A/N: Thank you for all of your lovely reviews. Specially like the ones that stroke my ego and comment on the wonderful relationship that is between Flack and Adam. I try, I really do. (is conceited)
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Don Flack and Adam Ross were barely a block away from the detective's apartment when they heard the sounds of sirens coming from his complex. Suffice it to say, they made quick work of getting the rest of the way there to discover quite the crime scene in barricading the entrance to Flack's abode.
"What's the situation?" Flack said in his normal detective voice that left Adam gawking. Were they not standing in front of his house? Was he not shocked by the broken-in window or the torn curtains? Because that sure as hell was sending chills down Adam's spine!
"Found the guy we were lookin' for snoopin' around the downstairs guest room. It's a good thing Adam wasn't in there because when I found and detained him he was carrying this," Danny held up a plastic bag with a sizeable blade inside. Adam's face noticeably paled so he instead turned his pinched expression to the number of cops searching the inside of Flack's apartment.
Maybe he was just making Flack's life harder…
"Are you okay?" Flack asked, sparing little concern for the spectacle centered on his living quarters.
Danny nodded thoughtfully. "Got a little scraped up in the struggle but nothing major."
"Good, I'll take Adam down to the station and make sure we got the right guy. Adam!" Flack said forcefully, trying to pull the dazed scientist out of his intrigued trance. Adam looked up at him, his expression still anxious. Flack softened his tone when he caught saw the other man's face. "You ready to head down to PD?"
Adam nodded, albeit apprehensively, still casting worried looks at the sliced curtains and ripped bed linens. He shuddered, knowing it would have been a losing battle if he had been in the bed. Pushing past the traumatizing thoughts, Adam obediently followed Flack to the sleek black car all the way to the bustling NYPD headquarters.
Adam was lead into a familiar-looking room with four walls and a stretched window that allowed him to watch a white wall etched with several height markings. He tensely nodded as Flack explained to him what was going to happen and that he could always leave if looking at the men brought back bad memories.
Adam resisted the urge to tell him he had seen it done over a thousand times in his own personal experience with witnesses and through numerous television shows. Words seemed to be lodged in his throat at that moment as he waited on bated breath for the men to come in. The young man was about to be in the presence of the monster that killed two people, one very dear to Adam, in the past three days. Such actions were inhumane and made him shudder uncontrollably.
"Are you cold?" Flack asked, his face contorting into one of unfamiliar worry. Adam seemed slightly shocked at the sentiment but even more shocked by the action that followed. The detective hurriedly shrugged off his trust gray trench coat and laid it gently around Adam's shoulder.
Not knowing what else to do, Adam slipped his good arm inside, instantly warmed by the coat and an odd blush that spread across his cheeks. Was it normal for a man to offer his coat to another male? The lab tech decided to deliberate on that detail later as he hugged the warmed clothing around his shivering frame. Flack watched him carefully for another moment, reassured that the tech wasn't actually suffering from some symptom of PTSD and gave the go ahead to the officer to bring the men in.
Adam sat atop the nimbly little stool, eyeing the suspects carefully and with a certain amount of nervousness. It was only when Adam saw the man from that night that something hit him:
He knew him.
And, obviously, of course he knew him. He was the man that Adam had seen that night and the monster that killed Christine the night after. But, even as Adam rose to garner a closer inspection of that man's face, the young man already knew the face, the nervous fidgeting of his right arm, and the unforgettable fuzzy mane that reached the nape of his neck.
It was Hal Curtis. The man looked slightly more deranged than usual, or maybe he always looked that way. The little Adam could remember of his old acquaintance from college consisted of Hal being a very distant kind of guy that seemed too weird and old for the university setting.
One thing that remained quite poignant in Adam's mind about Hal was his connection to Rob Hartnett.
And belatedly, Adam realized there was a much deeper connection between the two men from that night at the concert. There was an even deeper connection to him.
"Adam?" Flack asked, and Adam started at his soft tone, looking into the detectives concerned blue eyes. "Do you need to take a moment?"
Adam declined with a shake of his head, too stunned by the flood of information to speak. Instead, he pointed timidly to Hal Curtis, who was the fourth man from the right in the lineup. Flack quirked an eyebrow at the sketchy-looking character. "You sure about that?"
Adam closed his eyes and nodded. More sure than he was willing to admit.
"Okay then, we'll have a talk-" Flack began and Adam cut him off.
"I'm going to use the restroom real fast." Adam all but spit out. In his rush to get there, he barely noticed the great wall of Flack that held him in place.
"I'm sorry, Adam; I can't let you do that." The detective said in a regretful tone.
Adam let a sliver of a laugh creep into his voice as he replied, "What? You're afraid I'm going to run off while I'm taking a piss?"
"Actually, that's exactly what I'm afraid of."
Damn, because that's exactly what Adam had planned. Still, Adam had to find a way out of the older detective's watchful gaze, but after the stunt he pulled that morning, such a task seemed almost too daunting to even bother with.
"Um, what if I really have to go though? You're not going to seriously deny a guy the right to pee, right?" Adam asked sincerely. If there was one thing Adam was good at, it was making people trust him .Who would ever be suspicious of the biggest wimp in the world. Certainly not Flack.
"I'll just come with you then," Flack said, giving Adam one of his patented smirks and a knowing look. Adam tried hard not to kick the nearest wall in frustration. This guy just couldn't stop being the overbearing detective for one second, could he?
As they walked their way over to the bathroom, Flack at least had the good grace of letting Adam go into the four-stalled restroom by himself. Adam took this as a golden opportunity, of course, and began searching the room for an exit.
Perfect!
On the other side of the room was an exit into the men's locker room which probably lead directly into the great outdoors. The sooner Adam got to Rob the better, thus he made haste to breaking the locker room's code and backing through the door.
As he watched the inside of the restroom, making sure Flack wouldn't catch him, he didn't notice the man he was backing into until it was too late.
"Ow!" Adam cried and turned around swiftly with an irritated look on his face, his hand rubbing the sore spot on the back of his head that connected with the other man's jaw. The irritation quickly turned to surprise then fear when he caught sight of Flack rubbing the sore spot on his chin he'd hit with his head.
"Ah! Watch it, Ross!" Flack said, more disappointed that he didn't move out of the way soon enough than the fact that Adam had actually considered running away through the officer's locker room. It was only until he caught sight of Adam's eyes shifting toward the exit sign behind him that Flack actually switched gears.
In one swift motion, Adam found himself pinned against the wall, Flack bearing in on him with a no-nonsense look in his icy blue eyes. "Look, Ross, you're going to tell me what you know about that man in there, or I'm about to make your life very painful."
Adam didn't think that was possible at the moment as Flack's elbow was pushing quite harshly into his injured shoulder. So much so, that Adam momentarily felt his eyes roll into the back of his head. When he refocused again, he was slumped on the floor with Flack knelt in front of him, slapping him lightly on the cheek.
"Ugh, stop-stop it." Adam pleaded, throwing Flack's hand to the side.
Flack's demeanor had done a complete 360 from the guy of, what felt like to Adam, was only a couple of seconds ago. "God, buddy, I'm sorry. I totally forgot about your shoulder… thing." Flack said, motioning awkwardly to his own shoulder.
Adam was breathing heavily, more from the pain now receding slightly from his shoulder than the thought of Flack killing him. Without any options left, Adam finally decided to just do it.
"It's Rob Hartnett."
Flack looked up at him in confusion, his mind not even on the case anymore (miracle in itself). "Who?"
"The guy from the concert I had a connection with from college. Hal Curtis, you suspect in the interrogation room right now, is in cahoots with him." Adam said with a little more clarity as he was able to think about something other than the fire within his shoulder.
Flack shook his head, disbelieving that Adam was capable of knowing such a thing. "How do figure?"
Adam gulped, this was the tough part. The part that could make or break him. In this case, "break" meant getting his butt thrown in jail for an undetermined amount of time for a crime that he didn't know he would be connected to until it was too late.
Somehow, the way Flack was looking at him though, all that didn't seem to matter. For once, Adam felt a familiar security around the man, and the lab tech realized he had gotten the same feeling when he was first told he was going to be paired with Flack two days ago. The feeling like nothing was going to happen to him; like Flack was going to do everything to make sure no one got the chance to kill him. Emotions like these were rare to the usually nerve-wracked lab geek that was currently staring into the detective's probing gaze, and Adam realized it was a losing battle to keep it a secret any longer.
"Because I'm helping him make a weapon."
Flack blinked twice, not fully comprehending the gravity of Adam's words. "Like, a weapon-weapon? "
Adam nodded, unable to keep eye contact with the other man.
"I don't think I fully understand. How have you been helping this guy the entire time you've been working at an NYPD crime lab. I think we would've picked up on that in our background checks. From what I hear, they're a bit more thorough than that." Flack said, his brow still furrowed in confusion.
"No, it-it was a stupid formula I made in college that dealt with oscillations of waves and their affect on the pressure levels in human being's ears." Adam said remorsefully, rubbing an anxious hand across his brow, as Flack still looked utterly mystified.
"English," Flack enunciated, causing Adam to look up. "Just tell me what it is that you've done to help this guy and why."
"Well both Rob and Hal have always been into sound theories and AV equipment. I fiddled with the idea a little bit and helped Rob develop a formula for his experiment with human sound levels." Adam explained in as plain of terms he could muster.
Flack still shook his head. "So you're telling me you 'fiddled' with a hobby and out popped a revolutionary theory?"
Adam tried to hide how flattered he was at the question; this wasn't the time to be accepting compliments, especially since Flack still didn't know the half of it. "That's not important. The important thing is that Rob has the formula and I'm pretty sure he's done with the weapon that can fry a person's brain to mush if the oscillation device is executed on them."
Flack stood up. "C'mon, I've gotta call for backup."
Adam followed suit to stand up hastily but had to use Flack's arm for support since he was still dizzy from fainting. "No! We-we can't do that." Adam insisted. "Rob is a dangerous person with an even more dangerous device. The Rob I knew in college was nice and unassuming but hated people. If there are more than two people in the room with him, he could do something dangerous."
"Ok, ok, I'll trust you, Adam." Flack conceded, if only to calm the young man down some. "But you gotta promise me that if things go south in there, you get the hell out. All right?"
Adam could see things going bad the moment he and Flack arrived, but he couldn't see him just ditching things when the going got tough. No way was he just leaving, not that Flack could tell if he told a little white lie though, right?
"Sure," Adam answered in what sounded to him like the worst fib of the century.
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A/N: Adam is the worst fibber. So, whatchoo guys think of the chapter? Oh, no! Wait! Hold that thought. Press the button below this, and type your answer. Don't forget to press submit, too! Ahh, you just gave me a review and it feels so good!