Born to Darkness

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Well, you should make time. When was the last time you took a vacation?”

  She looked at him.

  “Was it absolutely never?” he asked. “Or abso-fucking-lutely never?”

  She refused to laugh. “You have no idea,” she started.

  Shane cut her off. “Yeah, I actually do, Mac. Because I was you. When I was in the teams. Everything was life or death, now or never, fight or fight harder. And it burned me out. You know, I should’ve seen that lose/lose situation coming. The one I told you about? I should have done the research in advance, and gotten my guys lost in the mountains. Or, I could have manufactured a helo malfunction—it happened all the time, no one would’ve blinked. Instead, I got caught in a clusterfuck that I could have avoided if I hadn’t pushed myself that hard for so many years. I was doing a lot of good out there, taking a lot of very bad people out of commission. But I went from being just like you, to … being nowhere. Blacklisted.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t belong to a team that’s going to kick me out,” she said. “And even if they do? Fuck them. I’ll work on my own.”

  “Until you work yourself stupid from exhaustion, and you make a fatal mistake. You want to save these girls? Gotta be alive to do it, Michelle.”

  “Fuck you!” Shane said it with her—it was clear he knew it was coming.

  “Why do you hate your name?” he asked her.

  She made an outraged sound as she gazed at him. “I thought you were supposed to be helping me maintain my integration levels, not pissing me off and send me bouncing all over the place.”

  “I know I’m not going to get what I want by sitting quietly in the backseat,” he motioned around them, “waiting for you to need me. Instead, I’m going to do what I do best. And a big part of that is identifying the problems that I see.”

  “And my choice not to use the name that some asshole gave me when I was an infant is a problem?”

  “Yes it is,” he told her. “Because you think you’re not Michelle anymore.”

  “I’m not,” she agreed. “I left her behind a long time ago.”

  “But it doesn’t work that way,” Shane said. “We drag everything we’ve done and said and been with us, always and forever, Mac. Michelle’s not gone, she’s just hidden behind the giant curtain that you pretend not to see. You might want to bring her out and make friends with her, because she’s always going to be there. And maybe if you stopped running from her, you could find some inner peace. And look, I’m not saying this because I want to change you. I happen to like you, very much, exactly the way you are. But I believe—absolutely—that achieving an inner balance will give you strength and help you grow. I know you take what you do very seriously, and I honestly think this is something that can help move you to the next level as a warrior.”

  He was sitting there with his conviction and his admiration swirled together with his desire and affection for her—she refused to think of it as love—having just called her …

  A warrior.

  And he meant it.

  Mac couldn’t help herself. She grabbed Shane by the shirt and kissed him.

  Which, of course, was exactly when Charlie took out his earphone and turned around. “Hey, Dr. M., I just got a text from Brian—whoops, sorry, ma’am and sir!”

  They immediately sprang apart and Mac was flustered, but Shane, as always, kept his cool, morphing smoothly into officer mode. “The Brian who’s driving Dr. Diaz’s van?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Charlie said, peeking at them cautiously in the rearview mirror. “He reports that they successfully apprehended and contained Devon Caine. They’re bringing him back to OI.”

  “That’s great.” Mac found her voice, even as her cell phone buzzed. It was Diaz. She picked it up. “Yo. I just heard. Good job.”

  He didn’t say hello or otherwise respond. In a voice that was clipped and tight, he just asked, “Have you spoken to Elliot since we left OI?”

  “No,” she said. “Why?”

  “I can’t—” he started, then cut himself off. “Please, if you hear from him, just tell him to call me.”

  Mac sat up. “D, what’s going on? Do you need us to get back to OI?” She looked at Charlie, who was watching her cautiously in the rearview. She nodded at him and mouthed the word, Drive, and he put the car into gear. Shane, too, was on high alert, watching her.

  “No,” Diaz said. “I just … Michelle, I had—I don’t know what it was—a vision? And it was … Bad. And now I can’t get through to El to … I don’t know, warn him?” He drew in a ragged breath. “Although, it’s typical for him, you know? He gets into something and he turns off his phone. I know he’s safe—he’s in OI. He’s gotta be safe. Just do what you were doing. Try to pick up Nika’s grid. I’ll call you if I need you.” And with that, he cut the connection.

  Mac closed her phone, more disturbed by that than she was willing to let on to Shane and Charlie. “Diaz had some kind of crazy-ass freak-out vision,” she reported, “but he still wants us to go to the crime scene.”

  Charlie nodded and did a youie right there in the street, heading back toward Cambridge.

  Shane was watching her as she opened her phone again, as she scrolled down to Elliot’s number, and called him. But it went right to his voice mail, so she left a message. “El,” she said, “D wants to ask you to the prom, so get off your butt and call him back, asshole.”

  She snapped her phone shut and pocketed it. And glanced over to find Shane still watching her.

  “Diaz doesn’t usually freak out,” she told him, but again tried to make light of it. “But then again, he’s never been in love before.”

  Shane nodded. And whatever he was thinking, for once he kept it to himself.

  It left Mac wondering, in the silence as the car moved into the left lane, why she had no problem with it at all when Diaz called her Michelle.

  Elliot woke up surrounded by a security team.

  “We’ve got him, team leader,” an earnest young security officer named Patricia Gilbert was saying into her radio. “He’s in the lounge. He was sleeping on the bench in the southwest corner of the room.”

  Louise had delivered his soup and sandwich, and it sat now on the table in front of him. As Elliot sat up, he stuck his finger into the soup and yes, it was cold. And that meant his five-minute nap had gone on a little longer than he’d planned. He looked at the crowd around him. Yeah, make that a lot longer. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “You were missing, sir. Dr. Diaz was quite concerned.”

  “Crap.” Elliot started to stand up, but quickly sat back down. He’d been having an awesome dream—one of his own this time, but no less erotic than Stephen’s had been. “Is he back?”

  Stephen was back. In fact, here he came, striding into the lounge with his kick-down-the-door walk and his intensity showing in the tightness of his shoulders and on his stunningly handsome face. “Computer, access SD. Immediate medical scan of Dr. Zerkowski,” he ordered. “Text the results to my phone—STAT.”

  “I’m fine,” Elliot told him. “I fell asleep.”

  “Hold still,” Stephen commanded, then nodded to the young woman who’d woken Elliot up. “Thank you, Ms. Gilbert.”

  “No problem, sir. Just doing our job.” She herded her team toward the door.

  Stephen was left standing there, looking down at Elliot with his teeth still clenched and his heart in his eyes. “That really scared me,” he admitted.

  “I’m sorry,” Elliot responded, even though Stephen had been careful to say that not you.

  His phone beeped at the same moment Stephen’s did—it was the result of the med scan. Elliot had his alerts set to notify him any time he was scanned, and to provide him with a copy of the results.

  As expected, he was in very good health. His heart rate was slightly elevated and his blood pressure was a tad higher than his usual readings, but yes. The reason was right there for them both to see. He was aroused. And Stephen’s super-hot h
e-man posture and attitude wasn’t helping.

  Or rather it was helping too much.

  Before he pocketed his phone, he saw the whole string of missed calls—not just from Stephen, but from Mac, too. And he also saw the text that announced the good news that Devon Caine had been apprehended.

  Nika Taylor’s surviving kidnapper was safely ensconced in Security’s holding cell, after having been stripped of all of his possessions and dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit. No doubt about it, this one was not getting away.

  As Stephen sat down heavily next to him—but far enough away to not accidentally touch—he saw the text that Elliot was reading and nodded. “As soon as Dr. Bach can, he’ll take a walk through Caine’s mind. He’s been given the message that Caine is here, but he implied that it might take him another hour to break free from trying to contact Nika.”

  Elliot looked at him. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

  The muscle in Stephen’s jaw was still jumping as he nodded again. “The takedown went like clockwork. We did a quick sneak and peek into Caine’s apartment, verified he was alone. He was in the shower, which made it even easier.”

  Elliot understood. All Stephen had to do in order to shock the man into unconsciousness was to send a jolt of energy through the pipes with the water.

  “I knocked him out, we went in, shot him full of sedatives as insurance, and popped him into the van. The entire operation took three minutes. We were in and out. Or we would have been,” Stephen told him. “I was doing a quick look-around in his place—collecting his cell phone and wallet and anything else that seemed to stand out, and … That’s when it happened.” Tears actually filled his eyes and he closed them, taking a deep breath, and exhaling hard.

  Elliot would have reached for him, taken his hand, touched his leg, but the distance Stephen had put between them was not accidental, and he didn’t want to cross that boundary. So instead, he clasped his own hands and waited.

  Stephen took another deep breath, exhaled again, and finally opened his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m a little scared,” Elliot admitted.

  Stephen nodded. “Me, too. And I know what I’m going to say. I think it’s bad, El.”

  “Please tell me.” Elliot was now as aware as hell of the fact that Stephen wasn’t reaching for him. Still he had to … He held out his hand. “Or show me, if it’ll be easier?”

  But Stephen shook his head, vehement in his no. “I don’t want to freak you out.”

  “Too late?”

  “I had a vision,” Stephen told him. “While I was in Devon Caine’s apartment. It was a really awful place, babe. It was filthy and … I’m pretty sure, just from the feel of the room, that he’d brought some of his victims there. God, I wanted to leave. It was oppressive and I couldn’t breathe. And it got worse, like I was being smothered. And then I was both hot and cold and I had to sit down, because my vision was tunneling. And then—bang—I was outside, except I wasn’t. I could see the sky even though I knew I was sitting on that disgusting carpet in that disgusting room. I could still smell Caine’s feet and his dirty laundry and his … general stank.”

  “But you saw the sky,” Elliot confirmed.

  “Like I was really there.” Stephen nodded. “It was bright blue, with these big, puffy, beautiful clouds. I was watching this bird flying—a big black hawk. And it should have been beautiful, wheeling in circles way up there, but as I watched it, I was afraid. It made me feel this … foreboding. And then I saw that Anna and Mac were both there, only Anna had incredible power, and she started to fly, too. Not as high as the hawk, not at first, but I knew she was going up there. And she was carrying Mac with her, and at first Mac was angry and she was fighting her, but then she screamed and pointed at something behind me, and I turned and …” His voice broke. “You were lying there, in the grass—it was so green—and you were bleeding. You’d been shot in the chest and in the throat and … There was no way I could save you. No way. And it was so fucking real.”

  To hell with boundaries—Elliot reached for him. And God, at the contact, he saw it, too. Stephen’s vision or dream or whatever it was. And the power of Stephen’s grief as he knelt beside Elliot—and there was so much blood in that green, green grass—hit him with such force that for a moment, he couldn’t breathe, either.

  He felt Stephen’s fear, too. It was there, outside of the vision. What if I’m prescient? Stephen asked. What if one of my new powers, as a Sixty-one, is foreseeing the future?

  Holy crap. What if, indeed.

  Elliot had worked with a powerful prescient, once—a young woman named Tilda, whose time at OI had been relatively short. She’d walked through the halls with haunted eyes. She’d left, right after correctly predicting the death of her younger sister.

  I’ll find my notes, Elliot told him, see if we managed to locate the part of Tilda’s brain that she accessed in order to—

  I didn’t mean what if I’m prescient and how will that affect me? Stephen interrupted. I meant, what if I’m prescient, and you’re going to die?

  I’m not dead yet, Elliot pointed out. Prescients don’t see the future, Stephen, they see a future. If you’re really prescient, then we’ll learn how to use your talent for the warning system that it is. And we’ll take a different path.

  Stephen nodded, his relief palpable. He wiped his face with his hands as he took a series of deep breaths.

  Unless, of course, Elliot added, you foresee us winning the lottery. Then we’ll proceed as planned.

  Stephen laughed, and he turned and he kissed Elliot, right on the mouth, right there in the lounge. And then he made Elliot completely forget that they were sitting there, kissing in public. I love you madly. Marry me.

  Elliot pulled back, laughing his surprise. “What?”

  “Too soon?” Stephen asked.

  “Yeah,” Elliot said, but then he lost himself in Stephen’s gorgeous eyes. “Holy crap, you’re not kidding are you?” He reached out to touch the other man’s arm. As always, the connection was instantaneous and …

  Stephen was dead serious. Was that a yeah, too soon or a yeah, you’ll marry me? he asked.

  It was absolutely a yeah, too soon, but it was also the other. Elliot didn’t have to put the thought into words. He knew that Stephen could feel his yes.

  The Greater-Than smiled, but it faded far too quickly. Life’s too short, Stephen told him. And I don’t want to waste a minute of time that I could be spending with you.

  “I love you, too,” Elliot said the words aloud—words that, after the fiasco with Mark, he’d never thought he’d say again, certainly not that easily. But he didn’t hesitate, not one bit. In fact it was so easy to say, he said it again. “I love you completely. And I’ll make it a point,” he promised, “over the next few days or weeks—or however long you think it’ll take—forever, if you need me to—to stay completely off the lawn.”

  “Thank you,” Stephen said, and kissed Elliot again.

  David was gone.

  After she’d seriously kicked his ass, Anna was left wandering through her former boss’s palatial townhouse, all by herself.

  It was impressive that she could be here, and not feel the fear and revulsion.

  Well, maybe some of the revulsion was still lingering. His “man cave” decorating—the dark stained wood and lack of brilliant color, the King-of-the-Jungle design in the master bath—was slightly stomach-turning. But she most definitely wasn’t afraid.

  Thanks to Joseph Bach. He’d implanted some terrific and very powerful self-defense skills into her mind, which was a little weird—but only a little.

  Anna liked knowing that she could defend herself.

  She went into a kitchen that was black, white, and red, with pictures of WWII-era pinup girls in frames on the walls. And it was only then—looking into a refrigerator filled with food she couldn’t eat because she was asleep and neither the food nor the fridge was really there—she realized that since this was her dream,
she could go anywhere she wanted to. Anywhere in the world …

  So she left David’s house, not really knowing where she wanted to be, but ending up in the living room of Joseph’s childhood home.

  That was interesting. What did it say about her that she subconsciously wanted to come back here?

  She liked Joseph Bach. A lot.

  Anna couldn’t deny that.

  It was night in his living room—just as it had been when she’d been here before. Also just like before, she didn’t need to turn on the lights to see—which was a good thing, because she wouldn’t have been able to manipulate the switches.

  The furniture was beautiful—all antiques, all astonishingly well cared for. Joseph’s parents had had money—that was for sure. She browsed the titles of the books on the built-in bookshelf and discovered that they were all antiques as well. In fact, everything in here—the phone on an ornate little side table, the lamps, the light switches on the walls, the electrical outlets, even the magazines that were out on an end table—was an antique. There was a pristine copy of Life magazine, dating from February 1942.

  She couldn’t pick it up and read it—she couldn’t move or alter anything—but she could see a piece of mail on the table beneath it that was addressed to Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Bach.…

  “Hey.”

  Anna spun around to find Joseph sitting on the sofa, same as he’d done the last time they were here. He was dressed in what he called his “Disney prince” clothes, his flowing pirate shirt hanging open to reveal his well-defined chest.

  “You’re back,” she said, somewhat inanely.

  “I found Nika,” he told her with a beautiful smile, and the relief that filled her was so sudden and overwhelming, she felt herself sway.

  Joseph was on his feet immediately, keeping her from falling as he led her over to sit on the couch.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, as she started to cry, “oh, thank God. She’s alive! Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine,” Joseph told her, one arm still around her as he used his other hand to push her hair back from her face, and to catch the tears that were now rolling in earnest down her face. “She’s safe.”