“Look, I know you don’t want to get into this,” Shane said quietly, “but I’ve been thinking about it ever since you told me about Tim and … We don’t have to make this a conversation, but I would appreciate it if you could just listen to what I have to say.”
She didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t run screaming from the room.
He took that as an affirmative. “Every time my heart beats,” he told her quietly, “it’s like I’m just marking time until I can be with you again.” He laughed softly. “It’s crazy, that kind of wanting, you know?”
Mac didn’t move.
“And I get how it must be beyond annoying for you. After hearing what happened when you were a kid, after seeing Dr. Marry-Me in action back at the hospital …? I get how upsetting it must be to believe that you’re wanted not for who you are but for what you are. For reasons that, to you, don’t feel real. But can I tell you something?” he said. “Can I tell you what it feels like from this end? Because, to me, it feels fucking real. It feels like … Connection, to the nth. It feels like joy, like truth. It feels like I belong somewhere again.”
She laughed at that—or maybe it was a sob, but she still didn’t move, so he kept going.
“Maybe that’s too touchie-feelie for you. And maybe you won’t be satisfied until you lock me up and keep me away from you for a week or a month—or however long it’s going to take for you to believe your voodoo’s worn off. But I can tell you this right now. You can lock me away without food or water, but the first thing I’m going to ask for when they open the door? Is you. Because even if I stop feeling this? I am going to remember what it feels like. And I’m going to want it back.”
She finally pulled her arm away from her face and spoke. “But it’s not about me,” she argued. “Whatever it is that you’re feeling. You could feel this way about anyone. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t have to be me!”
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “It completely has to be you. You’re one of a kind, Mac. And Jesus, maybe I gave away the fact that I love you too soon. Maybe I skipped over the part that you really wanted to hear, which is I like you. I like you, Mackenzie. I really do. I like being with you. You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re beautiful—you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. You want to shut down the sex and be friends with me for a year or five years or however the fuck long it takes for you to understand that? Let’s do it. I’m ready.”
It was then that she reached for him, pulling him down toward her for a kiss.
And his first reaction was a joyful leap of his heart—she believed him! But reality came crashing in as he realized, in those split seconds before his mouth covered hers, before he completely lost himself in the sweetness of her kiss, that he was being tested.
So he kissed her only briefly—just a brush of his lips across her soft mouth before he pulled away.
Which shocked the hell out of her, but just for a moment. She covered her surprise with a laugh and more of that attitude that both pissed him off and turned him on. “So what are you going to do?” she asked. “Sing me to sleep?”
Shane laughed, too, and felt his body responding as she slapped him with her power. Which was completely unnecessary.
“I don’t need that to want you,” he told her as he pulled one of the pillows onto his lap, because, damn. “And I don’t need sex to want to be with you. You want to test or even torture me? Go for it.”
“But I’m not doing it on purpose. I can’t always control it,” she admitted miserably. “It happens because … God, I think it’s instinctive. Like using body language or releasing pheromones. It just happens.”
Shane knew that was true. Human beings instinctively responded to a person whom they believed would be a good biological match—a good mate.
So in other words, Mac had instinctively chosen Shane, right from the get-go. And it also meant that her body’s effort to make him succumb to her charms was not going to let up any time soon. In fact, it was likely to get worse before it got better.
“Well, okay,” he said, standing up, still holding that pillow in front of him. “This is going to be … interesting.”
Mac actually laughed. “Ah, shit,” she said. “Just … come here. Just …” As she looked up at him, she let herself want him, and she let him see it in her eyes.
It was the moment of truth. And Shane hesitated, because he was only human. But he was in this not to win the battle, but to win the war. So he shook his head. Sadly and with deep regret. But he shook it.
“Nope.” Shane popped the P. “I’m just gonna go get my pants. Pants are gonna help.”
But she was looking at him with those beautiful eyes, and he found himself leaning over to kiss her. Just one kiss …
Just …
One …
Kiss …
He maybe could’ve done it—kissed her once and walked into the bathroom to pull on his pants, but she whispered, “You’re always asking me how you can help …”
And it was true. He wanted to help. He desperately wanted to help …
So he kissed her again, and his pants stayed off, and she came undone in his arms, and he lost himself, too.
And he lost.
He knew, even while she was gasping her pleasure, as she was shuddering her release that he’d …
Lost.
“Sleep now,” she told Shane.
And he did, even as he tried to hold on to her, as he wrapped his arms around her.
Even though he knew that when he woke up?
She’d be gone.
Elliot glanced up as Stephen came into lab one’s observation room. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Stephen stood beside him at the window, a solid presence looking out at the research and testing area that was set up as a living room with several big comfy couches and a lot of pillows. Bach was sitting on one couch, with his feet up and his eyes closed. Anna was nearby, watching him anxiously. “How’s it going?”
“Weird,” Elliot admitted. “But a little less so now that Bach’s back. When it was just Nika, broadcasting out of Bach’s body …” He glanced at Stephen again. “Do you know how powerful that little girl has got to be to gain access to Bach’s mind the way she did? With complete physical control of his body? That’s crazy. And yet, she’s still struggling to lower the blocks she’s got in place in her own mind. Until she can do that, not even Bach can get access to her memories—he’s working it hard, right now, just to get back into her head. He hasn’t managed to do that yet—which is scary for everyone. If something pulls Nika away, we’re not sure we’ll be able to regain contact, even with Anna’s help.”
“Shouldn’t we be talking to her?” Stephen asked. “Getting as much information as possible?”
“Already done. She doesn’t remember anything between the abduction and waking up in the holding room, except for a brief moment of consciousness when she was with Littleton and Caine. She remembers being afraid of Caine,” Elliot told him. “Other than that, she said she’s seen only three different people while she’s been a prisoner—not including the other girls. An older woman, a man with a badly scarred face, and a girl in her late teens who’s—you’re going to love this—pregnant.”
“Oh, God,” Stephen murmured.
“Yeah,” Elliot agreed. “It looks like they’re trying to breed ’em now. Nika said the girl appears to be a prisoner, too—at least to some degree. But the man and the woman work there, from what Nika’s described. The plan is for Bach to essentially make her memories his own, and then pass them along to someone who can draw, like moi. I can draw as realistic a sketch as I can manage of their faces, and we’ll then try to get a computer match. If we can identify these people, and they live outside the Org building so we can track them as they go to work …”
“Those are some very big ifs,” Stephen said.
Elliot nodded. “I’m with you on that. Any word from Mac?”
Stephen shook his head. “No, but Shane’s gone missing, too.
Since he’s been to her apartment before—I feel pretty confident he’ll find her. If she needs help, he’ll call in.”
Elliot took a deep breath and just said it. “Is there any chance that the vision you saw—your premonition—”
“No,” Stephen said.
“Okay, was that supposed to be funny, like you’re prescient now so I never have to finish any of my sentences again or—”
“No,” Stephen said again, but then winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to … I just knew what you were asking—not because I’m prescient, but because I know the way your brain works. So no, the vision I had wasn’t about Mac getting shot—”
“Well, I know that,” Elliot said. “But visions can be cryptic. Maybe you knew someone was going to be shot, but you didn’t know who, so your mind made it be me because you love me so ardently—”
“No. I mean, yes, but … No.”
“That’s too bad.” Elliot sighed.
Stephen sighed, too, and reached for him, holding out his hand first, silently asking permission. They were alone in the room, and Bach and Anna remained silent and unmoving in the lab, so Elliot interlaced their fingers.
I would know if the threat is past, Stephen told him as their connection immediately snapped on. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. And I know the vision was cryptic because Anna was flying away with Mac, and unless she jokers from taking Destiny, that’s not going to happen the way I saw it. But, really, it’s beside the point, because when I had the vision, I experienced this … god-awful sense of foreboding. And it’s still back there, El. You’re still in danger.
Then I’ll continue to be careful, Elliot reassured him.
“Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean—it’s just not working.”
They both jumped and even sprang apart as Bach’s voice came through the speakers, higher pitched and odd sounding.
But then he answered himself, his voice more normal. “Give it time.”
“I’ve given it time.” That was Nika again, speaking through him.
Stephen glanced at Elliot. “You were right. That’s very weird.”
Anna spoke. “Give it a little bit more, Neek.”
They fell silent again, and after a moment, Stephen asked, “How’s Edward O’Keefe?”
“Astonishingly still not dead,” Elliot answered. The old man was clinging to life. “He’s responded to the low levels of oxyclepta di-estraphen we’ve given him. The self-healing centers of his brain have reactivated. We’re continuing stimulation, and the damage to his heart is continuing to be repaired. His improvement is pretty miraculous.”
“That’s great news, babe,” Stephen said, managing a smile.
“It’s good,” Elliot told him. “It doesn’t get to be great until he comes out of the coma, which may not happen for some time. If it happens at all. But my fingers are definitely crossed.”
“Still not working.” In the lab, Bach was now up on his feet. Or rather, Nika was on Bach’s feet. “I can’t do this anymore!”
Anna stood, too. “Neek …”
“No, Anna, I tried it. Joseph, I tried it your way! I’ve calm blue oceaned ten thousand times. Now I wanna try it my way.”
Bach reclaimed his body and said, “Anger isn’t the answer. The powers it sparks are impossible to control. Yes, it may provide surges—”
“But maybe that’s all I need,” he appeared to argue with himself. “One good surge!”
Anna, too, appealed to Bach. “What can it hurt to try?” she asked. “We have no idea what’s happening to Nika’s physical self while she’s here. We need to find her, and, I’m sorry, but it does feel like we’re wasting time.”
“Nika’s certain that she got here by channeling her anger,” Elliot told Stephen, as Bach just shook his head. “She wants to try doing that again.”
Dr. Bach, of course, believed that harnessing anger—or other passions—was never productive.
“Bach would hate trying that,” Stephen agreed with a nod. “Maybe I can help.” He leaned forward and hit the on switch for the microphone that would allow him to be heard in lab one. “Excuse me, Dr. Bach? How about you sit back for this one—let me come down and run the experiment.”
Bach looked up toward the mirrored window as if his powers allowed him to see through it. Maybe they did. He finally nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Diaz,” he said, as always remarkably polite. “That would be most appreciated.”
Bach sat on the sofa in lab one, and let Nika have total control of his body.
Right now, she wasn’t using more than his vocal cords.
“It started as fear,” she told Dr. Diaz, who’d pulled a straight-backed chair across from them, and was sitting there, giving Nika his full attention. “I woke up and Joseph was gone, and … I was really scared.”
I’m so sorry, Nika.
It’s okay, she responded silently. I’m sorry, too—sorry that I’m disappointing you this way.
Sweetheart, you’re not. Just … Listen to Dr. Diaz.
“And then what happened?” Diaz asked, obviously repeating his question.
“And then some of the girls were crying, and I got angry at them,” Nika said. “And I stayed angry and I thought about this girl they killed, right in front of us—”
“Oh, God,” Bach heard Anna say, as she reached over and took his hand.
“And then I got even more angry, because the man with the scar said he was going to make me pick one of the other girls, and she’s going to be killed.” Nika was breathing harder now, faster, as she let herself get upset all over again.
Or maybe Bach was the one breathing harder, outraged by the sheer evil of Nika’s captors.
After spending far too much time digging around in Devon Caine’s disgusting head, he was well aware of the ways the Organization kept their girls terrified. But this was particularly awful, especially for a sensitive girl like Nika. If such a terrible thing were to happen, even if Bach and his team found Nika and got her to safety, she would be irrevocably changed. She’d be scarred for life.
But they weren’t going to let it happen. They were going to find her and they were going to get her out of there and—
“I’m sorry,” Nika said aloud to Diaz. “I need to … I just need … Joseph is, um …” You’ve got to stop that, she thought at Bach. At any other time, it would be great, but … It’s not helping. And it’s particularly not helping because unless I learn to do this … this … impossible thing, to lower these blocks that I can’t even feel, you’re not going to find me, and you’re never going to get me out of there. And I don’t know why I’m blocked—I don’t even know what it means—blocked. It’s not something I did, not intentionally, so I don’t know how to fix it. And you say I’m special, but I don’t feel special and—
Wait. Bach stopped her. “Holy shit.”
“That was him, not me,” he heard Nika say to Anna.
“It’s not something you did,” Bach repeated to Nika, saying it aloud, looking to Diaz to see if he was following. He wasn’t. “The blocks. Nika’s blocks. If she didn’t erect them …”
Diaz got it. “Then someone else did,” he finished for him.
“I’ve been looking in the wrong place,” Bach said, laughing his amazement. He spoke aloud so that Diaz and Anna could follow. “Neek, I assumed you erected those blocks unconsciously, but there is another option entirely. And that’s if someone else entered your mind and created these obstacles.”
“Someone else?” She was confused. “Who else?”
“I don’t know,” Bach told her. “But whoever it was, they surely knew you were a Greater-Than.” And if that wasn’t a big enough bomb, he dropped another, “It’s possible they created those blocks in an attempt to protect you—to hide you from people who might try to exploit you.”
“That’s absurd,” Anna said.
“No, it’s not.” Bach turned to look at her. “With those blocks in place, Nika has access to only a small fraction of her power. And yet she still
scanned at twenty.” A fact that was amazing. “Whoever did this knew that her integration was going to explode off the charts when she hit puberty.”
“And actually,” Diaz broke in, “who did it is secondary. A mystery for a rainy day. Our primary goal right now is to knock the blocks down. ASAP, Maestro.”
“I’m on it,” Bach said. “Nika, I know we tried this before, but we didn’t really try this before.”
She knew what he wanted. You want me to breathe. And think about a perfect, still ocean. A cloudless blue sky. A drop of water flowing into the—
And just like that, approaching from the outside, instead of trying to unblock her from the inside out, Bach was in.
“Whoa!” If he’d thought Anna’s mind was chaos … Being in the unfettered middle of Nika’s mind was like being caught in a paint store when a tornado hit.
It caught him off guard and he didn’t know where to look first, and for a moment he just spun.
From the corner of his eye—although it really wasn’t his literal eye, it was more his own mind’s perspective—he caught the shape of a woman, a shadow, a shade, as she leapt and faded away. He almost followed, intrigued, certain it was a memory of Anna and Nika’s mother, long dead.
But he needed to focus on this mission, which was hard enough as it was.
Because Nika was emotion personified. She was a thirteen-year-old girl, and her thoughts and observations and memories swirled and skipped and sparked and danced around him in age-appropriate madness, as he took another moment just to get his bearings.
He spoke aloud, though, for the benefit of everyone—including Nika. “I’m in.”
And Bach saw it all now—her vivid memories of everything she’d lived through in the past few days: the abduction, her waking up in the room with the other girls, the visit by the scar-faced man, the dying girls, the port in Nika’s arm, her awakening in the safe room, the steak and french fries, the view out the window …
The window.
The window!
“Nika tried to write SOS on the window in ketchup,” Bach said.
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