Killfile Read Online Free Page A

effectively blind in an instant. He screams as I step aside, and he runs into the wall hard enough to bounce.
    They’re both out of the game. I turn back to Gaines. I feel a stab of fear inside his mind.
    â€œNow you’re trying to remember the last time you fired that Glock at the range,” I tell him. “And how many bullets are still loaded. And you’re especially curious to find out if you can get it out of the drawer before I do anything else.”
    I take a step forward. He flinches back in his chair.
    â€œI admit, I’m a little curious myself.”
    A side door to the office opens. An older man stands there in a white shirt and khakis. I knew he was there. He was listening to my audition the entire time.
    â€œThat’s enough, Mr. Smith,” he says. “I believe Lawrence is convinced now.”
    I’m looking at Gaines’s boss. Who also happens to be the thirteenth richest man in America.
    â€œI’m sorry for the trouble,” Everett Sloan says. “By way of apology, I hope you’ll allow me to take you to lunch.”
    M Y STEAK IS big enough to fall over the lip of the plate. Which is actually fine by me. Vegetarians can have their clean arteries. Humans are smart because a bunch of primates on the African savannah developed a taste for raw flesh, and the amino acids in their bellies went straight to their heads and built bigger brains. Two million years later, there’s me, reading minds and downing megaloads of protein to refuel. Evolution in action.
    Sloan sits across from me at the table, drinking coffee. We have an acre of space in the back of the restaurant, all to ourselves. I’m not sure if this is because Sloan wants it this way, or if this is just the standard lunch hour in South Dakota.
    Even so, I pick up the angst as the waitress follows an argument between two friends on Facebook, the boredom of the manager, the stoic acceptance of the cook in the back as he adds another burn to the layers of scar tissue on his right hand.
    Keith was still dry-heaving when we left, so Sloan drove us here himself. His hands were steady on the wheel. I know he’s in his seventies, but he looks at least a couple of decades younger and stands straight and tall. One of the benefits of having a billion dollars is that time doesn’t leave the same marks on you as it does other people.
    When I decided to go private, I memorized the names and faces of all the people on the Forbes 500. Future clients, I hoped. Sloan stood out. He’s not the richest man on the list, but he might well be the smartest. And yes, I’m including Gates. Forget the software geeks who have gotten rich off stock options because they came up with a new way for teenagers to take nude selfies. Sloan is an actual, honest-to-God genius. He was still a college student at Stanford when he was recruited by the NSA to break Soviet codes in the Cold War. He went to grad school after that, supplementing his meager salary as a teaching assistant by playing poker in backroom card games. Then he found that some of his equations could actually predict the movements of the stock market. He took his paycheck to Vegas and won a poker tournament. He used the prize money to start his own investment firm. Within a year, he was a multimillionaire.
    Now he manages about $20 billion in assets, and there are people who’d sell their own daughters for the chance to give him their money.
    I’ve never encountered a mind like his before. Even this close, I couldn’t tell you what he’s thinking. He’s running calculations and modeling outcomes way ahead of anything I can fathom, much faster than I’ve ever experienced. It’s like a wall of ice—cold, flawless, and perfectly smooth. Most of my attempts to read him just slide right off.
    â€œI hope you’ll forgive Lawrence,” he says. “He tends to be overprotective.”
    I saw that clearly in the office when