The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(60)

I cross my arms, trying not to sound pissed off. Because really, I am mad at my dad and not Dr. Simons. And snapping at him isn’t going to get me what I want: information. “And who the hell is North Point?”

“They are a defense contractor. Deep military ties, even deeper pockets. And apparently boundless determination. They want unfettered access to certain aspects of your father’s research.”

“So they are the ‘threat’ that everyone was talking about?” I ask.

Dr. Simons nods. “But to be clear, we have no reason to believe that they have located us yet. Everything we’re doing is simply with an abundance of caution.”

I picture Doug’s red face, the way he looked at me in that diner like he wanted me dead, the way he chased after us in the woods so easily even though he was bleeding so much. The addition of Dr. Simons and Quentin has not made me feel like we’re going to be any less screwed if they do find us. And they already have once. Who says they won’t be able to do it again?

“Yeah, I think they might be closer than you think.”

Dr. Simons’s eyes widen. “What do you mean?”

“Our car broke down, so we asked for a ride.” I’ll have to talk quickly if I’m going to get the story out. “They pretended they had this baby, but when we realized they didn’t, we tried to run. The guy, his name was Doug, or that’s what he said, jumped Jasper, so I had to—we ended up getting away, but barely.” I can’t bring myself to say the stabbing part. Especially not if Dr. Simons thinks that I have a “condition.”

“That certainly does sound like it could be them. The fear, of course, was that, given the opportunity, they might try to grab you to elicit your father’s cooperation,” Dr. Simons says quietly, then he looks up at me with these sad brown eyes. “And I wouldn’t be so sure that your asking them for a ride was entirely voluntary. These people are terribly clever. And well trained.”

I close my eyes, remembering suddenly. “We were both in the market for a couple minutes, and they were out there together alone by the car,” I say. They could have easily done something to make it not start. “But they were at the gas station first. How would they even know we were going to stop there?”

“They were probably intercepting the texts from Cassie. Thanks to Level99, that won’t be happening again.”

Looks like they were right to take Cassie’s phone. It was putting someone in danger: us.

“But why did you bring Cassie here? And why did he act like he didn’t have any idea where Cassie was? He made it seem like I was the only one who knew. That I needed to tell him.”

“I can promise you that everything your dad did was in an effort to protect you, to keep you out of this—what could be a very dangerous situation. I suspect he thought you were receiving false texts from someone who wasn’t Cassie—remember we didn’t realize she even had her phone. We had no reason to suspect she could be sending you texts. I’m sure he was also concerned about revealing too much over the phone. We knew that our communications had been hacked and they weren’t secured until just now. Your dad couldn’t risk giving out too much information over an unsecured line.”

“This still doesn’t make any sense,” I say. And maybe bits and pieces do, but the whole thing together? Not in the least. “And why my dad’s research? No one has ever cared about it before.”

Dr. Simons frowns. “Did your dad have an opportunity to tell you about the Outliers?”

“Yes, I mean no, not exactly.” Because actually it was Gideon who explained them. Why give my dad credit for being honest about anything? “They are the not-normal ones.”

Dr. Simons nods. “That’s a fair description. The Outliers are the handful of test subjects who demonstrated simultaneous nonvisual and nonauditory emotional perception,” he says. “In other words, capable of reading other people’s emotions while blindfolded and wearing headphones. There weren’t many. Really, they were an inadvertent by-product of your dad’s research. The combined nonauditory, nonvisual segment of the test was meant to provide a control baseline. Your father was looking at the implications of live discussion on emotional perception. He never imagined that there would be some individuals capable of accurate emotional perception without visual or auditory clues. But their discovery could have profound implications.”

“Profound how?” I swallow hard, try to keep my stomach from pushing farther up into my throat.

“Well, for instance, the US Office of Naval Intelligence has been trying for years to use intuition in combat, and a discovery like this could be critical to that research,” he says. “I expect North Point’s interest in the Outliers is similar. Their ultimate goal would be to use the Outliers’ skills to develop some kind of innovative military strategy or technology.”

“So why don’t these people just redo the study themselves, find their own Outliers?”

“They’ve been unable to. Because the Outliers were an inadvertent, inappropriate by-product of your father’s study, their existence was acknowledged only in a footnote in his data section.”

“Meaning?” I ask.

“They were an accident,” he says. “We only know of three Outliers thus far. Notably, all of them were younger than the minimum age for study participants. All under eighteen. Two of the three were included because the study parameters were not properly administered by your father’s research assistant.”