Page 49 of A Simple Mistake
“Because I’ve become used to throwing him a random question and getting a detailed answer back a few minutes later.”
“You don’t say.”Gareth struggled to hold back his laughter.Jack had told him only the other day that Conrad was convinced he could perform miracles.
“I do say.In fact, he answers even if you haven’t asked him a question.It’s fucking uncanny.”
“What did he do?He surprised you again, right?What did he do?”
Aidan opened his second beer.He’d make that one last to the end of the evening.“Did Jack tell you I bumped into him at the Cinnamon Club the other day?I was meeting with officers from a charity.The guy I was with—he’s the CEO of the charity—complained that one of his projects isn’t getting good enough press and he couldn’t work out why.Jack was fiddling with his phone while we talked—you know, the way he does when he’s not entirely comfortable somewhere and is distracting himself?—and then he suddenly suggests, cool as you please, that the charity might want to audit the project director’s financials.Because while the project failed to reach its targets, the director’s daughter went to an eye-wateringly expensive private school, and the man had just bought a brand-new Aston Martin.”
“And was he right?Jack, was he right?”
“Of course, he was friggin’ right.Big internal investigation, police called, the whole nine yards.All from half a complaint that wasn’t even directed at him.”
“It’s fascinating to hear him explain how he reaches his conclusions,” Alex said.
“You mean he knows?I always thought it’s intuition,” Gareth said.
“Intuition is just your brain processing too fast for your conscious mind to follow.You give Jack a problem, he gives you a solution, and it seems instantaneous.But if you ask him later, he can unravel the whole pattern for you, tell you all the steps that took him to the solution.”Alex sounded wistful, as if Jack’s absence deprived her of a treat.
Aidan saw it, too, and offered what comfort he could.“Wish I hadn’t sent him.”
“But he’s happy you did,” Nico threw in.“He likes Japan.”
“He didn’t like meeting that Max guy again,” Daniel said, and Alex’s eyebrows went up.
“Max?As in Max Young?”
Daniel shrugged.“Dunno.But he sounded as if he’d rather be elsewhere when he said the name.”
“That wouldn’t be the guy who left Jack stuck on a roof without backup, would it?”Gareth asked.
Alex sighed.“That’s the one.”
“No wonder he wanted me to duct tape Conrad’s nuts to the fridge.”
“I knew nothing about that,” Aidan sputtered.
Gareth switched his empty beer bottle for a fresh one.“I’m sure you will once he gets home.”
The floorboards gleamed red in the light of the early morning sun, their colour vibrant against a backdrop of moss-covered tree trunks, grey stone, and pale, raked gravel.Jack’s measured breaths and the shuffle and slap of his bare feet on the boards joined birdsong and the rhythmic clacking of a bamboo fountain.The storm that had torn across the country—almost a typhoon according to Min—had blown itself out overnight, with the calm that followed feeling like a welcome respite.
Jack had been awake for forty hours.Gritty eyelids told that tale, as did his stiff shoulders and the feeling his head was too far from his feet.Yet he was still a long way from sleep.
Storms in Japan were nothing like the storms in England.There’d been high winds, yes.But also the most spectacular lightning, and more water pouring down on him than he’d ever felt outside of a shower.Flooded roads, collapsed verges, fallen trees, and broken telephone poles had turned their escape into an obstacle course and he’d have relished the challenge of driving through it all if he hadn’t had to dodge the gunmen on their tail.
He could have done without a wounded, feverish Max Young in the car, too.
And without a rock star throwing a tantrum in the backseat.
The tantrum had been on Max’s behalf, and Ryu had apologised the moment he’d realised he was in a snit.Still…the brief outburst had been spectacular, given the range of Tempest’s voice and the decibels his well-trained lungs could produce.
Jack shifted, breathed, raised the bokken over his head and brought it down in a diagonal slash.Frowned at the position he found himself in at the end of the move.Took a step back and started over.
He didn’t care whether it took him fifty repetitions, or a hundred.Practising kata never failed to calm him.Some days, it just took longer.
The sun had moved from lighting the dojo floor to warming the roof tiles when Min Park appeared in the open sliding door.Jack lowered the bokken.“Trouble?”
“No.Apologies for interrupting.I didn’t know you were a kendoka.”
