Chapter 1
Two years ago – First exchange:
Binary: Your code is inefficient. Line 347 could be compressed.
Mercury: Not everything is about efficiency.
Binary: Explain.
Mercury: It’s a sonnet. Fourteen lines. Read the first letter of each line.
Binary: “Stay safe stranger.”
Mercury: Sometimes beauty IS the function.
Binary: …Interesting.
Lincoln Bollinger was typing on a laptop he’d brought to a bar on a Saturday night, and he saw absolutely nothing wrong with this.
The crack of the cue ball against the eight ball made him glance up just in time to catch Theo Lindstrom’s groan.
“That’s another twenty you owe me.” Bear leaned his pool cue against the table, grinning. Lincoln’s cousin had been hustling pool at the Eagle’s Nest since they wereteenagers—longer, if you counted the years their dads had looked the other way.
Theo was already fishing bills from his wallet. “Double or nothing.”
“You know he’s just going to take your money again,” Lincoln said, eyes back on his screen.
“Thank you for that stunning insight.” Theo lined up another shot—an impossible bank, two rails minimum. “Some of us enjoy the process.”
“The process of losing?”
“The process oftrying, Linc. It’s a human thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
Lincoln almost smiled. Theo had been giving him grief since third grade, when Lincoln had corrected their teacher’s math in front of the whole class and couldn’t figure out why everyone was mad about it—something about extra homework. Twenty-some years later, Theo still hadn’t let him forget it.
“You’re at the wrong angle,” Lincoln said without looking up. “You need forty-three degrees. You’re closer to fifty.”
Theo took the shot anyway. The eight ball missed the pocket by two inches.
“You could’ve told me thatbeforeI shot.”
“I gave you the data. You chose optimism over mathematics.”
Bear laughed, catching the twenty Theo slapped into his palm. “When are you going to learn? My cousin is never wrong about numbers.”
“He’s wrong about plenty of other things.” Theo dropped into the booth across from Lincoln, next to Derek. “Social cues, for example.”
“I’m adequate at social cues.”
Bear and Derek exchanged a look.
“I’madequate.”
His cousin Derek slid a glass of water across the table—the only thing Lincoln ever ordered here. “You eat yet?”
“I ate at six.”
“Of course you did.” Derek shook his head. “Six on the dot—still running on Aunt Quinn’s dinner schedule after all these years.”
