Chapter 2: Prevention of Pawn Weakness
Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relieve all the darkest moments
The phone started ringing just as Adeline closed the door of her apartment. Sometimes she wondered if Amy had some radar for those things.
"Amy."
"What? Why are you picking up? Aren't you supposed to be in bed...or any other more prevented place of your choosing?" Her friend was chewing on what seemed like a gum very loudly.
"Because I'm home and alone. Feel like killing you though. Or at least inflicting pain." Adeline got out of her high heels and bee-lined to the couch for her feet have started hurting long before she reached home.
"What? Why? I mean like this time."
"First of all thank you for heads up that Matt's blind! It's not a problem, I mean you should know it, but seriously you could have warned me... so I wouldn't feel like a little Chinese girl lost in the middle of american supermarket."
"Wait wait wait! Addie, what are you talking about?"
"You didn't know he was blind?"
"No-o, nine, niet...Nel's such an ass! Didn't tell anything. O-o-ok, but you stayed, as far as I can tell. How was it? And why aren't you...? You know!"
"Oh that's the second part why I wanna kill you. He's...very nice." As she said "nice" Adeline's voice gave a little half-breath. "He's funny and smart..and charming. And not an option for a one-night stand."
"Wow you certainly are impressed with Stevie Wonder there."
"Sometimes I listen to what you say and wonder why do you even have friends..."
"I don't, you're my only friend. My life is lonely and pathetic and when I die, my dog is gonna eat me before I'm found." Then Amy laughed hysterically and added. "Kidding! I don't have a dog."
- - /- -
Adeline wrapped the silky robe around herself and loosely secured it with a matching belt, hair dawn, no trace of make-up. Slowly she reached the study and turned the table lamp on, dim light covering the small room. The brunette took her place behind the wooden desk and threw her legs on it as she learned on the back of the chair looking up at the ceiling.
Barbara Reser, Ben Millstone, Sara Miller, Caleb Sommers, Jerome Haas...pictures of their blooded bodies, tortured and torn were pinned right over the desk. All Adeline had to do was raise her eyes. She studied every crime scene very carefully for a hundred times at least. They weren't glued to the ceiling for this, not anymore. There was a moment during those months...indefinite one...when the pictures started serving as a reminder: the man who committed those crimes was still out free and there would not be any kind of peace in her soul before he pays.
Adeline's blue orbs locked on the photographs once more before she reached for the laptop on the desk, her mind going back and forth between the job at hand and a man she shared a dinner with. Matt left an impression on her, that's where Amy was right. It was rare, the amount of men who could actually fall into sync with her was decreeing drastically, sometimes Adeline considered turning into a hermit at all. She knew she was attractive to men, some would say desirable: petit with dark wavy hair that barely reached her delicate shoulders, big eyes, full lips. That should have been enough for a simple but a very comfortable life. Unfortunately that's not how Adeline was tailored. The innocence long gone, her head a structure for the chaotic criminal activity she decided to prosecute. She didn't have a big personal drama that pushed her to that, it was just there from the start: cold-sweat mind; she was born to be in a court room.
The only trouble arising was that she planned for Matt to be just a one night thing, just sex. Thus he wouldn't divert her attention from the more important things. Because for the last year she felt like there was only one man in her life: a criminal with a nasty habit to leave a trail of massacred bodies and corrupted cops behind him. And Adeline won't stop and rest until she throws him behind bars or brings him to death penalty. So even if she liked the redheaded lawyer there was just no place for Matt at the moment in that chaos.
-\-
Matt couldn't deny that he wasn't just passing by Adeline's window that night.
The darkness has long enveloped the city but for a Friday it was rather calm on the streets. Or at least that was Daredevil's excuse.
There was something different about that woman that he couldn't place, she was unlike every one he's known. Matt wasn't a saint, he's had his fair share of lady friends and if he was honest a couple trails of broken hearts as well. But never there was such a feeling before: something in the pit of his stomach as if nagging him to not just leave it at one date.
He knew that Adeline was just like himself, a person of many layers. He could feel it, sense it. And he was about to start peeling them. It's like when a con man meets a con man, they just know, there's the intangible mutual wasn't just a plain curiosity: the air around her was soaked with danger. And Matt has learned long ago to never ignore his gut. Things were about to heat up in Hell's Kitchen and she would be one of the key players. Oh, he was definitely sticking around.
It helped that he was intrigued by her on a whole different level. Despite the fact that she was beautiful (he judged only by the way sounds around her echoed back to show him her sculptured face, a small nose and the slightly pointed up corners of her lips when she smiled softly) by her nervousness he concluded that dating wasn't her usual idea of spending time. Which wasn't customary for women as good-looking as her. And smart, every single thing they talked about the conversation flowed with no awkward pauses. Then why? Matt new the answer: she had secrets. Because again just like himself she wouldn't simply let anyone in her life.
Something, could be his Daredevil sense, told him he'd be keeping tabs on her because this Devil was hell on bend to solve the mystery that was Adeline Ames.
-\-
"Sir?" The new "assistant" was young, seemed to be in his early twenties but he possessed the quality most important for the job he was hired for. Invisibility. Marco Moore was your usual mouse: plain, average, with almost no special characteristics, someone to be passed by unnoticed.
"Come it." The man with a whisky glass called.
Marco stepped through the door of what seemed to be an office.
"I need you to become a shadow for someone. I was told that you're a perfect man for the job, Mouse, that what they call you." it wasn't question. "Can you do that?"
"Who do you want me to shadow?"
The man with hoarse voice finally turned from the window but in the barely lit room the young man still couldn't see the face, only the grim glints from his glasses and what seemed like short grey hair.
"It's the new ADA. She used to work in Seattle before but changed the location three months ago. I want to know everything she does. Everything."
Marco was distracted by the raspiness of his employer's voice once again and could only nod receiving a manila folder from a larger man.
"I will be generous if you are as good as you were painted to be."
"When do you want me to start, Mr...?"
"You can call me Mr. Hyde. And you can start tomorrow morning."
Before leaving Marco could swear he heard a very strange sound: like a laugh but deeper and much more malicious. His feet accelerated on its own accord. He was out for the good money, who was the man that hired him and why he wanted to know about the new ADA wan't his problem at all.
-\-
"Hello?" A sleepy voice answered the phone.
"Jen?"
"Adeline? What the hell? What time is it?"
"Well, it's 4 a.m. here sooo around midnight at your place. Were you sleeping?" Adeline asked, looking at the picture in one of her hands while she used another to wind her hair on a point finger and her shoulder and neck to hold the cell.
"I think the question is why aren't you?" The other female sounded annoyed.
"Sorry I woke up you but this is important..."
"Isn't it always?"
"Oh come on, Miss Gloom, help a friend out!"
"Fine, what do you need, Adie?" Jen finally caved in with a sigh.
"Do you remember about a year ago you had a client who was raped after a party in a bar? She said it was an enormous man like a beast or something?"
"Yeah, yeah, Michelle...Rivers."
"And the guy you suspected...Calvin Zabo?"
"Yes, a crazy scientist, totally off the hook about reality but we had to let him go. Not enough evidence. Why are you asking anyway?"
"Because I'm looking at his picture from two days right now." Adeline's voice sounded as if she was deep in thought. "He's here, in Hell's Kitchen."
"Hmmm...well, if you ask me, he was guilty. And he's brilliant, very smart. So whatever you do, be careful."
"I will, I promise. Sand me the case files on him, will you?"
"First thing in the morning." When she didn't hear any reply, Jennifer wished her friend luck in their usual manner. "Goodnight, Ames."
"Goodnight, Walters." Adeline smiled and hung up.
A\N:
There you go, we've got the villains surfacing. Plus Jennifer Walters makes a guest appearance. More to come, I promise!
Do you think there wasn't enough Matt in the chapter? I think it wasn't. I miss Matt always: the more Matt the better.
Make my heart swell and leave a note to me in reviews! Xo
RoadwayFox