Neuropath by R. Scott Bakker Read Free Book Online Page A

that nothing survived. Nothing save the Argument.
    Like most, Thomas had moved on. Humans were hardwired for conviction, thoughtless or otherwise, and had to work to suspend judgment—work hard. He had taken the low road, allowing the assumptions to crowd out the suspicions. The years passed, the children grew, and he found himself packing all the old questions away, even as he continued playing Professor Bible, destroyer of worlds in the classroom. Nothing killed old revelations quite so effectively as responsibility and routine.
    But Neil… For whatever reason, Neil had never let go. Thomas humored his ramblings, of course, the way you might humor old high school football stories, or any reminiscence of irrelevant glory. 'Oh, yeah, you sacked him real good.' He even wondered whether it was a sign of some hidden distance between them, an inability to connect outside of on-campus residences and off-campus bars.
    Last night had simply been more of the same, hadn't it?
    He was trying to talk me out of loving my kids.
    Peekskill glared beyond the windshield, whipping this way and that as Thomas gunned the straightaways and squealed around the turns. He peered like a pensioner over the steering wheel when he turned down Nora's crescent. The sight of her black Cherokee in the driveway made him numb.
    So much for her trip.
    His heart sucked ice-cubes in his chest.
    'San Francisco my ass,' he muttered.

    Special Agent Samantha Logan put her white Mustang into park and let it idle. She flicked her cigarette outside, watched Thomas Bible through the windshield. He trotted up to the front door of a grey-brick bungalow. He looked agitated.
    Somehow she'd known he was heading home. She'd followed him from Columbia to the West 116th subway station, then raced north to beat him to Peekskill—halfway to fucking Poughkeepsie! Somehow she'd known there was more to Thomas Bible than met the eye.
    If it wasn't for Shelley Atta and her insistence that Bible see the BD, they might already have what they needed. But no , the idiot thought Cynthia Powski would rattle the man into compliance. As if anyone with two marbles to rub together would be anything other than outraged by Neil Cassidy's little 'sitcum', as her sometime-partner Danny Gerard had wickedly dubbed it. When Atta had mentioned her plan, the first thing Samantha had wondered was how she herself would react. But that was the problem with pricks like Shelley Atta: they just couldn't step outside their own skin. Or didn't care to.
    Samantha Logan had understood why Thomas Bible had kicked them out of his office. She had even secretly applauded him for doing it. But why had he raced home afterward? And why had he raced here immediately after that?
    Just where was here , anyway?

    Thomas paused in the shade of the porch. He'd been to Nora's 'new place' more times than he could count, picking up the kids, delivering the kids, and once to help her carry in a new refrigerator—something he still alternately congratulated and cursed himself for doing (they had ended up screwing on her tacky living room couch). And yet despite the frequency of his visits, nothing about the place felt familiar. He was an interloper here, an unwelcome passer-through. The long low porch with its impenetrable windows, its bustling planters and sun-hanging geraniums, its whitewashed railing and black aluminum door, had always seemed to personify Nora somehow.
    And Nora no longer loved him.
    But there was more to his hesitation; there was Neil and the FBI as well. Why had Neil mentioned her? And what was it he had said? Something. Something… Thomas rubbed his face in frustration.
    This isn't happening.
    He simply stood and breathed, stared like an idiot at the closed door. The house seemed preternaturally quiet. When he blinked, he no longer saw Cynthia Powski, he saw inside .
    Signs of struggle. Lines of blood roped across hardwood floors…
    No way. No fucking way.
    A fly buzzed in the corner of the window's