James Axler – Parallax Red Parallax Red

Kane didn’t like that melancholia, so over the past six months he worked very hard at burying it, at rerouting all of the repressed passions he felt toward Brigid to a dead circuit board inside of his mind.

The circuit board sparked to life every so often, as it had in New York, on New Year’s Eve, 2000, when it impelled him to kiss her. But the melancholy filled him like a cup, and he pushed her away before the sadness overflowed to such a degree he would never be able to contain it again.

A few weeks before, when Kane had protested to Morrigan that there was nothing between him and Brigid, the Irish telepath had laughed at htm. She said, “Oh, yes, there is. Between you two, there is much to forgive, much to understand. Much to live through. Always together…she is your anam-chara .”

In ancient Gaelic, Kane learned, anam-chara meant “soul friend.”

He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew he felt curiously comfortable with Brigid Baptiste, at ease with her in a way that was similar, yet markedly different than his relationship with Grant. He found her intelligence, her iron resolve, her wellspring of compassion and the way she had always refused to be intimidated by him not just stimulating but inspiring. She was a complete person, her heart, mind and spirit balanced and demanding of respect.

Only a few days ago, when cornered by Salvo’s questions about his reasons for sacrificing everything for a woman, he could think of only one, clumsily phrased response “Because I know her. Because I need her.”

Kane privately acknowledged the perversity of making such a confession to a man who was his sworn enemy, rather than to the woman in question, but he was unableor unwillingto speak the same words to her.

Brigid reached down to pick up her bodysuit, shouldering Kane aside. He recoiled, making a swiftly stifled exclamation of pain, his hand moving to the wound on his ribs.

When Brigid straightened up, she saw the ruby bead of blood shining at the edge of the film of liquid bandage covering the cut. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Me, too,” he replied ruefully, probing at the injury with careful fingers.

She pulled in a deep, calming breath, pushed it out and said softly, “I have no right to give you hell about Rouch.”

“That’s for sure,” he agreed. “Direct it toward Lakesh.”

“I don’t have the right to give it to him, either,” she replied. “Objectively his reasoning is sound. I have no hold over you.”

Kane frowned, not liking what she said but unable to dredge up anything to refute it. He reached a hand out toward her, but Brigid turned her back and stepped into the bodysuit.

Thrusting her arms into the sleeves, she said brusquely, “DeFore mentioned to me that she was worried about your emotional stability. The coma you suffered after the Irish op threw a scare into her.”

Kane said nothing.

“She’s afraid you’ll develop a full-blown psychosis. She interpreted your insistence on taking Salvo with us to New York as evidence of it.”

Zipping up the suit, she turned around to face him, her eyes and voice level. “She thinks that was the reason the mission failed.”

Kane opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head and said falteringly, “She might be right. Maybe my instincts can’t be trusted anymore.”

Brigid’s lips curved in a wry smile. “If the mission to change history failed, it had nothing to do with your instincts or Salvo. We gained important data from it. We now know the true purpose behind Operation Chronos.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about DeFore’s worries when I first suggested bringing along Salvo?”

Brigid’s green eyes gleamed strangely in the dim light. “What good would it have done except make you doubt yourself? She doesn’t know you, doesn’t know that you’re at your best when faced with seemingly impossible challenges.”

He crooked an eyebrow at her. “And you know that?”

She nodded. “I do. DeFore thinks you have a deluded self-image of yourself, that you believe yourself to be an arrogant superman, glorying in your power over life or death.”