Shadow Falling (The Scorpius Syndrome #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

to walk the perimeter with me to look for holes in the fence and weak points. I have an itch between my shoulder blades—I think an attack is coming.”
    Raze nodded. “Copy that.” Oh, an attack was coming, but it was from the inside. From him.

Chapter Four

    Some of the most insane persons on earth appear perfectly normal. It is the glint in the eye that gives them away.
    —Dr. Vinnie Wellington,
Sociopaths
    Vinnie triedto remember what lecturing felt like. Before Scorpius, she’d given lectures all over the country to law enforcement organizations when she wasn’t hunting serial killers. She could talk to these people. A scratched whiteboard waited at her back, while some of the most dangerous people still alive sat in front of her on folded chairs.
    Jax Mercury looked just as deadly in the soft afternoon light as he had in the morning. Shaggy black hair, hard brown eyes, and sharp Latino features. Lynne Harmony sat next to him, cultured and educated, her gaze intense and curious. Blue from her famous heart showed through her T-shirt in an electric glow. The second she’d entered the room, Jax had put her safely between him and the door.
    What would it be like to have somebody so intent on protecting her? So damn determined? Vinnie felt a small spurt of jealousy that she quickly quashed.
    Tace, the medic, sat next to her, while Sami, a prettybrunette with sparkling eyes, kicked back on his right. Raze leaned against the side wall as if preparing for an attack.
    Did he ever sit?
    Of course, he was right between Vinnie and any threat, whether he’d intended to place himself there or not.
    “You ready?” Jax asked quietly. His gaze was shuttered, his body on alert.
    One of her gifts, one she’d honed with training, was reading body language as well as digging into subtext. Jax didn’t know her, didn’t like her, and wasn’t going to trust her.
    If he had any clue how crazy she was, he’d throw her right out.
    “I’m ready.” She nodded and tried to ignore the sight of her stepmother sitting behind Jax. Lucinda had married Vinnie’s father when Vinnie was thirteen, and they’d had a fairly decent relationship until Lucinda had succumbed completely to schizophrenia a few years after Vinnie’s dad had died. Regardless, Lucinda had died years ago and wasn’t present in Vanguard territory. Nope. Not at all. And ghosts didn’t exist. So Vinnie needed to get a grip on her hallucinating brain somehow.
    They were on the first floor of Vanguard headquarters, in Jax’s offices, where a large conference room was surrounded by lockers holding weapons.
    “Okay.” Jax scrubbed a hand down his face. “Lynne has educated us about Scorpius and the bacterium’s effect on the brain and body, so we can skip any more information there. I understand that sociopaths and serial killers might have different brains than normal people. For now, I need you to give us a brief lesson on the way sociopaths and serial killers think before we move on to discussing President Atherton.”
    Vinnie swallowed. The Vanguard leader wanted her to distill seven years of higher education and five years in the field into an hour briefing? “No problem.” She reached fora blue marker to twirl in her hands. “Simply put, sociopaths don’t feel anything, especially empathy. They can fake emotions, and well, but they don’t really
feel
them.”
    Her stepmother nodded vigorously. Today her blond hair was streaked with purple and dangling elephant tusk earrings hung from her ears.
    Vinnie kept her gaze on the real people and not her new hallucination. “Serial killers range from the disorganized kind who just want to harm or kill to the brilliant, calculating kind who live for the game of hunting people.”
    Raze crossed his arms and settled his back against the wall. “It’s impossible to tell one until they act, right?”
    “Correct. Before Scorpius we looked at nature and nurture. What was their nature, genetic makeup, and so on, in