Made In Basalt

Potential

June 12th, 1943

Dean Hannity regarded the kid sitting before him, hands clasped loosely on his glossy oak desk. The kid regarded him back, dark eyes swarming with a mixture of unease and defiance, and his body language - arms folded, one shoulder slightly raised, sitting back in his chair with a slight curl to his lip - screamed youthful bravado.

Hannity saw right through the act.

Hannity saw the edginess in the rigid set of the torso, the way the slim pale fingers dug into his arms and gripped them hard enough to leave bruises the next day. He saw the way the kid's body wasn't so much leaning back against the chair but pressing itself against it, as if trying to put as much space between himself and Hannity as possible. To the untrained eye, though, Jeffrey Isbell was doing a good job hiding his unease. Not an excellent one, but for nineteen years old, Hannity was impressed.

The local police in Lafayette had been only too happy to hand him over. Curious, yes, belligerently so, of course. But no real resistance. Hannity's people had told him things, how the cop unlocking the kid's cell had done so a little too cautiously, how there were four other officers hovering nearby, palms resting on their pistols, just in case. How there was none of the usual jeering and shit-talk that local cops treated their criminals to, barely even any eye contact.

Hannity was a man who trusted his gut, and he kept an ear to the streets. Even in the street of barren Midwestern towns, which had an uncanny knack for birthing either the most valuable government agents he'd encountered in his career, or the most depraved serial killers. An intriguing dichotomy, unless it wasn't one at all. Unless Hannity's theory was correct, in that the best government agents were just serial killers who had been captured early and trained into convenience.

Dean Hannity regarded the kid sitting before him, and spoke the words evenly.

"What's your name?"

The kid's eyes narrowed. "You know my name."

"I'm telling you to repeat it." He let a hint of steel slither its way into his tone. The kid shifted, glanced to one side.

"Jeffrey Isbell."

"How old are you, Jeffrey?"

"Nineteen."

"Where are you from?"

"Indiana."

Hannity leaned forward. "Did you graduate high school?"

The kid scoffed, rolling his eyes. "What does this have to do with anyth - "

"Did. You. Graduate. High school."

Glaring at him, the kid snapped his mouth shut.

"Yes," he said at last. The word came out strained, as if he wanted to say more, but was holding himself back by sheer force of will and the strength of a clenched jaw.

If Hannity was the kind of man who smiled, he would have smiled. Instead, he tilted his head up and relaxed his shoulders. For the next ten minutes, he kept asking questions, keeping an eye on the clock on the wall to the right, bullshit questions he knew the answer to but asked anyway. To establish the upper hand. More importantly, to see how the kid reacted. And despite himself, Hannity had to admit - the kid was good.

"Are you a virgin?"

The eyebrows went up slightly, but the kid was otherwise still, and he didn't miss a beat. "Why? You wanna fuck me?"

"Are you?"

"That's a fucked up question to ask a minor, sir."

"Answer it."