Brilliance by Marcus Sakey Read Free Book Online

to see her.”
    “No.”
    “How do I even know that you have her?”
    “I’ll prove it,” Cooper said. “But you’re not going to see her until after. And if you mess with me, you’ll never see her again.”
    Orange hate radiated in waves off Bryan Vasquez’s face. Cooper could see him trying to decide if he was the kind of man who would jump a table and attack a government agent. See him knowing that he wasn’t that man, that he never had been, and that fury didn’t change facts. Finally, Vasquez steepled his hands in front of his face and blew a long exhale into his palms. “Okay.”
    “Good. We’ll be back in a minute with your document.”
    The interview rooms were kept stuffy on purpose—warm, thick air made people sleepy, which led to slips—and the air-conditioning in the hallway felt great. He waited till he heard the door of the interview room click shut before he turned around.
    “Are you out of your mind?” Dickinson’s eyes were bugged. “Letting a terrorist—”
    “Get that document drafted,” Cooper said. “Make it simple and clear. If Bryan does what we want, we won’t charge his sister, period.”
    “I don’t work for you.”
    “You do now. You got proactive, remember?” Cooper stretched, popped his neck. Tired. “And when you’re done with that, go downstairs and get a necklace from Alex Vasquez’s personal effects. It’s gold, a songbird. Bring that back up for Bryan, to prove we have his sister.”
    Dickinson looked confused. “Downstairs?”
    “Yeah. In the morgue.” He turned and started to walk away, then spun back. “And Roger, make sure there’s no blood on it, would you?”

PIERS MORGAN:
My guest tonight is David Dobroski, author of
Looking Over Our Shoulders: The Crisis of Normalcy in the Age of Brilliants
. David, thank you for coming.
DAVID DOBROSKI:
My pleasure.
PIERS MORGAN:
There have been no shortage of books about the gifted and what they mean. But yours frames things differently.
DAVID DOBROSKI:
To me, it’s a generational issue. A generation is born, it matures, it comes into power, and eventually it passes that power on to the next. That’s the order of things. And yet it’s been disrupted. People fixate on technological advances, or the New Canaan Holdfast in Wyoming, but what it comes down to is far simpler—the natural order of things has changed. And my generation is the one facing that.
PIERS MORGAN:
But doesn’t every generation fear the one after them? Doesn’t every generation believe the world is, if you’ll pardon the expression, going to hell in a handbasket?
DAVID DOBROSKI:
Yes, that’s perfectly natural.
PIERS MORGAN:
So what’s the difference?
DAVID DOBROSKI:
The difference is we never had our time. We never got to shine. I’m thirty-three, and I’m already obsolete.

CHAPTER FIVE
    “You let him think his sister is alive?” Bobby Quinn smiled over the lip of his coffee. “You, my friend, are a bad, bad person.”
    “Whatever. I don’t disagree with what he said about abnorm rights, but blowing shit up isn’t the way to fix it. He and his sister would have killed hundreds of soldiers, and I’m supposed to be weepy about lying to him?” Cooper shrugged. “Not feeling it.”
    Last night’s rain had given way to one of those pale, chilly DC days. A patchwork of clouds pressed down on the city, shading the daylight a tarnished silver. The wind was cold, but Cooper finally had a coat on. That and the half-dozen hours of sleep he’d snatched had done wonders for his mood.
    12th and G, Northwest. Bland office buildings loomed on all four corners, the windows reflecting back the cold sky. Between them was a public square of concrete and stone. Escalators ran up from the open mouth of Metro Center Station, vomiting men and women in business attire, all of them checking watches and talking on cell phones. According to Bryan Vasquez, all he was supposed to do was show up and stand on the corner. His mysterious contact would do