Born to Darkness (21 page)

Another possibility was that Bach had suddenly spiked—gone from seventy-two to seventy-three. Increases of power rose tremendously as integration levels got bigger, so that while the difference between a Ten and a Twelve wasn’t that significant, the difference between a Seventy-Two and a Seventy-Three was vast.

Bach had been training and working for years now without the slightest increase in his integration. It was time for a bump upward. And maybe the ability to receive some type of thought projection from Nika was one of his newest skills.

Of course, there
was
the possibility he’d received that thought projection from the girl because she was somewhere in the close vicinity of that supermarket parking lot—a fact that would also be very good to know.

Bach waited as patiently as he could for his car to be searched at the entrance to OI, and when the gate finally opened for him he went significantly above the campus speed limit as he buzzed up the hill and then over to the main housing building.

Anna Taylor had been given apartment 605. High floor. Great view. It was a three-bedroom—one room for her, one for her little sister, and one to emphasize the perks that would come when she gave Nika permission to enroll in the training program here.

When
, not
if
.

There was no way Anna could afford a three-bedroom apartment out in the real world. No way at all.

Bach parked and beeped his car locked as he ran toward the more modern architecture of the building that had been lovingly dubbed the “barracks.” The nickname had been given by someone who obviously had never in his or her life lived in military housing. Still, it had stuck.

The guard at the door ran her security wand over Bach—the security team had long since learned that waving him through was a surefire way to get canned.

She did a thorough job, and even though he used the time both to stretch out his back and exchange some quick texts with Analysis—they’d found info on a Devon Caine and were attempting to locate a current picture—he was tapping his toe by the time it was over. When she told him he could go in, he thanked her for her thoroughness, but then headed for the elevators at a run.

One opened right away, and he pushed the button for the sixth floor. It took too long to get there, so when the doors finally opened again, he dashed down the hall.

Apartment 605 was an end unit—he knew it well since he lived directly above it, on the top floor. He could feel Anna’s presence—she was awake—so he leaned on the buzzer.

The intercom clicked on almost immediately.

“Did you find Nika?” Anna asked, no doubt having ID’d him through the peephole, then added, “I can’t open the door. I think I’m locked in.”

She was. But Bach used his mind to click the lock open and there she stood, hair slightly rumpled, looking at him with such hope in her eyes and on her pretty face.

“We haven’t found her yet,” he said, “but we’ve got a possible new lead. May I come in?”

“Of course.” She stepped back and as he went inside, he saw that she’d done as he’d instructed and unpacked. She’d flattened the empty boxes that had held her few belongings, and they leaned in a neat stack against the island counter that separated the big
kitchen from the rest of the main living area. “What kind of lead? Do you know where they took her?”

“Actually, this is going to sound a little crazy,” Bach realized as he took off his coat and put it over the back of one of the counter’s stools, “but I just had an unusually vivid … dream.”

“A dream?” she repeated, frowning slightly.

“Yes, I know, maybe not just a
little
crazy, am I right? At least not in the world you’re used to.” A framed photograph was on the coffee table in front of the sofa and he picked it up after he sat down.

In the picture, Nika was a toddler, which meant that Anna had been close to Nika’s current age when it was taken. A woman who had to be their mother, with slightly darker skin but the same wide smile, held the younger girl on her lap as Anna hugged them both.

It was true that the two sisters looked very much alike, but there was a somberness, a seriousness in Anna’s brown eyes that had been absent in the SAT images Bach had seen of Nika.

He looked up from the photo at the real Anna, who now had her arms tightly folded across her chest as she stood there, gazing at him with unconcealed dismay.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but are you honestly telling me that your
lead
is from a
dream
that you had …?”

“Telepathic powers include something called
thought projection
,” Bach explained. “It’s a highly advanced skill, and we’ve only documented cases sent and received at close proximity—where the sender and receiver were mere yards from each other. The visual images sent can be remarkably realistic. And detailed. And yes, I do believe the projection I received, just a short time ago, was from Nika.”

He could see, just from the expression on Anna’s face, that she was unwilling or unable to understand.

So he quietly told her about the nightmare he’d had in the supermarket parking lot—about the scar-faced man and the room filled with screaming little girls.

Anna slowly sank down in the leather chair opposite the sofa as he described the badly stitched port in Nika’s arm.

When he ended with the scar-faced man’s casual disposal of Zooey’s body and his words to Nika about a man named Devon Caine, Anna silently spoke the name along with him.

He sat forward at that. “Did
you
receive the projection, too?” he asked, intrigued.

She nodded. “I thought it was a nightmare.”

“It’s possible Nika was somehow subconsciously projecting to you, and you then projected to me—” Bach cut himself off. Even though the idea that a thirteen-year-old girl had the power to project to not just one person but two, across great distances, was fascinating,
how
it happened was a mystery they’d focus on later. Right now … “May I?” he asked as he reached out to Anna with his mind. His silent request was more specific.
May I check to make sure there were no other details in this projection that we both might have missed or overlooked …? It would help if I could combine our two memories
.

She nodded, her eyes wide as she gazed back at him.

It was unnerving and oddly intimate to be looking directly into the eyes of a person whose head he was entering. He usually turned slightly away, or even closed his own eyes to avoid the forced intimacy.

But this time he didn’t. Turning away felt too much like he was abandoning her, and he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.

And as Bach moved into Anna’s mind, he felt all of her trepidation, her confusion, her disbelief, her attraction. Yes, she was definitely attracted. She was also afraid of him still—afraid to trust him, to believe him. And yet she was willing and even eager to let him in—if it was going to help them find her sister.

He moved into her memory centers, and there was that name again—Devon Caine—and a glimpse of the brightly lit hallway on the other side of the door outside the room where Nika was being held. He saw numbers on the side of the trash container that the scar-faced man had wheeled into the room—a two and a one, but the rest were obscured. He saw an image of that same man’s deformed face that was so clear he could have drawn it. And he
would
draw it, with Elliot’s help. The doctor possessed a natural
artistic ability that Bach didn’t share, despite countless years spent trying to hone those skills. Music had always been more Bach’s thing, but it was far less practical given his line of work. He just couldn’t imagine that the day would ever come when he’d play
Rhapsody in Blue
or a Mozart piano concerto to woo some joker down from some mental ledge.

But maybe this man with the scar isn’t real
. That was Anna, interjecting and pulling him back on track as she followed his thoughts. He was far more tired than he’d believed, and it was a good thing he hadn’t wandered into thoughts of—

He cut himself off abruptly, but Anna was focused and didn’t notice.
Maybe he’s just a symbol of the danger that she’s in
, she continued.
If Nika’s projections are subconscious—and it’s hard to believe that she knows how to do this—isn’t it possible that this is, I don’t know, just a nightmare that Nika had? Couldn’t it all just be fantasy?

“I don’t think it’s a dream.” Bach answered her by speaking aloud, even as he gently pulled out of her. She gasped, just a little, at his sudden departure, and he added, “I’m sorry, I should’ve warned you that I was going to—”

“No,” she said quickly, “it’s just odd. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

“It’s really not something I’ll be doing all that often,” he tried to reassure her. “And … you can see that—now that you know what it feels like—it’s not going to happen without your knowledge. Again,” he added somewhat lamely, since he
had
not only invaded her mind but had also put his own thoughts in it, completely without her knowledge, simply to get her into his car. He quickly pushed on, bringing them back to the vision they’d shared. “I don’t think Nika was dreaming. It was too linear, Anna. Too real. Too organized—dreams tend to jump and shift.” He put it as clearly as he could. “I believe that Nika was projecting what she was actually experiencing and seeing.”

“So that name—Devon Caine …?” Hope was back in her eyes.

“I’ve already sent a request to Analysis,” Bach told her. “We’re
working to track him down. We’ll bring him in and find out what he knows.” He didn’t tell her that he believed Devon Caine was also the man responsible for raping and murdering a girl at the mechanic’s garage in South Boston. That headline could wait until they had the man safely in their possession.

“He called Nika a fountain,” Anna remembered from the vision. “The man with the scar. What did he mean by that?”

“They took your sister’s blood,” Bach explained, “and they no doubt tested it and discovered that she’s an abundant source of the crucial ingredient needed to make oxyclepta di-estraphen. The good news is that they’ll keep her alive. The bad news is that they’re going to try to keep her in a near-constant state of terror, which is
really
bad news for the girls in the room with her.”

“Oh, God,” Anna breathed. But she took a breath and sat up a little straighter. “So … What now?”

“We run some tests,” Bach told her. “I want to see if you’ve got any powers that we might have missed, since it’s highly unusual for a non-Greater-Than to receive a projection of any kind. At the same time, I’ll see if maybe I’m the one whose integration is spiking, or … Maybe it’s all Nika. We’re going to gather as many facts as we can. I know it’s early and you haven’t had much sleep, but if you’re willing, we could go into the lab and—”

Anna stood up. “I’m willing. Just let me get my sneakers.”

Rickie Littleton was in the Oasis Restaurant on Route 9, up by the Chestnut Hill Mall. He was eating their $14.99 Recession Special breakfast, the way he always did when he was flush.

He didn’t recognize Mac when she walked in—but then again, he wouldn’t. Through the years, she’d worked hard to make sure that he never saw her. Up until now, it had served OI to use Littleton as an informant of sorts, following him and gathering information when needed.

Up until now.

She could’ve kept her distance, let him finish his breakfast, and then trailed him around the city for a few days to see where he
went and who he talked to. But a few days would seem like an eternity to their missing little girl, and picking Littleton up and bringing him in meant that they’d know everything that he knew in a matter of minutes. That’s how long it would take for Bach to stroll through the drug dealer’s mind.

So Mac sat down at the counter next to him, her charm set on stun.

Still, he didn’t even look up from his plate until she said, “Don’t you hate it when they undercook the bacon?”

He looked a little surprised then, because, really, what woman in her right mind would initiate a conversation with someone who looked and smelled the way he did? But then she gave him a flash of the Rolex and gold-and-diamond bracelet that she’d borrowed from OI’s local bank box, specifically for this purpose. As she pulled the sleeve of her jacket back down, Littleton’s second glance at her was filled with understanding. She was here to score some Destiny.

“I’ve had both items appraised and I’m fifty dollars short,” she told him, catching her lower lip between her teeth in a move that she knew he’d find hypnotizing. She didn’t have to work to sound desperate—she just had to think about the child who’d died at the garage that this man owned. Either Littleton was a murderer and rapist, or he’d let his murdering rapist friend use his place for his evil deeds. “I was hoping we could …” She lowered her voice even more. “Trade?”

His
yes
was in his eyes, even as he returned some of his attention to shoveling his home fries into his mouth. “I’ll be done here in five.”

“My car’s out in the lot,” she told him as she slid off the stool and headed out the back door.