Born to Darkness (3 page)

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 contact 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 you’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.

Of course, Shane was assuming that fate applied in times of last-ditch desperation.

And he was assuming, too, that OI’s offer wouldn’t be reneged when they finally checked their records and realized that he wasn’t just a former Navy SEAL, he was a blacklisted former SEAL.

Of course, that was kind of like assuming that buying a lottery ticket meant that he was going to win the billion-dollar jackpot.

The subway turnstile accepted his debit card just as a train stopped at the platform with a squeal of brakes. Shane dashed inside the thing just before the doors closed, but rode it only a few stops to Kenmore Square.

Where there was a public comm-station right on the T platform. He’d used it earlier that evening.

It was open—the place was mostly deserted—so he ran his debit card through the payment slot, keyed in his PIN, and selected
the five-minute option. Which would cost him—
shit
—five dollars? He back-keyed and picked three minutes. With only twelve dollars left to his name—nine, now—he’d have to do this fast.

He googled the Obermeyer Institute, cursing himself for spelling it wrong first—he would now forever remember that there were three E’s in Obermeyer. When he finally got it right, he followed the website’s link to their so-called testing program, clicking on a button that said POTENTIALS.

Which was him. The OI had first contacted him via e-mail, letting him know that he was, apparently, something called “a Potential.” Shane had never quite figured out
what
he potentially was. All he knew was that the OI was an R&D facility. And that some of what they researched for future development required human test subjects.

It was all dot-gov approved, which honestly didn’t mean that much anymore.

Still, they were willing to pay him, which, in his current situation, was all he really needed to know.

A window opened on the screen, showing a beautiful, bucolic hillside on top of which sat a stately and ornate old brownstone building.
Old Main
, a descriptor beneath proclaimed. It faded neatly into a picture of a more modern building, surrounded by the lushness of flowering bushes in the height of a New England spring.
The Library
. There were people in that photo—of varying ages, but all attractive. They were dressed mostly in street clothes—everything from jeans to business suits, with even a young woman fully clad in BDUs, down to her boots and cover.

Beneath the ongoing slide show—now a bustling scene of some people holding trays, some sitting at long tables in what had to be the nicest, fanciest mess hall Shane had ever seen in his life—a form appeared. It requested his full name, which he typed in: Shane Michael Laughlin. It burped, then requested his NID—his National ID number. He hesitated only briefly. But really, what did he think? Someone was going to steal his identity and empty out his debit account? Buy half a burger with the nine bucks he had left? He typed in the twenty-digit number and hit enter.