Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It had been three months since Persephone had finished the leg of her never-ending PhD thesis that had taken her to Virginia, and thus it had been three months since she had sat down with her ward, Adam, and asked him if he would like to move back to Washington with her.

It was always asking with Persephone. She wasn’t exactly built to be a mother - too strange in her mannerisms and too childlike in her speaking - and she was more like an aunt, or a family friend that had legal guardianship over him. But, still, any respect felt nice when he had grown up on so little.

“I’ll go back at some point.” She had said, looking straight at Adam with those pure black eyes of hers, “And it’s your choice whether you come with me, or whether you’d like me to stay here with you.”

It was always choices with Persephone. Adam knew, from extended phone calls that had fallen to him after Persephone had gotten the whim to make a pie, that one of Persephone’s best friends - of the two that were back in Washington - Maura, wholeheartedly didn’t believe in treating children as inferior. It was clearly a trait that Persephone had picked up on. Or maybe she was just mirroring the parenting style of the only parent she was close to.

Because it wasn’t like she had intended to become Adam’s legal guardian when she moved to Virginia for six months. She’d intended to write her PhD thesis, and do some tarot readings with the local psychic - who she had suspected to not be the real deal - and to spend her free time sighing and lamenting. And, for the large part, she succeeding at these things because she was already quite good at them

But then Adam had stumbled into her life. Quite literally, as well - passing by her home with one hand trying to stop the river of blood pouring from his nose, the other hand scrabbling madly at his no longer working ear.

She had invited him inside. He’d taken one look at her and immediately trusted her, with her open face and honest posture and fantastical dresses, which was quite something because Adam never trusted anyone .

She’d cleaned him up, and took him to the hospital where he was told he’d never hear out of his left ear again. A police report had been filed against his parents.

He’d stayed with Persephone until father had been jailed for child abuse. Until his mother had been jailed for negligence.

It was difficult, at first, being under a different roof, but he soon got used to fending for himself, the way he had done for so many years prior. Living with Persephone was a lot like living with a reclusive roommate. She came and went as she pleased, kept strange hours, and played music way too loudly when he was trying to sleep.

He thought he might have loved her. It was hard to know, because he’d never loved anyone before. But he liked being around her, liked the way she’d sometimes put a motherly arm around him for the barest half second, letting go before they both got too uncomfortable.

So, when she’d sat him down and asked him if he’d like to move back to Washington with her, he’d said yes. A large part of him didn’t really want to leave - it had taken him too long to get to a good position in all three of his jobs, and he was working himself to the bone to stay at the top of his class.

But he hadn’t wanted to be the reason she didn’t go home. He knew she missed her friends - they were more like the three faces of Hecate than just friends , she had told him once. The mother, the maiden, and the crone. She had refused to elaborate on which one was which.

A tiny, selfish part of Adam had wanted to leave Henrietta for his own benefit. Despite knowing his parents were in jail, he couldn’t help but be terrified any time he walked anywhere, afraid that they’d round the corner and see him living a life without them.

Three months ago, Adam had packed all his meagre possessions into one second-hand suitcase and one carry-on duffel bag and had gotten on a plane with Persephone.

It had been horrible , even though the plane ride had been short, even though Persephone had tried to comfort him by telling him how unlikely it was that the plane would go down. It hadn’t worked, but he had appreciated the effort.

He’d spent the entire plane ride clutching the arm rests and nervous sweating and steadfastly refusing to do anything but stare dead ahead. He thought he might have fallen asleep at some point, because the journey seemed shorter than it ought to have been, but he was unsure.

He had still been jittery and nervous when they were picked up in a ramshackle little car.

The driver was a steely-eyed woman called Calla, who’d scanned him up and down critically before popping the trunk open to put his things in. He had heard Calla’s waspish voice on the phone, and knew that she was one of the other faces of Hecate with Persephone and Maura.

The drive had been silent. Calla seemed to seep arsenic into the atmosphere just by being there, and Adam had fidgeted, nervous that she hadn’t wanted Persephone to bring him at all.

(Of course, in the three months he’d lived with Calla, he’d come to know that she was simply just like that . It took a little bit of adjusting to understand her specific kind of affection.)

300 Fox Way was everything that Adam’s childhood house was not - noisy, full of life, and full of love. Small children ran every which way, chased by parents or older cousins. Bookshelves tilted at odd angles, over-loaded with high school text books and baskets of wool and stacks of framed photographs. Every surface and chair was taken up by somebody sitting there, some of them watching TV, or mixing drinks, or pouring over spreads of cards.

It was too much at first, overwhelmingly so. The clatter of voices pressed in on his one working ear, and the cramped walls and the knowledge of so many people occupying such a small space made his skin itch with claustrophobia.

Persephone had seen his discomfort immediately, and had led him through the kitchen to the back door, where a small garden sat, overshadowed by a towering beech tree.

Under that beech tree, was the most beautiful girl Adam had ever seen. Round faced, doe eyed, spiky haired. Blue Sargent. He’d fumbled with his words around her for a good month before he realised that he had grown to think of her as a cousin, or perhaps even a sister.

Blue had told him the best times to do everything in the house when he wanted to avoid people. Wake up early to avoid the bathroom rush, then stay in his room to skip the clammer for the kitchen.

“But don’t worry.” She had said, patting his leg, “It’s an extreme sport, but you’ll get used to it pretty soon.”

Since then, they’d pretty much been inseparable. They sheltered up in Adam’s attic room to do homework and gossip, and then in the evenings they’d pile on Blue’s bed to read together in silence.

He liked it. He liked her . He liked Fox Way, despite the fact that it was like no other house he’d ever been in in his life.

And he liked Forks . That was the most surprising, he thought. He disliked the rain and the wet and the cold - and he always would - and Forks was pretty much the rainiest, wettest, coldest place he could have possibly moved without venturing to Alaska. But he liked the sense of mystery that surrounded Forks.

Because there was something going on in the town that he couldn’t quite figure out. He’d come to know, through startling revelation, that the women of 300 Fox Way were all psychic, except for Blue. Maybe that was the reason they were so close - two non-psychics in a house choked with them.

He hadn’t believed it at first, but the evidence was just too damning for him to continue being a sceptic after his second week in the house.

At first it was all coincidences. It was Maura stopping him on the way out and telling him to avoid the number three - something he’d remember when he got to his job at the local Walmart and see a disastrous spillage in aisle three. It was Calla guessing the exact number he’d get on the scantron pop quiz in chemistry that day. It was Persephone saying idly before his first day “Remember to watch for obstacles in walkways.”

Later on, when he remembered her warning just in time to look down and see a rucksack blocking his path, he would feel both grateful that she’d saved him from tripping up in front of a school’s worth of new people, and confused as to how she’d known.

He hadn’t questioned it after a few weeks. It was just one of those things that were . He didn’t question that the sky was blue, and he didn’t question that Maura, Calla and Persephone were psychic.

And he didn’t question Blue’s boyfriend’s intimate knowledge of the supernatural. Gansey seemed to have an answer for everything, and wouldn’t hesitate to ramble on and on about various mythologies - something that was quite endearing when you got to know him, but had initially made Adam incredibly suspicious of him.

Nor did he question why Blue’s other friend - and quickly Adam’s friend as well - Noah repeatedly missed days of class at around the same time every month. Or why he’d caught the others making dog jokes about him. Or why Noah couldn’t remember what had happened for three days every month.

What he did question, though, were the Lynch brothers. Two of them dark haired and deep eyed and pale skinned, the third brother blond haired and constantly smiling.

The Brothers Lynch were a mystery to everyone at Forks High. They lived out of town, with their mother Aurora - just as blonde as her third son and just as pale as the elder brothers - who worked as the best doctor Fork General Hospital had to offer. They kept to themselves for the most part, except for the fact that they didn’t . Declan was always schmoozing with teachers, and Adam knew for a fact that he had most of the female staff wrapped around his little finger. Everyone loved Matthew, who couldn’t be a recluse if his life depended on it. And Ronan - by far the most intriguing of the Lynch brothers, in Adam’s opinion - actually did keep to himself, apart from his strange kinship with Gansey, and his subsequent friendship with the rest of the group.

Adam had been becoming increasingly paranoid since moving to Forks, and he couldn’t shake the incling that the Lynch’s were part of whatever was happening behind the scenes of this small town.

They never ate. Well, Matthew did, and he stole food from his brother’s trays because they never protested. It took only a few weeks of Blue dragging him over to sit with her friends - and therefore sit with Ronan Lynch - to pick up on it.

Adam had tested it once, at lunch time. A sneaking suspicion that wouldn’t let him go until he knew the answer. A full tray of food, and all Ronan was doing was picking the skin of an apple off bit-by-bit with his long fingers. Adam couldn’t decide whether both older Lynch brothers had an eating disorder - surely not, with the impressive way Ronan’s muscles strained against his shirt - or whether there was something else .

“Aren’t you eating, Lynch?” Adam had asked, gesturing to the tray of food he knew Ronan wouldn’t eat. It was wasteful, to get all of that and not eat a single thing. He felt a twisting in his chest, the desire to lecture him on his privilege welling up inside him, but he swallowed it down.

Ronan had held Adam’s gaze for a moment - he had the most intense blue eyes sometimes - before deliberately picking up a fry from his plate and eating it, chewing quickly and swallowing with a barely concealed look of disgust on his face.

He’d pushed his tray out toward Adam, “I’m full. You want the rest of that?”

Adam had eyed him suspiciously, sure it was a joke of some sort, but when Ronan had turned to Gansey to talk to him about a Latin translation, Adam had gladly dived into the food. It would have just gone to waste otherwise, he reasoned. It wasn’t charity.
It wasn’t just that the Lynch brothers didn’t eat that made his suspicious, though. He sat next to Ronan in Latin, and on the infrequent occasions that their skin brushed together, Adam found out that he was cold . Too cold. Dead body cold. Just jumped in a snow drift cold. Freezer burn cold.

But the Lynch brothers were always at church - he knew this for a fact, because Gladys, one of the regulars at his supermarket job, liked to chat about how pleasant and holy those Lynch boys were every Sunday, always so respectful.

He was hard pressed to imagine Ronan Lynch as pleasant. Or holy. Or respectful. As a general rule, he was a bit of a twat to everyone, including his best friends. And Adam, who wasn’t sure where he stood in Ronan’s mind, despite the fact that they seemed to be friendly (relative to Ronan) at lunch and in Latin, the only class they shared.

The Lynch brothers never came to school on the rare occasion that it was actually sunny in Forks. Gansey always told him that they were a really outdoors-y family, that they went on hikes, or took camping trips, or were helping out the local Catholic church by keeping the building clean and tidy.

Adam didn’t believe him. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but there was something about the explanations that made him think that they were lies. Maybe it was because he couldn’t imagine Ronan Lynch, with his tight jeans and heavy combat boots, doing hiking of any sort. Or Declan Lynch, for that matter, always strangled with a tie and tucked into his neat Oxfords. They were both handsome and very clearly related - Gansey had told Adam once that they shared their face with the late Niall Lynch - but in different ways. Declan’s was kind of beauty that made you swoon and stammer and flush. Ronan’s was the kind of beauty that rocked you back on your heels, like a sucker-punch to the gut, like you were taken aback by a piece of art sculpted by a man whose chosen medium was marble and ruination.

He didn’t really think there was anything particularly wrong  with the Lynches. He was just making excuses, he thought, for their strange behaviour. Trying to tie up loose ends by tucking them into an unbelievable explanation. They were Irish. The big differences that Adam was picking up on were probably just European things.

He pushed the question of the Lynch family to the back of his mind. He was supposed to be having fun with his friends, not puzzling over an absent acquaintance’s strange behaviour.

Forks High was holding a dance next Saturday and while Adam himself had made excuses about why he couldn’t be there, his friends were going, and he’d accompanied them out to Port Angeles so they could shop for clothes.

Blue was currently rifling through the racks of old donated prom and bridesmaid dresses at the Goodwill. She was merely trying to find a base to work off of - she had a glue gun and a sewing machine at home that were her most prized possessions. All her clothes were home-altered, if not entirely home-made, and her dress for the dance would be no different.

“Are you sure you can’t come, Adam?” Gansey asked for the third time. He was leaning against the end of a rack of coats, looking at Blue in a decidedly lovesick manner.

“I’m sure.”

“Has no one asked you?” Gansey said, sounding way more worried than he probably should. It was just a high school dance, it wasn’t like if he didn’t go he’d die.

“That isn’t it.” Adam said, sighing. That was the opposite of his problem, actually. Three different girls that he barely knew the name of had asked him - because the dance was girl’s choice, something Blue thought to be a trite way of trying to reverse antiquated gender roles - and he’d had to awkwardly let them down each time, fielding an excuse that he had to drive up to Seattle that weekend, “If anybody asked me, I’d probably say no. Dances aren’t my thing.”

Blue looked at him from the corner of her eye as she pulled a pink dress off the rack to get a closer look at it. It was an absolutely horrible dress. She looked like she loved it. “You didn’t say no to Tad.”

“What?”

“I told you it wasn’t true.” Blue muttered to Gansey, who looked abashed. She explained to Adam, “Tad’s telling everyone he’s taking you to the dance.”

“He’s what ? That little-” God, he just couldn’t catch a break, could he? Tad wouldn’t leave him alone, no matter how many times Adam ignored him or just straight up told him that he wasn’t interested.

A guy nearly hits you with his car one time , and suddenly he’s trying to pity take you to dances and asking you out all the time. Horrid. Infuriating, even.

He hadn’t even hurt Adam. He’d been find. Tad had been the injured one. The only damage Adam had walked away with was a soft bruise in the shape of an arm dragging him out of the way and a dent in his fender that he fixed himself that weekend instead of paying for the mechanics.

It had snowed the day before, but by the evening the snow was melting into torrents of water everywhere. Adam had thought that had been the worst of it - snow was worse than rain, in his opinion, though he disliked both - but it had only gotten colder that night, freezing the water streaming down every surface into slick and deadly ice.

It had been his turn to drive to school - a burden he took turns baring with Blue and the only other cousin in the family that had a driver’s licence, though Sage was in the year below them and had just recently passed her driver’s test - and he’d just slammed the driver’s side door behind him when he heard the loud, screeching of metal behind him.

He could barely register the scene at the time. Nothing slowed down, like it did in the movies. Instead, it seemed to play in fast forward - the car hurtling toward him as Tad Carruthers tried desperately to regain control of the wheel, to no avail.

He was sure of only two things at the time:

1) He was about to get hit by a car. And it was probably going to hurt, which meant hospital bills that he couldn’t afford, and having to buy a new car because his little tri-coloured nightmare was surely going to get ruined.

2) Ronan Lynch was standing at the other end of the parking lot, beside Gansey’s obnoxiously orange Camaro, his face fixed in a mask of horror.

Except he hadn’t been, had he? Because Ronan’s shockingly cold hand had wrapped around Adam’s waist right at the last minute and had yanked him out of the way. There was no physically possible way for Ronan to cross the distance so fast, to get him out of the way. It must have been another boy with a shaved head. Another boy standing next to Gansey. Another boy with intensely blue eyes and a tattoo creeping up his spine.

When Adam had tried to ask him about it, Ronan had simply ignored him, which Adam knew meant that there was something he was hiding. Ronan maintained that he wasn’t a liar, it was the most well-known thing about him, apart from his general intimidating demeanour - a fact that was true in theory, but in reality just meant that he wouldn’t answer any questions he couldn’t give an honest answer to.

Which made Adam all the more suspicious of him. Ronan didn’t answer him, either, when he asked him why he’d driven by Fox Way when Adam was fixing his car that weekend - though he never said that it hadn’t been him. According to Ronan, lying by omission was fine as long as you never actually lied.

“Do you think-” Adam started, his words hissed out through teeth clenched with anger as he remembered the events of those few days, and the subsequent repeated asking out that had followed, “-That if I hit Tad Carruthers with my car, he’d drop it ?”

Blue laughed, folding the pink dress she’d been looking at earlier over her arm, “It’s always worth a shot.”

“Have you tried talking to Tad?” Gansey asked, “Before, you know, running him over?”

“I have.” Adam said, “Multiple times.”

“Guys like that don’t listen, Gansey.” Blue said, walking over to the check-out as the other two followed behind her, “Trust me - they get it into their head that you’re ‘playing hard to get’ or whatever even though the person they’re asking out has said in very clear terms that they don’t want to go out with them.”

Adam scowled forward, still fuming at Tad. The audacity that he had honestly should have been studied in schools. Nearly kill someone with your car and dent the fender so badly they’d spent all weekend making sure it was fine? Sure, they’d love to go to a dance with you.

Blue paid for her dress with the tip money she’d been saving up and then they all left the Goodwill, a big plastic bag over Blue’s arm.

“We can take that back to the car.” Gansey said, referring to the neon orange Camaro he treated as his pride and joy, “So you don’t have to carry it around.”

“You guys go do that.” Adam said, “I’ve got some errands to run.”

Gansey blinked at him, eyes wide and worried behind his wire-frame glasses, “Are you entirely sure? Port Angeles is a big city. I don’t want you getting lost.”

“I know how to use a map, Gansey.” Adam said, trying not to get riled up at the implication that he was too simple to know how to navigate a city just because he hadn’t grown up there, “I’ll be fine.”

Blue said, “We can come with you, if you want?”

The phrasing of her question was entirely different to Gansey’s. Gansey said I don’t want you getting lost , implying that Adam frequently wandered about and got lost, which he didn’t. Blue said we can come with you , which was an extended offer of their company, to be rejected or accepted as he pleased.

“You said you wanted to walk down the boulevard, didn’t you?” Adam said to her, gesturing behind them at the picturesque little boardwalk, “Go enjoy your date without me third-wheeling.”

“Okay.” Blue said, clearly registering the fact that he didn’t want to intrude on their alone time more than he already had - he hadn’t originally intended to come out with them tonight, but Calla had taken one look at the way Adam had slouched through the door after school that day and had snapped at him to just get in the goddamn car and be a teenager for once in his life, “Meet us back here at seven, okay?”

Blue took Gansey’s hand and patted Adam on the shoulder before tugging her boyfriend off in the opposite direction before he could protest and offend Adam further.

Adam checked his grubby wrist watch. It had just turned half past five, so he had an hour and a half to run the errands he needed to before he needed to be back here to meet his friends.

He set off walking. He knew vaguely where he was going, because he’d studied the area map of Port Angeles on Gansey’s phone on the way over, wanting to be prepared. Besides, the city was easy enough to navigate as long as he could remember which way the boardwalk was.

His first stop was a second-hand book store. Most of the reading materials in Fox Way pertained toward the supernatural side and, while Adam had nothing against those and they were certainly interesting to read, he was more partial to a crime thriller himself, or maybe a contemporary character study.

The bookstore was small and drab and a bored twenty-something that must have been a student at Peninsula College as they were steadfastly working their way through a textbook on the middle ages and looking like they might cry. He left them alone.

Adam found only two things that he would have liked to read - a lot of the books tended to be battered copies of children’s paperbacks given away once the children grew out of them, or the same copies of the same books he already owned. He found a copy of American Gods , which wasn’t his usual speed but he thought he could give it a try, and he also found a barely-in-tact copy of Much Ado About Nothing that he’d need for English class.

He was given his purchases in a brown paper bag that he hung from his wrist. The sky above him was quickly darkening - it never seemed to stay bright outside as long as it had in Virginia.

He ventured a few more streets down and stepped into a cheap-looking stationary store to get another pack of pens - Fox Way seemed to go through them like they were going out of style, and twenty pens disappeared into the ether every week or so, and he was running out of implements to do his homework with.

He stepped out of the stationary store and continued on foot, sliding the pens into his bag as he went. The windchill had picked up in the minimal time he’d spent in the last store, and he shivered. He’d left his jacket in Gansey’s car - it had been sunny today, a rare phenomena that he liked to soak up as much of as he could, but he had to have known it wouldn’t last.

There was a prickling on the back of his neck, and he became abruptly aware that he was being followed.

There were only two men, one dark haired and one light, but he’d noticed them outside the Goodwill as he was talking to Blue and Gansey. And he’d subconsciously clocked them walking in the same direction as him when he’d split off from his friends.

Now they kicked off from the wall they’d been leaning against while he was inside and began walking again, this time closer than they had before.

Adam felt a horrible chill skitter up his spine. He wished, for the first time, that he hadn’t been so stubborn about getting a cell phone. He argued that he didn’t need one - that he could contact his friends via the Fox Way phone, or talk to them in person, or send them a letter via carrier pigeon if he had to.

He wished now that he could call Blue or Gansey or Noah or, hell, even Ronan . Just so that there was someone on the other end of the line to assuage his anxiety. He didn’t think the men behind him would try anything if they knew someone might hear, might notice he was missing.

He walked quicker, burying his hands in his jeans pockets to search for something he could use to defend himself. He knew Blue carried mace on her at all times, along with a pink switchblade knife given to her by her sort-of-stepdad, Mr Grey, who worked as the English teacher at Forks High. But he didn’t have anything like that, unwilling to carry violence around in his pockets with him.

The most he had were his keys - to the front and back door of Fox Way, the small key to his locker at school, and his car clicker. Not nearly enough to defend himself against both of the men, but he slipped the two full size keys between his fingers anyway, flexing his hand into a fist.

He was shaking.

He skirted down a sidestreet, trying to lose them, but they just lengthened their strides to keep up with him.  His heart tried desperately to escape the confines of his rib cage, beating so fast that it felt like it should be a homing beacon, a great neon sign pointing to his exact location. The sound of it rattled in his head.

He knew that his next move should be to step into another store and wait it out, perhaps call Gansey to come pick him up. But as he was walking briskly down the street, shooting careful looks from side to side, he began to realise that there were no stores for him to step into. The map of Port Angeles spread itself out in his head, and he cursed at himself for taking the turn into the more industrial side of the city, where all there was around were big brick buildings with closed metal shutters and empty windows. There was nowhere for him to shelter, no shop for him to step into to borrow their phone.

He couldn’t turn around now. The men were too close to him.

Maybe he could loop around - a left at the end of this street and then another one to get back to the shopping district.

“Hey baby!” One of the men called out from behind him, his words slurring together. Clearly drunk.

The dread in his stomach was slowly curdling into true fear.

The men were gaining too much ground on him. He was loathed to drop his wallet, but maybe he could - maybe that’s what they wanted from him, and they’d leave him alone if he gave it up.

If he were Gansey, he could likely charm himself out of this situation. If he were Blue he’d shout and scream and kick up a fuss until they decided that she was too much effort, that she drew too much attention to herself. If he were Noah he’d be able to slip away, slight and easily unnoticed. If he were Adam, he would have already started punching.

Too bad that he was Adam Parrish, all but paralysed at the mere suggestion of violence.

“Going somewhere?” A difference voice, the other man, taunted. His voice was louder. Adam snuck a peak over his shoulder. The men were maybe ten feet from him now. Getting closer.

He was going to have to fight them. That was his only option. Fear trembled through his body, borne from the situation at hand and the bone-deep aversion to any form of violence. He would not be like his father, and he knew logically that this was entirely different, that this was self defence, but it didn’t feel like it.

“Come on, sweetheart!” The first man called. Nine feet away, now, “We just wanna talk to you.”

“Yeah.” The second man jeered. Eight feet. Adam was practically running as he tried to put more distance between them - but he couldn’t run, not yet. He had to turn the second corner, to get in view of other people. Running would just entice them more, “We just wanna get a look at that pretty face of yours.”

He’d never taken self-defence classes in high school. He’d had to miss that day, because there had been an ominous creaking in his ribs whenever he breathed and a dark splotch of bruise over his right cheekbone. He knew what Calla would say, though:

Elbows. Use them. Into the nose, and the chest, and the stomach. Kick them in the balls. Stick your fingers in their eyes and gouge. And then run for your life .

There were two of them. There was no way he could take on two of them. He might’ve been able to get one good kick in on one of them, but the second one would immediately take him down.

He was going to have to accept his fate. He knew the feeling well - of letting a punch hit rather than fighting it, to get back up when kicked down because honestly, Adam, we all know you’re faking it, I didn’t even hit you that hard you pussy , to keep silent when his pitiful whimpers only served to further enrage his attacker.

Bright light cut across his eyes, temporarily blinding him. On instinct, he put a hand up to shield his face from the light. The car squealed around the corner and came to an abrupt stop, brake lights washing the alley red.

Adam barely had time to register the sleek, sharklike BMW and its sleek, sharklike driver before the passenger side door was being thrown open.

“Get in.” Ronan snarled, and Adam didn’t even give himself time to sigh in relief before he was scrabbling to get in, slamming the door closed. His breath was coming too quickly, scraping along the back of his throat. Forcibly, he unclenched the hand that was still fisted around his keys.

Adam looked over at the driver’s side. Ronan was clearly furious, gripping the wheel of his car so tightly it looked like it was about to break. The BMW was already speeding off, leaving the shocked and angry faces of Adam’s would-be attackers in the dust. He watched them in the wing mirror until they disappeared from sight.

Then, and only then, did he allow himself to study the handsome planes of Ronan’s furious face. The events of the night were catching up to him, played at two-times speed in his mind. He was full of questions.

The only question he asked, though, for the time being, was, “How did you find me?”