Synapse

by Steven James

  “Aha. Well, that really does narrow it down. Meat?”

  “Didn’t know where you stood on that issue. I didn’t want to assume too much.”

  “Thank you. For thinking of my preferences, I mean.”

  With the drain on natural resources from raising animals for food—not to mention the questionable treatment of them on farms—more and more people had been turning to plant-based diets or opting for factory-grown meat over the past few decades.

  I ate very little meat myself, but I tried not to be rude when it was offered to me. It wasn’t an important enough issue for me that I felt comfortable causing offense, but I was thankful that, natural or otherwise, there wasn’t any meat in this tonight, and that he’d been gracious in his choice of food.

  Before I closed my eyes, he passed me a pair of chopsticks, but I said, “If I have to use chopsticks with my eyes closed, I probably won’t get any food to my mouth.”

  “That would be entertaining.”

  “For one of us, maybe.”

  I retrieved a fork from the drawer and returned to the table.

  “Alright.” He placed a hand on one of the takeout boxes. “Now, close your eyes.”

  I did.

  I heard him snap the container open.

  The inviting smell made me even hungrier, but didn’t reveal to me what kind of dish it was.

  At first I’d wondered how I would feel sitting here with my eyes closed with this NCB agent across the table from me watching me, but I found that I wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, it felt surprisingly natural. Intimate, even.

  He took my hand and directed it to the container. I didn’t mind.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see how you do.”

  “Don’t laugh at me if I get this wrong.”

  “I promise—no laughing.”

  Sticking my fork into the box, I swirled it around for a moment, then lifted it to my mouth, being as careful as I could not to drop any food onto my lap.

  “Tofu?” I guessed.

  “Yes. And?”

  “Rice.”

  “So far so good.”

  I took a couple more bites. “Bok choy with tofu.”

  “Close.”

  “Gosh, I don’t know. I’m tasting some cashews.”

  “Yes.”

  I tried some more. “And bamboo shoots?”

  “Very good.”

  “Szechuan vegeta . . . Wait a second.” Eyes still closed, I pointed a finger at him in mock accusation. “Did you try to trick me? Did you have them mix more than one dish together here?”

  When he spoke, I could hear the smile in his voice. “You really are observant.”

  Cautiously, I opened one eye, then the other. Behind Nick’s back, Jordan had paused while working on the new screen and was glancing in my direction, a slight smirk on his face. I cleared my throat lightly and he went back to work.

  “What did you get for yourself?” I asked Nick.

  “General Tso’s chicken with white rice, my go-to dish.”

  As we ate, Nick scanned my bookshelves. “You certainly do have a lot of books.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was implying anything or simply making an observation.

  “I like to read from actual pages. I’m a bit old-fashioned that way.”

  “Is that your quirk?”

  “Do I only get one?”

  “You can have more.”

  “Good.”

  The light caught hold of his dark eyes and I wondered about all they had seen. His job probably took him into some very dark places. And despite the pain and loss I’d experienced myself this week, I wanted to hear his story, to listen to him. To be there for him. To—

  “What are the others?” he asked.

  “The others?”

  Stay focused, Kestrel. Don’t get lost in those eyes.

  “Quirks,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, you know how people have a favorite color? Well, I have a favorite word.”

  “What is it?”

  “Obelisk.”

  “Obelisk? Why?”

  “Nothing profound. It’s just so much fun to say.”

  He pronounced it again, this time slowly and savoringly. “Obelisk.”

  “See what I mean?”

  “I do. What else?”

  “I listen to electronic dance music when I’m preparing my sermons. Even though I’m right-handed, I brush my teeth with my left hand—I have no idea why. Oh, and I don’t like watching cotton balls being torn apart. It’s terrifying to me.”

  “That’s a very specific fear.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Are you psychoanalyzing me now?”

  “Oh, no. I leave that to the profilers. I’m just a field agent.”

  “Well, what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Your quirks.”

  “Well, let’s see . . . I eat chocolate mousse once a year, at Christmas.”

  “Do you like chocolate mousse?”

  “I love it.”

  “Then why don’t you eat it more often?”

  “Because it’s my quirk.”

  “Ah. What else?”

  “I’m a little compulsive about working out every day.”

  “That’s very healthy of you, but I would call it a habit, not a quirk. Music?”

  “Rock, but that’s a preference, not really a quirk.”

  “Any fears? Cotton balls? Cotton swabs? Washcloths?”

  This time he was slow in replying, and the playfulness in his voice shifted toward something else. Something hard to read. “You really want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “Not finding the right person. My wife left me three years ago. I’ve had a hard time . . . Well.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “No, no, no. It’s not that. It was for the best. I’m just saying that when I think about it, I’m sometimes afraid that my work will keep me from finding someone else. I tend to get lost in it.”

  “That’s incredibly honest of you, I mean, to tell me all that.”

  “I didn’t mean to step over any—”

  I placed my hand on his. “No. It’s okay. Don’t apologize. Thank you.”

  He nodded but said nothing more.

  I removed my hand, although maybe not as quickly as I could have.

  Since he was being so open and forthcoming with me, I wondered if I should tell him about the meeting I had set up tonight at eight o’clock with the Purists.

  On the one hand, if I did tell him, he would almost certainly want to go in my place or send a tactical team in, which could easily result in casualties. I had no idea who might be there, if it would be Conrad himself, or if he might have chosen a location with innocent bystanders nearby.

  On the other hand, if I didn’t tell Nick and went by myself, as the message had instructed me to do, it might put my life in danger and even get in the way of his investigation.

  The note was clear, Kestrel. It said to go alone. That’s the safest choice for everyone. Conrad won’t harm you. He could have done that easily enough already if he’d wanted to. That’s not what this is all about.

  Despite how much I wanted to fill Nick in, I couldn’t shake the thought that telling him about the rendezvous would end up causing more problems than it would solve, and in the end, I decided not to say anything about it and to head out there by myself after he was gone.

  28

  Eckhart stood beside his boss, the one who’d orchestrated the bombing at the plant in Cincinnati earlier this week as a way to test the blast capacity of the tri-nitrocellulose. Together, they surveyed the blueprints of Terabyne Designs’ headquarters northeast of Seattle nestled high in the Cascade Mountains.

  All in all, there were eight buildings on the campus, but the ones that mattered most were the power plant, the conference center, and the underground access chamber to the site’s mainframes.

  “The struct
ural integrity?” Eckhart asked her.

  “With those crates themselves lined with RDX and the tri-nitrocellulose packing material, it’ll be sufficient to take down the building.”

  “And bomb-sniffing dogs?”

  “According to Terabyne’s SOPs, they’ll clear the building before the crates are brought in.”

  If all went as planned, tomorrow’s attack would make the one in Cincinnati remarkably forgettable.

  It wasn’t just about carnage, although there would certainly be more casualties than there had been earlier in the week. No, it was about making a statement and putting things right again. The time for action had come, and if it wasn’t taken now, a year from now, or even a week from now, might be too late.

  A few things needed to happen first: arrange for the armored car, prepare the packing material, and get the press credentials in place.

  * * *

  We were almost done with our meal when I asked Nick, “How do you do what you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean tracking killers, terrorists. Always seeing the worst side of people, of what they’re capable of. It must be hard.”

  “It can be, yes,” he admitted. “I suppose in your case you get to see mostly the best of people. As a pastor, that is.”

  “Most folks are good at putting on a show on Sunday mornings, but when they’re alone in my office you’d be amazed at what they admit—well, then again, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised at all.”

  He didn’t comment on that, but said instead, “I have to believe that what I do matters. That it makes a difference. That’s what keeps me going.”

  “The pursuit of justice?”

  “Yes, which is a bit of a mystery in itself.”

  “How’s that?”

  He set his chopsticks down. “Most people believe in justice, wouldn’t you say? Or at least that it’s a goal worth pursuing?”

  “Sure. I’d say so.”

  “But why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why would we believe in justice when there’s no evidence from the natural world that it exists, that it ever has, or that it ever will? In fact, there’s overwhelming evidence against it.”

  “Evidence against justice?”

  “Nature isn’t just in any way—it never has been. There’s nothing fair about the life-and-death clash for survival, in who lives and who dies—or how. And in what I deal with in my job, some people’s crimes go unpunished while innocent people are sometimes imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. We always fall short—but we have the same goal. Every culture in the world does.”

  “Justice.”

  “Yes. Even though, from an evolutionary perspective, it’s a goal that’s not only illusive but also illogical.”

  His words reminded me of Solomon’s observations in the book of Ecclesiastes where he concludes that everything in the end is meaningless, like chasing after the wind. There’s corruption in our courts, the just and the wicked both die, as do the wise men and the fools. None of it makes sense. Ultimately, without God and his final justice in the equation, there is nothing truly fair about life.

  Nick was right. Why would we as a species cling so desperately to a concept for which there is no evidence?

  I thought of my conversation with Trevor earlier about the justice and love of God. If we truly are made in God’s image—whatever exactly that phrase might imply—it would make sense that we desire justice and cling to the concept of it even though there’s no evidence for it in the natural world. Otherwise, where would this desire for justice, where would the idea of it, even come from?

  Nick turned to Jordan, who was finishing up with the screen. “Have you been listening to this, Jordan?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So what do you think? Does justice exist?”

  “Not in this world, only in the afterlife—if that exists.”

  “So in the CoRA?” Nick said.

  Jordan reflected on that. “The fact that people strive for justice, lacking any evidence of its existence in nature, suggests that something beyond this life exists, since that’s the only way there could be any sort of real justice in the universe.”

  “What conclusion does that lead to, then?”

  “If you believe justice exists, you have to believe in the afterlife. And if you believe in the afterlife, you have to believe in God. This isn’t to say that God or the afterlife must exist, just that, in order to be consistent in your thinking, you would need to believe that they do if you believe that justice does.”

  I’d never thought of things in those terms before, but it made sense to me. Beliefs about God, justice, and the afterlife were all intertwined—but that still didn’t make me feel like life was fair in any way, or that it was just for God to have taken my daughter from me the way that he did.

  * * *

  He tests the screen and finds it working. But cannot concentrate on the task at hand.

  Because he is thinking about justice. He is thinking about the afterlife.

  And about his mother, seeing her there at the production facility. And his subsequent visit to the park with Kestrel and their conversation about her. Is she in the CoRA or is she gone forever?

  Those thoughts pool down into the discovery of the note on the bottle.

  He saw what it said.

  He knows the location and he knows the time. The message instructed her to come alone.

  He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t even know who Kestrel is planning to meet.

  But he does know, or at least he senses, that it would not be good for her to go there alone.

  * * *

  After Nick and I finished eating, he and Jordan arranged my new furniture for me, and then Nick reached out to shake my hand.

  His grip was firm and resolute.

  Admittedly, I wished he would have leaned in for a hug, or at least something a bit more personable than a handshake. But I wasn’t going to complain. When he stood close I caught a whiff of that cologne again.

  The ocean.

  Sailing toward—

  “Please let me know if you need anything,” he said as he let go of my hand. “Call me anytime.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  Then, after we’d said goodbye and Jordan and I were alone again, Jordan asked me, “Do you want to mate with him?”

  “What?!”

  “Isn’t that where romantic relationships eventually lead?”

  I flushed. “There’s nothing romantic about our relationship. And besides, mating isn’t necessarily the end goal of a romance. If that’s what we were having. Which it’s not.”

  “What is the end goal, then?”

  “Jordan, I . . . Well . . .” I found myself quite embarrassed talking to him about this. “Intimacy. Oneness. Sex can be part of that, but it doesn’t need to be.”

  “Oneness,” Jordan said. “As the Bible teaches? The two shall become one?”

  “Yes.”

  He said nothing more and I wondered what he was thinking, but whatever it was, I was glad to set the topic of mating with Agent Vernon aside.

  I could probably wait a few minutes before leaving to meet the person who’d left me the note, but I decided to take off now to make sure I was there in time and to, hopefully, have a look around first before the rendezvous.

  I waited for Nick’s car to disappear down the street and got ready to leave.

  I thought of taking my slate with me in case whoever had sent me the message earlier needed to reach me, but then decided that since the Purists were not fans of technology—to say the least—and I didn’t want anyone to be able to track where I was, I left it on the kitchen counter.

  After I asked Jordan to test ViRA’s settings for the new screen on the wall, I turned to leave.

  “I saw the note at the park,” he said.

  I paused, then faced him. “This is something I have to do.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone.”

  “I’
ll be fine. Now, stay here, Jordan. Don’t follow me. I’ll see you when I get back.”

  29

  Nick was back at his office going over the work rosters of the people at the Terabyne plant who were on duty at the time of the bombing when the switchboard operator contacted him.

  “I have someone on the line for you. He says it’s urgent and that you’ll take the call.”

  “Did he give you a name?”

  “Yes. Jordan. He said it has to do with Kestrel.”

  “Put him through.”

  * * *

  Traffic had slowed me down, and even though it was almost eight, I figured that it would probably be best not to park directly in front of the address I’d been given, so I directed my car to a spot two blocks away.

  Whether or not that was a good idea, I wasn’t sure. I’d never been trained in spy craft, and I was making this up as I went along.

  More than a little nervous, I found myself praying as I left the car that things would go alright. I realized that I hadn’t been praying much in the last twenty-four hours, and although doubtless it was in part because of my hectic week, I wondered if it was also because of my frayed relationship with God.

  Frayed.

  Yes. That was a good way to put it.

  Or even better yet—in tatters.

  The wind tossed a discarded candy wrapper across the empty street in front of me. The abandoned storefronts just beyond the crack-riddled sidewalk collected the shadows that the few working street lamps failed to illuminate.

  The night had turned cold and I wished I’d chosen a thicker jacket than the thin nylon shell I had on.

  At the intersection, a malfunctioning traffic signal blinked incessantly red, then yellow, then red again.

  A couple of cars prowled down the street in the distance. Other than that, it was almost like I’d entered a vacant movie set.

  One more block to go.

  I wondered what I might be walking into, who had trashed my apartment and taken the violin, and if the same people were responsible for the burglary as for the bombing at the Terabyne plant.

  On a more personal front, I also wondered if the HuNA settings I’d chosen for Jordan had caused him to jump into the water, how much fear and pain he’d actually felt when he drowned, and if he really was back to normal again.