Born to Darkness (8 page)

A gallant prince who spent a lot of time indoors, and didn’t even remotely share her own racially-mixed, melting-pot heritage—which was all part of being a prince. The whole purebred-to-the-point-of-inbred thing came with the territory.

He was looking her over as carefully as she was inspecting him, and she knew that she didn’t look like most people’s idea of a Cinderella princess, with her wild mass of dark curls, her coffee-colored skin, and her hint-of-Mayan-ancestor’s nose.

Of course, he wasn’t much of a real prince himself if he made his living kidnapping girls and “finding” them for their distraught families.

He still hadn’t tried to explain his
it’s complicated
, so she asked him point-blank, “How much?”

“I’m sorry?”

“How much is it going to cost me to get Nika back?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he said, “Let’s go someplace a little warmer—and safer—to talk.”

Anna laughed and crossed her arms. “Yeah, sorry,
Dr
. Bach, I’m not inviting you inside.”

“I’m not asking that,” he countered. “In fact, that’s the last thing I want. I have no doubt that your apartment’s been bugged.”

“If the kidnappers bugged our apartment, then they know I have no money to pay any kind of ransom.” And they also knew that, at twenty-five years old, she slept in the bottom rack of a bunk bed in a tiny room that she shared with her thirteen-year-old sister. If they’d been inside the place, they’d probably also guessed that she and Nika felt profoundly lucky to have their own kitchen and bathroom, rather than having to share with a bunch of strangers.

Although, if Anna didn’t get a real job soon, they’d have to move into that kind of a rented-room arrangement. Assuming, that is, she was going to get Nika back. Her throat tightened.

“They’re not looking for ransom,” Bach told her somberly, in his Golden-Hollywood-era voice. “If I’m right about who they are, sometime in the next few hours—if they haven’t done it already—they’re going to decide that they want to keep Nika. Badly. At which point, they’re also going to realize that they’ll have to get rid of you.”

What? “Get
rid
of …?”

“Kill,” he said, nodding. “You. Although first they might try taking you, too. If Nika’s as talented as I think she is.”

“Talented …?” Now he was really freaking her out. “This doesn’t make sense. Why would they want to kill me and keep her?” Anna asked. “If the whole point of kidnapping is to make money from ransom? And don’t say
it’s complicated
.”

He smiled rather ruefully as he took a set of keys from his pocket. “But I’m afraid it is.” He pushed a button and a little car
that was parked right there at the curb flashed and the doors unlocked with a click. “Why don’t you come with me to the Obermeyer Institute, and I’ll do my best to explain.”

Anna took a solid step back. “Why don’t you just
do your best to explain
right here and now?”

He sighed. Almost imperceptibly. “I know that the idea that you’re in danger isn’t easy to process, and that you have no real reason to trust me.”

“Why
should
I trust you? Why should I believe
anything
you tell me?”

This time he didn’t hesitate. “Because I can get Nika back—I
will
get her back. I’m one of the good guys, Miss Taylor.”

And time seemed to hang as she gazed into Dr. Joseph Bach’s dark brown eyes. He exuded such absolute confidence, and she found herself wanting to believe him. It would be so easy, in fact, to believe him—to just throw herself into his extremely attractive arms and beg him to rescue both her and her sister, to let him take care of them, forever.

Instead, Anna took another step back, away from him, and drew in a deep breath. Exhaled hard. And asked, “What kind of doctor are you, exactly …?”

He took his time answering. “I’m a surgeon,” he finally said.

She laughed her disbelief. “I’m sorry, but it’s just … 
Before
you lie? You really need to do your research. My mother was a doctor and … Seriously? You’re just too young. Next time try
intern. Intern over at Mass General
might work a little better for you.”

He smiled. “I’m not as young as I look. And I usually
do
hide what I do, but … I didn’t want to lie to you. I’m actually a
brain
surgeon, Miss Taylor, although that’s even harder for some people to swallow. I have a variety of other degrees, too. Internal medicine. Psychiatry.”

“What, no rocket science?”

His smile broadened, revealing charming creases—too elegant to be called dimples—along the sides of his mouth. “Actually, yes. But I tend to leave that off the list. It makes people take me less seriously.”

“As opposed to that degree you got from clown college …?”

He laughed. “I haven’t done
that
yet,” he admitted. “But I wrote the book—the Western one, anyway—on neural integration.”

This was a little crazy, because part of her actually
wanted
to believe him, particularly when he let his amusement shine in his eyes.

“And that brings us back to your sister,” he said, sobering and instantly serious again. “Did you know that she’s twenty percent integrated? Has she had any outside training or …” He trailed off, no doubt because he could tell just from looking that he’d completely lost her.

Twenty percent
what
? “What does this have to do with finding Nika?” she asked him.

“Everything,” he told her. “It’s the reason she was taken. She’s special and …” He frowned slightly and took his phone out of his pocket. He must’ve gotten a text because as he looked at the screen, his frown deepened. “I’m sorry, but we really do have to get out of here. Immediately.” He opened the passenger-side door to his car.

“Mmm,” Anna said. “Still not keen on getting into a car with someone I’ve just met.”

“I can understand that.” He gazed at her for a moment, and then sighed. Just a little bit. “I can help you … to trust me.”

“By … How? Showing me your
citizen detective
ID card?” she asked. “Or a note from your mother saying,
Trust my son
?”

“My mother’s dead,” he told her.

She winced. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m
so
sorry. That was … I didn’t mean to …” She was unable to stop the sudden rush of tears to her eyes. “Mine is, too, and, God, what I wouldn’t give for her to be here right now.”

He looked at her and other than the sympathy and empathy that she could see in his eyes, he didn’t move. He just stood there and did nothing, and nothing happened, except …

Anna was suddenly flooded with warmth, with peace, with a sense of calm certainty.

Joe Bach is going to find Nika
.

Joe Bach is going to bring her home
.

Joe Bach can be trusted
.

She and Nika, both, will be completely safe with him. Always
.

Mommy would’ve loved him.…

“We have equipment at the Institute,” he said quietly, “that can track Nika’s cell phone. I know that’s something that you want to do as soon as possible. Although I have to be honest, Anna. Whoever took her isn’t an amateur. They ditched or destroyed her phone right after they grabbed her. We’re not going to find her that way.”

Anna nodded. “I want to do it, though. Is it very expensive?”

“No,” he said and he stepped out into the street, crossing around to the driver’s-side door and opening it. “Come on.”

It’s time to go
.

Joe Bach is a friend
.

Anna nodded again and got into his car.

Mac fumbled as she unlocked the apartment door, wishing—not for the first time—that she shared Bach’s and Diaz’s telekinetic skills. While she had the ability to move large objects—cars, buses, the occasional jet plane—she’d yet to develop the small motor skills needed to finesse the inner workings of a lock. Of course, compared to Bach and D, she was still a relative newbie at this.

“Want me to …?” Shane asked her, but she shook her head, pulling off her leather gloves so that she could use her fingers to get the key where it needed to go.

“I got it.” The door finally opened, and as she led the former sailor inside, she realized that, if she’d been thinking clearly, she could’ve taken control of the thermostat back when they’d still been in the bar, so that heat would have begun ticking its way through the ancient radiators. Instead, the place was cold.

But she hadn’t been thinking clearly. At least not about any of the Susie Homemaker shit that made an apartment feel all welcome and warm.

She’d never done more than furnish her various living spaces
with the basics. She didn’t hang pictures or curtains, didn’t collect knickknacks or doodads or even old-fashioned DVDs or hardcopy books, the way some people did.

Stephen Diaz’s quarters at OI had shelves on almost every available wall space. He had throw pillows, and expensive cookware, and art.

But Mac traveled light and saved nothing.

And an apartment like this one, in a crappy part of town, was just a place to crash.

Or keep some guy that she occasionally liked to screw.

She pulled off her hat and scarf, but kept her jacket on as she made her way to the thermostat over by the kitchen door, and pushed the arrow up to a walk-around-naked seventy-five degrees. It would take awhile to get there, though. Until then, they’d have to create their own heat.

Yeah.

She shrugged off her jacket, and turned to find the sailor still standing by the door, watching her.

Damn, he was attractive—tall and lean, with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and long legs. He was almost impossibly handsome, too, with that head of thick, reddish blond hair, a straight nose, a strong chin, and an almost elegant, gracefully shaped mouth that was quick to quirk up into a smile.

Kind of the way it was doing right now.

He was well-educated, and well-mannered, and his intelligence gleamed in his perfect-cloudless-sky-blue eyes.

And as scornful as she’d pretended to be about the whole officer-and-a-gentleman thing, it was a total turn-on.

He was the anti-Justin—a full-grown man to Justin’s often-petulant boy.

His smile broadened at her perusal, and she didn’t doubt for a second that a man this handsome knew exactly how good-looking he was. She would’ve bet her entire month’s pay that he knew just how to make his eyes sparkle like that, in order to make a woman’s heart beat a little harder.

It was working.

But she, too, had her own tricks in the charm department, so she couldn’t blame him or cry foul.

He let a little heat into his eyes as he continued to just stand there, and her mouth actually went dry.

“You got another name,” he whispered. Even his voice was sexy. A rich, accentless baritone with just a hint of smoke to give it a unique texture. “Besides just Mac?”

“I do,” she said.

He waited, but when it was clear that she had no intention of telling him what it was, he laughed a little. His laughter was almost musical. “Okay,” he said.

“Is it?” she asked.

“It has to be, doesn’t it?” He took off his jacket then, and tossed it onto the sofa, but still didn’t come any closer.

“You could leave in a huff,” she pointed out.

He laughed even more at that, genuinely amused. “I suppose, in some alternate universe, I could, in fact, leave in a huff. But that’s not going to happen here.” He looked around then, at the small, austerely furnished living room, the attached dining area, the pass-through to the tiny kitchen, the hallway that led—just a few steps—to the bedroom. And then he looked back at her, clearly waiting for a cue.

So Mac gave him one. “I’d offer you a beer, or something to eat,” she said, as she went down that little hall, “but I haven’t been here in a while, and I’m pretty sure the cupboard’s bare.”

“I’m good. But … can I ask you something?” he asked as he followed her into the bedroom, where she turned on the bedside table lamp. He didn’t wait for her to respond. “Am I here because—or in spite—of being blacklisted?”

“Neither,” Mac said. “You’re here because you were honest.” She looked at him over her shoulder as she sat on the side of the bed that was farthest from the door. There was real irony in her words, because no way in hell was she going to be honest enough with
him
to say,
You’re also here because just touching you put my
self-healing mental powers into overdrive. I can’t wait to see what happens to my ankle when we actually have sex
. “I happen to really like honesty.”

“Note to self: Be more honest.” He’d stopped in the doorway again, just leaning against the jamb as he watched her unfasten the laces of her boots.

“Don’t forget the smiley face emoticon,” she said. Her right boot came off easily and hit the floor with a thump. The left was going to be more of a challenge and she hesitated.

He laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever included a smiley face in a note.”

“No?” she asked.

“Nope.” He let the P pop.

“I didn’t really think so,” Mac said. It was probably better if she just kept her left boot on for now. Although
that
could be awkward when it came time to get out of her pants—which was going to happen soon. She hoped. “I was kidding. You’re just such a … Boy Scout.”