The Soulmate Equation

River’s gaze passed over the group, sweeping past Jess before pausing and jerking back to her face. “Why’s she here?”

“Have a seat, Riv,” Lisa said, then turned to a petite Asian woman to her right. “Tiff? Do you want to hand out the data?”

Data. Yes. Great. Jess’s shoulders eased, and she took a sheet when the stack came around.

The handout contained much less information than Jess would need to give useful feedback on a commercial undertaking of this scale. Two client IDs were listed at the top left and a red circle around a number in the upper right corner. Ninety-eight. Beneath was a table with a simple summary of a data set: variable names, means, deviations, and P values with many, many zeroes after the decimal.

There was a highly significant finding in this data; the urgency of this meeting was becoming clear.

River released a breath that sounded like it’d been punched out of him.

“Wow,” Jess said. “Ninety-eight. Is that a compatibility score? I realize I’m new to this, but that’s huge, right?” She flipped back to her memory of Lisa’s presentation. “Diamond?”

The nervous energy at the table doubled; all but one head nodded. River was still staring at the piece of paper.

“Yes,” Lisa said, and her smile was so intense the skin had grown tight around her eyes. “The highest we’ve seen in the DNADuo is ninety-three.”

“Okay, so are we asking about a way to confirm this interaction?” Jess leaned in, looking at the variables. “Without the raw data, I can only guess, but it looks like you’ve customized your stats using an N-type analysis—which is exactly what I would have used. But I’m sure you know the biggest problem with this is that the bounds we would normally use for a typical algorithm become less effective. Though”—she chuckled—“looking at this P value, I’m guessing with this pair the interactions are everywhere, even with stricter bounds. I could create a non-Euclidean metric, something like a multidimensional data structure—like a k-d tree or cover tree …” She trailed off, looking up. No one was nodding excitedly; no one was jumping in to brainstorm. Maybe there wasn’t another statistician in the room. “I’m more than happy to dig into your post hoc analyses, though with the number of genes in your array, I might need a couple weeks.”

Self-conscious now, she put the packet down on the table, smoothing it with her left hand. The room had grown so quiet, the sound of her palm over paper seemed to echo around them. But no one else was actually looking at their handout, or even seemed to be listening. They were all looking at River.

And when Jess looked at him, at the raw shock in his expression, a current of electricity ran through her, almost like she’d just touched a live wire.

He cleared his throat and turned to Tiffany. “Tiff, did you look through the raw data?”

She nodded, but she was staring at David, who was exchanging another heavy look with Brandon. The room felt deeply, meaningfully silent, and Jess realized she was missing an important context for the gravity here.

Awareness sank as quickly as a weight in water. Jess glanced down again at the client information.

Client 144326.

Client 000001.

Oh, God.

“Um … who is client number one?”

River cleared his throat; he’d gone sheet white and gripped the paper in two hands. “Me.”

Oh. Well, Jesus Christ, no wonder he wanted to confirm the analysis. A Diamond Match for the original scientist on the project was huge news, especially this close to launch.

“Okay, I get it.” Jess took a deep breath, leaning back, ready to get to work. “How can I help?”

River looked at Lisa then, his eyes heavy with the obvious question. Literally everyone else in the room was staring at him, waiting for him to say it: Have we confirmed the assay? Have we replicated the finding with a backup sample?

But that wasn’t what he asked. In a low, shaky voice, River murmured, “Who is 1-4-4-3-2-6?”

Every head swung Jess’s way and—

When she realized what was going on, why they were all there, why they had sent a car, why they hadn’t made her sign an NDA for data purposes, why River hadn’t known she would be there, and why everyone else was looking at Jess with that fevered, vibrating force in their expressions, it felt a little like falling off a curb, except she was sitting.

It was genuinely so absurd she started laughing.

Ninety-eight!

“Oh.” Jess was still laughing as she stood on shaky legs. Her heartbeat was a pulsating cacophony in her ears. “I’m not here to advise on your statistics.”

Ninety-eight. P values with at least ten zeroes after the decimal. Her brain scratched around, looking for a way out of this.

“Jess—” Lisa began.

“This isn’t right,” Jess cut her off, fumbling for her purse.

“We ran the data through all of our standard analysis programs,” Tiffany added quietly.