Born to Darkness

by Suzanne Brockmann

  That had to have sucked.

  Mac now adjusted back to herself, then sprayed a little detangler into her hair to lose the dried-while-she-was-napping look, going instead for simply messy.

  She transferred her plastic scissors and wrist restraints into one of her pants pockets along with her lock pick and her keys, loosely folded the red blouse and stashed it in the flat pocket on her lower right leg, and she was good to go.

  Mac grabbed her jacket and went out the door, not looking back.

  Bach got off the elevator on the sixth floor.

  He could sense that Anna was sleeping even as he approached the locked door to her apartment.

  He felt her total exhaustion beneath an anxiety that was so solid and deep he didn’t need Mac’s empathic skills to feel it.

  So he didn’t ring the bell to wake her. He just stood there a moment, undecided—until he recalled just how eager Anna was to help find Nika, in any way possible.

  So he clicked open the lock and let himself in. Anna had pulled the living room curtains, and they blocked all but a narrow ribbon of light, leaving the room dim.

  Bach stood for a moment, aware that Anna had left her bedroom door open. He could hear the steady, quiet sound of her breathing.

  There was paper over at the comm-station, in the printer. And he powered the thing up because his handwriting was lacking. But he changed his mind and instead of typing the note—which might have awakened her—he took a piece of paper from the tray, and used a pen from the desk drawer.

  Anna, he wrote, working carefully to print the letters legibly. I’m in the living room. I didn’t want to wake you. Even though I still don’t know how Nika managed to project those visual images you and I shared, I thought it would be a good idea to re-create some of the conditions—and perhaps make it easier for her to contact us again. I thought if I took a nap, this time in closer proximity to you, while you sleep, too …

  Well, I’m not sure what I think, other than that we’re in uncharted territory, and anything’s worth a try.

  Wake me if you rise before me. If there’s time, we’ll return to the lab for additional tests. I have a meeting at 1400 (2 p.m.) with Elliot and my Fifties. If you like, you can be present for the end of that, when we’re discussing the next step in our search for Nika.

  They’d be talking about the girl only after they’d discussed the fact that Mac’s integration level was up to sixty after having been intimate with one of their new Potentials.

  And wasn’t that going to be fun?

  He signed the note, Joseph, but then added Bach, which looked stupid. How many Josephs did Anna know here at OI, anyway? Although he really couldn’t remember the last time he’d signed a note Joseph or Joe instead of just Bach. Of course, he also couldn’t remember the last time he’d handwritten a note instead of simply sending a text.

  Dearest Annie,

  I couldn’t bear to wake you, but I had to get back home before my father discovers I’m gone …

  Yeah. It had been a good long while.

  When he stood up his back twinged—a reminder that it had been awhile since he’d last stretched—but he pushed away the vague residuals of discomfort as he carried the note toward Anna’s open bedroom door.

  It was darker in there, and he stopped for a second to adjust his eyes.

  And there she was, her black curls spread out across the pillow, her eyes closed, and her lashes long and dark against her cheeks.

  Something stirred inside of him and he tamped it gently back down because that was what he always did. Effortlessly. Unconsciously. Except this time he was aware of what he was doing. And a part of him watched, wondering what would happen if he ever let himself truly feel that desire.

  This woman was attracted to him, too. Bach would have known that even if he hadn’t spent time kicking around inside of her head. And after they found Nika, she was going to be living here at OI. For years, probably, as Nika trained. They’d find Anna a job, if she wanted one—and Bach was willing to bet that she’d want one.

  She was beautiful and smart and funny.

  And she wasn’t Annie, despite their similar names.

  She was sleeping, curled up, on top of the spread, as if she’d only intended to lie down for a few minutes.

  Bach knew that there was a throw on the back of the sofa in the living room, and he raised his hand to catch it effortlessly as he moved it toward him with his powers. He carried it into the bedroom with him, and he set the note on the bedside table where she’d see it right away when she awoke. He used his telekinesis to open the blanket and float it gently down to cover her without waking her.

  He then went back into the living room and stretched for just a moment before he sat on the sofa and closed his eyes.

  And he opened his mind to any and all possibilities—at least in terms of receiving contact from Nika.

  It wasn’t long before he, too, slept.

  Shane dozed in the sunshine, on the lounge chair out on his previously inaccessible balcony.

  He’d gotten the locked sliding door open within minutes of Michelle Mackenzie’s leaving him in his cushy but freedom-restricting temporary quarters. His inner asshole needed to flip the bird to the people here at OI who wanted to keep him contained.

  Or maybe he’d thought Mac would come running back when the alarms went off. But nothing happened. No bells, no buzzers. No flashing red lights, either—at least not that he could see—as he stepped out into the spring morning.

  And that was fine. Because he wasn’t going anywhere.

  He just wanted to make it clear that if they really wanted to contain him, they’d have to chain him, literally, to the wall in some cell in their brig.

  He assumed they had real cells in their brig, over in the security building. But then again, he would’ve assumed their security team had real weapons besides tranquilizer guns, so maybe they didn’t.

  Shane ate a bowl of cereal and had another of those perfect bananas as he sat and thought about everything that Mac had told him—that she’d used her superpowers to make him lust after her and that he wouldn’t have looked twice at her if she hadn’t engaged her voodoo. He supposed it was possible—in this new world he was in where drug addicts could fly and professional types with doctorate degrees could completely restrain a Navy SEAL with a simple thought.

  But he didn’t quite believe it.

  And then he stopped thinking about it—but didn’t stop thinking about Mac. She was a far more pleasant subject for his musings than his worries about Johnny and Owen and all of the other good men who’d served under his command in SEAL Team Thirteen.

  Lucky Thirteen …

  Shane let himself focus, instead, on his memories of last night as he put his head back and his feet up and closed his eyes.

  His exhaustion levels were high, and he fell immediately into a deep sleep, convinced that someone—hopefully Mac herself—would come to get him in a few hours, for that mysterious meeting in Bach’s office, wherever that was.

  He hadn’t been asleep for all that long when he woke up suddenly. He was instantly alert, which wasn’t a big surprise. He’d trained extensively, as a SEAL, to have all synapses firing before he opened his eyes. And this time, when he opened his eyes, he found he was already on his feet.

  He knew exactly where he was, and why he’d woken up. Mac was in his apartment. He could practically feel her. He turned toward the sliding screen door that separated him from the living room, expecting to see her standing there, glowering at him. But his apartment was empty.

  It was then that he heard the sound of footsteps on the pathway that led through the garden to the parking lot.

  And there she was, three stories below him.

  And again, at just the sight of her, Shane’s heart did another gymnastics routine. And he found himself smiling.

  “Hey!” he called, his voice rusty from sleep. He cleared his throat. “Mackenzie!”

  Her shoulders tightened and she spun ba
ck toward the building, looking first toward the door she’d just exited. But it didn’t take her long to find him, her gaze jerking up to his balcony.

  “Where are you going, Michelle?” he asked, leaning his elbows on the railing.

  “What are you doing out there?” she countered.

  “Just getting some air. I thought Elliot grounded you.”

  “My integration levels are back down,” Mac told him. “I’ve been cleared to leave. I’ll be back in time for the meeting. Get your ass back inside.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so,” Shane said, swinging his legs over so that he was outside of the railing. It was a piece of cake to climb down from this balcony to the one below, and then to dangle and drop to the ground. He landed lightly on his feet as he smiled at her. “I’d rather go with you.”

  She made a sound of disgusted outrage, then said, “Like hell.” But since she didn’t reach for her phone to call either security or her buddy Elliot, Shane knew she’d been stretching the truth with that cleared to leave crap.

  “Where are you going?” he asked again. “I know this has something to do with finding that girl. Nika Taylor. Maybe I can help.”

  “Look,” she said. “Navy. I get that you’re a rule-breaker. You’re a badass, blacklisted, cage-fighting rebel. Point made. But you can’t help—”

  “Come on, we do this right, no one will know I was gone,” Shane persisted. He knew her words were designed to piss him off—calling him a badass rebel when he knew she thought of him as a Boy Scout—so he ignored them. “I looked at the security at the front gate. You’re checked going in, not out. We’ll just breeze past the guard—”

  Mac shook her head, absolute. “No. Nuh-uh.”

  “Of course, your alternative is to leave me behind,” he pointed out. “Possibly get stopped—wow, that would suck—before you even reach the gate.”

  “Possibly,” she repeated, looking hard at him with those crazy-beautiful eyes.

  Shane nodded, turning away to squint out at the budding trees in the garden. It was a lovely day. “I’d say there’s a pretty high probability.”

  “You’re going to call security on me,” Mac said, and it was clear she didn’t believe he’d do it. In fact, she dug into her pants pocket and took out her phone. Held it out to him. “Okay. Go on. Tell on me. Tattle. Turn me in.”

  And just like he’d called her bluff, she’d called his.

  “I’m not going to do that,” he admitted.

  She put her phone back and turned to leave. “Get back upstairs.”

  “But I am going with you,” Shane said. “You can keep me out of your car, but that’s okay. I can ride on the top. Although that might raise some eyebrows as we approach the gate.”

  Mac turned to look back at him, and he could see that she knew he was serious. This he’d do. Absolutely.

  “I know you’re taking a car instead of your bike—otherwise you’d be wearing boots,” he told her, pointing to her sneakers.

  Her gaze never left his face. “So this is blackmail,” she said. “You’re blackmailing me. I take you with me, or I’m busted. That’s pretty low, Laughlin.”

  He laughed. “I’m sorry, but aren’t you the woman who recently confessed to tricking me into having sex with her?”

  That hurt her. Shane didn’t have any special talents when it came to empathy, but even he could tell that one had hit below the belt. So he quickly apologized, “Wow, that was harsh. I’m sorry. I think it was supposed to be funny or clever or—”

  “I don’t need any help,” Mac told him flatly, “with what I’m doing. I’m going to the hospital ER, all right? The same one that Nika Taylor went to. When I get there, I’ll go in as a child. I’ll pay in cash, they’ll med scan me, and I’ll get on the Organization’s radar.”

  “You’re setting yourself up as bait to be kidnapped the way Nika was,” Shane realized. “But, honey, I’m sorry, no one on this planet is going to mistake you even for a sixteen-year-old. It’s just not going to happen.”

  Except, Jesus, she changed herself into a kid—right there, while she was looking at him. Her chest flattened and her face became that of a girl, not a woman.

  Shane took a step back, involuntarily, and she laughed—and turned back into herself.

  “Okay, so I’m wrong about that,” he said quickly. “But … They’re really just going to let you walk in there, to the ER, without an adult? Aren’t there rules—”

  “I’m going to be my own mother,” she said. “I have another shirt to put on. I’ve done it before—people are too busy to pay attention. Mom’s parking the car, or she’s in the bathroom, or taking a phone call …”

  “But won’t it be easier,” Shane asked, “if you’re there with your, I don’t know, your mother’s boyfriend, or your Uncle Shane?”

  “What’s the deal?” Mac asked him abruptly. “You’re tired—I can tell you’re still tired. Why is it so important that you come with?”

  “Because I know I can help. Because I want to help.”

  She laughed, but Shane knew that it wasn’t because she found any of this funny. “You want to come,” she told him, “only because whatever I did to you still hasn’t worn off.”

  Shane laughed, too, genuinely amused. “Yeah, I don’t think so. I mean, even if it hadn’t, that you-being-suddenly-thirteen thing would’ve done the trick.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. You’d still want me. You’d just hate yourself for it.” Mac’s mouth tightened. “How about we both just climb back up into your apartment? I’ll give you what you want, and then you’ll let me leave.”

  “Hmm,” he said, and for the first time he could actually feel it—the whatever it was that she did to make herself more attractive. It was crazy. He could feel himself responding—shifting a little closer, his pulse quickening, his body actually stirring from the increased blood flow. He forced himself to take another step back, away from her. “Tempting, but, no. I’d much rather take the field trip. Besides, if I touch you, your what-cha-ma-call-it, your integration level goes through the roof—I’m pretty sure that’s a given. You’ll have to wait for it to drop back down.”

  He could see from her face that he was right about that.

  “This way, as long as we don’t touch,” Shane continued, “you can pretend you don’t realize that just standing next to me elevates you, right? And I’d also like to point out that hospitals have security cameras and metal detectors at the door. If someone gets suspicious, they’ll definitely realize there’s only one of you, which could come back and bite you on the ass. So let’s just do this the easy way. I’ll walk in with you, we’ll get this done, and then walk back out.”

  Mac turned abruptly, heading for the parking lot. “Slow me down, and I’ll leave you behind.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Shane said, keeping his smile inward as he jogged to catch up.

  Stephen Diaz closed his eyes.

  He’d just taken the biggest leap of faith ever in his life and told the man that he adored that he did, in fact, adore him. That is what you think, isn’t it. That it’s all about the sex, but … it’s not. I’ve been in love with you, Elliot, for the past seven years.

  But now Elliot was uncharacteristically silent. He was no doubt remembering the nonstop action that Stephen had broadcast into his dreams, which surely made it seem as if, despite what Stephen had just said, it was all about sex.

  Elliot finally spoke. “You ever going to look at me again?”

  So Stephen opened his eyes.

  Elliot was sitting there, beside him on the sofa, and behind his glasses, his blue eyes were soft. “That’s better,” he said quietly.

  The heat that had been in his eyes just a few moments ago was gone. It had been replaced by … kindness?

  Oh, God, Elliot was going to tell Stephen that his confession was flattering but entirely crazy, and that there was no room in his life for insanity, only he was going to do it gently, kindly, patiently and with humor—the way he alwa
ys did everything, and—

  “I’m not sure what to say,” Elliot admitted. “I mean, you’re this … paragon. Everyone’s just automatically in love with you. Including me—but it’s never been a real possibility, connecting with you that way, because of who you are. Never. I never thought … I never even hoped … I’m not even sure I really know you, Stephen—the real you. I didn’t even know you were gay.”

  Here it came. The I think we should just be friends speech. Stephen’s heart had leapt at that including me—but that absolutesounding never had put him back on guard. He braced himself for the disappointment. Forcing himself to keep his eyes open, he nevertheless couldn’t hold Elliot’s gaze for a second longer. He had to look down at the floor.

  “But I’d very much like to get to know you,” Elliot said quietly. “And then, we can … I don’t know. See where it goes?”

  Stephen looked up at him, his surprise no doubt apparent on his face, because Elliot laughed and added, “Seriously, you thought I might, what? Shut you down cold? You do know who you are, don’t you? This higher-integration thing hasn’t created some kind of weird amnesia, has it? You want to take a minute and go look in the bathroom mirror?”

  Stephen laughed, too, as he let himself gaze into Elliot’s eyes. “The way you were leading up to it, I was expecting—dreading—that you were going to friend me.” His heart was actually pounding, and he wondered, inanely, if Elliot could tell that from his ongoing jot scan. Of course, he could. Except the researcher hadn’t looked at the computer’s monitor once since Stephen had dropped his L-bomb.

  Elliot’s gaze dropped to Stephen’s mouth—just for a brief moment. Just long enough for Stephen to know that Elliot was thinking about kissing him—which no doubt sent his pulse rate soaring even higher.