Chapter 1

Shifting, uncomfortable and nervous, he tried to get a bead on his target. The small aiming reticule weaved across the crowd. Closing and opening his eye, he tried to focus through the narrow viewfinder. It took more than it should have, but he found her.

He had hidden himself away in the audio visual booth just for this occasion. Every year, his school hosted the slam dunk demonstration. It was a performance designed to encourage students to reach for their dreams and pursue their destinies. All of the students loved it.

The assembly was chosen because the slam dunk team brought their own sound system and lights. Their guy was sitting on the sidelines with a host of wires running into a small laptop. It was also a dark assembly, the team would douse the lights, allowing one student hiding in the A.V. booth to get up and aim his device across the crowd and find his target, without being seem.

Moments ago, before sliding open the A.V. window, and propping his device up on the sill to find his quarry, he had pulled the thing from his backpack. An eighteen inch long stainless steel cylinder with a tiny sighting mechanism on top, it had a USB port on the side, and one rubberized button on one end. The other end was a rounded crystal lens.

How the device worked, he had no idea. Notations had told him what it would and wouldn't do, but like the manual for car stereo, knowing how to turn the tuner wouldn't help him understand how the device worked on the inside.

Luxurious and radiant blonde hair filtered into the reticule. He was able to see his target, the ever beautiful and popular Amber Wetzel. Her blue eyes shone even across the gymnasium. They were his true target; the beam had to hit her in the eyes to be effective.

Holding a deep breath, he braced his arms around the device, and began to press the button on its back. He had to be careful not to disturb his aim while he pressed it. Just as he heard the device whir and come to life, the sighting picture changed. Something flashed in front of the view, and he couldn't see his target. He knew the laser would only shoot for a millisecond, and released the button, snapping his head up to see.

Across the arena, he saw the girl next to Amber retracting her long arm. As it passed Amber's face he saw the shining gleam of the girl's wrist watch. The silver reflective band stood out like a beacon of failure. He had no idea if his plan had worked or not.

Panicking, he jumped down to the floor, and shoved the laser into his bag again. Striding out the door and back into the gymnasium, he put his head down and walked as fast as he could out of the building. Heart lodged in his throat, he was fortunate it was easy to get back to the parking lot and into his car.

Twisting the door open, and crouching in the driver's seat of his old Toyota sedan, he ran one shaking hand into the mop of brown hair on his head, and beat the other on the steering wheel. Unable to face the crowd at school after stressing himself over his plan, he spun the keys in the ignition, and headed for his home.

Liam Douglas McNeil had been prepared for an anti-climactic response of the laser hitting Amber Wetzel, and nothing happening. He was already prepared for the laser to be unassuming, since the beam was invisible to the naked eye. But, with the arm and watch blocking his view, he couldn't bring himself to act and find out if it was a success.

Low self esteem was a result of hardship. Two years prior to his incident in the A.V. booth, Liam had lost his father to a short battle with liver cancer. It hadn't been detected early, and Donovan McNeil had been on the transplant list for less than six months when doctors declared that the cancer had spread and they had no more tools to deal with it.

The loss had forced Liam's mother, Becky McNeil, back to school. Insurance and savings had ensured that Becky and her son were in the black with their finances, including the three bedroom family home, but college for Liam, and future living expenses would only be covered if Becky re-inserted herself into the workforce.

She enrolled herself at the community college the same summer, only six weeks removed from Donovan's April passing, and began the task of getting a nursing license. She was going to transfer the college credits from before she'd met Liam's father, and complete the program in three semesters.

Becky McNeil left Liam to clear out their basement that first summer, promising the fifteen year old that he would be able to assume it for his own room when he was finished. Liam attacked the basement the first day his mother went to class. His father had used it for his personal research. University equipment was scattered through the room when Liam first went down.

Enjoying a research position at the University, Donovan McNeil had spent his career researching new laser technologies. At home he had been known to devote just as much of himself to his science. Over the course of six weeks hard work, Liam managed to empty the basement of his father's things.

The staff at the University was glad to have the pieces of equipment Dr. McNeil had taken home, the science department was happy to have his research papers, and Liam was relieved on the sixth week, when the basement was finally clean.

When it was finished, three of his father's things remained. A small coffee machine that had brewed hundreds of late night cups when his father worked through the evening, the small dorm room refrigerator that cooled drinks when his dad wanted his caffeine cold, and the old fashioned roll top desk that served Donovan McNeil through college and into his years as a research scientist. One drawer of the desk stuck when opened and closed, but it would be months before Liam discovered why.

So with six weeks to go until starting the first year of school he'd attend with out his father helping with homework, Liam began moving his things down into the basement. His things didn't dominate the space; the basement was more than double the size of his ten by ten room upstairs. The basement came with a half bath and its own door to the outside. As long as Liam could stand the sounds of the furnace and hot water heater, he'd have the perfect teenage retreat.

A retreat turned out to be exactly what he needed. Before his father died, Liam was an unpopular kid. He'd get teased for his smaller size, even though he was growing rapidly. Girls would giggle at him because he'd become flustered when they spoke to him.

He'd entered high school as a five foot five freshman. Not the shortest, but with his small frame only weighing him in at one hundred ten pounds, he appeared the smallest. Despite the constant growth spurt he'd been in pushing his height to five foot nine before his junior year, Liam still felt smaller than all the rest, and acted even smaller.

Once he returned to school, it was different. Classmates seemed to feel sorry for Liam. About the same as any other human would feel sorry for a boy who had lost his father. They took the approach of not teasing Liam any longer, and trying to give him space. The side effect of that was that Liam himself felt ignored and lonely.

Getting home from school had the same result. Trying hard to gain the skills to earn a good living for her and her son, his mother was taking classes and doing volunteer work at the hospital. So when he got home from school, Liam was alone. He did his homework alone. He ate alone.

Grading went without a problem, Liam was intelligent, and while he had to study, his studying always worked. He wasn't a student who would ever be mistaken for Einstein, but he would never be thought of as less than bright either. His parents had instilled a good sense of work ethic and responsibility, getting good grades was automatic.

Comparing himself to his peers, Liam began trying to figure out why he had no friends of significance, why he was ignored so completely and why he couldn't bring himself to open up in front of people and have an actual conversation. He began looking for a solution.

Amber Wetzel became his ideal. She was perfect in Liam's eyes. Beautiful with her sparkling eyes, and that radiant hair, the girl all the boys wanted. Socially she was graceful. Capable of moving from group to group without difficulty, she was liked by everyone. Liam had never seen her acting rude to a classmate. If he could become her friend ... he'd have real friends too.

So he trudged back and forth to school, trying to work out how he'd become her friend, and be one of the lucky that she flagged down in the hallways to talk to. Even better, if the blonde goddess would go out with him, he'd have all of his problems solved. Just before Christmas break, trying to fix the sticking drawer on his desk in the basement, he found his answer.

Having finished his homework, and running out of things to occupy him, Liam started tugging on the drawer and trying to work it out of the desk to see if something was jamming it. With one final shoulder popping tug, the entire drawer was wrenched free, and Liam peered inside to find the source of the jam.

Stuck to the back of the desk, up against the inside of the cavity he'd pulled the drawer from, was a large manila package. Thinking the package couldn't possibly be there on accident, Liam worked it out of the desk with care and concern. It had to have been left by his father, it looked to be only a few months old, and was taped up in a meticulous way; how his father would have done it.

Laying the package on his bed his mind raced as to its possible contents. First he thought it might contain an inheritance, a sum of money that could insure that his mother wouldn't actually have to work. Then he considered that it might hold the secret to some old crime his father might have perpetrated. Finally, Liam realized that it was much more likely to contain more research documents, probably documents that his dad considered important.

Flicking open a pocket knife, Liam cut away the tape, and unwrapped the package. Inside the thick paper, Liam found a long stainless steel cylinder, two computer CDs, and a thick spiral bound notebook. Staring at the items, he began to sort through them.

It took all of the Christmas holiday to learn what the package was about, but when it was done Liam had a large glimmer of hope in him. The day he'd opened the package, he'd stuffed everything except the notebook underneath the mattress on his bed. Taking his time, Liam began to digest the notebook.