“Exactly! My brain is all I have, and you want to put me in a position where bullets may be flying at it. Not cool.”

“There’s never any reward without a little risk, and bullets are hardly flying at your head. You’re not in any real danger.”

Burke lit the cigarette, took a drag, and blew the smoke in Carter’s face. “The only reason I’m here is that my dad said he’d kick me out of the loft above the shop if I didn’t at least try to do whatever it is you think I can do.”

Carter smiled. “What I think you can do is save a lot of lives. You have a special gift. Your brain is literally wired differently than a normal person’s.”

“Neurotypical, not normal. The concept of normalcy is one so subjective and totally reliant on perspective that the word is utterly meaningless in such context. Your brain and your behaviors may seem ‘normal’ to you, but to me, you’re all like a bunch of alien beings composed of nothing but contradictions and lies.”

Carter stared off into the distance. Burke hated nothing more than being ignored, except maybe being told what to think. But he supposed his communication skills also left much to be desired.

He had a tendency for brutal honesty and very strategically placed comments. Like the comment he had made to Ms. Whelan. It was one of the few shockingly blunt and yet disarming intros that he had designed for use on the fairer sex. By his calculations, that particular line had a success rate of sixty-three percent, and it instantly established that he saw the comment’s recipient as a potential mate, avoiding all the usual confusion and social intricacies.

Carter was looking up and to the right, as if remembering something. Then the FBI ASAC’s eyes narrowed.

“What’s wrong?” Burke said.

“The second time that man came to the door, I noticed a second weapon slung under his coat, one with a sound suppressor.”

Chapter 28

Nic Juliano couldn’t stop thinking about Burke. Mainly about punching him in the face, but not because of his analysis, which had been pretty spot on, but for the looks the young doctor had been giving Bristol. The man seemed entirely too aggressive when it came to women, which scared Nic. And he had to admit a certain amount of jealously at the way she looked at Burke. Once upon a time, she had looked flirtatiously at him like that, but the break-up had been entirely his fault, and so he had no right to say a word, at least not about Bristol.

Carter and Burke pushed their way into the crowded comm center as Nic and Taz were studying a set of blueprints sent to them from GoBox’s corporate office. But the damn representative from the company was still MIA.

“We may have a problem,” Carter said immediately.

Taz laughed and said, “You’ll have to be a bit more specific there, boss.”

“I saw a pistol with a sound suppressor under the coat of the man at the door, and he’s clearly not the one in charge.”