Twist (Book 1): The Abnorm Chronicles-Twist (19 page)

He also knew that
talking to her would make no difference. Her hatred ran deep and overflowed from her pores, spilling out of her until it stained the very air around her. Inside that hatred, he found a reverberation of what he felt about himself. Hatred for his own condition, hatred for his life—all things that he had just started to overcome. And now, too late, his life was over.

In his hand, he still clutched the
sketch Agent Cooper had given him. The portrait Chloe had drawn of him, for him, the perfect detail that was more meaningful than any mirror. This was how she had seen him. “Why are you so sad?”

“
I’m not sad anymore.” Looking Selene in the eye, he raised his chin, exposing his throat. He wasn’t going to hide. He was done with that part of his life. No more fear. No more retreating. He stared through her hatred, into her eyes, into the center of who she was. Through that one last reflection, his gift kicked in just as he said, “Do it.”

Her eyes reflected the window, the window saw through to the world outside. Seven thousand eight hundred and twenty
-five angles of refraction bounced off that building. He could see it as clear as day. The entire world was held in her eye, and he could see it all one last time.

Chapter
47

As Cooper walked out of the stairwell with Detective Jones, he felt satisfied, energized. The combination of circumstantial and direct evidence would be enough to bring in Selene Cook. Not only would he stop an escalating serial killer, he would score a high-profile victory for Equitable Services—just what Director Peters needed to increase the task force’s prominence. He would catch another Brilliant bent on harming society.

As
he and Jones stepped out into the street, though, Cooper paused. The detective had a determined step, ready to march across the street to apprehend the suspect.

B
ut Cooper grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, stopping him in his tracks. He stared up and down the street, looking left, looking right, scanning. Something wasn’t right.

Jones looked back at him
as if he’d gone insane. “What is it?’

“
Hold on a minute.” His mind had mapped out the details, filed them away, and now compared them. The flow of the late-afternoon street always changed the surroundings, but something else was different here. His gift was screaming at him, demanding his attention.

There, the mouth
of the alley, shards of glass. Freshly broken glass, bright in the sunlight. Trivial. It could be nothing.

The perfect photograph in his memory went back to the hallway outside of Adam’s apartment
. He and Jones had been talking as they knocked on the door, and they had been on a mission as they departed. But even so his peripheral vision had cataloged the details. He compared them now.

The roof-access door at the far end of the hall
! It had been closed when they entered the apartment, but it was just slightly ajar when they left. Someone had opened it, gone inside the alcove.

Did he remember seeing a shadow, as if someone
was lurking behind it? Watching?

Now he narrowed his eyes.
Back to the alley. The glass was clearly the round flat bottoms of two bottles. Just the bottoms, no necks, no bodies. A shattered whiskey bottle in an alley should have been the entire thing. Someone had kept the top half.

“
She’s here.” Turning around, he bolted back inside Adam’s apartment building while Jones remained baffled for a moment before sprinting after him.

Cooper
didn’t waste breath explaining as he pulled open the stairwell door and ran up the steps. Jones didn’t waste breath asking questions either. Both men pulled their weapons from shoulder holsters as they pounded up one flight after another.

Both men were in excellent shape, but
climbing seven stories in Denver’s thin air still proved a challenge. Running without pause, past landing after landing, made Cooper ready to drop, but the certainty of Adam’s danger supercharged his muscles.

T
hey reached the last doorway on the top floor, and Cooper slammed through into the corridor. He held his pistol ready, as he ran.

Down the hall,
Adam’s door was wide open.

Angling his body as he ran,
Cooper dashed into the apartment. Jones was seconds behind him.

Adam was sitting in his chair with his chin raised high, defiant, staring Selene Cook in the eye. In his one good hand, he clutched the portrait Chloe
Eccles had drawn of him. Selene raised the jagged bottle above the man in the wheelchair.

Without even stopping to process what was in front of him,
Cooper swung, targeted, squeezed the trigger.

The
shot took Selene on the back of the hand, grazing the skin and bone. The bottle spun away to impact the window—Adam’s window to the world—then fell with a thunk to the hardwood floor. Somehow, it didn’t shatter.

Shocked,
Selene reacted with serpentlike swiftness. She lunged back toward Cooper and Jones—no, not toward
them
, but toward Detective Rodriguez, who lay sprawled and blood-soaked near the doorway. Even with her mangled hand Selene was fast. She reached Rodriguez, used her right hand to grab at his holster.

Less than a second had passed, and Cooper kept moving
.

Jones yelled from the doorway.
“Freeze!”

Cooper swung the pistol, tracking her. Jones also had her in his sights.

Selene hesitated. Her good hand gripped the butt of Rodriguez’s pistol; her mangled hand dripped blood.

Jones rattled off in an angry monotone,
“Selene Cook, you are under arrest for murder and attempted murder. Move your hand away from the weapon and lie face-first on the floor. Place your hands behind your head.”

Selene
’s face was unreadable, but Cooper saw what she was going to do in the very instant she made up her mind, a fraction of a second before Jones realized it. In a desperate and hopeless ploy, she tore the detective’s pistol out of its holster.

Cooper pulled the trigger again,
shooting her in the shoulder and spinning her around. Selene dropped the weapon and collapsed to her knees.

Jones was running into the apartment, but Cooper got to her first, tackling
her and forcing her flat on the floor. His training kicked in. Wrestling Selene onto her stomach, he placed one knee in the small of her back to hold her down, controlling her position.

Jones
reholstered his pistol and pulled out his handcuffs.

Selene sneered and thrashed
as she was cuffed, but she kept staring at Adam. “Worthless Twist!”

Jones
bent down over Rodriguez, checked for a pulse. He was already on the phone, calling for an ambulance and demanding that they hurry. The other detective was still breathing.

Cooper looked back, tried to be reassuring. “It’ll be all right now, Adam. You’re safe.”

Adam kept eye contact as he rolled his chair forward. “No, it won’t be all right. She killed Chloe.” He drew a breath. “But I’ll survive.”

#

Adam’s heart was pounding, and he wanted to hurt Selene for what she had done, but his body was incapable of doing much. He did know three words, though, that would cut beneath her skin.

He had come to know her well
from his incessant watching. He understood what made her tick. The words echoed in his mind, struggling to escape his lips:
You’re worthless, Selene.

But, f
or a reason he didn’t entirely understand, Adam restrained himself. Did he need to inflict pain like that? He was emerging as someone with a worth that he alone could measure. He would have the power over his own life. There was a different way, one that would hurt Selene just as much—and one that would render her own hatred impotent.

“
Agent Cooper, why don’t you tell her what she really is? Selene doesn’t even know.”

While Jones tended to Rodriguez, applying pressure to the worst wounds,
Cooper hauled Selene to her feet and turned her around. Her eyes were glazed and panicky. “What don’t I know?”

“You’ve never been tested, have you?”
Cooper stared at her, realized that she truly was unaware of her own makeup. “You’re a Brilliant yourself.”

She stared at him
as if her world had fallen apart. “Like hell I am! I’m no Twist!”

Cooper
doubted he would ever get through the funhouse mirror of her own self-delusion. “There’s no doubt. I’m a Brilliant, and my gift is pattern recognition. I can spot the signs in you. You’ll be tested once you’re in custody, and that test will reveal the extent of your talent.”

She spat at him.
“I’m no freak! I’m no abnorm.”

“
You’ve been killing your own kind.”

“
No. No. No!” She shook her head repeatedly. “I’m not a Twist.” Cooper saw horror and pleading in her eyes. “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

Cooper
shook his head. “Equitable Services finds Brilliants, we don’t kill them.”

Chapter
48

Exhausted, Cooper leaned back in the plastic chair of the emergency room waiting area of the Rose Medical Center. Jones sat across from him, hands folded between his knees, hunched over. Hours had passed.
Hours.
It was now late Sunday night, and Cooper couldn’t feel any sense of triumph, just a cold and leaden
waiting
.

Between them, Adam
Lee waited patiently. After the paramedics had taken a barely alive Rodriguez away on a stretcher, carrying him down seven flights of stairs to the ambulance, it had required another substantial crew of determined officers to carry Adam, and then his wheelchair, down those same stairs. He had insisted, in no uncertain terms, that he was damned well going to be there when Detective Rodriguez woke up.

If he woke up.

He remembered that the handcuffed Selene, despite her two gunshot wounds, had been led down the stairs on her own two feet.

Cooper wondered if the whole incident would be sufficient bureaucratic motivation to get the elevator fixed.

They sat in the emergency room, hoping for any kind of word. Taking advantage of the interminable waiting, Cooper had a chance to call home, just catching Todd before his bedtime. Then he spent half an hour filling Natalie in on the details. He told her he missed her, told her he loved her, and also said that he knew he had done a Good Thing.

Finally,
one of the hospital nursing staff came out to inform them that Rodriguez was in stable condition. “He’s still in ICU, but in another hour we might get special dispensation for you to go to his room.”

He shifted in the plastic chair, feeling worn out, wondering why he had even bothered to get a hotel room.

Out of habit, Cooper studied Adam. The man had been a surprise to him. In only a few days, he had watched the disabled vet turn around, embrace his Brilliant gift, and become someone extraordinary. Selene Cook was an unregistered Brilliant who used her gift in a destructive way, but Adam had learned to shine. Cooper found it humbling.

Now, in the emergency room, t
he three stared at one another. They stared at the clock on the wall. They stared at one another again.

Cooper looked at Adam.
“So what now? Seems like things are changing for you.”

“
Maybe I agree to move to a better place . . . but I like my window. I’ll miss the people too much. Not just Chloe, but Davis and his problems with the divorce, the new tenant Dan Peterson, the Benedict family—they watch TV like I watch out the window . . . but maybe Richard Sr. will win that bowling tournament after all.” His voice sounded wistful. “I’ve gotten to know them. Sure, it’s cliché, but I feel like there’s a whole new world out there waiting for me, and I want to find out what’s in it.”

Jones smiled to himself
, and Cooper nodded. “I have a feeling you’re going to do well in it. Thanks again for helping us with this investigation. You saw things the rest of us missed.”

Adam stared at Chloe
’s sketch, which he still clutched in his hand. “I had a lot of motivation.”

The nurse
marched back into the waiting room, looking for them. “Don’t expect much conversation, but you can come back now.”

#

Machinery beeped intermittently, and Rodriguez woke in a dark room. A soft snore punctured the silence, alternating rhythmically with the monitors.

Adam
Lee was asleep next to his bed—in his wheelchair.
Hospital.
Flashes of the attack came back.

When pain ran sharp fingernails through his nerves,
Rodriguez groped around the bed until he found a corded remote and pressed the blue morphine button. The release of painkillers immediately soothed him.

As his eyes
began to droop again, Rodriguez studied Adam and realized that the other man was sleeping peacefully. No nightmares, just sound sleep. Rodriguez smiled as his eyes drifted closed.