Born to Darkness (67 page)

“I can’t reach him, sir,” Charlie said. “I’ve been trying for a while. I keep getting sent to his voice mail.” He lowered his voice slightly as he turned to face Bach. “His message says that he’s currently in with Stephen Diaz. I suspect, sir, that that’s not good news.”

Stephen was on fire.

He’d been floating, drifting, farther and farther from anything solid or recognizable, but now the pain was back and he couldn’t control it.

Still, it was better than the slow fade into nothing, than the waves of ennui and the ripples of oblivion that hadn’t quite filled him because nothing could or would fill him anymore.

But now the pain could and did, and he didn’t fight it, but he
did
fight. To stay. To be.

To live.

And when he opened his eyes, he saw flashes of lightning instead of gray. And with each beat of his beleaguered heart, he remembered all that he was and all he stood to lose.

And as Stephen fought harder and harder to stay, he realized that he was no longer alone. He turned and saw Elliot. And he knew—instantaneously—what Elliot had done.

And Stephen’s grief and regret and burning sense of loss dwarfed the spears of pain that wracked him. But when Elliot reached out, his touch was powerful enough not just to soothe but also to heal.

Still, Stephen had to ask him,
Why?

Elliot’s smile was beautiful, his voice as gentle as a kiss.
You’re needed
.

Stephen’s heart broke.
And you’re not?

I’m still here
, Elliot said, even though they both knew that what he’d done would surely kill him.

And Stephen realized that he hadn’t changed the future after all. He’d merely delayed the inevitable.

The elevator opened with a
ding
, and Goatee took his key from the control panel, leading Shane onto the fortieth floor of the Organization’s Washington Street building, where they believed that Nika, Anna, and Mac were all being held prisoner.

There was another security checkpoint right in the elevator lobby on that floor, manned, literally, by seven guards—all male, and all wearing the pseudo-cop blue uniform, all with weapons at their hips. As they wanded and then patted Shane down, he had quite a few opportunities to relieve several of them of their firearms, but he opted not to. He wanted to see just how much closer he could get to their security control room before he got this party started.

Goatee led him—conveniently—toward his target destination, through halls that were mostly empty. There were offices and what looked like lounges with their doors hanging open, and Shane spotted a man sitting behind a desk, on the phone, wearing the same lousy body armor that the corporate rulers had decided—over twenty years ago—was good enough for U.S. troops in combat zones.

There wasn’t a Navy SEAL alive who hadn’t opted to buy his own higher-quality gear—or who didn’t know every chink in the common armor that was used worldwide. There was quite a long list of ways to kill a soldier wearing cheap protection—particularly if he or she felt invincible.

But right now, Goatee and Shane had reached a part of the hallway where most of the doors they passed were closed, and spaced farther apart. “Looks kind of like a hotel,” he commented.

“It kind of is,” Goatee helpfully told him. “The Brite Group is an international corporation—lotta visitors from overseas who need super-secure living quarters while they’re in the U.S. We’re
also occasionally asked to take back-to-back shifts—when a shipment is being prepped. So we’re sometimes housed here as well. It’s pretty jam.”

The hall they were in ended in a T—and Shane knew the control room was to the right. When Goatee started to lead him left, Shane stopped him.

“Before I go in to talk to Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones, I’d love to hit the nearest head.” Which was also down to the right, according to the floor plans Shane had memorized.

But okay, that was confusion on Goatee’s none-too-intelligent face—confusion and alarm—and Shane quickly translated his Navy-speak into plain English. “Bathroom,” he said. “The head is a bathroom aboard a ship. I’d like to use the bathroom?”

Goatee laughed his relief. “Well, fuck it, brohms, glad you said so! I’m thinking
hit the nearest head
—which has gotta be mine, what what?” He laughed as he opened his jacket to completely reveal the weapon holstered beneath his left arm. It was strapped in with a single slender strip of Velcro. “I came
this close
”—he held up his right hand to measure out a half an inch between his thumb and forefinger—“to drawing on you.”

The hall was empty, in all three directions, and Shane couldn’t see any cameras—but there
had
to be cameras, unless there purposely
weren’t
cameras for the sake of the anonymity of their overseas guests. He suspected that they were simply concealed.

Still, he’d lived long enough to recognize a truly beautiful gift when he was handed one.

So he reached out and helped himself to Goatee’s SIG Sauer, and jammed the barrel into the space between the ill-fitting top and bottom of the guard’s cheap body armor before his shit-eating grin had even faded from his pasty-ass face.

“Stay silent and do exactly what I say,” Shane told the man, as he hustled him down the hallway that led to the right, “and I won’t pull the trigger. You do know, don’t you? That if I angle this right, the bullet’ll get trapped by the body armor and bounce around—turn your pelvic area into total hamburger. It’s something of a design defect.”

Goatee squeaked his assent, and Shane moved their pace into triple time, even as, from down at the far end of the hallway, behind them, there came a shout, “Hey!” And then a classic, “Freeze, motherfucker!”

Shane didn’t freeze. In fact, he booked it even faster.

Anna tried to tell herself that this wasn’t about her. This had nothing to do with her—it was all about Mac and the way adrenaline would release more hormones into her blood, which the Organization would use to make Destiny.

It was about money, about greed, and yeah, okay, as the man with the scars opened his filthy lab coat and unfastened his pants, Anna knew that it was at least a
little
bit about her, because she could see from the glint in his eyes that he was going to enjoy hurting her.

“Don’t do this,” Mac was saying. “Don’t you do this! Anna, shit, I am
so
sorry! Hey, you! Hey!
Hey!
Look at me.”

And it was beyond bizarre, because something happened. Something strange took place when the man
did
turn and look over at Mac. There was a shift in his body language. He stood a little taller, breathed a little differently, and seemed completely unable to look away.

Anna didn’t know what Mac had done to him—but it was clear she’d done something.

“That’s right,” Mac said. “You don’t want her. You don’t need her. You only want me.”

Shane almost made it to the control room. Almost.

And it was a damn good thing that he wasn’t moving faster, because a security team of a half a dozen blue-uniformed men came pouring out of the very door he was heading for.

So instead he barreled his way into not the men’s head, but the ladies’, dragging Goatee with him and locking the door behind them—throwing both bolts.

It was a single-seater with a pristine sink and a toilet that no doubt got very little use. Not a lot of women working here—that was for sure.

Shane did a quick double-check of the map in his head as he gave Goatee a little stop-sniveling tap with the butt of the man’s own handgun. He then dragged the unconscious guard by the feet to the opposite wall, because this one—to the immediate left of the toilet—was shared by the control room.

And when going in through the door was not a possibility—due to the fact that the team of guards were now banging on
this
door, demanding he come out with his hands up—that didn’t mean the game was over. It just meant it was time to get creative.

Extra creative, since he had only twelve sticks of C4-flavored “gum” and two blasting caps.

There was a saying in the SEAL teams that Magic Kozinski had loved to recite in times of duress:
When a door shuts, a window opens. And if the window shuts, then it’s time to blow a hole through the fucking wall
.

Shane rifled through Goatee’s pockets, transferring several magazines of ammo into his own pants, and coming up with a dangerous little switchblade that the man had clearly been trying to work free during their race down the hall.

Wallet, ballpoint pen, pack of cigarettes, cell phone—Shane confiscated it all. He was traveling so light, it couldn’t hurt. Plus, there was no telling what he’d need.

He got to work, slipping the detcord from his neck, using Goatee’s knife to cut the little angel free, and sacrificing half of his explosives to create a Shane-sized hole, down close to the baseboard of the wall.

The fuse didn’t have to be very long—there was nowhere to run for cover. But Shane did pull Goatee with his body armor in front of him as he lit the thing and hunkered down behind the toilet.

He checked the SIG Sauer, making sure that the magazine was full as he waited for the pop …

And waited, and waited …

It was taking too fucking long—impossibly long—but he was still careful as he peeked around the toilet …

To see …

The blasting cap was faulty. Had to be.

But if he used the second cap he’d brought for this, he’d have nothing to use to blow up the scanners and the power source.

So he cut another length of detcord and tried again with the same cap.

The third time was just an exercise in thoroughness—something useful for his hands to do as he thought about—really thought about—the potential ramifications of his Plan B.

Still, he didn’t need to be a Greater-Than with powers to see through walls to know that the six guards in the hall outside the ladies’ room had grown into a much larger number.

If he was going out through that door, he needed to be bulletproof.

So when the blasting cap failed for the third time, Shane didn’t hesitate.