A Better World Read online

  ABOUT A BETTER WORLD

  The brilliants changed everything.

  Since 1980, 1% of the world has been born with gifts we’d only dreamed of. The ability to sense a person’s most intimate secrets, or predict the stock market, or move virtually unseen. For thirty years the world has struggled with a growing divide between the exceptional . . . and the rest of us.

  Now a terrorist network led by brilliants has crippled three cities. Supermarket shelves stand empty. 911 calls go unanswered. Fanatics are burning people alive.

  Nick Cooper has always fought to make the world better for his children. As both a brilliant and an advisor to the President of the United States, he’s against everything the terrorists represent. But as America slides toward a devastating civil war, Cooper is forced to play a game he dares not lose—because his opponents have their own vision of a better world.

  And to reach it, they’re willing to burn this one down.

  From Marcus Sakey, “the master of the mindful page turner” (Gillian Flynn) and “one of our best storytellers” (Michael Connelly), Book Two of the Brilliance Saga is a relentless thrill ride that will change the way you look at your world—and the people around you.

  Also by Marcus Sakey

  Brilliance

  The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes

  The Blade Itself

  Accelerant

  Good People

  The Amateurs

  Scar Tissue

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Marcus Sakey

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477823941

  ISBN-10: 1477823948

  Cover design by Jeroen ten Berge

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903386

  For my father, who showed me what it means to be a man.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  THREE WEEKS EARLIER

  CHAPTER 1

  ONE WEEK BEFORE THANKSGIVING

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Cold liquid splashing across his face brought Kevin Temple back to himself.

  He’d been on the road all night, a dedicated run from Indiana hauling a load of fresh vegetables. Fifteen minutes out of the depot in Cleveland, and he had that stale feel, too much coffee washing down too much beef jerky. What he’d really been craving was a double cheeseburger, but while it would surprise no one to see a trucker gone flabby around the middle, it was a point of pride that at thirty-nine he weighed only ten pounds more than he had in high school.

  When sirens lit up the darkness behind him, he jumped, then cursed. Must’ve zoned out, gotten heavy on the pedal—only no, the speedometer read sixty-seven. He’d been tired, but not so whacked that he’d drifted out of his lane. A broken taillight? It was after four in the morning; maybe the cops were just bored.

  Kevin eased over to the shoulder. He yawned and stretched, then turned on the interior lights and rolled down the window. A week until Thanksgiving, and the cold air felt good.

  The state trooper was middle-aged, with a lean, wolfish look. His uniform was starched, and his hat hid his eyes. “You know why I stopped you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Get out of the cab, please.”

  It must be a broken taillight. Some cops liked to rub your face in it. Kevin slid the license from his wallet, grabbed the manifest and registration, then opened the door and climbed down. A second trooper had joined the first.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them, please.”

  “Sure,” Kevin said. He held up the paperwork. “What’s this about, Officer?”

  The trooper held the license up, clicked on a flashlight. “Mr. . . . Temple.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cleveland your destination tonight?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You do this route regularly?”

  “Two, three times a week.”

  “And are you a twist?”

  “Huh?”

  The trooper said, “Are you an abnorm?”

  “What are you—why do you care?”

  “Just answer the question. Are you an abnorm?”

  It was one of those moments, the kind when he knew what he should do, in that idealized sense of the word. He should refuse to answer. He should make a speech about how that question was a violation of his civil rights. He should tell this bigoted cop to shut his idiot mouth, throwing around a word like “twist.”

  But it was four in the morning, and the road was empty, and he was tired, and sometimes the shoulds get overwhelmed by the willing tos. So he settled for putting a little attitude into his voice as he said, “No, I’m not a brilliant.”

  The trooper stared at him for a moment, then flicked the flashlight up. Kevin winced and squinted, said, “Hey, whoa, I can’t see.”

  “I know.”

  There was motion in his peripheral vision, the other cop raising a device that crackled electric blue, and then lightning struck Kevin Temple square in the chest. Every muscle locked up at once and he heard something like a scream coming out of his mouth and stars blew out his vision as claws sank into his ribs.

  When the pain was finally done, he collapsed. His thoughts were slippery, and he struggled to process what had just happened. The ground was cold. And moving. No, he was moving, being dragged. His hands were behind him, and something held them together.

  Then liquid splashed his face. The cold made him gasp, and he sucked some of the fluid into his mouth. It was foul. A pungent chemical presence he’d never tasted but had smelled a thousand times, and that was when panic swept out the last vestiges of pain, because he was handcuffed on the side of the road and someone was pouring gasoline on him.

  “Oh God, please, please, don’t, please don’t—”

  “Shh.” The wolfish trooper squatted down beside him. His partner tipped up the gas can and stepped backward, pouring a trail. “Quiet now.”

  “Please, Officer, please—”

  “I’m not a cop, Mr. Temple.
I’m”—he hesitated—“I guess you could say I’m a soldier. In Darwin’s army.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want, I have some money, you can have anything—”

  “Be quiet, okay? Just listen.” The man’s voice was firm but not harsh. “Are you listening?”

  Kevin nodded frantically. The gas fumes were everywhere, ringing in his nose, burning his eyes, chilling his hands and face.

  “I want you to know that it’s not because you’re a normal. And I’m honestly sorry that we have to do it this way. But in a war, there’s no such thing as an innocent bystander.” For a moment it seemed like he was going to add something else, but then he just stood up.

  The purest fear Kevin Temple had ever known filled him, pressed him out of himself, wore him like a suit. He wanted to cry, to beg, to scream, to run, but he couldn’t find any words, his teeth chattering, his arms bound, his legs rubber.

  “If it’s any comfort, you’re part of something bigger now. An essential part of the plan.” The soldier struck a match against the side of a pack, once, twice. The flame caught and flared. The bright yellow flicker reflected in his eyes. “This is how we build a better world.”

  Then he dropped the match.

  THREE WEEKS EARLIER

  CHAPTER 1

  Arms wide and palms empty, hyperconscious of how many weapons were trained on him, Cooper was thinking about all the ways things hadn’t gone as planned.

  It had been a busy month. A busy year. He’d spent half of it undercover, away from his children, hunting the most wanted man in America. But when he’d found John Smith, Cooper had discovered that everything he believed was built on lies. That his agency wasn’t just covert—it was corrupt, led by a man who was fostering a war for his own gain.

  The aftermath of that discovery had been bloody and dramatic, especially for his boss. And the weeks since had been split between cleaning up the mess and reconnecting with his children.

  But today was supposed to have been quiet. His ex-wife Natalie was taking the kids to visit her mom. Cooper had no meetings, no details to attend to, and at the moment, no job. He planned to hit the gym, then go out for lunch. Afterward maybe a coffee shop, spend the afternoon lost in a book. Whip up dinner, open a bottle of bourbon, read and drink his way to an early bedtime. Sleep ten straight hours for the sheer luxury of it.

  He made it as far as lunch.

  It was a hole-in-the-wall Arabic place he liked, lentil soup and a falafel sandwich. He was sitting at a two-top by the front window, hollow November sun glaring off the silverware, dumping hot sauce into his soup, when he realized he wasn’t alone.

  It happened just like that. One moment, the opposite chair was empty, the next, there she sat. Like she’d formed from sunlight.

  Shannon looked good. Not fit and healthy good, but make a man think wicked thoughts good: a fitted black top that bared her shoulders, hair slipping past her ears, her lips quirked in that half smile. “Hi,” she said. “Miss me?”

  He leaned back, regarded her. “You know, when I asked you on a date, I meant soon. Not a month later.”

  “I had some things to take care of.”

  Cooper read her, not just the words, but the subtle tensing of her trapezius muscles, the sideways dart her eyes wanted to make but didn’t, the alert readiness with which she took in the room. Still a soldier, and not sure if you’re on the same side. Which was fair. He wasn’t sure himself. “Okay.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust—”

  “I get it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But you’re here now.”

  “I’m here now.” She leaned across to help herself to half of his sandwich. “So, Nick. What are we going to do today?”

  The answer, it turned out, was perfectly obvious to both of them, and they spent the afternoon knocking pictures off the walls of his apartment. Funny, it was only the second time they’d made love—and the third and semi-fourth—but they had an unselfconscious comfort that normally required long intimacy. Maybe it was because he’d been thinking about her all month, waiting for her to appear, and the anticipation had been akin to actually being together.

  Or maybe it was just that their relationship already had enough complications. He was an abnorm who had spent his career hunting other abnorms for the government. She was a revolutionary whose methods verged on terrorism. Hell, the day they’d met, she’d held a gun on him, and that hadn’t been the last time.

  On the other hand, she also saved your children’s lives and helped you bring down a president.

  As the top agent at the Department of Analysis and Response, Cooper had built a career on intercepting terrorists, usually before they struck. But the one who had eluded him—had eluded the whole country—was also the most dangerous. John Smith was a charismatic leader and a strategic mastermind. He had also been blamed for the slaughter of countless innocents.

  After a particularly horrifying attack in Manhattan that cost more than a thousand lives, Cooper had gone undercover to find Smith. It was during that time that he and Shannon had first connected, first as mortal enemies, then reluctant companions, and finally lovers. But when Cooper had finally tracked Smith down, the man opened his eyes to a horrifying truth—the real monster was Cooper’s mentor Drew Peters. The proof was a video in which Peters and the president of the United States planned a massacre in a popular Capitol Hill restaurant. It was a political maneuver, a way to polarize the country and place more power in the hands of the government. By blaming the attack on abnorm terrorists, Peters and those like him gained enormous power to control and even assassinate brilliants.

  And all it cost was the lives of seventy-three innocent people, six of them children.

  After Cooper discovered the truth, Drew Peters kidnapped his children and ex-wife as leverage. Shannon had helped Cooper rescue them. He had no doubt, none, that without her his kids would be dead.

  So, yeah, complicated. He and Shannon were like those diagrams of overlapping circles. Parts of them might always be held back, but that middle intersection, oh man.

  Regardless, the sex had been great, the shower had been great, the shower sex had been great. The conversation had been easy. She’d filled him in on her last month: time in New Canaan Holdfast, the enclave in Wyoming where abnorms were trying to build a new world. The mindset there, how people were getting worried. They talked about the tagging that was slated to begin next summer, the government’s plan to implant a tracking device against the carotid artery of every abnorm in America. Starting with tier ones like Shannon. Like himself.

  Near as anyone could figure, the abnorm phenomenon started in early 1980, though it wasn’t detected until 1986, when scientific study revealed that for unknown reasons, one percent of all children were born “brilliant,” possessed of savant abilities. These gifts manifested in different ways; most were impressive but unthreatening, like the ability to multiply large numbers or perfectly play a song heard only once.

  Others were world-shifting. Like John Smith, whose strategic gift had let him defeat three chess Grandmasters simultaneously—at age fourteen.

  Like Erik Epstein, whose talent for data analysis had earned him a personal fortune of $300 billion and prompted the shuttering of the global financial markets.

  Like Shannon, who could sense the vectors of the world around her so completely that she could move unseen, just by being where no one was looking.

  Cooper’s own gift was for recognizing patterns in people. A kind of souped-up intuition. He could read body language, know by the motions of subcutaneous muscles what someone might be about to do. He could look at a target’s apartment, and based on the books they’d read and the way they organized their closet and what they kept on their nightstand, he could develop a good notion of where they might try to run. It had made him an exceptional hunter, but it came at some cost. The things he had seen haunted him. There was an irony to being an elite soldier desperate to prevent war.

  You’re not a
soldier anymore. And it’s not your war.

  A mantra he’d been repeating for a month. But repetition hadn’t made it seem like fact.

  “Did they interrogate you?” They were on the couch at that point, naked and sore, a blanket draped over them. Shannon had her head on his shoulder and one hand toying with his chest hair. “Your old agency?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you tell them about Peters?”

  “They didn’t ask.”

  “Seriously? The director of a DAR division goes off a twelve-story building, and they’re willing to let bygones be bygones?”

  “I’m sure they knew it was me. But Quinn took care of that.” Cooper’s old partner had been the third member of the team that night. His friend had commandeered the building’s security center and erased all trace of their presence. “If there’d been explicit proof, they wouldn’t have had a choice. But without it, they’d rather avoid the scandal right now. They even offered me my old job back.” He felt her tense. “Relax. I declined.”

  “So you’re unemployed?”

  “We’re calling it a personal leave. Technically I’m still a government agent, but I’ve done enough for God and country. I need time to sort things out.”

  Shannon nodded. His gift, never idle, never under his control, put a thought into his head. She has something to ask you. There’s an agenda here, besides this.

  But when she spoke, all she asked was, “How are your kids?”

  “Amazing. They both had nightmares for a while, but they’re so resilient, it seems like it’s behind us. Kate is in a nudist phase, keeps stripping off her clothes and running around the house giggling. And Todd has decided he wants to be president when he grows up. Says that if the last one did these things, we need a better one.”

  “He’s got my vote.”

  “Mine too.”

  “And Natalie?” she asked, too casually.

  “Good.” Cooper knew enough to leave it at that.

  Later, they went for a walk. Magic hour, the sun almost down and the light coming from everywhere at once. It had been a mild autumn, the trees a riot of color that had only started to fall in the last week. Blue jeans weather, leaves crunching beneath their shoes, red cheeks and her hand warm in his. DC in the fall, was there anything better. They strolled the Mall, past the Reflecting Pool.