Born to Darkness (47 page)

She’d already turned away, searching for her panties as he reached to pull up his own pants. She found her clothing and escaped into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

It was then that Shane noticed that the wall was dented. The drywall had been pushed in just a little bit—in the shape of Mac’s back. The paint was chipping along the edges of the indentation and as he ran his fingers across it some of it flaked off onto the floor.

“Hey, are you all right?” he called, but his words were obscured by the sound of the toilet flushing and the water running in the sink.

The door opened pretty quickly after that, and she came back out, drying her hands on the thighs of her cargo pants.

“Is your back okay?” Shane asked.

Mac said, “What?” so he tapped the wall and she moved closer to look. “Whoa.”

“This time we didn’t just overload the electrical system,” he said.

Mac swore. “I had no idea …” She looked at him hard. “Did I hurt you?”

“I’m not the one who hit the wall hard enough to do that. Let me see your back.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“Humor me.”

He must’ve been radiating determination because she rolled her eyes and pulled off her tank top, turning around to let him see—her body language broadcasting her impatience.

She was wearing another of her sports bras, this one blue—a good color for her. Her shoulders were unmarked. Still, Shane took a moment to make sure, slipping his hand up beneath the tight racerback. Her skin was smooth and soft and, as always, touching her increased his heart rate.

And he was struck again by her total lack of art. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d met a woman who didn’t at least have a rose on her ankle.

“Even if I got bruised or scratched when it happened, you won’t see it. I heal really quickly,” she reminded him. “Little things, like this? I don’t even have to think about.”

And suddenly, it made sense. “That’s why you don’t have any tattoos,” he realized.

“Correct for ten,” Mac said, pulling away from him and putting her shirt back on. “My body reads them as wounds, and heals them. I absorb the ink, and they’re gone in about twenty-four hours. Total waste of cash. One of these days, I’ll figure out how
not
to do that. Maybe sixty-two’s the magic number.”

She crossed to the chair where she’d thrown her jacket as Shane looked over at the comm-station. Despite the power surge it was still active even though the computer’s voice was silent. Which meant …

“You seem to be holding pretty steady now, at sixty-two,” Shane said.

She glanced up from digging in her jacket pockets. “Yeah.”

“How exactly did you—?”

“I don’t really know.” Mac cut him off as she found what she was looking for—her phone. “I guess I focused. Whatever I did, it worked. Obviously.”

“Well, that’s … good,” Shane said.

“Yup,” she said, devoid of all emotion—neither positive or negative. She was just remarkably flat as she scrolled through her contacts list and dialed, no doubt calling Diaz. “It’s great.”

“So how are we going to do this?” Shane asked. “Devon Caine. A simple locate and grab? Similar to the way you brought in Rickie Littleton?”

“
We
are not going to do anything.” She put her phone to her ear. “You’re going to stay in the van.”

Shane felt a flash of frustration, but bit back his words as Mac turned slightly away from him to speak into her phone. “Yeah, D, it’s me,” she said. “It worked. I’m picking up Caine’s emotional grid. I don’t know how I’m doing it—you’re just going to have to trust me. Also? I don’t know how long it’s going to last, so we should move quickly.” She paused, nodding slightly as she listened, and then ended the conversation with, “Thanks. We’ll meet you down there.”

When she turned back to Shane, there was a clear challenge in her eyes, and one eyebrow was slightly raised, as if she could sense his irritation and was expecting or even daring him to argue.

And while he completely believed that, despite being a lowly fraction, his skills as a former SEAL would benefit any team looking to make a 270-pound sociopathic serial killer vanish off a city street in broad daylight, he knew that this was not the time to have that debate. They were in a hurry. A little girl’s life depended on their getting this done.

“Let’s go,” he said instead.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Mac said as she unlocked his door and led the way out into the hall. “Because as we’re driving
into Boston, Diaz is going to go
blah blah blah don’t want to risk you turning Devon Caine’s brain into pudding, Mac
, and he’s going to make me stay in the van, too. Or worse—once we locate Caine, he’s going to make us drive away, just flat-out vacate as the rest of the team goes to work. And I am not going to be able to keep from bitching.”

“Yeah, you will,” Shane told her as they double-timed it toward the elevators. “Because you’ll have something else important to do. You know, it occurred to me that if you can find Caine this way, then maybe you can find Nika directly. She was abducted off the sidewalk by her school, right? After we point Diaz at Caine, we can go there and—”

Mac was already shaking her head. “I already tried that,” she said. “It’s harder to do, if the emotional event occurred outside. It—I don’t know—dissipates or something. The emotions. I thought that, too—that she must’ve been terrified when she was kidnapped—they hit her really hard, but …” She shook her head. “I couldn’t feel her. I was there for over an hour. I tried.”

And failed—and suffered for it, blaming her own inadequacies, even though she was attempting the virtually impossible. Shane knew Mac well enough now to be certain of that.

“Sixty-two,” he reminded her as they approached the bank of elevators. “Maybe you could feel her now. We could go over there. You know. After. Just to give it a try.”

She clearly liked that idea and she nodded. “Yeah. That’s a good plan.”

“Yes,” Shane celebrated as he reached the down button first and leaned on it. “Proving myself valuable as more than just an extremely well-educated sex toy.”

Jackpot. She finally laughed. True, it was more of an expression of exasperation or disgust than genuine amusement. Still, she was about to say something, when the doors opened with a
ding
.

The elevator wasn’t empty. Robert from Hospitality was standing behind a cart that was loaded down with metal-covered plates of food. It was the lunch Shane had requested from the computer. Had to be.

“Damn,” Shane said. “You are one hungry woman.”

Mac laughed again, pulling him to the side, but then holding the doors open with her foot, so that Robert could wheel the cart out. “This is for the entire floor.”

“Thank you, Dr. Mackenzie. Oh, don’t forget this,” Robert said, reaching down to the lower shelf of the cart to pull out … A brown paper sack and a cardboard holder filled with two fairly small coffee cups, their lids securely attached.

Shane took the bag as Mac took the coffee.

“Thanks, Bob,” Mac said as she and Shane got into the elevator.

As the doors closed, Shane opened the bag to look inside, even though he’d already realized what was in there, from its size and weight.

“You asked for it. Two energy bars and a cup of coffee,” Mac confirmed. “Times two.”

“Always to go.” He didn’t need to make it a question. He knew. The coffee was a small enough cup so that she could probably finish it before she reached the lot where her bike was parked. The energy bars—filling and far quicker to consume than a sandwich—would go into her pockets.

But Mac answered anyway. “Nika’s not the only missing girl in this city,” she told him quietly. “There’re a lot of them out there, being bled dry every single fucking day. I’ll eat when I’m old and I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

Shane nodded. And here he’d thought the most he’d learn from her dining habits was whether she had a secret love for junk food or was a strict vegan.

Instead he’d gotten a glimpse inside of her head.

Anna was dreaming that she was back in David’s townhouse, in the expansive entryway.

She wasn’t surprised to be here—she’d more than half expected it.

What she didn’t expect was Joseph—he was with her. And he
was dressed the same way he’d been in the dream she’d had while drugged—like a Disney prince.

“This is still you, you know,” he told her, gesturing to his outfit.

“Sorry,” she said. She herself was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, clunky boots on her feet. “I don’t know why I do that.”

“I’ll live,” he said. “You know, this
has
to start as a nightmare. I’m sorry about that.”

Anna did know. She nodded and turned, and there he was—David—at the top of the stairs, on the second-floor landing. Just the sight of him there, looming and angry, made her heart pound.

“Easy,” Joseph murmured, and she felt his hand, warm on her shoulder. “That’s good, but don’t wake up. She’s out there, I feel her—Nika.”

Anna blinked and David moved closer—he was now standing halfway down the flight of stairs. And it was then that Anna didn’t simply feel Nika, she
saw
her—a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye—but her little sister vanished the moment that Anna turned. Of course, when she turned back to David, he’d reached the bottom of the stairs. He stood there, just staring at her, his eyes lit with anger, the same way he’d looked at her on that awful, awful day.

But this wasn’t a memory, it was a dream—albeit a bad one—except, Joseph was still beside her. “Don’t wake up,” he told her again, but God, she couldn’t help but remember the nightmare of David’s weight on top of her, keeping her from getting away even though she struggled and fought and kicked and hit.

And there was her little sister again, another flash of movement or maybe it was just smoke, closer now, but with a ghostly echo of Nika’s voice shouting,
“Annaaaah!”
as if from a long way off.

“Neek!” Anna shouted back, turning to look in the direction of that ethereal apparition that she just
knew
was her sister, wherever she was …

You think that gives you the right to
steal
from me?
Anna turned back to see David, raising his arm to hit her with his open palm—not quite a punch, but still with far more force than a mere slap. She saw it coming and she could taste the blood in her mouth
from where her teeth were going to cut her cheek, she could hear her ears ring, feel her very brain rattle in her skull.

Except before it happened, before he made contact, she raised her arm to block the blow, even as she spun like a dancer—no, like a black belt in karate delivering a roundhouse kick—and hit him square in the face with her boot.

David went down—hard—and Anna stood there, stunned. She looked around for Joseph—he was driving this dream, wasn’t he? Except he was gone.

And her first thought was one of absolute terror—how could he have left her alone like this? As she looked down, she saw she was dressed once again in the skirt and blouse that she’d been wearing that awful day. She was wearing those same stupid shoes in which she couldn’t possibly run.

And as David pushed himself off from the floor, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, Anna knew what was coming and she heard herself scream.

But in that instant, as David took one step and then another toward her, she realized that whatever happened here, in this nightmare, didn’t matter. What mattered was Joseph Bach finding Nika, and if he wasn’t standing there next to Anna, didn’t that mean—please God—that he’d found her?

And Anna kicked off her shoes and instead of running away, she ran
toward
David. And she used her hands, fingers formed like bird’s beaks, to go for his eyes even as she stepped close enough to knee him—with all of her might—in the groin.

She didn’t know how she knew to do that. She didn’t know how, as he kept coming, that she knew to hit him with her elbow; to kick him again—her boots were back—so that he couldn’t get close to her. He couldn’t grab her and pull her down.

Although she knew that even if he did, she could still fight him off, because she knew how to do it, how to protect herself from anyone who might try to hurt her—as if someone had dropped that knowledge directly into her mind and …

Someone had. Joseph had.

Stay asleep …

Anna laughed as David kept coming.

Because this was
his
nightmare now.