by Tina Gower
I jot down a few more notes and after a while our interview is cut short when a medic takes her away for a routine health screening to be sure she’s okay and we didn’t miss something.
I walk along the path, retracing her steps, retracing what would have been the other victim’s steps, but I don’t know what direction he came from or what led him to this particular bench. After a while my stomach growls from my lack of breakfast and it’s closing in on lunchtime and everyone else has packed up and gone. Not even the tree limb remains.
I stare at the blood mixed in the gravel of the jogging path, hugging my arms close to me.
“He’s not fateless.” Becker walks up next to me. “I checked. He’s got several predictions in the system spanning back years. He couldn’t have changed this girl’s prediction.”
“Gods, I was hoping for something easy, but that would not have been it. I’ve got enough to stress over with a wrong calculation on my record much less worrying about how the general public might react to a fateless changing destinies.” I absently stretch my neck, which has gone stiff from crouching over the scene. The tension in recent months over the less than one percent who’d not only never received a prediction, but also can’t be predicted on had tightened. As a fateless, my own standing at work would be threatened if my superiors found it out. After a recent surge of anti-fate crimes and attempts to break our city’s net had occurred, politicians had claimed that the fateless were a risk to our security. At one time it wasn’t a big deal to admit being fateless, kinda more of a handicap, but now…
I throw my plastic gloves in the nearest trash bin. “I didn’t realize you were still here collecting evidence too.”
“No. I left this morning in the body taxi with the vic. After we tagged him I had to swing by your office for a few cases and you weren’t there.”
“It’s a weekend.”
He scratches his jaw. “Oh. Right.” Then he rises on his tiptoes. “Gretchen was there. Going over paperwork and prepping for this.” He gestures to the scene. A wrong prediction, especially one that has no clear lines of how the destiny was changed without intervention, creates a lot of paperwork.
My brain catches up to what he said. “You didn’t ask about me.” My voice rises a few octaves.
“Of course not. I just followed a hunch that you’d still be here.”
The tension eases from my shoulders. We’d been careful not to appear too friendly with each other. HR had dropped their earlier insistence that we claim a relationship, but I didn’t want to give them any reason to believe we were lying. Not that we were. Becker and I didn’t have a relationship in the usual sense of the word. But I didn’t need the heat because of a past relationship and Becker didn’t need anyone to know about the pack issue. He saw it as a disability that his supervisors could use to downgrade his position.
He hands me a nut bar and a banana. I glance at the offering and the confusion must show on my face.
He holds it out further and his brow furrows. “I can hear your stomach trying to eat itself for nutrients. Kinda annoying, Kate. Just take the food.”
I rip open the saran wrap package and chew, not realizing how hungry I’d been. 2:00. Gods, it’s later than I thought. And the bar is delicious. Like something Ali would make.
“There’s nothing left out here to go over.” Becker shoots me a weary look.
“Don’t say it,” I mumble around my almond and dried cherry bar.
“Okay.”
We’re both silent, but I hear him saying it in my head anyway. I refuse to accept I was wrong.
I sigh. “It’s fine. I need to get back to the office anyway and run some of these numbers again, go over the file. Crap, I didn’t expect this to eclipse my weekend. I have other cases to work on, and who knows what’s been piling up in my inbox after this?” My anxiety brain lists about a dozen other issues that I don’t state out loud. No reason to get myself more riled.
Sensing my unease, Becker goes into an awkward pose. His arm reaches to go around me, but he pulls back just as soon as he moves forward. He plays the movement off as an itch. It’s too bad really. I would have liked the comfort, but it would be unfair. Or would it? Gods, this pack thing makes me over think every little action.
He eyes me like he really wishes he could break the “no touching at work” rule. “This is all going to work out. It’s just a fluke.”
“It’s not a fluke. Doesn’t it seem to play a little too closely to history repeating itself?”
His expression goes soft. “What happened to Jack was an accident—”
“And this is an accident. There seem to be an awful lot of those going on around me lately.” My fists clench. “I don’t buy it.”
“It happens all the time. Mistakes in the system.” He rattles off the excuses, but he doesn’t really believe it. I can tell by the twitch in his eyelid. He just wants me to believe it so I can move on. Stop beating myself up. “The oracle’s prediction is off, or the calculation—”
“I did not miscalculate. And I’m not paranoid. I don’t want to be responsible for another Jack Roberts.”
“Jack survived and he’s back at work next week.”
I run a shaky hand through my hair. Maybe that’s what has me spooked. I knew Jack was returning and that he’d been a target before. I didn’t want him at risk again. I’d begged him to take a transfer to another town, but he wanted to stay close to friends.
Becker nudges my side. “I’ll help go over this case when I come over tonight.”
“Tonight?” And as I ask, it dawns on me I’d agreed to dinner and a snuggle session. At the time I wasn’t thinking about it being dark. I’d made a point to allow Becker over only during the daylight hours, but I hadn’t accounted for the shorter days now that it was winter.
Becker doesn’t let anything show on his face. Instead, a blush creeps up his neck. “At seven.” He sighs. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride back to your office.”
Chapter 3
The office is empty. Probably because it’s Saturday—and nobody else made a major mistake like me, so they get to have an actual honest-to-gods weekend. Not even my boss remains after coming in to start the paperwork on the botched prediction. It’s a little unnerving to not have the phones ringing or Yang yelling out case numbers that have gone unclaimed or Miles’s annoyingly time-able cough. (Every fifteen to eighteen minutes—yes, I did time it). I’m poring over my notes from the case when a soft tap on my office door brings me back to reality.
“It’s eight o’clock.” Becker crosses his arms and lets out a disapproving breath through his nostrils. “You’re still here.”
Becker’s usually the workaholic, bringing case notes to my house on his breaks and after we do the pack thing he’s right back on the streets for work. It’s as though having us switch places unnerves him in some way.
I glance at him and then to my perfectly sorted notes in piles on my desk. “There’s something off about this prediction. I’m missing something.” I lean back in my ergonomic chair that I’ve finally adjusted to my height and stare at the ceiling. “Any news on the main predicting oracle?”
Becker smacks a file next to me. “First oracle is already retracting her vision. It was vague to begin with and she’s young.”
I sigh. “Yeah, she’ll probably get her vision thrown out, stating too many confounding variables. What about the second oracle?”
His eyebrows pop up, indicating this one might have a more interesting story. “The second oracle is clean. Nothing to prove she’s inaccurate or losing her ability. It’s still most likely a miscalculation due to error.”
I notice this time he leaves off the human part, although his slight hitch before he says error lets me know he censored himself.
“It’s not an error.” I glide my chair over to snatch the file and flip through it. “Two oracles reported similar predictions. I re-read the recordings from her prediction and everything indicates a high probability. The second oracle
prophesies a death; she names the victim several times; she explains in vivid detail the time, place, and smells. Even an alternate prediction if the victim were to stay at home to avoid the death. Each of those things ticked up her probability numbers in the formula. The high frequencies of names and details were all indicative and supportive of the numbers I ran and the result. Sure, the first prediction was with a younger oracle and we can throw her prediction out as an erroneous correlation of chance, but this oracle”—I point to the printed pages of the original prediction— “has a high accuracy rate. That usually doesn’t indicate an error in calculation.”
“What about the predicted victim?” He reads her name from the file. “Alana Morrison.”
“I interviewed her this morning and called her again a few hours ago. She was out for a jog. Usually takes a break on the bench for about twenty minutes doing stretches. Didn’t know she had a death prediction—she admitted after some prodding that she opted out of the certain death alerts.” Which a lot of people do if the forecast means there is nothing we can do to intervene on the prediction. Makes it easier to pretend that we lead normal lives, free of certain kinds of fate. Sure, it’s possible for some control, but the oracles have proven that margin is less than most would like. I flip through the file on the oracle, slap it shut when I don’t see anything useful. “What about the body? What’s his story?”
Becker pulls out his own notes from this morning and flips through the spiral notebook. “Jared Walker. The guy had a bus ticket and a coffee. He missed his bus after the coffee shop—time stamp on the receipts. Maybe the coffee took longer than he anticipated? So he sat on the bench in the park until the next bus arrived. Found his phone and cracked case at his feet, he’d been reading an historical novel. Chance death—it does happen you know. Some people are harder for the oracles to pin. And the network isn’t expansive, so there’s occasional holes.”
Blind spots. The official explanation to why we had naturally occurring fateless. Oracles have petitioned to increase funding to experiment on widening the network to potentially fill in the blanks; there are still a small number of people who’ve never received a prediction. A lot of theories are tossed around as to why. None that are viable. I’ve never received one and didn’t care to analyze my feelings on it. I’d spent too much time musing that topic.
I sift through my notes from the interview. “The girl said her usual bench was occupied, which turned out to be our vic, so she jogged to the next one. She got as far as the corner when she heard the crash. Ran back to see what happened and found the guy crushed under a tree.”
“There you go. Saved by a chance occurrence. That’s what the six percent is for. Mystery solved.”
No. Too convenient. I roll my shoulders to ease the tension settling there. “I’m going to go over the notes again before filing the report.”
“Go home, Hale. You were wrong. It happens. Take a long hot bath or whatever humans do to de-stress.”
“Probably the same thing you would do.”
He looks me up and down, glancing away before I can decipher the intense emotion in his eyes. “I doubt it.”
Heat spreads from my cheeks down to my neck. Latent werewolves exhibit a higher than average sex drive, but Becker is too professional or too shy to act on it. I’m counting on that shy-professionalism to keep our walls firmly erected.
He runs a hand though his copper hair, pausing a few times like he’s going to speak, but he doesn’t. He pauses as if he’s waiting for me to say something, but I don’t. I raise an eyebrow at him. He huffs and stomps out of the actuary offices.
Great, I scared him off. Except, shit, I told him I’d let him have a more fulfilling pack session tonight. He didn’t want to be the one to bring it up. There were several things about Becker’s rough personality that eased after he’d regulated from several pack sessions, but his relationship shyness and social anxiety weren’t one of them.
The guilt festers for a moment until I decide I’ll make it up to him. I pull out my notes from the prediction once again, read them a seventh time. A chance probability happens rarely, but it still happens. Our office gets maybe three high probability predictions in a given year that don’t manifest. Usually with no residual predictions or ripple effect. It’s the first indicator that the calculation could have been wrong.
I run a search through our system and read a few. They all report chance occurrences similar to mine. Maybe it’s just my turn to be wrong. My fingers hover over the submit button on my report, but I can’t do it.
Instead I call up video from downtown by the park. Becker sent me access codes for any relevant footage for the surrounding area a few hours before and after the event. I check the time stamp on the receipts from Becker’s report. It takes a few minutes to find Mr. Walker and witness his last moments. Walker orders his coffee and waves at the barista. I switch cameras to the bus. He walks leisurely to the stop. He waits for a few minutes, checking his ticket.
I rewind the recording. Was the bus early? The time on screen shows he waited at the correct time. I rewind back about fifteen minutes and don’t see the bus, so I fast-forward back to my guy on the bench. The bus comes into view about eight minutes late and the guy stands up, ready to get on when the bus stops, except it doesn’t. The guy waves and chases after the bus for a short distance, before shoving his ticket in his pocket, kicking at the ground in frustration, and walking to the park.
Our guy didn’t miss the bus. The bus missed him.
My heart races and with shaky hands I send a request to investigate Alana Morrison’s recent bank, phone, and online activity. The girl claimed she didn’t know about her prediction, so I should expect nothing abnormal. Since she’s directly related to my report, the request is granted instantly. She’s clean. No huge deposits or transactions, indicating she was getting her finances in order, no mass goodbye letters to friends. She did call her parents and sister the morning she’d been fated to die. At five a.m. It was not enough to indicate guilt, but strange. Going back the last month, she didn’t have a habit of early morning calls.
The door bangs. The rustle of plastic bags and squeaking Styrofoam announces Becker’s arrival.
“Here.” He plops the sacks in front of me. “You should eat.”
The aroma of Chinese food fills the area. I fight with the knot of plastic, my mouth watering. He got me my favorite kind of chow mien with the little fried noodles. I’d know that smell anywhere. Not as good as Mom’s, but I’ll take the substitute.
He nods when I take my first bite and steps backwards. He’s about to retreat again, slower this time.
I hold up my foam container. “There’s enough for two.”
“They only gave you one fork.”
“There’s silverware in the mini-kitchen.” My boss, Gretchen, and her wife converted an empty office when the newer, crumbier building they were moved to ten years before I came along didn’t include a kitchen. Gretchen says she did it to boost morale. Nobody likes working for the government actuary offices, but the benefits are better than the private sector.
Becker scratches his chin, as if he’s considering my offer. He plays it cool, but I notice a slight flush in his cheeks. His eyes are dilated, with little flecks of gold glowing through the iris. The rims of his eyelids are red with lack of sleep. He’s dangling on a dangerous edge. I should offer to increase the time we spend during pack sessions, or have them more frequently. Becker would never ask on his own. My intent in stepping back wasn’t to punish him.
He pulls up a chair across from me. “Maybe I’ll keep you company for a while.” His smile is unsure, like he’s afraid I’ll rescind my invitation. He’s offering me an out if I choose to revoke the privilege.
I lead him to the kitchen to retrieve a fork and tell him about the bus and the phone calls.
He fiddles with the fork like he’s testing its strength and stabs a section of chow mien. “Only one way to find out. Come by the station in the morning. I’ll ge
t you clearance for the case to watch the questioning.” He shoves the forkful of noodles in his mouth.
“I’ll ask for an extension on the report.”
We both eat the noodles in awkward pauses and lame attempts at small talk. This is why I hate dating.
Chapter 4
I ask Becker for a ride to my apartment before he can offer. He swings the car around to let me out right at the steps up to my apartment. It’s weird to have a friend that I’m physically close to on a regular basis, whom I’m also sexually attracted to, be so formal. I don’t know what box to check next to Becker, and the issue is like a widening gulf between us. Eventually I’ll need to deal with it, because I feel him slipping away.
It’s not that he’s avoiding me, but instead he’s emotionally cutting himself off. I can’t put my finger on an exact example. Except for right now, this moment. He’s tense, a little pale, and a light sheen of sweat dabs his temple—these are all signs that he’s near the edge of what he can handle and he won’t ask me for a pack session. He won’t push on the promise I gave him earlier about having one tonight.
I bite my lip, wondering how I should go about un-guilting myself about working over our scheduled pack session. “Actually, I was hoping you’d come up?”
He scans the lot. A few months ago someone snapped a photo of him climbing up to my bedroom window in the middle of the night. HR got a hold of it and tried to blackmail us both into signing relationship notices to ward off a possible sexual harassment case. His gaze fixes on one apartment number. Seems like Becker figured out the culprit.
“So who is it?”
He squints, glaring at the doorway of the offender. “Howard Parsons.”
My stomach sinks. “We worked in Traffic together. I didn’t realize he was in the same apartment complex.” Sat across the hall from his office for years and the jerk never said a word. The first week I was working there, I had a zillion questions, assured that if I did an excellent job they’d let me go back to Homicide where I’d interned before I screwed it up and got romantically involved with one of the supervisors, Kyle Dillingham. Howard would answer my questions in one-syllable utterances, and after the first week he’d comment that I needed to figure things out for myself and stop bothering people who were doing actual work. And he was the “nice” one in the office. Yet I didn’t expect him to try to sabotage me.
