“Why not?” Taz said.

Burke blinked rapidly, and said, “What normal person would choose a time like 9:47 a.m.? They would choose 10:00 sharp or 9:45.”

“Maybe his watch is off,” Nic said.

“The timing isn’t important. What’s critical here is analyzing the data at hand, which you haven’t done properly.” Burke changed the displays to a shot of the front of the GoBox building at 9:46 a.m. The video showed a family leaving the building.

“So what,” Nic said and dropped his now useless tablet computer onto the conference room table. “They waited for the family to leave. All that really tells us is that they’re smart enough to not want to contend with crying children pissing their pants.”

“Yes, Officer Juliano, but what you’re neglecting to see is that there is no way they could have known that the family was in the building. You have a report from an eyewitness claiming that the van pulled up at 9:30, while the family entered at 9:10. They could only have known that children were inside if they had eyes within the facility. That potentially means that one of our hostages is not on our side.”

Chapter 22

August Burke would have rather been almost anywhere else than crammed into this tiny box with a bunch of strangers, people whose behavior patterns and uses of non-verbal communication were unknown to him and therefore completely unpredictable. Contending with neurotypical people was so strenuous, and not because they lacked intelligence or because he felt that his IQ made him superior. In fact, he had often wished he could trade his intellect for just a few hours of peace, a few hours of being able to interact with other human beings without having to analyze and filter every word, every gesture. And despite his attempts to learn about people and study their ways of thinking, he usually had no idea how to communicate with them without feeling like a freak, without spending countless hours assessing and then obsessing over some small social offense.

And that was why it was always safer to just keep his damn mouth shut. Unfortunately, he had already foolishly challenged the official assessment. It didn’t really matter that he knew they were wrong. He often talked to people who told him about things they believed to be absolutely factual, while he could quote five or six different sources that invalidated the person’s entire argument. Even in those moments, he had learned it was better to just smile and nod. In his experience, neurotypical people didn’t really want to hear what others thought and felt, especially if the other person’s feelings or opinions contradicted his or her own beliefs. Burke liked to be wrong because that was an opportunity for learning, but he had discovered that most people interpreted an attack on an opinion as an attack on him or her as a person.

He often felt like he was wearing a straightjacket and a gag in his mouth while walking on broken glass and trying not to make a sound.