Born to Darkness (17 page)

Elliot sighed almost inaudibly, but then smiled when Anna glanced at him. “Kinda hard not to picture
him
naked, too, huh?” he said to her, out of the corner of his mouth.

She laughed, but doing so somehow triggered a rush of tears to her eyes, and she inhaled, hard, so that her laughter didn’t turn into an audible sob.

But Bach glanced sharply back at her, as if he’d heard her anyway. Or maybe he’d just felt a disturbance in the Force—this was
so
weird.

Elliot slipped his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “Hey,” he said, warm and solid against her. “With these three on your side, there’s no way we’re not getting Nika back. You gotta have faith.”

“It’s just all so strange,” Anna admitted. She forced a smile as she looked up at him. “Particularly since the best-case scenario
puts me in a world where my little sister is going to learn to read my mind.”

Elliot laughed. “I know, scary, huh?” he said as he led her into a small room with a flatscreen that almost took up an entire wall. There were plenty of chairs. And as Elliot pulled her by the hand to the row of seats, she couldn’t help but notice that tall, dark, and handsome Dr. Diaz stayed standing, off to the side, over by the door.

Bach took some kind of remote control device from its port on the wall, and sat, leaving an empty seat between himself and Anna. “Let’s just get this over with,” he said. “Computer, access JB-one. Dim lights. Picture on.”

The lights in the room dimmed as a picture appeared on the flatscreen. It was an aerial map of the part of Boston where Cambridge Academy was located. Nika’s route from school to their apartment was marked with a bright blue line.

Anna forced herself to keep breathing as the Bach commanded, “Computer, zoom in.”

The image on the screen wasn’t a dead-on aerial. The satellite must’ve been positioned to the south, because although it gave them a view from above, it was angled enough for them to see that yes, that was Nika, walking home from school, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her jacket unzipped.

Her head was down, though, as she looked at her phone, no doubt sending that text message to Anna.

Sure enough, the time clock running down the seconds up in the right-hand corner of the video read 14:26:43. As it clicked over to 14:27, Nika must’ve pushed send, because she finally looked up from her phone.

“God, is she your sister, or what?” Mac said.

“She does look a lot like you, doesn’t she?” Elliot said.

Anna nodded, her heart in her throat, as a car—a black sedan with tinted windows—pulled up alongside her sister, keeping pace with the girl.

Nika didn’t notice it at first, but then she did, looking at it
askance, over her shoulder. She shifted her bag, increased her speed, and raised the phone she was still holding up to her ear.

“Smart girl,” Mac said. “Calling someone—or at least pretending to.”

“Pretending,” Bach confirmed. “Her phone records don’t show any calls out after that last text.”

“Why doesn’t she run?” Anna breathed.

But then Nika
did
run—and she proved herself to be a
very
smart girl, because she ran back the way she’d come, toward the school.

The street was heavily trafficked enough to make it impossible for the car to follow her by backing up. Instead, a large man jumped out of the passenger side and chased after Nika.

Bach used the remote to adjust the view.

And it looked—for a moment—as if Nika was going to do it, as if she were going to get away. She flung her backpack at the man who was following her, and it slowed him as he tripped and nearly went down.

But then there was a break in traffic, and the black car went surging in reverse, all the way back to the corner, where it jerked to a stop. And the driver got out and Nika was trapped between the two men.

“Shit,” Mac said. “With his hood up, I can’t see his face. Can you—”

“Let’s just watch it through once,” Bach murmured.

There was nowhere for Nika to go on the otherwise empty sidewalk—the building on her side of the street was boarded up and surrounded by a dilapidated chain-link fence.

So she stopped and focused on her phone, and Anna knew that she was trying to call for help, trying to dial 9-1-1.

But the hooded man from the car slapped her phone out of her hand, then slapped her in the face, and Anna gasped as the force of the blow sent her little sister reeling back, right into that fence.

And still, Nika tried to run, but the man with the hood blocked her and hit her again. And again. And again.

This time the flurry of blows sent her to the ground, and Anna was unable to keep silent. “Oh,
God
 …”

But the fight hadn’t been beaten out of her sister yet, and even though Nika could barely push herself up off the broken and pitted concrete, she again reached for her phone.

But the bigger man who’d been chasing her down the sidewalk finally caught up to them. He saw what she was doing, and he stomped on her phone with one of his big, clunky boots, then kicked the pieces into the street before turning to kick Nika in the stomach. God, Anna was going to be sick. She couldn’t help herself—she started to cry.

And still Nika tried to crawl away.

The two men then exchanged what looked to be angry words. The driver jogged back to the car as the bigger man dropped the pack, and dug into his pocket for something.

He turned and reached for Nika, pulling up the girl’s jacket and shirt.

“What is he doing?” Anna couldn’t keep her horror from her voice.

“Giving her an injection.” Bach’s voice was tight, too.

“Probably something to knock her out,” Elliot murmured as he reached over and took Anna’s hand.

And sure enough, Nika finally slumped, unconscious.

The big man scooped up Nika’s pack and then picked the girl up almost as easily, carrying her to the car. He tossed her inside, then climbed in himself, and the car pulled away from the curb.

Throughout the video, Bach had been pushing buttons on the remote, and a series of small pictures now lined the margins of the screen—including some still shots of the two abductors. “Computer, pause video,” he said now, as he used the remote to highlight the stills, going through them one at a time.

The first was of the car, and he zoomed in to reveal the plate number. That was good, wasn’t it? Anna pulled free from Elliot’s hand to use her sleeve to wipe her eyes. Crying wasn’t going to help get Nika back.

Diaz spoke up from the back. “Analysis already ID’d the car as a government vehicle reported as stolen—which explains, at least in part, why no one stopped to help.”

“I would have stopped,” Mac said grimly.

“For all they knew it was official business,” Diaz said.

“Two men? Beating a child …?”

“It doesn’t matter. People don’t want to know,” Diaz pointed out.

Bach had already clicked to the next photo—of the larger man getting out of the car—but it was blurred so he kept going. “Let’s just get through this as quickly as possible,” he said, again, stopping on a much clearer shot.

The man was heavyset, with a wide, fleshy face, and light-colored eyes that broadcast anger and what looked to Anna like more than a touch of crazy. His hair was dark and thinning, and he had a bald spot in the back.

She felt Bach glance at her, and she shook her head as she gazed up at the man. “I’m sorry, I don’t know him,” she said, fighting another rush of tears.

“We didn’t expect you to,” he said quietly. “Anyone else?”

“No, sir,” Diaz murmured, as Mac said, “Nope.”

“Computer, analysis,” Bach commanded and a window with information popped up onto the screen. Apparently, whoever this man was, he was six feet tall, and weighed 270 pounds. His approximate age was thirty-four. Face recognition software was flashing an icon as it searched its archives, but it came up with a very disappointing
Unknown
.

“He’s either not in the system, or he’s using some kind of shielding device,” Elliot leaned in to tell her. “There’s a new product on the black market—a cell phone app—that creates interference with digital imaging technology. It’s illegal and it’s expensive—which tells us something right there. If thugs like this have that technology? We can be pretty certain they’re connected to people with money, i.e., the Organization.”

“We can still use these images to try to make a visual match,” Mac pointed out.

“Analysis is already on that,” Diaz said. “But that takes time.”

Bach was already flipping through the stills of the man wearing the hood, and going back to the only one that showed his face.

His features were contorted, his mouth an ugly gash, and Anna had to look at it through her eyelashes. The picture was from right after he’d hit Nika, and the girl was in mid-air, having not yet landed on the sidewalk. Anna couldn’t speak. She just shook her head no, even as Mac spoke up.

“I know this one,” she said. “His name is Rickie Littleton. He’s a low-level dealer, lives in Southie, but peddles his shit at Copley Square and the Chestnut Hill Mall. He’s something of a hard-on—” She glanced at Anna as his stats appeared on the screen. He was significantly smaller than his compatriot—not a whole lot taller than Anna herself. But again, the face recognition program came up blank. “Look, I’m not going to lie. He has a rep for being brutal, but he’s not real bright, either, so …” She exhaled hard. “It really could be a lot worse.”

“Looks like he’s gone into acquisition,” Elliot said. “Maybe trying to move up the Organization’s food chain?”

“Yeah, I can’t see that actually happening,” Mac scoffed. “We’ve been tracking him for a few years now. We haven’t taken him out because he’s so transparent that it’s better for us to keep him in the game. We get more information from watching him work.”

“The real question is,” Bach said, “does he know what he’s got?” He made an adjustment with the remote, and the screen went back to the paused video of the stolen car leaving the abduction scene. “Computer, highlight the car,” he ordered, and the vehicle glowed bright yellow. “Let’s see where they take her. Computer, fast-forward.”

The image not only fast-forwarded, but it zoomed out to a map of the area, so that the movement wasn’t too dizzying. Anna could easily follow the yellow dot. “But how will we know they didn’t stop and remove Nika from the car?” she asked.

“The software’ll bring us in closer if the car so much as slows,” Bach said, as the image on the screen did just that. The car pulled
up to a red light and idled. No one got in or out. “But someone in Analysis will watch the footage in real-time, just to be sure.”

The yellow dot was moving again, faster now. And it didn’t slow until it pulled up to what looked like a mechanic’s garage that was, indeed, in South Boston.

The bay doors opened and the car pulled inside, and the doors shut tightly behind it.

Mac stood up. “Let’s go kick his ass.”

“The girl may not be there anymore,” Bach warned, although he got to his feet, too.

“On the other hand, Rickie really might
not
know how important Nika is,” Mac repeated Bach’s words. “Seriously, sir. There’s no way the Organization would’ve farmed this job out to him. This was entrepreneurial initiative. Had to be. Rickie somehow got hold of the acquisition list and went after the name at the top. How much you want to bet we find a stolen shipment of Blacklight disposable cell phones somewhere in that garage?” She turned to look back at Diaz. “Who wants to come find out?”

Bach looked toward the back of the room, too, as Diaz said, “I’m good to go.”

“Let’s do it,” Bach decided. “Go ahead and start surveillance. I’ll be right behind you.”

The two Fifties left the room as Anna and Elliot, too, stood up.

“Mac’s right,” Bach told Anna as if he could sense her anxiety—which he no doubt could. “They aren’t as smart as they think they are. It was amateur hour—as soon as they broke Nika’s cell phone, we were well on our way to finding them.”

Anna didn’t understand. “But breaking the phone meant we couldn’t track them by its GPS.”

“Except they broke the phone,” Bach said, “at the precise location where they abducted Nika, which was the equivalent of sending us a message saying
start searching here
. And we
did
start our search of the SAT images at the longitude and latitude where we lost Nika’s signal. Without that critical information, our analysts would still be sifting through footage. Do you remember how I had you turn off your cell phone while we were on the Mass Pike?”

Anna nodded.

“
That’s
the way to do it, if you don’t want to be tracked. There was a lot of traffic at the time—you could have been in any one of those cars. Or maybe you weren’t there at all, but you’d put your phone in someone’s vehicle and … Because you turned off your cell phone at that moment, the police now have no idea where you are.”

“Unless they find me from SAT images.” Anna gestured toward the screen. “When they search the footage taken outside of my apartment, they’ll see me getting into your car.”

“No, they won’t,” Bach said, as he put the remote control back on the wall. “Before I arrived, I, uh, made a few adjustments in the satellite positioning. There are no pictures. At all. Any security cameras in the area experienced a blackout during that time. You’re completely safe here, Anna. And even if they produce a warrant, we have the means to hide you.”

Dear God. Anna searched his eyes, looking for what, she wasn’t sure. “I really hope you
are
one of the good guys,” she said.

“He is,” Elliot assured her.

“Yeah, well, you work for him,” Anna said. “You kind of have to say that.”

Bach smiled as he exchanged a glance with Elliot. “Everyone here works
with
me, not
for
me.” He turned to leave, but Anna stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“What can I do?” she asked him. “Please, I want to help.”

He covered her hand with his, and Anna felt shades of that same incredible warmth she’d experienced in his car. Although, this time there was an undercurrent of …