Born to Darkness

by Suzanne Brockmann

  She wanted to help but she didn’t know how, until Bach spoke. But her ears were ringing from that latest mental blast. The air around Diaz was crackling, too, and she couldn’t make out his words.

  So Dr. Bach gained entry into her mind the way he always did, provided he was at a close enough range. He gave a little push asking permission, which Mac granted immediately by lowering her defenses.

  And then she felt the warmth and calm that meant Bach was inside of her head. He didn’t so much speak as guide her thoughts.

  What did you do to me? The addict had asked that when he’d first come out into the hall.

  But Mac didn’t know what the man had meant—except then, suddenly, she did know. The joker had been favoring the very same foot that she’d injured, the same ankle she’d trashed when she’d fallen down the stairs. He’d been limping.

  Maybe there were some powers that Nathan couldn’t deflect. Maybe …

  She scrambled to her feet and instead of compartmentalizing and hiding the pain she felt when she put any weight on her left foot, she disintegrated her carefully constructed guard. And she didn’t just step onto her injured foot, she jumped onto it. Pain rocketed through her and she heard herself scream.

  Nathan screamed, too.

  Bingo.

  Mac felt Bach pull out of her head, and she knew he must’ve then paid a visit to Diaz’s mind, letting him know about the joker’s weakness, because Diaz, too, dropped his guard and let out a blast of everything that he was feeling. And to Mac’s surprise, that included not just the pain from the mentally looped electrical current, but anger and frustration, and—holy shit—an aircraft-carrier-load of pent-up sexual energy.

  Considering he was the Prince of Celibacy, that was a stunner.

  But that wasn’t the biggest shocker of the evening. The fact that Diaz walked around suppressing a forty-thousand-ton urge to screw everyone in sight was nothing compared to the wall of pain that Bach set free.

  Unlike Mac’s and Diaz’s mostly physical suffering, what Bach let loose was a blast of emotional hurt that knocked Mac to her knees.

  It was indescribable—the grief, the loss, the regret, the sheer sorrow.…

  It was too much to bear—not just for Mac, but for Nathan, too.

  “He’s out, I think that did it, I think he stroked out,” she heard Diaz gasp.

  Bach agreed with an urgency in his voice that she rarely ever heard. “Nathan’s out—and we need the medical team in here, now! Let’s not lose this one!”

  And there was the great irony of what they did. Risk their lives to subdue the joker, but then, when he was subdued? Rush his bad-guy ass to the special hospital unit over at the Obermeyer Institute and work their medical team around the clock to attempt to detox him—to try to keep him from dying.

  As the OI med team poured into the house, Mac pulled out of the fetal position she’d curled herself into.

  Dr. Bach came over and gave her a hand up. “You should get that ankle checked at the clinic,” he told her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, her subtext clear. Yes, she’d been injured, but he was the one who needed about a decade of grief counseling. Not that she’d ever dare to say something like that to his face. Still, he was Bach, so he surely knew what she was thinking. “My ankle’s not that bad—I can heal it overnight. I’ll be back to speed in the morning.”

  Bach nodded, his brown eyes somber. “Do whatever you have to do. I’ll see you back there.”

  He vanished down the hall, no doubt going to find the former Nathan Hempford’s wife and children, to let them know the ordeal was over and that they were safe, to explain what had happened, and what was likely to happen next.

  He wouldn’t go so far as to tell them that Hempford was guaranteed to die, or that the authorities were already in the process of covering up what had happened here tonight. The official report would no doubt include a home invasion by a fictional meth- or heroin-addled intruder, with the entire family—including Hempford—taken hostage. His obit would read that he’d died trying to save his family from an unidentified man who’d also killed two police officers. And the public would continue to remain blissfully unaware of this new, dangerous drug called Destiny, and the existence of Dr. Bach’s psychically powerful team from OI.

  Not that any of them wanted or needed a ticker-tape parade.

  In fact, their very anonymity and lack of recognition helped keep them safe.

  But still …

  Mac blocked her pain and hobbled her way down the stairs and out of the house, catching up to Diaz out on the driveway, where he’d helped the med team load an unconscious Nathan into the ambulance.

  “You okay?” she asked, and Diaz nodded.

  “Someone’s got a secret,” she said, unable to keep her smartass in check, even though he was looking considerably worse for the wear.

  She wasn’t all that clean and shiny herself—her nose was still bleeding a bit and her lip was definitely split, although it was already starting to heal. Another fifteen minutes, and her face would be as good as new. Her ankle, however, was going to require some significant attention and focus.

  Diaz gave her his handkerchief. Who the hell still carried handkerchiefs?

  “It’s not a secret,” he said evenly. “It’s just … irrelevant.” And then he said what he said after every takedown, even though by all rights they should have been rivals, vying to be Bach’s official second-in-command. “Good job tonight, Michelle.”

  So Mac gave him her standard reply. “You, too, D.”

  “See you back there,” he said, and vanished into the night.

  TWO

  The police station had seen better days. It was grimy and stale-smelling, poorly lit and barely heated, and definitely understaffed.

  Anna Taylor had had to wait for two long anxiety-filled hours before the desk sergeant called her number, before she could so much as report the reason why she was there.

  “My sister is missing. She didn’t come home from school today,” she said, working hard to keep her frustration from her voice. This had rapidly turned into a nightmare. But she’d sat, waiting, when what she’d wanted to do was keep searching for Nika, returning to all of her little sister’s favorite haunts. Not that there were many of them—they’d only lived in the Boston area for a few months, and were both still feeling their way in terms of making new friends.

  Anna hadn’t even met their neighbors in their apartment building until this afternoon, when she’d knocked on their doors to see if they’d seen Nika.

  No one had.

  The heavyset sergeant didn’t even look up from his computer. “I can’t help you. Until she’s been missing for seventy-two hours—”

  “Seventy-two?” she repeated, unable to hide her disbelief. “I’m sorry. Maybe I wasn’t clear. My sister’s a child. She’s only thirteen years old.”

  He looked up at her then, his faded blue eyes vaguely embarrassed, but mostly dull. Time and this job had sucked the life out of him. “Services had to be cut somewhere. Most missing people—including children—turn up on their own within that seventy-two-hour time period. Or they never turn up. Either way, it’s a waste of resources.”

  Anna was staring at him with her mouth open, but she knew it wasn’t his fault that cutbacks and layoffs had crippled the entire department. All of Boston’s first responders had been decimated. Just last week, while on the bus, she’d seen a building that was on fire. It was just burning unchecked as the tenants of the neighboring triple-decker used garden hoses to keep their own homes from igniting.

  Now, she closed her mouth, gathered her frustration-tattered civility, and managed to ask, “So if it’s a waste of resources either way, what exactly happens when I come back here in seventy-two hours to report that she’s missing?”

  He hated his job—that much was clear as he sighed heavily. “Your sister’s name gets put on a list. Her photo, description, and last-seen whereabouts go up on the Internet, along with your conta
ct number and the dollar amount of the reward you’re willing to pay for her safe return. Citizen detectives take it from there. You’ll either get her back or you won’t.” The sergeant reached beneath the desk for a sheet of paper that he put on the counter and pushed toward her with the tips of his fingers. “Here’s the form you’ll be asked to fill out, although if you do it online and upload your own photo, the fee’s only twenty-five dollars. If we need to rekey your info, it’s an extra fifty.”

  “Fee?” she repeated, stunned by the idea that Nika’s life could be in the hands of citizen detectives.

  “And if you want to skip the waiting period and get her name on the list tonight,” the sergeant informed her, “fee for that’s five hundred dollars. Cash or debit. Five-fifty if you use a credit card.”

  “What’s the fee to actually talk to a detective?” Anna asked, and she was really just being sarcastic. She didn’t expect to get an answer. But she did.

  “Five thousand’ll open a case file,” the man said, and her heart sank.

  She didn’t have anywhere close to that much in cash, and her credit limit had just been lowered again, this time to a meager thousand.

  The sergeant shook his head dismissively. “But that only gets you two hours of boots on the ground, which is virtually useless in a situation like this, and there are no guarantees.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “If it was my kid, and I had that much money to spend? There are a number of private sector agencies that can help you for a much lower price.” He tapped the form. “But I would fill this out, and get her stats on the Net, ASAP. The first three days can be critical, in cases of child abduction.”

  “And yet there’s a seventy-two-hour waiting period …?” This was unreal. “Look, Nika’s a really good kid. She’s got her own cell phone, I was hoping someone could, I don’t know, use some kind of technology to track her …?”

  “Again, that’s a service you’ll spend less on by utilizing a private security firm,” she was told.

  “Can you recommend—”

  He cut her off. “I can’t. It’s not allowed. And I’m going to have to ask you to step aside—”

  “Wait!” This was crazy. “Please. I’ve heard about these … I don’t know, kidnapping squads? I thought they were an urban legend, but … Nika’s a scholarship student at Cambridge Academy. Maybe someone grabbed her, thinking we have money, but … I don’t even have a full-time job!”

  The sergeant sighed. “Best thing to do, miss, is fill out the form and let the citizen detectives—”

  “But what if the citizen detectives are the people who took her in the first place?”

  “If they’re one and the same, then it stands to reason that you’ll get her back, won’t you?”

  “Not if I don’t have the money to pay,” Anna said, as tears of both fear and frustration stung her eyes. “Isn’t kidnapping a felony, or has that changed, too? Let me know, because if it’s an accepted business practice now, I may have to take it up myself.”

  He pointed down the hall. “Fee Processing is first door on the right. There are public comm-stations there so you can access the Internet form, save yourself the fifty bucks.” He looked down at his computer, tapped a few keys, then raised his voice. “Number 718.” He glanced up to find her still there. “Please step to the side, miss.”

  Anna couldn’t let it go. Instead of stepping aside, she leaned forward. “Is this really okay with you?”

  “Step to the side, miss.” Any glimmer of humanity that she’d seen in his eyes was gone.

  Anna moved, telling him, “This isn’t okay with me.” Still, she reached into her backpack for her wallet and the credit card that was already nearly maxed out, and she hurried down the hall.

  Boston was no different from New York City or Chicago or Dallas or even Phoenix in terms of finding a job.

  It didn’t matter where Shane Laughlin went—blacklisted was blacklisted was blacklisted, regardless of whether the word was said with a heavy dose of the Bronx or with an accent worthy of a JFK impersonator. And being blacklisted by the corporations that ran the government meant that he wasn’t going to get hired. It didn’t matter that everyone who still had half of a fortune left after the latest market crash needed personal security to ensure their safety from all of the scary things that went bump in the night.

  Shane wasn’t wanted.

  Not by anybody doing anything legal, that is.

  And, here in Boston? Not getting hired due to being blacklisted apparently came with an attached beating.

  Three very large men of the no-neck persuasion had followed Shane out of the security firm’s personnel office. Two shuffled along behind him on the cracked and pitted sidewalk, and one had hustled across the street—no doubt to cut him off if he tried to run away.

  And there, ahead, out of a narrow side street, dimly lit by the flickering streetlamp, came two more bullet-heads—or rather jarheads. Shane would’ve staked a month of his former pay on a bet that they were, all five of ’em, former Marines.

  Of course that meant that maybe this beating wasn’t related to his being blacklisted, but more about his being a former Navy SEAL. Rivalry between the Navy and the Marines could get pretty intense. Even though, technically, the Marines were related to the Navy. But it had always been very much a dysfunctional step-sibling-type relationship, starting at the very moment some U.S. Navy captain had said, Hey, I have a good idea. How about we pack the deck of our ships with soldiers who’ll storm the beaches to fight the enemy on land, because frankly, these sea battles are getting tedious. And, I know, we’ll call ’em Marines and force ’em to get ridiculous haircuts that make their ears look extra stupid—like the handles of a moonshine whiskey jar. And we’ll tell our enlisted crew that it’s okay to treat ’em like shit.…

  The jarheads at twelve o’clock were pretending to windowshop, hands in their pockets, shoulders hunched against the chill of the damp spring wind. Shane might’ve been fooled into thinking they weren’t really waiting for him to get close enough to kick his ass, had the window been that of a pawnshop or maybe an old-fashioned video store specializing in porn.

  But it was a CoffeeBoy there on the corner—one of the few that had stayed open in this low-rent part of town, probably thanks to its proximity to the private security firm’s army of caffeine-ingesting behemoths who regularly dropped by to pick up their weekly paychecks.

  Shane picked up his pace, and yeah, when he moved it into a swift jog, the two men behind him followed suit. The two up ahead stopped pretending to be fascinated with the ancient Iced Delight ad that had, no doubt, been put in that window in June, about a decade ago, when CoffeeBoy still featured seasonal variations. These days, the corporate coffee giant was down to caf and decaf.

  The two men up ahead turned to face Shane, easy on the balls of their feet, ready to fight.

  Although, come on. Five against one wasn’t a fight. It was a premeditated thrashing.

  Instead of feinting right and dashing left around the two men who were blocking his route, Shane just went right—and opened the door to the coffee shop and dashed inside, slowing down immediately. Because as long as he was going to get the shit kicked out of him, he might as well be dry and warm when it happened.

  “High octane,” he told the woman behind the counter, well aware that the four men on his side of the sidewalk had followed him in. Any second now, the gentleman from across the street would be joining them. The bell attached to the door jingled, right on cue—he didn’t even have to turn around to look. “Extra large. Black. Please. Ma’am.”

  He added a hopeful smile, but the woman, close to elderly and clearly exhausted, didn’t reach for a paper cup. She barely even moved a muscle in her face as she announced, “We’re closed.”

  “Sign says open twenty-four hours.”

  “Not today. We’re … doing inventory.”

  Shane dropped all pretense. “You’re really going to let this happen? It’s not going to be pretty and yo
u’re going to have to walk past it when you go home.”

  She was unimpressed. “I’ll leave out the back.” She looked over his shoulder at the tallest of the men behind him. “Tommy, you take this outside. You know corporate’s looking for a reason to shut us down. You bust this place up, it’s over. We’re gone.”

  Shane turned around. “Yeah, Tommy,” he said. “Get down on your knees so you can properly suck the dicks of your corporate overlords.”

  Tommy, completely as expected, lunged at him. No surprises here.

  And the blind-rage lunge had always been Shane’s favorite form of attack. It was just so defendable, particularly since—even though he was a pretty big guy—he was nimble and fleet of foot.

  Shane ducked, dodging Tommy effortlessly. He then tripped the former marine, popped him a sharp chop to the throat that no doubt made him feel like he was going to die, and spun him around. He used the man’s own momentum to send him crashing into his buddies, like a giant bowling ball.

  As the goon squad cursed and scattered, Shane was already up and over the counter, thanks to the unintentional hot tip from the CoffeeBoy lady about the back entrance.

  He was through that rear door, out into the alley, and moving at full speed—which meant he was probably a solid block away before any of the five so much as made it over the counter.

  Still, he didn’t stop running until a team of police officers in a cruiser eyed him suspiciously. At which point, he slowed to a rather brisk walk, because the last thing he needed was to get picked up by the locals for running-while-unemployed.

  It didn’t take Shane too much longer to reach the Boston Common—which thankfully was right where the map in his head said it would be. He took the stairs down to an underground station for the T. The first platform he hit was for the Green Line, which seemed like fate, since the Obermeyer Institute was at the end of one of the Green’s fingers, out at the end of the D trains, near something called Riverside.