Still, it was enough to make him hope as the guard left his cart out by the curb and walked Shane inside.
There was a manned desk right at the entrance, with another metal detector—which impressed the hell out of Shane. Most organizations relied solely on their perimeter security, which meant that once an intruder was inside, he had free rein. But not so, here.
Apparently, the Obermeyer Institute was run by someone with brains.
It was then, as Shane was spread-eagled to allow for an even more detailed pat down from the guard, that Mac appeared, heading for the doors.
His heart leaped—it actually did gymnastics—when he saw her.
Except she was walking with a man whose picture could have appeared in the dictionary next to tall, dark, and handsome. He moved the way she did—whoever he was, he was a warrior, too. And wherever they were going, there was real purpose to it. The dark-haired man said something to her and she laughed, and the look they exchanged …
It said it all.
That look was filled with intimacy and trust. Whoever this man was, he was Mac’s teammate—probably in every sense of the word.
And it was then that Mac saw Shane. She did an almost imperceptible double take, and her eyes widened only slightly before she turned her face into an expressionless mask.
She didn’t look up at her giant friend, and she didn’t look over at Shane again—she just walked out of the building with the man by her side.
A blast of cold air from the open door hit Shane as the guard searching him gave a nod. He could put his shoes and jacket back on. There was a bench where he could sit, so Shane sat where he could look out of the windows in the big doors, and sure enough. He heard it before he saw it—the sound of not one but two motorcycle engines being started. They pulled out of the lot, and he could see their twin taillights—red and bright in the pre-dawn darkness—disappearing down the hill.
Mac and her boyfriend had his and her bikes—wasn’t that sweet?
Shane carefully kept his voice even as he asked the guard who’d walked him in, “Who was that who just left?”
“Sorry, sir,” he said. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
Of course he wasn’t.
“If you’ll follow me to processing …” The guard gestured down the hall, in the opposite direction from where Mac had appeared.
Shane grabbed his bag, which had been thoroughly searched a second time, and followed him, a little queasy and a whole lot disappointed—and far more jealous than he knew he had a right to be.
And it was only because jobs were so scarce that he didn’t just turn and walk out the door.
Besides, Mac had said it was important that he show up.
Although it was kind of clear that she hadn’t expected him quite so soon.
NINE
The mechanic’s garage in South Boston was deserted by the time they arrived. The place was a total ghost town—Rickie Littleton had clearly known that someone would be coming after him.
Mac stood in the middle of the vacant center bay and lowered her mental shields, closing her eyes to get a better sense of …
The slap of fear she could feel was strong, but it wasn’t sharp, and she knew it was a residual from the past. Still, it was enough to make her gasp and quickly reshield—someone had been killed here. Raped, and then killed.
God.
But not recently—which meant it hadn’t been Nika.
Mac felt nothing from the girl, which was either good or bad, depending on how you looked at it. It was good in that while Nika was here, she hadn’t awakened to find herself at the mercy of two very nasty-ass men. It was bad in that it suggested Nika hadn’t been here long enough to wake up from whatever sedative she’d been given during her abduction.
And that meant that their trail was cold and getting colder with every passing minute.
Diaz was already on the phone to OI, reporting what they’d found and requesting SAT images of the garage for the entire afternoon and evening. Analysis needed to track every car and truck that had left this place—although there was room in here for at least twenty vehicles. More, if they’d been parked tightly. It was going to take time to track them all to their destinations, and even then, it didn’t mean that Nika hadn’t since been moved again. And again.
Mac took a deep breath, and bracing herself for the awfulness of that rape, she lowered her mental shields again. She had to ignore the now-dead girl’s fear and pain, and focus on the other emotions in the room, hoping for a clue that would lead them to Rickie and his cohort.
But the rapist had bitten his victim over and over again as he’d slammed his body into hers, and—God, the murdered girl had been only a child, sobbing and pleading for him to stop. Her voice echoed with fragments of memories that Mac had long-buried: Don’t, Daddy, please don’t …
The force of the horror and pain pushed Mac down onto the cold concrete on her hands and knees, as she fought to stomp back her own ugly memories and to feel beyond it, to get to the emotions of the people who’d been here today.
And there it all was—there had been a lot of people in this garage, not too long ago. Dozens, if not more. Again, not a good sign—they were probably the drivers, hired to move cars out of the place—to make it impossible to track the one carrying Nika.
Mac searched among them for the strongest emotions and found a sense of triumph and glee. His ship had come in, he was going to be rich …
And then, from someone else … An intense sense of need. Someone was jonesing—not just for drugs, but for …
The girl. He knew he couldn’t do it, but he wanted to bite Nika like he’d bitten the other one and—
Jesus.
Mac threw up, right there on the concrete. But then Diaz was there—not just picking her up and wrapping his arms around her, but he was also inside of her head, helping her get her defenses back into place, helping her breathe, helping her stop shaking.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do this anymore,” Diaz said.
“Maybe you should suck my dick,” Mac countered before she threw up again.
She tried to push him away, because he couldn’t do anything to calm her stomach—it needed to be emptied, and there was really only one way for that to happen. Plus, Diaz didn’t have very much control when he walked around inside a fellow Greater-Than’s head—not the way Bach did. Bach could stay away from private thoughts if he wanted to. And right now, Mac knew she was an open book when it came to her sordid past. From childhood to adolescence to last night’s hookup with Shane …
She found that she was clinging to those memories of the former SEAL, focusing on the way he’d smiled into her eyes before he’d kissed her and …
God.
She felt Diaz turn away from her too-graphic memories, kind of the way someone polite might do if they stumbled upon you taking a dump with the bathroom door wide open. But he didn’t let go of her. He didn’t stop trying to absorb at least some of her nausea.
And finally her stomach was empty and it was over. She’d thrown up the crackers and tea, the whiskey and the wine, and whatever else was still in her system after a long day and night with too little food.
And then she and Diaz just sat there. She’d knew he’d gotten a glimpse of everything she’d felt from this hellhole of a garage, so there was no point in discussing it in detail.
One of Nika’s kidnappers was a serial child rapist and murderer. As if the threat from the Organization weren’t bad enough.
But Diaz felt compelled to say, “They grabbed her for the money. There’s no way the greedy one is going to let the other kill her.”
“But he might let him …” Mac couldn’t say it.
Steady. She felt Diaz beside her, and she let him breathe for her for a moment.
“I know this is hard for you,” he said quietly.
“Yep,” she said. “And I couldn’t tell which one was which. So when I find ’em? Littleton and his partner? I’m going to kill ’em both.” Afte
r she squeezed every little last bit of information out of them.
Even though Diaz was no longer inside of her head, he knew what she was thinking, and he nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
She glanced at him. “Sorry about …” She didn’t need to be specific. Again, he knew precisely to what she was referring.
And he shrugged. “Yeah, well, I have some pretty fierce fantasies, too.”
So okay. He either honestly thought those pictures in her head of her and Shane had been make-believe instead of memories, or he was pretending that was the case, in order to make her feel less embarrassed.
But then he surprised her by saying, “He was really hot—that man we saw in the lobby at OI, but I’ve discovered that I’m kind of a one-man man, even when it comes to daydreams.”
The look she gave him must’ve been an odd one, because he added, “What? You know my secret.” And as realization no doubt dawned in her eyes, he then added, “Except, okay, you didn’t really know.” But then he backpedaled. “Not that I was intentionally keeping anything a secret. It just wasn’t …”
“Relevant?” Mac finished for him and he nodded. “What I knew is that it’s hard for you. The celibacy thing. No pun intended. And, for the record, you know as well as I do that the no-sex rule is bullshit.”
“No, I don’t know that,” he said on a heavy exhale. This part of the conversation they’d had plenty of times before.
“It’s not even a real rule. It’s just a suggestion. I’ve had boyfriends—the kind that I get intimate with—for years,” Mac confessed. “And here I am—as much of a Fifty as you are.”
“Maybe you’d be a Seventy if you’d abstained.”
“I doubt it, but for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Maybe I’d be a Seventy, but I’d also be a completely bitchy Seventy,” she told him.
“Hard to imagine you bitchier than you already are,” he murmured, and she actually laughed.
And that was when the most personal conversation they’d ever had ended, because Bach arrived.
“Don’t unshield completely,” Mac warned the maestro as he swept in and did a slow spin, looking around. He made note of everything—of her puke on the floor in the center of the room, of the way she and Diaz were sitting off to the side on the cold concrete with their backs against the brick wall. He closed his eyes briefly as she told him everything that she and Diaz had discovered here.
Well, not quite everything … She left out the personal 4-1-1 about Diaz being gay and her desire to keep on shagging one of their new Potentials.
“Analysis just called,” Bach informed them. “Littleton and his friend were ready for us to track them. The SAT images show twenty-three different vehicles leaving this facility after Nika and her abductors arrived. We’re in the process of tracking them all, but …” He shook his head.
There was no way of knowing for sure which car or truck Nika had been in when she was moved from this place.
Diaz stood up, and turned to help pull Mac to her feet. Because, like Mac, he knew what was coming.
“Let’s find them—Littleton and his cohort,” Bach told them. “Split up, but keep in touch. Mac, head over to the abduction point, see if you can’t get a traceable read on Nika’s emotional grid.”
“Yes, sir.”
That, along with the rapist’s grid—which Mac would now recognize instantly, and be able to pick out of a crowd at a close enough range—would help them find the girl. Of course, Rickie would be even easier to trace, because the Analysis team at OI knew most of his hangouts and haunts. Assuming, that is, that he hadn’t already left the city.
“Remember, please,” Bach added, “we need them both alive.”
Mac nodded, and as Bach swept back out the door, before she followed him, she turned to Diaz and said, “FYI, nothing’s changed.”
She didn’t wait for him to nod, but she could feel his relief—and a very genuine affection that almost made her pause—as she turned and walked away.
Dr. Zerkowski had been right. The living quarters at OI were fricking great.
Shane had expected a barracks-quality living situation for the unmarried test subjects, or maybe—because the place so closely resembled an ivy-league college campus—something more like a dorm. A lack of privacy. Shared bedrooms, bathrooms, and common areas. Narrow cots with cheap mattresses that were designed for eighteen-year-old co-eds.
Instead, he’d been given a suite of rooms, right out of those pictures on the OI website, one of which contained a luxurious king-sized bed.
The place had hardwood floors that gleamed—tile in the kitchen and bathroom—and furniture that was both pleasing to the eye and comfortable. Both the sofa and the easy chair in the living room were covered with rich leather, and the rest of the furniture was solid wood.
The kitchen had old-style granite, gleaming wood cabinets, and top-of-the-line appliances. Plus—hot damn!—the cabinets and fridge were stocked with all kinds of food, and a bowl of fresh fruit stood out on the counter.
The towels were plush, the sheets were soft, the blankets were fleece, the bathroom floor was heated.
One entire wall of the living room was windows—a slider opened onto a balcony, which overlooked a garden that hid what appeared to be a parking lot behind it. Or at least it would overlook that garden in the daylight—which was coming soon. Dawn already lit the sky to the east.
The view, like the entire lush accommodations, was lovely.
And Shane would’ve traded it in a heartbeat to be back at that dumpy little apartment near Kenmore Square, where Mac had told him he’d rocked her world.
And it wasn’t just about sex.
He liked her.
A lot.
Shane stood at the window, eating a banana that had somehow achieved the perfect state of ripeness, thinking about all the material he’d just read about neural integration. He’d been given an e-reader by a terse, gray-haired woman named Clara, down in Processing, who—like all the other OI staff he’d encountered, hadn’t so much as blinked at the fact that he’d arrived in the middle of the night.
Sleep be damned—he’d already plowed his way through most of the files Clara had given him.
And he still didn’t quite know what to make of any of it.
Apparently, according to the “scientists” here at the Obermeyer Institute, some people were born with the ability to integrate significantly more of their neural net, aka their brain. Doing so allowed them to develop some serious superpowers. But control of those powers required some equally serious training—a concept Shane well understood as a former SEAL.
But still …
It was off-the-scale in terms of the whoo-whoo factor. Probably because, also as a former SEAL, he well understood physical limitations. A body could only do what a body could do. It was as simple as that.
But according to the good folks at OI, a body could do almost anything that an integrated brain told it to do.
And apparently? Those same folks believed that Shane was a good potential candidate—aka a Potential—for their training program.
They were going to be disappointed, because their entire line of research was a total pile of bullshit. They were wasting their time, whether they spent two minutes or two months trying to get him to move a pencil with his mind.
Time he’d far rather waste in other ways.
Which brought him back to Mac.
He’d been playing and replaying all that he’d seen in the main OI lobby, and he’d come to the conclusion that he really couldn’t make any realistic conclusions about any of it.
Mac had been walking next to a man who’d said something that had made her laugh. Big fucking deal. Shane had spent time with plenty of women that he’d never so much as touched.
They both had motorcycles—Mac and her giant friend. So what? The Harley was a vehicle of choice for security specialists all around the globe.
When Shane pulled back his heavy shroud of jealousy and looked obj
ectively at what he’d seen, he saw two people—one of whom he’d recently slept with—heading off purposefully on some kind of mission.
And yet he couldn’t help but hear an echo of Mac’s voice, right before she left him standing alone in the street, outside of her apartment. It means I can’t see you again.
There were quite a few reasons why she might’ve said that—only one being because she was already in a relationship with someone she worked with.
Shane threw away his banana peel, and picked up the phone that was out on the counter and punched zero.
It rang only once before it was picked up. “Lieutenant Laughlin,” a cheerful voice greeted him. “This is Robert in Hospitality. What can I get for you, sir?”
“Yes, hi,” Shane said, “I’d like to leave a message for Mac. I saw her leaving, so I know she’s not here at the Institute right now and, um, I’m wondering the best way to do that since I don’t have her phone number.”
There was a somewhat longish silence before Robert cleared his throat and said a whole lot less cheerfully, “Your request is … most unusual, sir. I’m not sure how to … Well, I do know that I can’t give out anyone’s private number. I’m sorry, but—”
“Nuh, nuh, no, I’m not asking you for that,” Shane said, even though he hadn’t exactly not asked for it. This was a fishing expedition. He didn’t even know if Mac really did work here, and he still didn’t because Robert hadn’t given him much to go on. Although maybe he had. When Shane had asked for Mac, he hadn’t said, Who? Still, Shane wanted more. He made his voice match Robert’s initial joviality as he laughed. “If you did do that, I’d have to call Security to kick them in the ass, right? I just thought maybe you could, I don’t know—connect me to her voice mail?”
Another long pause. Come on, Robert. At least drop him a clue. Did Mac even have voice mail here?
The throat was cleared again, then, “I’m sorry, sir—”
“How about you leave her the message?” Shane tried. “Ask Mac to call me, okay? Whenever she gets in. It’s kind of urgent.”
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