by Lexi Blake
She looked ready to move but he had a few things to say. He shifted so he was standing in front of her. “I’m sorry, Erin. I never said it to you. Not plain and direct. I’m sorry. I was selfish, and it could have cost you everything. I don’t know what was going through my brain at the time. I can’t remember them, but I must have loved them.”
“I know you did.” She sounded solemn for a moment. “And I think you love her. So don’t fuck it up.”
“I already did,” he replied. “Even if she can forgive my past, she won’t ever forgive me for lying to her. She won’t forgive the way we met.”
“I’ve seen couples survive worse,” Erin replied before pointing to Ezra. “Not that one, though. He’s super stubborn and does not consider an actual divorce to be a break. He and Solo are so not going to end up like Ross and Rachel. Be smarter than they are.”
“Do you have to be such an asshole?” Ezra asked.
Erin shrugged. “I’m the chick who says what everyone’s thinking.”
“I was not thinking that at all,” Ezra said before turning back to Owen. “If you want Rebecca, don’t let up. I watched Theo’s twin brother Case utterly ruin his relationship with Mia. And he could have accepted that. He could have laid down and accepted that it was over.”
“He mostly whined and looked sad and shit.” Erin’s brows rose at the look Ezra gave her. “Hey, who had to put up with that? This girl. I had just had a baby and I swear Case cried more than TJ.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Ezra replied. “I got to see it from the Mia side. You know what got them back together? Case didn’t give up and he was honest with her. Even when it was painful. He told her everything he was feeling.”
“Or you could do what Theo did and fuck her until she can’t see straight. Sorry. I’m not good at the touchy-feely stuff. You should wake up Ari for that.” She glanced back into the living room and when she looked back an infinitely sad expression crossed her face. “Or don’t wake her. Let her sleep. It’s sucks to be awake sometimes. Do what Ezra says. Talk to her. Tell her all your manly feelings. It does work for most chicks. I think it’ll work for her. She already feels bad. You have to get through her guilt or it will eat her alive. Is she asleep somewhere? Should we like find her? You’re a terrible guard. Feel bad about that.”
Could he talk to Becca? He didn’t talk to anyone. He barely talked to Ari and she was his therapist. He wouldn’t know until he tried.
“You know you need help, right?” Ezra was asking Erin after he’d explained Becca was in the kitchen.
“No, I need a hot chocolate,” Erin replied.
“I’ll put a kettle on.” It was the least he could do for her. And he could make one for Becca if she liked. Perhaps they could start some kind of dialogue. If there was even a chance at getting back to where they’d been. He’d failed her. When she’d needed him to take control, he’d used that control against her. He’d listened to his own anger and guilt and not to his instincts about her.
He walked into the kitchen and stopped because Becca wasn’t alone.
* * * *
“We wouldn’t do that,” Owen said.
Becca didn’t know what to believe. When she’d woken up only a few moments before, she’d found herself reaching out for him. It had been terrible when she’d remembered where she was and why Owen was sleeping in a too-small chair. Now standing here just outside the kitchen, she was reminded of all she’d lost.
Ashley Jones. She was going to have to change her name so the police couldn’t find her. She would be stuck in some office in London, and who knew when she would see the light of day again.
She’d thought briefly about running, but that would be stupid.
How was her father going to feel? How embarrassed would her little sister be?
She didn’t say anything to Owen, simply turned and walked into the kitchen. A sense of relief washed over her when she realized he was still in the dining room talking to his boss.
His boss, who happened to be ex-CIA. There were a whole bunch of ex-soldiers and operatives. Even her barista had worked for Interpol. She’d never had a chance.
She wasn’t even certain why. That was what killed her. Why had Dr. McDonald chosen her to send this mystery box to?
“Don’t freak out,” a voice said from the gloom beyond her sight.
She reached out to find the light switch. A cone of light popped on from above the sink and she saw what she hadn’t before.
Her breath caught in her throat and she really wanted to freak out. It was Steven Reasor.
He stood up, his hands out as though to show her he didn’t have a weapon. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have another place to go. Sasha snores and Dante sleep punches. I’ll go sleep in one of the cars.”
He didn’t sound like Steven Reasor. Reasor was always in control. He always sounded like he was the smartest person in the room, and also the one who would stab you the fastest, and she’d learned he hadn’t meant that figuratively.
Now that she looked at him, he seemed differently physically. Not that he didn’t have Reasor’s face. It was his face, just without the arrogance, without the hint of malice that had always hung over the young doctor.
She could do this. She could stand in the same room with him and ask a couple of questions. Owen could be in here quickly if she called out.
Was it stupid to think Owen would save her? Maybe if she thought it was about loving her, but this group wanted her alive. They apparently thought she still had something to add so yes, Owen would save her. It made logical sense. She could ask her questions.
Could she get some closure? Would standing in front of the bad guy make it easier to move on?
“You didn’t think I would recognize you.” She turned and forced herself to look at him. She was glad she’d turned down Owen’s offer of his T-shirt. Being dressed for bed would have made her feel vulnerable.
His hands came down and he sank back into the wooden, straight-backed chair he’d been in before she’d turned on the light. There was nothing on the table. No drink or phone or tablet he’d been amusing himself with. He’d been sitting in the dark with nothing but his thoughts. “No. We missed something. Or we didn’t have enough information to make a proper decision. We did try to mitigate the risk that you would know one of us.”
He sounded so defeated, the words rolling out of his mouth like they were rote and bland. This man was answering questions not because he wanted to but rather out of a sense of obligation. Again, not the Dr. Reasor she’d known.
“How would you even start to do that?”
He glanced up and she could see the dark circles under his eyes. “We had a couple of known aliases. I was a part of what we call the B team. We mostly stayed in Europe where it was easy for us to move around. I think I was held somewhere in Asia once. I can’t be sure. But that was what we had to go on. We couldn’t find a man named Reasor who was close to her. I know the name. I know the nickname, too.”
“Dr. Razor.”
A shudder went through his body and his gaze was on the hallway. “Yeah. Dr. Razor because he cuts so deep.”
“You liked the nickname.” It was odd to be standing here with a man she’d thought was dead. Hoped and prayed was dead. “You bragged about patients giving it to you, but I convinced myself you were being an ass. You were often an ass.”
His eyes came up again. “So I’ve heard. Can you tell me what I did to you?”
Could she? She wasn’t even sure what had been done to her at all. “It doesn’t matter if you’re not you anymore.”
“It matters. It matters to me. It obviously matters to you, too, since that was a look of terror on your face this afternoon. We’d been lucky that I hadn’t worked for you before. I’d actually asked to be put on your service, but I was told I hadn’t earned the honor yet.”
Carter. Carter always placed himself on her schedule when he could. Right up until Monday when he’d sent in one of the female interns. She’d liked wor
king with Annie. The young woman was funny and smart. Had Carter thought it was an insult to place Annie on her service? “It would have screwed up your plan.”
She’d lost her appetite, but her throat was dry. She opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. It looked like someone had stocked them up. There was lunch meat and a couple of bagged salads. Some cheese, grapes, strawberries and yogurts. Maybe she could handle the yogurt.
“Do you recognize any of the others?” Reasor asked.
Raspberry. She could do that. Her hunger was gone, fled in the light of her current company, but her weakness remained. “No. Except for Tomas.” That wasn’t his name. “Theo. I remember him. I saw a lot of Dr. McDonald’s patients, but I remember him in particular because she seemed fascinated by him. It was kind of a shock and everyone gossiped about it when she would bring him in because that was a woman completely obsessed with her work.”
“Did I hurt Theo?” The question came out on a tortured gasp, and it was easy to see he was trying to keep control of his emotions.
Was he faking it? Or was he the real deal? “She never left you alone with him.” Why hadn’t Theo known… “She must have used the drug on Theo after they visited the lab. Toward the end of the summer, she was in and out. She left you in charge most of the time.”
“Of course, I was.” He glanced up, his eyes wide and empty. “The spoons are in the drawer by the sink. Raspberry is my favorite.”
She found a spoon and forced herself to sit across from him. “That’s surprising. You used to be a carnivore. You made fun of the bunnies in the group. That’s what you called them. You said there wasn’t a point to eating something without a face. I often worried about your fiber intake.”
He huffed, a slightly amused sound. “I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the occasional burger, I do, but I like yogurt a lot. I don’t eat a lot of meat around River. She’s a vegetarian. Jax is pretty much one now, too. I eat whatever someone puts in front of me. I’m not that great in the kitchen but I’m trying.”
“I don’t know if I can believe you.” She wasn’t sure she even wanted to. She’d hated this man for so long that the idea he might be likeable was foreign. But if the drug did what she suspected it did, it could be true. If this man had the connections in his brain destroyed, he wouldn’t remember who he’d been. He would have woken up and not understood what was going on. He would have been afraid. Perhaps not like she’d been afraid, but it was something they had in common.
“Please tell me what I did to you.” It was a quiet plea, but she could hear the desperation behind it.
What would it be like to wake up in a strange place with absolutely no identity memory? Fear and sorrow and rage had been fueling her since that moment she’d seen Reasor, but curiosity was starting to swirl around in her brain.
What Hope McDonald had done was horrifying, but the need to know how she’d done it was there. It was like a physicist looking at the atom bomb. The man or woman looking at it would be sickened by what it could do, but the scientist…the scientist would need to know how it worked.
If she figured out exactly how it worked, could she reverse it? Could she give them back what was lost?
“You were cruel,” she said quietly before taking a spoonful of yogurt. It was tart and sweet and cool on her tongue. She had to force herself to swallow. “To everyone really, but to me in particular. You were McDonald’s star pupil. You didn’t want anyone to take your place.”
“Where did I go to school? Was I friends with anyone? I’m sorry. I have a lot of questions.”
“Yale Medical,” she replied. “At first I thought we would get along because we were both so young. We had a lot in common. We’d both gotten through school quickly and were considered real talent in our fields. At least that’s what McDonald told me. I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of you before. I didn’t hear a lot about you after. You didn’t have friends, per se. At least not on the team, but there was a reason for that. Most of the team came and went. Six weeks here, two months there. She had a core team of four researchers. Three of them are dead. Veronica Croft is the only one left. She worked with you quite closely.”
“Veronica?’ He leaned forward like that name was a lifeline. “Who was she?”
A vision of a pretty young woman with long, dark hair floated through her brain. “She was one of the research assistants McDonald brought over from Texas with her. She was fresh out of UT medical. From what I could tell, she wrote up a lot of the research for the group.”
“Could we find her?”
She nodded. “Yes, but I don’t know that you’ll like what she says about you. She hated you. You were mean to her. Again, you were pretty much mean all the time. You ran the group while McDonald was traveling, and she traveled a lot. She had speaking engagements and conferences. Well, that’s what she said she was doing. She said she worked with the US Army on some projects dealing with retrograde amnesia. I didn’t ask for proof.”
She should have, apparently.
He sat back. “She wouldn’t want to talk to me.” He seemed to shake it off. “Did I ever talk about my family? Did you know where I lived? We found evidence of a Dr. Reasor when we found McDonald’s personal notes, but we can’t find me. Anywhere. It’s like I never existed.”
And that was odd. “There’s no record of you at Yale?”
He shook his head. “No. We checked all the medical schools. I know that sounds crazy, but the team I work with has a couple of excellent hackers. There’s a whole company we work with. They do nothing but track missing persons. In this case they’re working backward, but if anyone could find me, it would be them. Nothing.”
“There can’t be nothing,” she said, her mind working. “You haven’t looked in the right place yet. Hope’s father would have had the power to change records perhaps, but he was dead by then. Why would she have erased your memory? Could you have seen something you shouldn’t have? I don’t think that’s it. She let you have power over the project when she was gone. I was limited in what I could see of her research, but you often used her computer. I think you had to have threatened her in some way.”
“Like I threatened you?”
She set aside the yogurt and put her hands on the table because she needed balance. This would be easier if Owen were here in the room with her, but she had to forget about him in a comfort role. She was certain all his talk was about keeping her under control. Pleasing her sexually had worked well once. He was simply going back to a familiar tactic. “Yes, you threatened me. You scared me so badly that I ran and I didn’t look back. It was the only time I ever left a job.”
“What did I threaten to do?” He seemed to brace himself as well, his shoulders squaring and spine straightening.
He was a lovely man. He always had been, but there had been a hardness to the old Steven Reasor, a sneer that seemed to dominate his every expression. There was none of that on this man’s face. He seemed younger than Reasor. Despite the doctor’s youthful age, he’d always seemed so much older than she was. Not so the man in front of her.
Maybe she needed to start thinking of him as a patient. If this man had walked in with a degenerative brain disease and had wanted to call himself Tucker, she would let him do that. She would allow him to do anything that made him comfortable.
And she would have had someone confront him with events that might spark his memory.
“You threatened to kill me.” She was happy with how even her tone was. “Not before you’d sampled the goods, as you put it, but you promised that after you’d figured out what made me tick, you were going to kill me. I believed you.”
“I threatened to rape you?” He looked sick at the thought.
“Not in so many words, but that was the gist.” She needed to know a few things. Faith had talked about what had happened to her husband, but only in vague terms. “McDonald was there the last few days I spent at the Kronberg lab. You and she were fighting about something. I don’t know what because sh
e refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong.”
McDonald had smiled, a gesture that didn’t reach her eyes, and sent her back to work. Nothing to worry about. She would handle everything, and could Becca bring her the latest results on the primary testing?
“In her journal she talked about dealing with Reasor if she had to. She didn’t say why, but she said if he continued to cause problems, she knew how to handle him.” His eyes became steady, focused utterly on her. “Did I rape you?”
“No.” She sighed. “I don’t think so.”
His breath hitched and he stood up, panic plain in every movement of his body. This was killing him, and she didn’t think he was faking it.
“I don’t think you did anything to me physically, but I had a dream the night before I left.” It was past time to figure this out. “It was weird. I had dinner and I felt sick. That was the last thing I remembered. I woke up in one of the patient beds, and someone had given me IV fluids. The nurse on duty told me I’d had a terrible stomach flu and I’d passed out. She said it happened to a couple of us who ate in the cafeteria.”
He shook his head as though the blows just kept coming. “You think I poisoned you?”
“I had dreams that night. The worst dreams I’ve ever had. They were so vivid. It felt like weeks passed and you were there. You tortured me.”
“In your dreams.”
She nodded. “And when I got back to my room, that was when you confronted me. You were angry because Dr. McDonald was talking about bringing me on full time. I was supposed to go on a trip to Argentina with her the week after, and you’d just found out. I guess you wanted to be the one to go.”
