Born to Darkness (54 page)

“Or Caine was in charge of taking Nika in, but he took a little unauthorized side trip home with her first.” Mac’s face was tight. “I want to see that list.”

“It’s in your e-mail,” Stephen said. “You were cc’d a copy. It came in about fifteen minutes ago—along with Analysis’s list of locations. You know, the list that they compiled after they tracked all twenty-three vehicles that left Littleton’s South Boston garage? It took them awhile. Of course, there’s nothing on there that pops …”

Mac had taken her phone out and was scrolling through her e-mail. She clicked the message from Analysis open, and scrolled down … “Shit!”

“What?”

“I know this address.” Mac looked up at Stephen, and the darkness in her eyes made a chill go down his back. “According to this, Caine was only home for two hours after leaving Littleton’s garage, and then he went to Western Ave. Number two-ten. Littleton used to go there all the time, to get paid. We never found absolute proof that it’s an official Org building, but it is.”

“It’s not on our list,” he told her. “Not even of suspected Organization holdings.”

“It will be,” she said, sliding down off her stool. “It should be. Now that Littleton’s dead, those reports should’ve been filed.”

“Analysis has been a little busy,” Stephen pointed out. “Have you filed
your
report on Littleton?”

That should have made Mac laugh, or at least smile. Her allergies to paperwork were legendary. Instead she only looked grim. “Nika’s there. She’s gotta be.”

“If she’s there, we’ll find her,” Stephen tried to reassure her. “There’s nothing you can do that we’re not already doing.”

“Yeah there is,” Mac said as she took her jacket off the stool’s back and slipped it on. “I can blow the fricking roof off the place and get her out!”

Stephen stood up, too, intending to block her, or at least slow her down, saying, “That’s not the plan—”

“Fuck the plan!”

Behind the bar—one at a time—the bottles broke, exploding with a spray of liquor and glass.

“What the hell, Michelle?” Stephen said, ducking for cover, and pulling his jacket up over his head to shield himself.

But she’d already turned away, as if she didn’t even notice. She just headed for the door, pulling her gloves out of her pocket and slipping them on, even as she kicked her speed up to a jog and then a run.

Stephen scrambled after her, skidding on the gin- and tequila-soused tile as the lights in the room continued to pop and spark. By the time he reached the lounge door, he could see through the glass panel that she was nearly at the end of the hall and still picking up speed.

He yanked the door handle, and nearly dislocated his shoulder. What the …? He tried the other door, but it, too, was locked. He focused, trying to use his power to flip the lock, but it didn’t budge. He couldn’t open the damn thing—she was somehow jamming it.

“Shit! Mac!” He pounded on the door.

One last bottle exploded from behind the bar, and he jumped, and when he turned to look back down the hall, Mac was gone.

He reached for his phone, dialing Elliot even as he went to the nearest comm-station and activated it. “Computer, access SL. Link me to Security.”

Elliot picked up his phone. “I’m so sorry, but I’m still not done—”

Stephen interrupted him. “I need you to authorize a jot scan for Mac—immediately.”

Elliot didn’t hesitate. He raised his voice. “Computer, jot scan Dr. Michelle Mackenzie, STAT.” Back into his phone, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Mac is … Shit, El, is it possible for a Greater-Than to joker?”

“What?” Elliot said. “No.” But then he switched it to, “I don’t know. Jesus, your guess is as good as mine. I mean, I suppose anything’s possible.”

The comm-station beeped as Patty Gilbert from Security appeared on the computer screen, via webcam. “Sir, is there an issue with which you need assistance?”

“Hang on, El.” Stephen opened the connection to Security. “Affirmative, Ms. Gilbert,” he said. “Send an immediate message to all personnel. If they see or encounter Dr. Mackenzie, they
must
keep their distance. I have reason to believe she’s leaving the building—just let her go.”

“Yes, sir.” Gilbert had to be curious, but she knew him well enough not to ask questions.

He shut the connection and went back to Elliot. “Do me a favor,” he said.

“Anything.”

“Go to the barracks and get Shane Laughlin. Meet me in the south lobby.”

“Consider it done.”

“El, wait,” Stephen said before Elliot hung up. “Don’t go outside.”

“I’m going to kind of need to,” Elliot pointed out, “if we’re going after Mac.”

“Shane and I are going,” Stephen told him as he went back to the door. This time, with Mac long out of range, he got it open. He went out, moving swiftly toward the elevators that would take him to Bach’s office. “With Dr. Bach.”

On the other end of the phone, Elliot was silent and his subtext was clear. This was going to get old, fast.

But Stephen had his own subtext to his answering silence:
Too bad
.

“I’ll get Laughlin and meet you in the south lobby,” Elliot finally said.

“Thank you,” Stephen said, and hanging up, he started to run.

They’d returned to the scene of the crime.

It was a ridiculous thing to be thinking, but Anna couldn’t help herself as she sat on the sofa in Bach’s office.

Besides, it wasn’t even true. Bach’s childhood bedroom had been the
real
scene of the crime—except no crime had been committed. Nothing illegal, anyway.

Anna heard the toilet flush and the water running in the sink in Bach’s private bathroom—the water closet, he called it in his quaintly old-fashioned way—and she braced herself.

Whatever had happened with the “spelunking” of Devon Caine’s savagely twisted mind had been ugly, and Elliot had been called in to help Mac and Joseph, who’d both experienced some rather extreme physical distress.

Apparently, Caine was a monster, with an impenetrable mind that was filled with darkness. Finding him was a good thing, because it got him off the streets. But it brought them no closer to locating Nika.

And Anna realized that it was down to Bach—and the connection he’d established with Nika, via Anna’s dreams.

Bach had ended up isolating himself for about fifteen minutes of what he called balancing meditation, while Mac, looking a little dazed after having lost her dinner in the security lobby’s trash can, waved off Elliot and staggered away.

Bach had finally emerged, looking pale and ill—similar to the way he still looked as he now came out of his bathroom.

“Sorry,” he said.

Anna stood up. “I think you need to take more time.”

“We don’t have time.”

“Just another fifteen minutes,” she suggested. “I can wait outside.”

“Lie down,” he told her. “Please. Nika’s going to wake up soon—if she hasn’t already. While I didn’t promise her I wouldn’t leave, I did say that if I had to go, I would try to get back as quickly as possible.”

Anna sighed and sat on the edge of the sofa. “You won’t be able to help her if you make yourself sick.”

“I’m fine,” he said, meeting her gaze steadily. He even managed to force a smile. “Believe me, this is nothing. I’ve felt far worse. Now, please, lie down.”

Anna was about to sit back, when someone knocked on the door. Knocked and then pushed it open and peeked in.

“I’m so sorry, sir.” It was Stephen Diaz. “But it’s urgent. It’s Mac. Her integration’s fluctuating wildly with spikes up to seventy. She seems to have … I don’t know, snapped.”

Mac pulled onto the Mass Pike and pushed her bike as fast as it would go, only vaguely aware of the streetlights burning out with a flash or even a surge of sparks as she passed them.

It wasn’t as hard as she’d imagined not to think about Shane. True, she’d back-burnered him, and she could feel her awareness of her loss, and the deeply gnawing heartache, but it wasn’t front and center.

Right now, she had one and only one thing front and center in her mind: walking into those rooms where Nika and all those girls were being held, and setting them free.

She focused on it, because if she didn’t, then even with the roar of her Harley’s engine, even with the whine of her tires against the pavement, she could still hear the horrible sounds that Caine made as he raped and murdered that nameless little brown-eyed girl that he’d chosen after walking around the room filled with girls strapped to hospital beds.

He grunted and he gasped and he giggled and he moaned and
he clicked his teeth and smacked his lips. And sometimes he sang little bits and pieces of songs. And he liked it when the girl he was abusing screamed, but not half as much as he liked it when all of the other girls joined in. He was a showman and the screams were his applause. And he reveled in the power it gave him, and he got off on their fear.

And when he was in that place, in that time of abandon, his enjoyment was so … pure. It was absolute and practically childlike.

He had no sense of wrong or right, no concept of morality, no idea of empathy or compassion.

He did what he did because he liked doing it. He liked the way it made him feel.

But the people who hired him? The people who knew that he was so terribly broken, who were not only aware of what he did, but allowed him—no,
paid
him—to do it?

They were pure evil.

And Mac was going to find them. She was going to go through that entire list of places that Caine had visited, and she was going to find not just the girls who were locked in those rooms, but the people who’d locked them there and hired motherfuckers like Devon Caine solely for the purpose of keeping the girls’ adrenaline flowing.

Mac was going to find them, and she was going to rip their hearts from their chests.

And she wasn’t going to sing any songs while she did it, but it was going to feel fucking
great
.

Nika awoke with a gasp and a sense of emptiness.

Joseph?

No answer.

She tried again.
Joseph, where are you? Are you still there?

But there was nothing. She closed her eyes and searched her mind, but the odd warmth and strange sensation of having someone else inside of her head was gone.

She’d been abandoned.

Nika panicked. And even though Joseph had been adamant that she never speak to him aloud, she started to cry, and as she cried, she called for him: “Joseph! Joseph, please,
please
don’t leave me here! Where are you? Please be real! Please, please be real!”

And the other girls in the room started crying and screaming, too—shouting at her, “Stop that! They’ll hear you, and they’ll send someone in!”

But Nika didn’t care—she just wanted Joseph back, even if he was just a figment of her disturbed mind. Maybe, if she kept shouting, he’d appear—if only to chastise her for breaking his rules.

But no matter how loudly she screamed, it was soon clear that he wasn’t coming back. And then Nika railed at herself for falling asleep—for letting him soothe her to a place where she
could
sleep, where she felt safe enough to close her eyes.