If it were an egg, it would not have broken.
Elliot didn’t have the no-hands option, so he let go of Stephen and went to the sink to rinse—same as he’d done on that day. He glanced at the Greater-Than questioningly as he turned on the water. “You didn’t do this, either,” he pointed out as he dried his hands, then set his phone and scanner down near Stephen’s. “You opened the door for me, and essentially dropped me off and then went down the hall to another bathroom.” He gestured around them to the multiple shower stalls. “As if this one weren’t big enough for both of us.”
“I know what I did and didn’t do,” Stephen told him quietly. “This isn’t a complete memory. It’s more of a daydream I had, a fantasy version. It’s what I wished I could’ve done. Just … stuck around and talked to you, you know? Just … be your friend. But … You kill me, you know, every time you laugh. It’s so beautiful, and joyful, and … I wanted you, in every way, Elliot. I always had to walk away. But not anymore.” He took Elliot’s hand again, and just like that, they were back in his bed—right where they’d always been.
I’ve got plenty of time, Stephen told him. You can take as long as you need to learn to trust me. He kissed Elliot again. “We should get something to eat. And shower.”
The big meeting was in just less than an hour.
“We should maybe go in to talk to Dr. Bach a little early,” Elliot suggested. “In private, so that—”
“I don’t need to do that,” Stephen said. “But you know what we should do, before we go into that meeting?” He smiled at what Elliot was thinking. Besides that.
But Elliot did know. “We should see where your integration levels are—and see how long they take to drop, without physical contact.”
He let Stephen pull him up and out of bed, and together they went back to the sofa.
Stephen positioned himself in front of the laptop’s sensor, as Elliot grabbed his glasses from where he’d left them on the table and leaned in to look at the screen. The program had managed to continue scanning Stephen, even from across the room, and he had been steadily at sixty-one for the past busy hour—with no dips and no peaks.
The program had automatically scanned Elliot, too, and he had remained a dull and consistent Fifteen. It was disappointing, but not surprising.
Stephen glanced at him, surprised. I never realized …
That I’m envious of you and Mac and Dr. Bach and Ahlam and all of the others …? “I am,” Elliot spoke aloud as he broke their connection, moving slightly away from Stephen’s warmth. “But I’m also grateful that despite my lack of aptitude, I’m still able to contribute in my own way. And okay, you’re still a healthy sixty-one without contact. But there will be decay—we know this from experience. I scanned you after you left Shane and me in the examination room, and it wasn’t long before …” He frowned at the screen and Stephen’s unchanging numbers. “Although proximity might play into it. So I think I’m going to …” He stood up, pointing toward the bathroom. “You stay here, keep that sensor on you and watch the …”
“I got it,” Stephen said, instead watching Elliot pick up his now-empty coffee mug and carry it to the kitchen counter on his way toward the only room in the apartment that was separated from the rest of the place by a door.
Elliot turned on the light, illuminating the pristine bathroom, and closed the door tightly behind him.
The entire wall was a mirror, just like in his apartment’s bathroom, and he looked at himself as he stood at the toilet. He had a serious case of the bedheads—and surreal-itis, at the idea that he was taking a naked leak in Stephen Diaz’s bathroom after having spent the morning in the man’s bed.
“I’m dropping,” Stephen called from the living room.
“Already? That was fast,” Elliot called back, raising his voice to be heard through the closed door.
“I’m at sixty.”
“A jot scan’s imprecise,” Elliot reminded him. “With a jot, sixty means you could be anywhere from an actual sixty to sixty-point-nine-nine-nine. Hang on, I’ll be out in a sec—I thought I’d be in here longer.”
“Take your time.”
Elliot flushed and washed his hands, drying them on one of Stephen’s plush towels. There was no point in trying to tame his hair. He’d need to get into the shower to do that and …
Yeah, he wanted to get into the shower to fix his hair. Right. Like he wasn’t really thinking about getting Stephen into the shower with him and … Great. Now he was going to walk out of here with a very healthy hard-on—except there was a thick, white robe hanging on a hook on the back of the door. He took it down and put it on.
It smelled like Stephen, which only served to make him even more aroused, but the robe was thick and heavy enough to—
“Whoa, hang on,” Stephen called from the living room. “I’m back to sixty-one.”
Elliot opened the door and came out of the bathroom. “You went down, then back up—while I was out of the room? That doesn’t make sense.” He came over to look at the computer—not easy to do while Stephen was sitting there all distractingly tall, dark, and naked. But sure enough, he could see the graph dip down and then back. “Crap, I wish the reading was more precise. Did you … do anything different?”
Stephen spread his hands. “Just sitting here.”
“Okay, then … What were you thinking about?”
Stephen looked up at him. “You.”
“Me, like … fucking you blind?”
“Both romantic and poetic.” Stephen laughed as he reached up to take Elliot’s arm and pull him so that he was sitting beside him, close enough that their legs were touching. And just as it had done all along, their connection clicked back on.
And the Greater-Than replayed everything he’d been thinking, starting with watching Elliot walk naked across his apartment. Jesus, he’s hot, is this really happening? God, I’m happy. There’s probably enough time before the meeting to … Wow, after all that, I still want more. I wonder if he also wants to … If not now, then later … Except I can’t assume he’s just going to want to spend tonight—Okay, integration levels dropping, gotta tell Elliot. Yeah, good point about the imprecision of a jot scan. Huh, look at my reflection in the computer screen—I’m sitting here, grinning inanely. Jesus, I’ve got warm fuzzies simply from having a conversation through a closed bathroom door. And okay, maybe that’s not inane. Living alone for far more than fifteen years, isolated … But now …
Stephen had gone into a full-blown fantasy then, imagining Elliot coming out of the bathroom and helping himself to more coffee, completely at home in Stephen’s kitchen—which morphed into Elliot in the kitchen in the morning, in Stephen’s bathrobe, bedhead and all, as Stephen kissed him good-bye as he left on an early A.M. assignment. He went out the door, but then he came back in, to kiss Elliot far more thoroughly before leaving for good.
God, as far as fantasies went, that was ridiculously G-rated, but it was also beyond sweet. Elliot’s heart was actually in his throat.
And Stephen was a little embarrassed. “Apologies for appearing to want to move too fast,” he murmured. “It was really just a fantasy. You know, a someday thing.”
Elliot nodded and used the bathrobe to wipe his glasses. “For what it’s worth, it’s safe for you to assume that I … want more, too. But just so you don’t have to assume … I can state, unequivocally, that I want to have many, many more conversations with you through the bathroom door. Hell, next time, I’ll just leave it open.”
Stephen smiled. “Good.”
“Good.” Elliot put his glasses back on and focused again on the computer and the numbers displayed there. Okay, so it doesn’t appear to be purely sex or sexual attraction that creates your surges of integration. Still, we should re-test. Maybe see what happens with greater distance between us. I should leave—see if you can’t keep your integration levels up. Simply by thinking—what did you call them? Warm fuzzies.
Maybe we were right earlier, and it is the i
ntimacy, Stephen suggested, interlacing their fingers again. Sex is just one part of an intimate connection. And for some people, it’s the easy part.
Like Mac, Elliot thought.
Very much like Mac.
They were both well aware that, after Dr. Bach’s meeting, Mac was going to be chomping at the bit to get out there to find Nika Taylor. And as long as Shane Laughlin wasn’t around to dangerously rev up her integration levels, she could safely hit the streets as a Fifty.
She’ll want to go, Elliot concluded. Immediately. And you’ll want to go with her.
“You know what they’re doing to this girl,” Stephen reminded him.
“I do.” Elliot took a deep breath and stood up, cutting their connection. He turned to face Stephen. “But if your integration levels don’t drop back down to fifty, we need to test you before I can clear you to go out. We need to see how many volts of energy you command—and whether you have control of it. I’d also like to know what other talents—besides this nifty telepathic connection—that you’ve added to your list. And we should test that, too. The telepathy.” He headed back toward the bathroom. “See if that’s something you can do with everyone, or exclusively with me. Come on, we should shower and grab some food, go find an open lab so we can get some of this work done.”
“Uh-oh,” Stephen said, and Elliot turned back to look at him.
“You just got an alert,” Stephen told him, his eyes on the computer monitor, “that says you were e-mailed a med scan report on Michelle Mackenzie.” He looked up at Elliot. “It just came in, but with the communications delay … Yeah, it was sent about an hour ago.”
“Open it,” Elliot told him, and Stephen clicked open the message.
“She’s back down to fifty percent,” Stephen informed him. “And that means—”
They weren’t touching, but neither of them needed to say it aloud. They both knew exactly what it meant.
Mac had left the compound.
SIXTEEN
This was the same hospital where the missing girl, Nika Taylor, had been scanned, prior to her disappearance.
It was hard for Shane not to think about that—particularly when he went to the ER’s front desk, where a harried-looking medical assistant was performing a financial triage on the injured or ill people who’d staggered in. What type of insurance did they have—if any—and what form of treatment—if any—would be covered under their plan.
Mac wasn’t sitting out in the waiting area with the rest of the masses, which was odd. But maybe a potential head injury was taken before a broken ankle or the flu or even a cooking-knife accident.
But when Shane finally made it to the front of the line and said, “I’m with Michelle—the thirteen-year-old girl who just came in,” he got a blank stare.
“She fell out of a tree and hit her head,” he tried.
The man—Bob was on his name tag—shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir—”
“I just dropped her off,” Shane said. “She came in while I was parking …? Short hair, pretty eyes, nasty attitude …?”
Nothing. No lights went on. Zero recognition.
And yeah, the first thought Shane had was that whoever had taken Nika had—somehow—taken Mac, too. But that was crazy. She hadn’t even been scanned yet. They—whoever the they were who made up the mysterious “Organization” that he’d been warned about—had no reason to believe she was anything special and thus worth taking.
Shane’s second thought was far more likely: Mac had never intended to come here to get a med scan. That was just what she’d told him, and he’d played right into it—allowing her to lose him so that she could do whatever it was she’d really intended to do outside of OI’s grounds.
Something probably far more dangerous.
Son of a bitch.
“Maybe she’s in the bathroom,” Bob suggested, pointing down the hall, already looking past Shane to the next person in line.
His pulse-rate rising with a righteous mix of anger and worry, Shane went back out to the entrance, to the circular driveway where he’d left Mac. He was well aware that, with her ability to change her appearance—plus she’d said she had a different shirt with her—he could have walked right past her while she was coming out of the ER, and he never would have known it. Especially since he was an idiot and hadn’t been watching for it. Shit. Shit.
Of course, the only person out there now was the guard, who was eyeing him suspiciously.
Shane closed his eyes and … He’d hustled in from the parking lot, eager to prove himself indispensable and … He’d definitely walked past a group of three women leaving the hospital.
They’d clearly been together—two middle-aged women supporting an elderly relative. He knew Mac could make herself look younger, but could she also make herself look older? He had no clue. Although he was pretty sure none of the women he’d seen had been wearing olive drab cargo pants and sneakers. And truth be told, he really hadn’t given them more than a glance, because he’d been so fucking eager to find Mac.
Shane turned abruptly and went back through the automatic sliding doors into the ER waiting room. But even before he started scanning for Mac’s brand of sneakers among the crowd, he knew that she wasn’t there. He couldn’t feel her—not the way he’d felt her presence in the garden, from up on his balcony.
Unless she could somehow turn that off, too.
With Mac, Shane realized suddenly, anything was possible.
It was possible that everything she’d told him had been a lie. Everything—including that heartbreaking story about finding her powers upon awakening, drugged and naked … I hadn’t been raped yet. Not that night, anyway.
Except … He’d believed her.
Shane wasn’t a telepath, nor did he have empathic powers anywhere close to Mac’s but … She’d been telling the truth.
It was all he could do, not to overreact, when she’d told him what had happened to her when she was still just a girl. And, like he’d told her, he was pretty sure she’d left out the worst of it.
Still, his instinct had been to play it cool, to not pull her into his arms or even to say much of anything at all.
Shane knew she would read his response as pity, or—worse, in her eyes—possessiveness. But both the tragedy that she’d survived—including the accidental death of that boy on top of the trauma of abuse—and Shane’s realization that she completely rejected any and all emotional connection to him despite their night together, had made his heart ache.
He wanted … He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Regardless of that, he knew for damn sure that he wasn’t going to quit.
So he stood there. Glaring as he looked out at the entire room, his message to her clear: I will find you. But no one made a break for the door or shifted guiltily in their seat.
He went to the door of the ladies’ head, and keeping one eye on the crowded waiting room, he pushed it open. “Michelle, are you in there?”
But she wasn’t. It was empty.
So Shane began his person-by-person search—looking hard at each of the women and girls sitting or lying on the uncomfortable benches. He didn’t just look at their sneakers and pants, because for all he knew she’d already traded hers for something else.
Of course, then he realized that she was the one who’d told him about her appearance-changing talents. For all he knew, she’d lied about her ability to become male—at least outwardly so.
And forget trading her sneakers and pants. For all he knew, she had the capability of appearing—at least to others—as if she were wearing completely different clothing.
Which meant that he was about to be really rude and go through the ER waiting room touching everyone—because there was only one thing he was certain of. And that was that he’d know Mac when he touched her.
A stack of magazines had spilled off the top of a nearby table along with a piece of paper on which a child had drawn what might’ve been a dog. Maybe a horse, no … A dog. Shane bent to pick it up, turning t
o touch a large black man on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, did you drop this?”
And he could tell right away that no, Mac hadn’t made herself nearly a foot and a half taller and eighty pounds heavier. And a man. And African American. Which, when he thought about it, really didn’t seem possible—even in this crazy world in which he now found himself.
And speaking of impossible, the idea of parading down an entire row of people, touching them and asking if this drawing was theirs … That was going to raise some eyebrows or even get him smacked. He might as well just run down the crowded rows of seats, touching the tops of the peoples’ heads and saying, Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck …
“Shane!”
Goose.
Yeah, that was Mac’s voice, and it was coming from behind him, from the double doors that led into the actual ER, and he spun around as she added, “Sweetheart! There you are! I’m over here!”
And there Mac was—she was actually waving—and Shane definitely felt her as well as saw her. He also felt a rush of relief, and that now-familiar heat.
She’d changed back to an adult, but she looked slightly different. Her hair was longer—crazy how she could grow it in a matter of minutes—and she’d pulled it back into a tight ponytail that made her seem older—or maybe she’d somehow adjusted her face to create that effect. She’d also changed her shirt. She was wearing a red blouse over a very non-thirteen-year-old body, and held her leather jacket over one arm.
Still, he would have recognized her, no problem, even without the wave. She may have changed her face and hair, but those were still Mac’s eyes.
It was the words she spoke next that were the puzzler.
“I’ve found him,” she told him as he headed over to her. “I found Grandpa!”
What the …? Had he heard her right? “Grandpa.”
“Yes, he’s here. My missing grandfather. He must’ve had another episode while he was at the mall,” she said, adding, “Play along,” under her breath as he got close enough.
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