Free Born to Darkness by Suzanne Brockmann

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 spaceswith 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