The Iron in Blood

Fergus had miraculously managed to purchase a house across from Rebecca and her family. The occupants had been persuaded to leave fairly abruptly, and he informed me that it was standing empty, and ready for me to move in at any time. He sounded smug. I grinned, and considered about wiping the smug look off his face, but it was a fleeting thought. I would have to deny myself that satisfaction until my task here was accomplished. Growing up with two brothers and a distracted father meant that we had spent most of the time fighting, testing our strengths and each other's weaknesses, and the urge hadn't really dimmed as we had aged.

Marcus was the intelligent one, frighteningly so, able to read thick textbooks in hours, and not only remember their contents, but also comprehend every single concept contained between those intimidatingly numerous pages. He had about fourteen degrees, some of them achieved simultaneously, three or four at a time. Freaky by anyone's standards, even ours.

Fergus was slightly different, also gifted, but a bit like a kid with ADD. He was unable or unwilling to concentrate on one thing for long periods of time, and his flitting intelligence found a friend in the tangled workings of computers and the internet. No task was too complicated for him. He was probably the most accomplished hacker in the world, too good to even be detected. Humility was not one of his talents, though, and he laughingly resisted all my efforts to teach him.

I was different to both of them, both in appearance and intellect. They were pale, with silvery blonde hair and startling grey eyes. I was just as pale, but my hair was much darker, almost black, and my eyes were brown, nondescript, really, which was why it was decided that I should become the reconnaissance expert. I wasn't as extraordinarily gifted intellect-wise as my brothers were; my intelligence was apparently well above average (Marcus had tested us all a few years back - no prizes for guessing who got the gold star), but my strengths lay elsewhere. I could read people, of course, and after that occasion with the paedophile, I guess I could write them too, in a manner of speaking. I was strong and fast, but we all were, though I did have a bit of an edge on my siblings. A lot of an edge, really, but they didn't like to admit it.

My unique talent lay in hunting. Not the shooting defenceless animals type of hunting; anyone with a firearm and half a brain could do that. I hunted people, tracking down men and women who did not want to be found for whatever reason, and who often went to great lengths to not be found. I seemed to be able to anticipate their actions, and the direction that those actions would take them. Kind of like a mixture between a profiler and a strategist. I'd been employed by various organisations over the years, the GSG 9 in Germany, the SAS here in the UK, and the FBI eventually. I had made it a rule never to stay in the same place for more than five years, and always used a new identity forged by my hacker brother. Each establishment taught me new skills, but the work was seldom very challenging, and I'd started drawing unwanted attention to myself by having a better solve rate than most. And there was always the frustrating problem of "proof", and "beyond reasonable doubt". I didn't need these to make a decision about whether someone had perpetrated a crime. I looked at their minds and I knew.