to a different level. Seemed like every time he landed in a different school some bigger kid wanted to play Pound the Freak.
    One time he’d tried to submit, see if that made things easier. His father had just been posted to Fort Irwin, a couple of hours outside Los Angeles. Cooper was twelve at the time, and the bully was fifteen, a big-toothed kid with red hair. Red seemed no more dangerous than any other bully, so Cooper decided to let him get a few hits in. Maybe if the kid got to show off for his posse, exert his male dominance, then he’d move on with no real damage done.
    It might have worked if Cooper had been a normal kid, one in a line of victims. But he was different. And difference, as he learned that day, inspired a particular kind of savagery.
    His algebra teacher had found in him a bathroom stall, curled at the base of a toilet, the porcelain bowl drenched with his blood. His eyes had been swollen shut, nose broken, testicles bruised, two fingers crushed. The kicks he’d taken on the ground cost him his spleen.
    Dad had asked who’d done it, and so had the doctors and the teacher who found him, but Cooper never said a word. He just gritted his teeth and bore up for the three months it took to heal.
    Then he went looking for the bully and his posse. And that time, Cooper didn’t submit.
    “Something on your mind, Roger?” He met the man’s posture and gaze. The ritual was stupid and primitive, and he didn’t enjoy it, but it was a dance that needed dancing.