Set in Season Two
Disclaimer: all theirs, nothing mine. As usual.
Short Circuit
By OughtaKnowBetter
"Stop fussing over me," Adam grumbled. "I can tie my own tie. And this bullet-proof vest feels hot and heavy. I don't need it," he finished up, hope floating into his voice.
"Yes, you do," Shalimar contradicted in no uncertain terms. She was dropping him off center stage, and wasn't ready to leave her mentor to his own devices just yet. The stage-hands around them were setting the spotlights so as to illuminate the speaker and not wash out the screen behind that would hold the slides that Adam had prepared weeks earlier. The moderator had already greeted Adam, and was busy fixing his own tie in preparation for the lecture. "And you need help with your tie. You tie it crookedly. How can such a brilliant man be so inept at dressing himself?"
"I am not inept. It's this vest. It's hot and bulky and uncomfortable. I'm taking it off."
"Not a chance, Adam." Jesse's voice drifted into their ears through their comm. link. The molecular was high in the control booth looking down over the auditorium which was slowly beginning to fill up with suited scientists. "You got a bona fide death threat from a certified whack job. The letter arrived in the mail less than a week ago, and it's genuine, Adam. We're not just paranoid; there really is someone out to get you. And since you'll make a very inviting target standing behind the podium droning on about genetic research—"
"I don't drone."
Jesse ignored the interruption. "—you have just won yourself a brand new shiny vest lined with titanium." He switched channels. "Emma? You there?"
"Right here," Emma confirmed. The empath was mingling, sending out feelers, testing the psychic waters and looking for evidence of the threat that they all knew was somewhere in this building. People were ambling in, searching for a better seat from which to hear the famed Dr. Adam Kane speak, looking for colleagues that they saw only at these sort of events. Several wore suits, others couldn't be bothered and opted for jeans and a white coat stained with biological residue from a lab. Here and there the youngish ones eyed Emma appreciatively, but the girl wasn't interested. She was there on business. "So far everyone's clean."
Mutant X business.
"So either our sniper is not yet in the building or he's too far away for Emma to sense." Brennan was off to the side, waiting in the wings of the stage. He had adopted a different look today, dressed in a suit to better blend in with the crowd of egg-heads. But the stylish side of him had to come out somewhere: a pair of shades. Brennan came across as exactly what he was: a bodyguard. He rubbed his fingers together, and little arcs of electricity snapped across the short distance.
Shalimar glanced at him sourly. "Tone it down, Sparky. You want people to notice?"
"Sorry." The snapping stopped, but Brennan shifted his feet irritably, searching the crowd with eyes hidden behind the Ray-bans. The curtains edged toward him, potent with static electricity.
"You'd better get going," Adam suggested pointedly to Shalimar. Brennan wasn't the only one on edge. "It's about to begin. You should be in the audience with Emma."
"Trying to get rid of me?"
"As a matter of fact, yes." Adam adjusted the tie, trying to give his neck a little more room. "I need to look over my notes."
Shalimar gave him a quick peck on the cheek, working hard to cover how nervous she felt. "Going." She paused. "Be careful, Adam. We can't afford to lose you."
"You're not going to lose me," Adam returned irritably. "I'm wearing a vest, we have Jesse with a bird's eye view, Emma scanning, you hunting and Brennan over there about as inconspicuous as a zebra in an art museum." He looked at the elemental with annoyance. "And stop snapping your fingers. You'll blow out the spotlights."
"Sorry." The little arcs of electricity which had started themselves up again without Brennan noticing, stopped. Brennan took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. What did he have to be nervous about? It was Adam who was the sniper's target. As well as the man about to give a speech to a couple thousand critical scientists eager for the opportunity to challenge Adam's theories and proposals. Shalimar drifted away, not without a backward glance, to mingle with the crowd and hunt for signs that someone wasn't the innocent scientist that he appeared to be.
Adam turned off his comm. link. The background chatter would only distract him, and he could trust his team to look out for him. He half-doubted that there was any real threat; the evidence was shaky, and it could have been a person too angry to be discreet who was now regretting their actions. A simple letter didn't necessarily mean anything. He pulled out the sheaf of papers that he'd written his notes on and picked up the remote for the presentation slides he'd brought. Time to get to work. He put all thoughts of danger aside.
Brennan looked around anxiously, scanning the audience and watching Adam at the same time. He felt the most vulnerable here, standing in the wings behind the heavy curtains, wanting to be down among the sheep and looking for someone with malice in their heart. Instead he was with Adam, ready to intervene in whatever way necessary. "Jesse?"
"Right here, bro." The molecular was still up in the video booth with the technicians, monitoring the cameras that he had installed just yesterday when the threat had come in. "No matches yet. If this guy is here, he's either hiding his mutant DNA or he came in through the drain pipes."
"Now that's a mutation I'd like to see," Shalimar murmured back, holding her ring to her face to speak into the device. "But that's not what this guy can do. Emma?"
"He's here." The telempath was definite. "He just arrived. I don't know where, but he's here. And he's thinking about Adam." Then puzzlement: "Guys, I think our sniper knows Adam personally. Adam will be able to recognize him." A long and puzzled pause. "They were friends once."
"Mason Eckhart knows Adam personally," Jesse replied, "and that doesn't make him any friendlier. Got that, everyone?" Jesse's voice took on a more concerned tone. "We have a target, and it's someone that Adam knows personally. Let's take this guy out before Adam finishes his lecture and people come to him to shake his hand. That will be the danger time, with someone coming up to greet him and shove a gun in his face. Emma, can you move around, maybe narrow down his location?"
"Trying," she said. They could hear her concentration through the comm. link. "Try looking up high," she suggested. "I'm getting a sense of looking down on Adam. Jesse, I don't think he's going to wait for a meet and greet session."
"Redirecting the cameras," Jesse responded promptly. "Shal, you move up to the upper levels of the auditorium. Brennan, keep sharp. Let me know if you see anything."
The welcoming applause died away, and Adam stepped to the podium. The lights over the audience dimmed, and the first slide brightened the stage behind him.
"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," he said. "I'd like to start with a brief history of how science has been looking at the issue of genetic manipulation. Mankind has been altering the DNA of animals for millennium. One only has to look at the histories of domesticated animals for the evidence…"
Jesse tuned the man out; he'd heard this speech three times before, helping Adam to refine the wording back at Sanctuary over the last week. He aimed his vid-cams upward, trusting Emma's intuition as to where the sniper would be. One camera he left to track the empath. Emma was quickly making her way through the crowd still trying to find seats, blindly seeking out the welling emotion from the sniper.
"Jesse," she said, "He's getting tense. I think he's getting close to firing."
"Hear that, Shal, Bren?"
"Got it." Both of the other mutants were just as anxious. Electricity crackled on Brennan's comm. link, interfering with the reception.
"Can you locate him, Emma?" Jesse swung the cameras around. Time was getting short. The sniper wouldn't give them much more.
"Try all the way to the left," she suggested. And wished heartily that her own gift had some locational bent to it. It was fine to know that the sniper was here, but 'here' was too nebulous by half a mile under the circumstances. You can do this, girl. She glanced nervously at Adam, who was still lecturing at the podium. Then she peered back over the crowd. The scientists were all hanging on every word, most jotting down notes and a couple frantically trying to sketch in a graph that Adam was presenting. She shook her head wryly. All the notes they needed were on the handouts at the front of the auditorium, just below the podium. Scientists!
Jesse obediently maneuvered two of the cameras toward the left side of the auditorium balcony, searching for anything that might look like a spot for a sniper to hide himself in. Nothing. Everything was dark, the focus of the room on the slides on the screen at the back of the stage and the man discussing the evidence in front of the scene. The cameras slowly dollied across the upper area, the seats empty with the crowd eschewing these chairs in favors of the closer ones below.
He almost missed it—a small swaying of the heavy curtain at the side of the balcony. Jesse halted the progression of one camera and zoomed in for a closer look. Light glinted on a piece of dark metal.
"Got him!" Jesse said, alarmed. "Shalimar, Emma, balcony left! He's ready to fire! Brennan!"
A spurt of red flame erupted from the dark metal gun barrel. Brennan flung himself across the stage to take Adam down to the floor in the middle of discussing the upgrades to Mendelian evolutionary theory. A hole sprouted in the wood podium, sending splinters into the crowd with a sharp retort.
There was silence while the crowd of scientists evaluated the significance of what had just occurred: a small round hole in the podium, a dark-suited bodyguard who had just covered the guest speaker with his own body, and a noise strangely reminiscent of a gunshot.
The audience scattered.
Shalimar abandoned all pretense of being a normal human. Despite being trained observers, not one of the fleeing scientists noted the tiny blonde woman leaping up to the twenty-foot high balcony with a single jump, clutching onto the railing and clambering over. She darted to the curtains where the shooter had been, Jesse's cameras tracking her every move. Shalimar tore down the curtain with a single yank.
Empty.
"He's gone." Emma arrived as the curtain fell around Shalimar's ankles. "I felt him leave. He's angry at missing Adam. He considers himself a good shot."
"He didn't miss!" Brennan's voice came sharp and scared over the comm. link. "Jesse, call for an ambulance!"
Terror struck at them all. Shalimar took the short cut to the stage, turning a flip in mid air from the balcony to land on her feet close to the pair. Emma and Jesse were forced to use the stairs but didn't take much longer.
Adam was on the floor of the stage, gasping for breath, lips turning blue as he tried to make words come out. His hands plucked feebly at his chest. Jesse wrenched open the bullet-proof vest, ripping the white buttoned shirt with it.
"There's no blood," Shalimar discovered, alarmed. "Where was he hit?"
"He wasn't shot." Emma plucked the words out of Adam's mind. She looked up at the others, naked fear on her face. "It's his heart!"
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"Translate," Brennan insisted, frightened and trying to cover his fear with anger. This day had been too long and filled with too much excitement. Having it end up in the waiting room of the Intensive Care Unit was not what any of them had planned for when waking up this morning. It should have been a post-lecture victory celebration. "Speak plain English, doc. What's wrong with him?"
The doctor in the white coat stuck her hands into the voluminous pockets, fingering her stethoscope just to have something to do with her fingers. "Frankly, Mr. Mulwray, we don't know yet. We're still running tests."
"You've been running tests for six hours," Brennan reminded her. "How many more tests are you going to run?"
"At least twenty four hours worth," was the unapologetic reply. "This is not a straight-forward situation where I can point a finger at a diagnosis and say, 'that's the one.' When Dr. Kane was brought in, his heartbeat was extremely erratic. Now he's in a normal sinus rhythm; no sign of the ectopy that caused his distress. He's fine at the moment but I'd like to find out what happened and why. Hearts don't usually go in and out of irregular rhythms without explanation. I want a bit more reassurance that this isn't going to happen again, and right now I don't have that reassurance." The doctor glanced through the window into the patient room beyond. Shalimar was perched on a stool beside the hospital bed, clutching onto Adam's hand as though he would slip away if she didn't hang onto him.
Adam himself looked as white as the sheets that he lay upon, dark circles under his eyes a testament to his recent ordeal. More than one slender plastic tube was threaded through beeping machines, feeding medicines directly into the blood to act upon his heart. More wires kept him hooked to monitors, a small green light moving in a regular pattern across the screen. Another tube pushed oxygen at him. Brennan didn't see how the man could sleep through the racket.
"How can it be his heart?" Emma asked. "Isn't he too young? He's very athletic."
The doctor nodded. "You can never tell. There may be some inborn error in metabolism, something he was born with. Does he have a family history of heart attacks?"
The three looked helplessly at each other. As much as Adam knew about them, they knew little about their mentor's past.
Jesse was no less upset than Brennan, but more contained. "How long before we can get him out of here, doc? This is not a man who takes kindly to staying in bed."
The doctor grinned. "Then I'll be counting on you four to make him. He's had a close call. Twenty-four hours here with me, and, assuming I don't find anything I don't like, he can turn into your problem."
Emma bit her lip. "I'll hold you to that." She looked at the others, waiting until the doctor had walked away to continue. She spoke in a low voice. "What about the sniper? How can we protect Adam here?"
"One of us will be at his bedside at all times," Brennan promised grimly. Small sparks snapped nervously at his fingertips, and he crushed the electrons into silence. "Shalimar first, then Jesse, then me. Emma, I want you further away, scanning. Any hint of the sniper, you let us know."
"He's somewhere in this hospital, possibly in this downstairs waiting room." Emma scanned the waiting room on the first floor, hunting with both her eyes and her mind. The place was airy and open, adjacent to the front entrance to the hospital. "I can feel him. He's here. He's thinking about how to get to Adam and then make his escape."
Brennan looked around, Jesse following his lead. The room was crowded with people waiting for news of their loved ones: a group of gypsies in one corner casting dour looks at everyone else, a mother trying to keep two young children under control. More were elderly, barely able to totter about themselves with canes and walkers. All looked haggard with worry.
"Process of elimination," Jesse murmured just loud enough for the others to hear. "Subtract everyone over the age of seventy. The person who escaped from the balcony had to be pretty agile to get away faster than Shalimar could follow. Likewise, weed out the kids. I've yet to see a four year old write a death threat."
"That still leaves at least two dozen suspects." Brennan tried to memorize what each and every one left looked like. Mutants had a certain look about them, and this one should be no exception. The mutation here was a feral, like Shalimar. Shalimar had searched the sniper's hiding place thoroughly for clues. But while Shalimar took on the aspects of a feline, this one had been intermixed with avian.
Jesse had delved into the computer files when Adam had been less than forthcoming after the threatening letter, finally discovering a name after finding out that the sniper was an acquaintance of Adam's. Carlos Del Castillo, like the rest of the New Mutants, had been 'helped' as a child when he had developed a fatal illness. He was one of the earliest children to come to Genomex, and Adam had been instrumental in curing him, infusing Carlos' DNA with avian DNA from the peregrine falcon. It had worked; Del Castillo lived.
On the face of it, Del Castillo had been fortunate. His mutation gave him a superior hearing and a keen eyesight; like the peregrine falcon he could spot something as tiny as a mouse from a distance approaching a mile. And, like a bird, his bones were hollow making him far lighter than any human had a right to be.
All of this became extremely attractive to certain sub rosa military organizations. Del Castillo trained as a sniper, able to pick off targets at a distance limited only to the capabilities of his weapon. He became much in demand.
But there was a cost. His heart beat faster, which began a cascade of potential illnesses down the road. The risks, Adam had told Carlos back in their mutual Genomex days, were cardiovascular: heart attacks, stroke. A probable life span of not more than fifty. Which was a heck of a lot better than dying at age twelve, but now at thirty five Carlos was quite obviously not a happy feral. Hence the death threat.
All this Jesse had been able to pry out of Adam's database, worrying his way around the protections that Adam had applied, hacking his way in past the passwords as Adam lay in his hospital bed. The information was meager, but more than Adam had been willing to share. But the one thing that the team wanted, that they needed, wasn't there: a picture of Carlos del Castillo.
Emma cast around, looking not with her eyes but with her mind. She frowned. "He's not here."
"But you said he was."
"He's not any more." She tilted her head, then lifted it as if sniffing the air. "He's on the roof. I can feel the wind beating against him, helping him to fly."
Brennan scowled. "He turning into a bird man for real? Wings?"
Emma blinked, coming back to herself. "He's gone."
Brennan sighed. "Let's get back to Adam. I'll take Shalimar up to the roof. Maybe she can see something that we can't." His scowl deepened. "That doc better bust Adam out of here soon. I don't like having him where we can't see who's coming."
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"Any luck?" Emma plopped herself down on the stool next to Jesse's. They were all back at Sanctuary, having persuaded the doctor to release Adam before he up and walked out against medical advice. The trip had been a long one for Adam; he fell asleep on the way home, and was tucked into his own bed here in Sanctuary with closed eyes before he could object that he had projects to finish. And the others conspired to keep him there.
Jesse's fingers danced over the computer keyboard but slowed as he paid attention to the telempath sitting next to him. The banks of computers whirred at them comfortingly, promising to divulge the secrets of the universe if only someone would caress their keys.
Jesse arched his back, stretching. "Nope," he replied. "Don't know why, but Adam put some heavy locks on the information surrounding this Del Castillo character. There's nothing to indicate why Carlos is so angry at Adam."
"There's always the usual."
"Angry at Adam because he's going to die before his time?" Jesse shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. Adam gave him another twenty or thirty years. Del Castillo would have died before hitting puberty. There has to be something more."
"Why?" Emma wanted to know. "Ashlocke was the same way. He hated Adam."
"Ashlocke was crazy."
"And who's to say that Carlos isn't?" Then Emma checked herself. "Cancel that. I would know—I've touched his mind. He's not insane, just very very angry." She sighed. "No, there's a reason he wants Adam dead. Maybe if we find it, we'll be able to figure out how to stop him."
"Now that sounds good." Brennan ambled in to drop his backside onto another stool, peering at the computer screen. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. "You have any luck at breaking the encryption?"
Jesse sighed. "No. You?"
Brennan shook his head. "I went back to the auditorium, but no luck. The guy wasn't there long enough to leave a mark. Even the guards at the front and back entrances couldn't remember him."
"Didn't help that you didn't have a picture to show them," Jesse added.
"Yeah." Angry little sparks erupted from Brennan's fingertips. The elemental absently brushed them away. The picture on the computer screen tilted.
"Hey," Jesse objected mildly. "Turn it off, Sparky. You'll blow out the monitor."
"Sorry."
But Jesse had leaned in for a closer look. He looked at the monitor, then at Brennan, then back at the screen. "Brennan, move your hand closer to the monitor."
"Huh?"
"Just do it, okay?"
"Okay." Brennan obeyed. The picture shifted once again toward Brennan as though pulled by a powerful magnet.
Jesse took a more active role. He took hold of Brennan's wrist, moving the elemental's hand back and forth in front of the screen. The picture responded to his actions, the screen-saver warping toward where ever the Brennan-magnet was. "Cool."
Brennan jerked his hand away. "Right. Is this going to happen every time I sit down in front of a computer?"
"Beats me, Sparky." Jesse shrugged. "Gotta ask the resident genetics expert. Wait! We can't!" He smacked his forehead dramatically. "He saw you coming at him and his heart stopped beating!"
Brennan grunted dourly. "Very funny, wise guy. Suppose you put those smarts to work and tell us why this Carlos character hates Adam so much." Little sparks jumped from his fingers to the keyboard. The monitor shorted out with a disappointing pop and a hiss.
Jesse jumped back. "Hey! What did you do? I needed that computer, Brennan."
"I didn't do anything." Brennan pulled back from the set up, moving the stool back in alarm. "It's like something went zap."
"Yeah, the monitor went zap," Jesse grouched. "Go work out or something if you're going to leak electricity all over the place. That was an expensive computer, bro, and you just blew a monitor and probably inside the box as well. Go," he pushed.
Emma too got up. "I'll relieve Shalimar," she offered. "Use her as a sparring partner, Brennan. She should take a break from sitting with Adam. Jesse's right, Brennan. You're too wound up. You need to work off the excess energy. It's coming off of you everywhere. It's even making my hair stand on end, like static electricity."
Brennan threw up his hands in surrender, rising from the stool. "I'm going. I'm going. Tell Shal to meet me in the dojo."
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Adam wandered into the computer lab where Jesse sat tinkering with the box, unscrewing the power regulator and hooking up various leads, checking the responses and growling under his breath. Adam eyed the molecular suspiciously. "What are you doing?"
"Fixing the damn computer that Brennan broke. He fried the power regulator. Ow." Jesse bumped his head pulling it out from under the countertop and took a second look. "What are you doing up? Aren't you supposed to be in bed?"
"I was bored." But Adam didn't look bored. He looked lost. Jesse couldn't remember ever seeing the man at loose ends, worn out with the mere effort of sliding into a bathrobe. It was more than a little scary for the molecular. Adam was the untouchable one, the man who was there to fix all of them, the all-powerful father figure. He wasn't supposed to get sick or be weak or get injured. He wasn't a New Mutant.
Adam tucked his hands into the over-sized pockets. "Can I help?"
"Nope." Jesse plucked the screwdriver off of the table before Adam could notice and reach for it. "You're supposed to be in bed for at least two days, Adam. Doctor's orders. Why aren't you there?"
"I couldn't." Adam looked away. "I couldn't sleep."
Jesse pulled away from the box he was working on. "We can get Emma to help. You wouldn't have to take any sleeping pills if you didn't want to. What's that stuff that the doctor prescribed for you?"
"No. No," Adam repeated hastily. "I've had enough of sleeping. It's time to get up and moving."
"It's time to sit down and relax," Jesse contradicted. "Adam, you heard the same things that we did. Two days of bed rest, then light work for a week. And you get to follow that with another check up. Adam, your heart almost stopped! You think we're going to take that lightly?"
"No." Adam grimaced. Then he smiled, a ghost of an expression flitting across his face. "I guess I could have picked a better time."
"Well, yeah, I'd have to agree with you there." Jesse hung his elbows across his knees, resting his arms and surveying his mentor. "Taking a swan dive in front of over a thousand of the best and brightest in the business is not the way to exit gracefully."
"What's the reaction in the community?"
Jesse grinned. "Half of 'em think you're dead from a sniper's bullet. The other half think you're dead from a heart attack. And the third half think it was all a plot to bring science out into the open so that more impressionable little children will take up science as their life's work."
"That's three halves, Jesse."
"What can I say? I grew up with the new math, need a calculator to count how many toes I have." Then Jesse fixed Adam with a stern eye. "At least sit down. If you won't go back to bed, then sit. Take a load off. You can watch me work, do the heavy supervising." But it didn't make the molecular feel any better when Adam accepted the advice without argument. Adam was always on the go, never quitting, never slowing down. It worried Jesse to see the older man so exhausted. Somehow it felt…wrong. He changed the subject to the other item on his mind. "So who is this sniper and why does he have it in for you?"
Adam gave a crooked little smile, leaning back against the seat. "You couldn't hack into my files?"
"Don't distract me. I'm damn good at hacking, Adam, and you know it."
Adam chuckled. "Yes, you are. But you won't get into that one. I've encrypted it behind six layers of protection."
"Oh, yeah? I've already gone through seven, Adam, so don't give me that bull."
Adam chuckled again. "You're good, Jesse. There are actually nine."
"I'm betting on twelve. Why so much?"
Again the crooked smile. "Because there are some parts of my life that you and the rest of Mutant X don't need to know about."
"Beg to differ, Adam." Jesse wasn't giving up. "You've got someone shooting at you. That makes it something that we need to know."
"But—"
"Be reasonable, Adam. If it were any of us, you'd be all over us to 'fess up. So, 'fess up, man."
Adam started to refuse, then sighed. The lines settled a bit more deeply onto his face. "Right," he gave in. "You have a point, Jesse." He sighed again. "It's not something I'm particularly proud of."
"We've all done things we wish we hadn't, Adam. You taught us that. You also taught us to own up to our mistakes and then try our best to fix them."
"This one couldn't be fixed." Adam sighed again, huddling in to himself. It hurt to watch. "You've accessed the public file on Carlos Del Castillo. How'd you figure out that it was him?"
Jesse ignored the question. "Right. Mutant, age thirty-five, feral with avian characteristics. Crossed with the DNA of the peregrine falcon, giving him extraordinary vision and hearing. It also gave him an exceptionally light bone mass, and he engineered his own set of wings. Your files said that he could fly up to a quarter of a mile, and could glide two to three times as far if he had a tall enough start. What happened? Why did he go into killing?"
The corners of Adam's mouth turned down. "A bad set of circumstances. Eckhart was coming into his own just around then, taking over, and he needed money to finance certain pet projects of his. Carlos was a natural for killing. Along with the other falcon characteristics that Carlos received, he also inherited the feral killer instinct. You know; the one that Shalimar is always working to contain. She'll protect her pack, but outsiders are lucky that she doesn't rip them to shreds if they look at one of us cross-eyed."
Jesse had seen some of Shalimar's less-controlled episodes and had to agree. "So this Carlos liked to kill?"
Shoulders slumped. "I'd hate to characterize it that badly. Carlos was not a evil man. But there was—and still is—a certain thrill to bringing down your quarry. It's not the killing itself but rather the exhilaration of besting your prey. Carlos as a teen-ager always had his share of pride and ego, but after saving his life, well… Let's just say that Carlos had to work harder than most to keep his mutation in check."
"And then Eckhart came along," Jesse prompted.
"Yes. Mason Eckhart." Adam paused to collect his thoughts. "Eckhart needed money to finance several of his projects, projects that he ultimately used to take over Genomex and promote his goal of controlling all mutants. He saw in Carlos Del Castillo the answer to his problems. He loaned Carlos to the intelligence agencies as a sniper, for a rather large fee. Carlos became the perfect killing machine: he could snipe targets from an incredible distance and then escape via a route that no normal human could follow."
"And Carlos?"
"At first, Carlos hated it. He still had enough self respect to despise what he was doing."
"Later?"
"Later," and Adam's voice turned bitter, "he learned that some of his victims were not especially pleasant people. That the world was better off without them."
Jesse nodded slowly. What Adam had said made sense. All except one thing. "But why does he hate you, Adam?"
It wasn't really a smile. "Because I dated his sister."
There was that certain thrill, that weak in the knees feeling, every time Ana Del Castillo looked at him. Even now, years later, he could still feel her silky black hair between his fingers, taste her crimson lips on his, inhale the perfume that only she possessed. It was the way she fit into his arms, how she nestled against his chest as though she belonged there. She had only to beckon, and he would have gratefully approached her on his knees, begging for the favor of a single kiss.
It wasn't love at first sight. That was fleeting, and shallow. No, this went deeper, deeper than mere physical attraction, thought there was always that. Ana Del Castillo kept up with him, with every comment that he made, every idea that he had. She didn't know genetics, but she understood people in a way that Adam Kane knew he could never match. Adam simply didn't have that innate quality to comprehend people the way she did. It wasn't telepathy, or telempathy, but simply a character trait. And Adam loved her for it.