Born to Darkness (74 page)

Bach tried not to carry any negative energy with him as he went to see Mac as she sat vigil at Shane’s bedside, as he stopped in to see Diaz and looked down at Elliot’s too-still form.

But there was nothing he could do—no way he could help them.

So he left. He stopped in, too, to the observation room overlooking laboratory one, where Nika was beginning to explore her power, under the tutelage of Charlie and Ahlam.

Anna was in the room with her, reading a book. But she looked up at the mirrored glass as if she knew—somehow—that Bach was there, watching.

It was funny, the way life worked out—or didn’t work out, as the case might be.

Bach went back to his office and shut the door.

It took one week, four days, seven hours, and sixteen minutes.

After the first few days, the doctors who came in—Munroe and Cleary and Masaku—started making noise about the sinking probability of a coma patient’s recovery.

Mac had kicked their asses out of the room.

She played music she hadn’t listened to in years, and she danced. She read aloud from books she thought Shane might like—classics by authors like Robert Parker and Lee Child—interjecting her own comments and color. She’d brought in her laptop and played movies, giving Shane a blow-by-blow of the action on the screen.

She exercised his body, gave him massages and acupuncture treatments, rubdowns of all kinds.

She slept beside him at night—curled up with her arms around him.

And she talked to him. And talked. More than she’d ever talked in her life.

And after one week, four days, seven hours, and sixteen minutes, she apparently said something that Shane felt the need to respond to, because he woke up.

It was a little crazy, because after one week, four days, seven hours, and sixteen minutes of telling him about the patheticness of her life even before her mom had died, it took her talking about something absolutely mundane—that she was thinking about painting her bedroom walls blue. She’d told him that she was just thinking about it, and she’d probably take another dozen years of living here at OI to actually get around to doing it, when Shane opened his mouth and volunteered to help.

“You sure about that?” Mac said, her heart in her throat, as she reached for the buzzer that would call the nurse. “Because you’ve been kind of busy lately.”

It was then that he opened his eyes and he looked at her and smiled. “Am I alive or is this heaven?”

“You’re alive,” she managed, as tears filled her eyes.

Shane reached for her hand, tugging her closer. “God, that must’ve sucked.”

Mac nodded.

“But I’m still here,” he said.

“Yeah,” Mac told him. “I am, too.”

“I see that you are,” he said, and then he kissed her.

And Mac knew that she was in trouble, because now the
really
hard part of letting herself love this man had begun.

Stephen knew from the shouting and noises of celebration coming from down the hall, that Shane had come out of his coma.

Yet Elliot remained unreachable, even after Stephen told him the good news.

Mac came by in the afternoon when Shane was napping, and
she made up excuses. Shane was a little bit younger than Elliot. He was in better physical shape. His Navy SEAL training had prepared him for this type of trauma.

There were a lot of reasons why it made sense for Shane to have woken up first.

And Stephen didn’t believe any of them. “Maybe he still thinks I’m angry at him,” he said as he held Elliot’s hand. “I was so angry, Michelle.”

It had been—potentially—the last time he was going to see Elliot alive. His last chance to say something meaningful, to tell him how he felt. Instead, he’d merely asked Elliot if he was ready before he’d hit him with enough energy to stop his heart.

I love you
, Elliot had told him.

Right. Are you ready?

“I just want him back,” Stephen said now.

“Give him time,” Mac said. “He’s going to be okay. Did you tell him about Shane?”

Stephen nodded. “Of course.”

“That’ll help,” she said. “His knowing that it works. His theory, his procedure. That’ll definitely help.” She nudged Elliot’s bed with her leg. “Hey, asshole slacker, get out of bed!”

Stephen laughed for the first time in nearly two weeks. “Is that how you woke up Shane?”

“Nah,” she said. “I was talking about painting my bedroom. Crazy, huh? He wanted to help.” She nudged Elliot’s bed again. “Hey, Zerkowski, I bet if you wake up, the hottest guy at OI’ll rock your world.” She looked at Stephen and smiled. “How’s that for a little incentive? Although—correction, you’re the second hottest guy here, now.”

“You’re going to let Shane stay?”

She nodded, trying to play it nonchalant.

“You know, you’re allowed to be happy,” he told her.

“You are, too,” she shot back. She kissed him on the top of the head as she headed for the door. “Because Elliot’s gonna wake up, and then you’re going to get married, and annoy the shit out of everyone because you’re so fucking perfect together.”

“I hope so,” Stephen said.

“Count on it,” Mac told him, closing the door behind her.

It took one week, six days, one hour, and four minutes before Elliot finally woke up, too.

Shane was up and dressed and taking his first authorized walk around Obermeyer Institute when it happened. He and Mac had just stopped by Bach’s office when the word came down—that Elliot was finally back.

They both took a moment to compose themselves after hearing the good news—and Mac knew that Shane felt responsible for Elliot having taken his idea to shoot up, and run with it. It was a miracle that they’d both come out of it alive—and everyone at OI knew it.

This was not something they would try doing again.

“Do you mind if we, um …” Shane pointed to Bach’s closed door, and she shrugged, so he knocked.

It took a few seconds, but Bach finally answered, and he shook Shane’s hand. “Good to see you up and about.”

“Mind if we come in?” Shane asked. “I know you’re busy, but I had this idea and, um …”

Bach opened his door wider, letting them in, giving Mac a quizzical look that she responded to with a smile. She’d thought they were just out for a walk. But if Shane really wanted to do this now …? She would stand by him.

Or sit by him.

As she sat next to Shane on the sofa, she asked Bach, “Are you okay?”

He was looking even more tired than usual as he took a seat in his favorite chair. “Rough couple of weeks,” he said, forcing a smile as he turned to Shane. “What’s up?”

“I’d like to work for you,” Shane said, just point-blank, in true Shane fashion. “I’ve had a few conversations with the team down in Security, and I know there’s a place for me there, if I want it—I appreciate your recommendation, but …” He looked from Mac
to Bach. “I’d really like to be part of
your
team, sir. I know I’m not a Greater-Than, and I’ll never be one, but I do bring my own set of skills to the table. I really think your entire crew could use some weapons training—not necessarily to use firearms, but to know what to do when they come up against them. Which is going to happen, because you know the Organization isn’t just going to leave Boston. They’re going to regroup and they’ll be back in even larger numbers. And you better believe that from now on, anyone from OI is going to be wearing a target on his or her back. If I were you, I’d grow both your team
and
OI’s general security. And I can help you do that. Plus, I think we’ve learned that it’s always good to have a fraction on the team for unorthodox scenarios.”

“Non-Greater-Than,” both Mac and Bach corrected him, but then Bach looked at Mac. “You’re okay with this?”

“Very much,” she said. “I mean, I told him he could stay and be my boy toy, but he seems to want to be useful.” She glanced at Shane and smiled. “
More
useful.”

“What happens if you break up?” Bach asked, looking to Shane for the answer.

“I leave,” Shane said promptly, adding, “In the extremely unlikely event that that happens.”

“Or we learn to coexist,” Mac chimed in. “You get to decide if we’re pulling it off.”

“In the aforementioned extremely unlikely event that a breakup happens,” Shane said again.

Bach nodded. “I won’t have drama on my team. And for the record? I intend to inform Drs. Diaz and Zerkowski of this as well.”

“No drama,” Shane agreed. “Message received and understood.”

Bach stood up. “I’ll have a contract drawn up. I assume you’ll want to live on campus?”

Shane looked at Mac and smiled his happiness, as they both stood, too. “Yes, sir.”

Bach held out his hand. “Welcome to the team.”

The two men shook. “Thank you, sir,” Shane said. “You won’t regret this.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mac echoed, shaking Bach’s hand, too.

They went out the door, closing it behind them, heading down the hall toward the lounge before either of them dared to speak.

Mac broke the silence. “You didn’t even ask the rate of pay,” she commented.

“Because I don’t give a shit,” Shane told her. “I got room, I got board, I got you—on top of that, everything else is gravy.”

“This gig probably doesn’t pay as much as cage fighting,” she told him.

Shane laughed as he looked at her. “You are never going to let me forget that,” he said. “Are you?”

She smiled into his eyes. “Damn straight.”

“Seriously, Mac,” he said, stopping her with a hand on her arm. “You have no idea how good it feels to be welcomed here this way. To have a place where I fit in, where I belong. I didn’t think I’d ever have that again.”

Mac just smiled at him.

And Shane smiled back at her, and the love in his eyes was beautiful—regardless of how it had started. At least she kept telling herself that …

“Do you think when Bach said
no drama
, he meant that I should avoid kissing the hell out of you in the middle of Old Main?” he asked.

“I think PDAs probably qualify,” she said. “Especially when I start screaming
Take me to heaven, Shane Laughlin! Take me Navy-SEAL-style, like there’s no tomorrow!
”

Shane laughed. And he took her hand, and they booked it, double time, back to the privacy of his rooms, where he kissed her, and—absolutely—took her to heaven.

Even though they both knew that tomorrow was coming, whether they wanted it to or not.

The thank-yous have to start with the real-life U.S. Navy SEALs—the best of the best. Fiction can’t touch the reality of who these guys are, and what they do.

I’ve been writing my sixteen-book Troubleshooters series about Navy SEAL Team Sixteen since 1999, and my eleven-book TDD series about SEAL Team Ten since 1995. That’s a lot of Navy SEALs.

So you’d think when I sat down to write an entirely new series—a modern fantasy set several decades into a dark future—I’d have had enough of SEAL heroes.

But I just can’t shake my fascination with these tremendously intelligent, powerfully motivated, quietly humble, insanely courageous, and usually seriously funny guys. And thus was created Shane Laughlin, a former lieutenant in the Teams, and the hero of this first book in my new Fighting Destiny series. (Shane’s story doesn’t end in
Born to Darkness
, either. You’ll see plenty more of him in books to come.)