Page 79 of No Vow Broken

“Well, then we can safely say something good came out of it.”

“Guess we can.”

We endured yet another round of questioning from the police and Secret Service about what had happened. Weird, but I had started to become good at narrowing in on what they needed to hear. Since I’d endured several debriefs in such a short time, I’d even started to notice the rhythms and patterns the investigators used. While it was interesting, I was pretty much done with it by this point.

Interrogation fatigue. It’s a real thing.

When they finished with us, it was nearing seven thirty. Slash put his arm around me, and we rounded up the others before getting into our cars and heading back to the hotel under the escort of the Secret Service to run the media gauntlet. Everyone headed either to the hotel restaurant or to their rooms. To my surprise, however, Slash took my hand, leading me to the bar instead.

The bar was empty except for a lone bartender in a black shirt and white tie who sat behind the counter playing on his phone. Apparently, our guests were waiting in either the dining room or their suites to hear what had happened this time.

I had zero desire to recount once more what had just happened at the church, and I thought Slash felt the same way.

“You need a drink?” I asked. Not that I was judgmental. After what we’d been through this week, I could have used a half dozen drinks myself, and I hardly ever drank.

Slash didn’t answer, just walked me around some tables to the other side of the bar, where a baby grand piano sat.

In an instant, I felt the tension between my shoulder blades melt. “You’re going to play?”

“Would you like that?”

“Yes, oh yes. You have no idea how much. Or maybe you do. Because you’re good like that.”

His smile widened as he slid onto the piano bench and patted the spot next to him. I sat down as he ran his fingers over the keys, testing them and listening to see how well it was tuned. It must have met his satisfaction, because he began to play a slow, classical-style song.

“You don’t have the sheet music,” I observed. He didn’t look at his fingers, either.

“I don’t need it.”

“It’s impressive that you can hold such a large repertoire of songs in your head.”

“It’s not much different than memorizing code.”

“Except music requires an emotional attachment and conveyance that coding does not,” I countered.

“I could argue that code does, too,” he said lightly. “Think about all the times you lead with instinct instead of logic when coding and tell me how different it is from music.”

I considered his words. “There’s no room for emotion in code. It’s pure logic.”

He kept playing, his fingers flowing effortlessly over the keys. “Logic is certainly the endgame, but intuition and instinct are also a part of it as well. Your brain talks to you, whether you’re listening or not. For example, you see a man strolling toward you on the street. Your brain is either calm, curious, oblivious, or alarmed at his approach. By the time you register him, your brain has sent you a message to ignore, pay attention, or run. Why? Because it has already done all the calculations, sorting through patterns, determining the risk, mitigation, and danger, and is giving you a signal to do something. Whether you act on its advice is up to you.”

He had a point, but I wasn’t convinced. “Instinct is more about survival.”

“You want your code to survive, right? To do what it’s supposed to do, to work in a way that is functional. I’ve seen you do things while coding I hadn’t expected, because my brain didn’t show me that pattern. But yours did and you trusted it. And in the end, it may not have been what I considered logical, but it was the right choice. Because you acted on an analysis of instinct and intuitive thought. You code with emotion and intuition,cara, I’ve seen it for myself.”

I hadn’t ever really thought of it like that. “You may be right. I’m not sure I like it, though.”

“That’s because emotions and intuitive reactions have a bad rep in our line of work. But your reactions and emotions in times of crisis are how your experience generally shows itself to you…if you listen. And you do listen. Better than anyone I’ve ever known. That’s what makes you so good and…so dangerous to your opponents.”

I shifted on the bench to look at him. “So, is that why you play music? Because it frees your intuition?”

“It helps.” He lifted his fingers from the keys and met my gaze. “I don’t feel the constraints of making the music just right for anyone else. I make it right for me…and now, I hope, for you, too. But it also releases me from thinking inside the box and lets my intuition and my gut guide me.”

While I thought that through, he began playing a more melancholic song. I listened to the first verse all the way through.

“That’s a beautiful song,” I said when he stopped. “What’s it called?”

“It’s an Italian favorite called theIl cielo in una stanzaor ‘Sky in the Room.’”

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