4
Josh turned from the impound lot onto Mercer and headed toward the U. “I got off scot-free, Kate. Thanks to Peterson, my driving record remains unblemished.”
Kate, sitting in the passenger’s seat, dipped her head. “We all got off free today. All, but the deluded Boko Haram jihadist. He has a lot to answer for.”
Josh accelerated down a ramp onto I-5. “Our justice system will exact a big price.”
“I wasn’t talking about our justice system. The shooter will have to answer to God, and He won’t be Allah.”
As he surmised, Kate would make her religious beliefs an issue. Maybe for now, he should just avoid the controversy and concentrate on getting to know this gorgeous, talented, scary woman who had invaded his mind and staked her flag on his heart. Well…even if she wasn’t officially laying claim to him, that’s what it felt like. “Your family…it’s rather unusual.”
“Mom’s a very gifted person.”
“She looks more like a sister, except for…you know…”
She stared, waiting for him to continue.
He didn’t.
“OK. Mom is Japanese Hawaiian, and yes, she’s beautiful. My family is a family of five geniuses, even the twins. Moms IQ is about two hundred and the twins might be even higher. I’m adopted. Lee and Jenn rescued me from a group of human traffickers…”
The words ‘human traffickers’ shot through him like a charge of electricity.
Kate had noticed. She didn’t continue.
“Kate, I’m so sorry. I hope…” He shouldn’t have said anything. But the fears that went through his mind wouldn’t go away.
She studied his face.
Her expression said she had read his mind.
“No, Josh. They didn’t get a chance to sell me. I wasn’t…harmed. Just had nightmares for a while.”
He nodded.
She squelched any probing questions.
“Jenn took me home, got custody of me because I was an orphan in the foster care system. After Lee and Jenn married, they adopted me. About Mom, if you hear the FBI mention Miss Universe, that’s Jenn’s…I mean Mom’s nickname with some of the agents, although they don’t use it around her.” She paused and peered into his eyes. “So now you know everything.”
When they stopped at a light, he scanned her face, slowly, systematically. “Wow. Two Miss Universes in one family.”
“That’s enough. I was going to make you an offer, but if you’re only interested in gawking at—”
“Sorry, Kate. You can make your offer.” Whatever it was, he was inclined to accept it. Kate was incredible in every sense of the word, and he wanted time to get to know her.
“You’ve caught a glimpse of what it’s like to work with me. If you’re still interested, we can talk when we get back to the lab.”
So she hadn’t written him off entirely. He was still in the running and definitely interested.
Kate shook her head and mumbled something about geeks. “I can’t make any friends with them. Never have been able to. They’re all too intimidated.”
He glanced her way and grinned. “Gee, I can’t imagine why.” The words slipped out before he could stop them. He followed them up with a cheesy smile.
Kate looked at him and burst out laughing.
It sounded like music. Was the song a parody? Was he the subject of ridicule? His smile inverted.
She must’ve noticed. She stopped laughing. “Josh, I wasn’t laughing at you, just about you.”
“Not much difference, Kate. Am I just an amusement to you?”
“Please don’t do that. That’s what other guys do. When I start to enjoy their company, they get offended because I’m not tripping all over myself to praise them. If you ever needed to prove yourself to me, you’ve already done that. Can we please just enjoy our time together?”
So that’s what life was like for Kate. Sure, she was intimidating, but even more, enticing. And for someone as beautiful and intelligent as Kate to have any interest in him was—
“So that’s what Joshua West is really like? Just like the other—”
“No, Kate. You can laugh at me, about me, or with me. I don’t mind.” He gave her his most convincing smile, hoping it didn’t look cheesy this time.
Was that a smile on her face? Yeah. An enigmatic Mona Lisa smile. Regardless, he would take it. “Would you like me to let you off at the door?”
“No. Put your car in the parking garage. Then I can say I’ve actually parked with a guy.” She grinned.
He pulled into a parking space on the first floor, cut the engine, and turned to Kate in the semi-darkness of the garage. “Were parked. So, what do we do now?”
“I’m not sure. But I can tell you what we won’t do.”
“Yeah. We wouldn’t want the security guard to catch us, would we?”
“We’ve already been caught by the FBI today. So let’s just go to the lab, where I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
They got out of the car and walked toward the exit nearest the computer science building.
“Kate the Godfather… uh, Godmother.”
“I do have an offer, but it’s not like your life is on the line here.” She looked at him from the corners of her eyes.
“Just like it wasn’t on the line a few hours ago?” Why did he say that?
Her expression switched to that serious look. “I was in total panic mode then. I…I wasn’t even thinking about you. I’m so sorry, Josh.”
“Kate.” He pulled her to a stop. “Even the remote possibility that the Nigerian dude might shoot at three-year-olds, including Grady and Grace, would’ve driven me to instant insanity. I would’ve tried to unscrew the guy’s head.”
“Now you know what it was like for me.” She turned and continued toward the computer lab.
“I’m glad, Kate.”
“What? You’re glad that a terrorist almost shot my family?”
“No. That I finally understand something about Kate Brandt.”
The corners of her mouth curved upward. Kate was smiling.
Like Joshua West’s heart. He would learn about this incredible woman. Everything that was possible to learn. But for now, she remained mostly a mystery. Maybe her mysterious offer would reveal more about Kate Brandt, the woman who was stealing his heart in huge chunks. His heart. If the process continued, he feared there wouldn’t be enough left of it to sustain life…without her and the part of his heart she held.
Kate keyed the cipher code into the lock. When it clicked, he pulled the door open and followed her into the computer lab.
“Come here, Josh. I want to show you something.” Kate picked up a roll of paper from her desk and unrolled five feet of fan-fold computer paper. It had a drawing of some sort on it. “Do you know what this is?”
He surveyed the long sequence of arrows, boxes, diamond shapes, all annotated with text. “It’s the specification of some algorithm. But I hope you don’t want me to tell you what it’s for, or what class of problems it belongs to in only a few seconds.”
“Did you read the title at the top?”
“Uh…no. I’m an idiot, Kate. You don’t want me to work—”
“But suppose I do want you to work with me on this?”
“All right. The title says this is an NP-hard data-mining problem.”
“Which means?”
“That we don’t know if there’s a workable solution or not.”
“In layman’s terms, you’re right. But what if I restricted the size of the input data store to a few million values?”
“Then we could probably tweak our algorithm to solve it in some workable timeframe. The time won’t tend to infinity unless we have to deal with all of the combinations and permutations of the data.”
“We don’t.” Kate watched him with her enigmatic smile.
“Then, with enough computing power, we can solve the problem.”
“Exactly.”
“So what is this algorithm?”
“The one I ran to find the collaboration of our Nigerian shooter with Al Qaeda, and certain wealthy Saudis.”
“You have a real-world problem and a solution. What all can this be used for, Kate?”
“Anything involving Internet communications. I haven’t explored other possible applications because I became intrigued with catching bad guys who use the Internet.”
“But there’s still some magic happening, magic I don’t understand. Just like when our professors make a logical jump in a proof. It’s so obvious to them, so baffling to their students.”
“I’ll remove the appearance of magic later. But, Josh, there are two parts to this research that can be very nicely separated, the development of algorithms and their application. There’s more than enough room for two dissertations here. Way too much for one. So I need someone to work with me on—”
“I’ll take the algorithm development part, Kate.”
“So I wasn’t mistaken. You are smarter than you look.”
“Are you saying I look dumb?”
“No. Furthermore, I have nothing to say at this time about how I think you look.”
“Do you mean it’s something you don’t think about? Or are you thinking about it and not telling me?”
“I’m not telling.”
“What you’re thinking?”
“Josh, do you want to work with me on this or not?”
He wanted that more than anything he’d wanted in a very long time. Just like Sartre and the other existentialists said, one had to create meaning in life or one would have none. Most parents at least tried to pass their cherished values and beliefs to their kids. But not Josh’s mom and dad. Their indifference to life’s deepest questions left him feeling uncared for and defective—a kid with no answers. Kate gave him meaning. Something to live for. Today, even something to die for. When he was with her, he didn’t feel defective. Inferior perhaps, but not defective.
“Well…if you have to think about it that long—”
“I’ll help, Kate.” He met her gaze. “I really want to do this.”
Kate’s eyes widened. For the third time her cheeks turned pink. She turned away from him, rolling up the computer paper.
What was that about? Kate gave him so many signals it would take a crypto analyst to decipher them. Maybe he could devise an algorithm for solving Kate Brandt…given enough time.