Born to Darkness (53 page)

Sorrow.

“Please,” she said to Bach. “I liked him. O’Keefe. He really loved his dead wife. I think you’d like him, too. A lot in common, right?”

She was trying to be her usual irreverent self, but it came out forced.

Bach turned to Elliot. “Try it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Elliot said and turned to go, but then stopped to look hard at Mac. “You okay?”

“I’m
great
,” she said. “I’m
so
ready to go spelunking inside the horror-filled head of a psychopath—because my day just hasn’t been shitty enough.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Bach told her.

“Oh, yes,” Mac said, “I do. We’re going to find this girl.” She turned back to Elliot. “I understand congrats are in order. Good for you, bagging Diaz, and okay, that came out wrong, I didn’t mean it that way. Although, good for you, too, if
that
happened because, shit, life’s too short, right?” She looked from Elliot to Bach and then over to Anna, then back to Bach, then to Anna, then Bach.

And Bach knew that Mac had picked up on the extra-charged emotional vibe that was still connecting him to Nika’s older sister.

It was only dream sex
, he had the urge to say. Fortunately, he had control over his urges. Most of them, anyway.

And, wisely, Mac didn’t comment. What she
did
say was, “Let’s do this thing, shall we?” But then she looked at Anna again. “I’ll bring him right back.”

“So …” Mac looked at Bach as the door to the cell that held Devon Caine was unlocked. “You’ve been busy.”

Bach didn’t beat around the proverbial bush. “I like her,” he said, and yes, he was talking about the very lovely Anna Taylor. “She’s quickly become a good friend.”

“Your
friend
wants to screw you blue.”

Don’t
.

Okay, she’d hit a nerve, if he was making the kind of mental
proclamation he usually reserved for his communications with jokering drug addicts.

Sorry
, she sent back to him.

Bach didn’t respond. He just looked down at Caine, who was strapped to a hospital bed, still unconscious from whatever drugs Diaz’s team had shot into his bloodstream.

If they could have, Mac would’ve gone with Bach, directly into Caine’s head. But not even Bach was capable of doing that. So what he was going to have to do was reach into Caine’s odious mind and pull out a series of images. He’d hold them in his own head, and pull Mac in. She’d be able to sift through and identify, hopefully easily, if they were fantasy or true memory.

Yeah, this was going to suck ass.

“More than you can know,” Bach murmured his agreement. He looked at her.
I’m going to keep you close. I won’t let you go
.

Mac nodded.
I’d appreciate that, sir. And I am sorry. Not just about what I said, but … There’s a lot of bullshit in my own head that you’re probably going to run into
.

Bach smiled at that.
When is there ever not?

“Ha,” she said. “Ha.”

He glanced at her as he held out his hand—which was a giant hint and a half that this was going to be worse than she could imagine, since her relationship with Bach usually involved as little touching as possible.

Still, she took hold of him. She felt him say
Brace
. And just like that, she fell into the violent and horrific nightmare that was Devon Caine, knowing that, whatever she experienced …?

Bach was getting it supersized, and dozens of times worse.

Mac was sitting alone in the otherwise empty bar.

Stephen sat down next to her, but she didn’t look up. She’d lined a row of drinks—it looked like whiskey—in front of her and was downing them one after the other, with the rather clear intention of self-anesthetization.

She’d obviously helped herself. Louise wasn’t behind the bar. In fact, she was nowhere in sight, which was good. It would allow the two Greater-Thans to talk freely.

“We’ll find Nika another way,” Stephen said, and only then did Mac look at him.

“I should have been able to do it,” she said. “But I couldn’t.”

“That wasn’t about you,” Stephen told her. “That was about Caine. The guy’s insane. If he honestly can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, his daydreams are going to read as memories. It wasn’t you, Michelle.”

Mac nodded, but he knew she didn’t believe him.

“Dr. Bach couldn’t do it either,” he pointed out.

She nodded again, toying with her glass.

“It must be twice as hard,” he said gently, “knowing that you sifted through that horror-show without a positive outcome. Like you need more nightmares than you already have.”

“They’d been using him,” Mac told Stephen. “Caine. He was
working for them—and not just by helping them move their product.”

Stephen nodded. When it came to acquisitions—the Organization’s intentionally bland term for the kidnapping and exploitation of little girls—Caine would be an asset. “He has the talents they need—targeting and trolling …”

“Not just that.” Her voice was tight. “They pay him—they fucking
pay
him—to go into their holding rooms and play the bogeyman.”

“Oh, God.” He closed his eyes. The Organization imprisoned the girls they
acquired
in rooms where they were kept in constant terror. He could only imagine what a man like Caine would do. But then he didn’t have to imagine, because Mac told him.

“He’s allowed to pick one—just one. One’s all it takes. And one’s enough for him, because he knows he’ll be back, probably the next day,” she said. “And it’s like the best shopping spree ever. For Caine, it’s like being a kid in a candy shop with a hundreddollar gift card. So it takes him awhile, but he finally makes his choice.” Mac’s voice got even harder. “And he rapes her. In front of the others.”

And the fear the girls felt would increase their adrenaline and trigger the hormones and proteins that made their blood more potent, so the Organization could use it to make their drug.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Stephen murmured.

“But when they
really
want to shake things up? The bastards who run these places?” Mac said, her voice shaking. “They let him kill the girl he’s raped. Again—right there. It goes in stages. The girls who’ve just been brought in are terrified to start with. So it doesn’t take much to set them off. A guy with a scarred face comes into the room. And everyone screams because he’s so scary looking. Then he comes in with a knife and starts randomly slashing. And then, after they get immune to that, he kills one of them. And it goes like that for a while. Maybe he’ll kill one of them, maybe he won’t. But then they get tired—they’ve been bled so often—their energy drops. And some of them probably start to think that
death wouldn’t be that bad. A flash of the knife—it’ll be over nice and quick. So the fear levels just aren’t the same. Which is when management calls for Caine, and he comes in and shows those girls just how bad it
could
get, because he doesn’t kill his victims quickly. He likes to hear them scream.”

Dear God …

Mac’s face twisted again. “If Bach hadn’t been in there with me?” she said. “I would’ve killed him.”

“Devon Caine’s not going to hurt anybody ever again,” Stephen promised her.

“But they’ll find someone else to hurt them,” she said. “D, we’ve
got
to get those girls out of that nightmare.”

“We’re working on it. You know that.”

Mac nodded again, struggling to control her emotions. She drained another glass. Pulled the last one closer as she exhaled hard. “Listen to me, bitching and moaning to you, while you have your own nasty-ass nightmare to deal with.”

“Yeah,” Stephen said, drawing the word out. “And then there’s that.”

She glanced at him. “Wasn’t it you who once told me that the last skill you wanted—the dead last—was the ability to see the future?”

He smiled tightly. “That would be me.”

“You could lose that talent,” Mac told him. “I’ve dropped back down to fifty-one.”

She said it so nonchalantly, but Stephen wasn’t fooled. He knew exactly what she meant—that she and Shane were history. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

She shrugged and tossed back her last drink—the row of which suddenly made even more sense.

“Doesn’t it bother you,” she asked him, “knowing that you’re using Elliot the way you are? I mean, really, D. Would you have hooked up with him if he didn’t raise your integration levels?”

“Eventually,” Stephen said. “I’ve been working my way toward him for a while.”

Mac looked at him and laughed. “Yeah, right,
eventually
, like when you both turned eighty?”

“Probably before that.”

Mac nodded. “You know, I felt you before. When you and El were in his office. There was so much love in the room, I kinda threw up in my mouth.”

Stephen smiled. “Jealousy’ll do that.”

She sat back on the stool. “I don’t get how you’re just suddenly
okay
with it. I mean, you just accept the fact that Elliot loves you? He suddenly genuinely
loves
you. And it’s not at all because you look the way you look …?”

“I’m sure that plays into it,” Stephen told her. “It plays into my attraction for him—it always has.” He shifted toward her. “I know it seems fast, but … To answer your question, yes. I accept the fact that he genuinely loves me. The telepathic connection was key, though, in convincing me. Spending time in his head is … It’s like an hour together is the same as if we spent three weeks just talking. It’s crazy how comfortable and right it feels. And El’s so open and … Trusting. He’s so ready to be loved. If you want to know the truth, I’m exactly what he’s been waiting for, all his life. And we’re both very much okay with that.”

“He loves you because you’re special,” she persisted.

“Damn right, I’m special.” Stephen smiled. “He is, too. Michelle, I know it’s scary to let someone like Shane get that close,” he told her quietly, but she cut him off with a laugh and a disbelieving look.

“You have
no
idea. With your fairy-tale, happily-ever-after, found-your-soul-mate bullshit? Yeah, it must’ve been real
scary
falling into Elliot’s perfect arms.”

“How about knowing that it ends with him taking bullets in his chest and throat, and bleeding out?” Stephen asked her. “Is that
scary
enough for you?”

She was silent.

“You know, whether my
vision
—or whatever the hell it was—was real or just a result of low blood sugar and lack of sleep,” he
told her, “the truth is, it could end that way at any time—for either of us. For
any
of us.” If they weren’t already on the Organization’s hit list, they’d all be there soon enough. “For me, it’s scary to think that I used to believe it was better to be alone. How could that be better? It’s safer, yeah. But it’s not better.”

“You have no idea,” she said again, as if her life was hard while his was easy.

And that pissed him off a little, which made him throw her some snark. “And then there’s the fact that maybe if you weren’t down to fifty-one,” he pointed out, “you might’ve been able to see the truth in Devon Caine.”

That got him a deservedly dark look. “You really think I haven’t thought of that?”

“I was just rubbing it in,” he said. “Pouring salt onto your foolishness.”

“I’m foolish?” she asked, shaking her head. “Foolish would be …” Her voice broke, and for one heartbreaking moment, her face twisted, and Stephen thought she actually might to start to cry.

But her face morphed immediately into her standard semi-bored half-scowl, and she said, “I’m being practical.”

“You say practical, I say foolish.”

“Shouldn’t you be prying Elliot from his office, and throwing him over your shoulder, forcing him to stop working and come home?” she asked. “Or is the sex going to be a once-every-fifteen-years thing?”

Stephen smiled at that absurdity.

“I’ll take that as a no,” she said. And her tough-bitch mask broke again. “Seriously, D, I’m really happy for you. I am. Elliot’s amazing. I’ve loved him right from the first day he came in for that job interview.”

“Me, too,” he told her. He gently nudged her leg with his boot. “I’m going to need your help to keep him safe.”

“You got it,” she told him, zero hesitation. “You know it.”

“Good.” He knocked on the bar. “I gotta go. But oh. My reason for looking for you. I took Caine’s cell from his apartment,
and Analysis was able to track his wanderings via his phone’s GPS. I don’t think he knew how it works, because he didn’t shut it off. He’s never even wiped the memory. As a result—”

Mac was already sitting up straighter on the barstool. “We know where he’s been—and where he’s gone! Do we have the route he took after grabbing Nika Taylor?”

“We do.” Stephen held up one hand. “We’ve got a surveillance team not only tracing his footsteps, but also staking out any location where he spent any time at all. But we do know, unfortunately, that he went to his apartment from Rickie Littleton’s garage. Littleton—or someone else—may have taken Nika in. Or it might’ve been a handoff, right in the street. You know, here’s the girl, here’s your cash.”