Chapter Eighteen

 

 

Owen sat up in the godawful uncomfortable chair he’d been trying and failing to sleep in the moment he heard Becca cry out. He was on his feet in a heartbeat, staring down at her.

“You’re still here.” She groaned and sat up, pushing the covers away and then pulling them right back up because it was chilly.

It was downright cold and he didn’t have a blanket to huddle under. He didn’t have her to cuddle with.

“I told you I wouldn’t leave you. Are you all right? Was it a nightmare?”

He knew he sounded like a mother hen, but he couldn’t help it. Ever since that moment when she’d broken down utterly and he’d carried her out of the cabin, he’d known he’d likely ruined every single chance he had with her. And he’d also known he wanted that chance, all those chances. He’d known in that moment that he loved her with his whole broken and busted-up heart.

And he’d ached when she’d attacked him. Not because of her fists or her righteous anger. He understood that. He’d been oddly satisfied that she’d taken it out on him. He wanted her. All of her—her love, her body, her soul, her joy, her sorrow, and her rage. He’d stood there, willing all that anger to transfer from her to him. He would have told her he would take it all if it brought her a single moment of peace.

“I didn’t have a nightmare.” She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “I just woke up and for a moment I couldn’t remember where I was. I’m thirsty.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

A long sigh split the air. “I’m hungry, too. I didn’t eat lunch and then well…I’m hungry. I had a protein bar in my purse but it’s back at the foundation.”

“Robert and Ari hit the supermarket in town on their way in. Come on. I’ll make you a sandwich.” He held out a hand. She wouldn’t need to get dressed. Other than her taking off her shoes, she’d kept everything on, even the purple cardigan she’d been wearing. He’d tried to talk her into slipping into one of his T-shirts. He had two in his go-bag, but she’d refused.

After that blissful moment in the gazebo when she’d clung to him like she wouldn’t let go, she hadn’t touched him again. He’d had to be satisfied with the fact that she hadn’t argued about him staying in the room with her. It had likely been shock, but she’d simply taken off her shoes, got under the covers, and fallen into an exhausted sleep.

“All right.”

He was shocked when she put her hand in his and allowed him to help her up. She dropped his hand the minute she was on her feet, but she’d touched him. It had to be enough for now.

“I can get it myself,” she said. “I’m not going to run or anything. It’s not like I have anyplace to run to.”

“I’m going with you,” he returned, following her out the door.

“You’ll do what you want to do anyway,” she muttered as she turned down the hall.

The place was quiet except for the sound of keys clacking. The cabin only had two bedrooms and a tiny loft with two twin beds. He and Becca had taken one and Theo and Erin the other. River and Jax had bedded down in the back of the van while the loft held Sasha, Dante, and Tucker. He wasn’t sure which one was sleeping on the floor, but he would bet it was Tucker, and he wasn’t sleeping at all.

The living room was quiet, only the crackling sound of a fire in the hearth making any noise at all. Nina was curled up on the love seat while Ari and Robert had taken the couch. His friend seemed to be moving in the right direction this time. Robert was lying on his back while Ari had draped herself over him, her head resting on his chest. They were cuddled together under a blanket and looked warm and happy.

He was fairly certain he’d looked that way the previous night.

He led her into the dining room where Ezra’s face looked ghostly in the light from the computer screen. He glanced up. “Everything all right?”

“She’s hungry” Owen replied. “Everything’s fine. How are the plans going?”

“We can’t get a plane out until the day after tomorrow, but I don’t think that will give Green time to track us.” Ezra looked over at Becca. “We’re going to take you to London, but we have to do it carefully. Jax is working on getting you a Canadian passport. I promise I won’t let him pick your name. He’s not good at them.”

“When he made one for River, he named her Fjord,” Owen said.

A hint of a smile crossed her lips. “Because it’s water. Like a river.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Ezra corrected, “because she’s obviously not Nordic, and even Nordic people don’t name their kids Fjord. Jax thinks he’s creative. I need him to be realistic. Amber or Ashley is normal. Fjord makes security look twice, so River is Amber and you get to be Ashley. Regular Ashley. No two ee’s or the p is silent.”

“They argue about spelling, too,” Owen admitted. He’d found it amusing. “Jax thinks fake names should be special. Ezra thinks they should be as boring as possible. What did he try to name Becca?”

“Sunny Brooke. Not joking. First name Sunny. Last name Brooke,” Ezra said with a sigh. “I’m sure he was going to try to work the word farm in there somewhere. My question is how the hell does he know about Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. He knows next to nothing about the damn world. He can’t tell me who the last president of the United States was but he knows a kid’s book.”

“It’s Kay’s fault.” He adored Kayla Summers. She’d worked at the London office before she’d married her Hollywood sweetheart. Kay had been the one to take all the Lost Boys under her wing when they’d first showed up at The Garden. They’d been traumatized and unsure of what had happened to them and she’d sort of played big sister to all of them. “She would watch movies with us at night, trying to acclimate us to the culture. Unfortunately, she showed us the The Shining and then Sasha started sleeping with an ax, so then we had a whole week of kids’ films. I still don’t understand why they had to shoot that dog.”

“Old Yeller was rabid,” Ezra said with a shake of his head. “Like a couple of you. Anyway, Becca is now Ashley Jones from Ottawa. We’ll take a private jet to Mexico City. From there we’re going to split up. I’m sending Becca back to London with Ari and Nina.” He held out a hand as though he knew what came next. “Brody and Nick are meeting them in Mexico. They’ll provide security, although don’t let Nina hear me say that. She’s a badass all on her own.”

“I thought she was a barista,” Becca said.

“She makes a mean latte and can kill a man fifteen different ways. She’s a modern woman,” Owen explained. “But I would rather escort her. I’m not wanted by Interpol. I don’t have a record like the others. I can go home.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, but we’ll talk about it later. I think you should feed her and get back to bed.” Ezra nodded to Becca. “You need to stay in the house. The police are looking for you. There hasn’t been any media coverage yet, but the Huisman Foundation has blocked your access to the building and they spent the evening searching your lab and your apartment.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“I know because I have sources.” It was all Ezra would say.

Becca thought about that for a moment. “Did you have cameras on me? Did you put them in my apartment?”

Owen’s gut churned, but he wasn’t going to lie to her again. “Yes. We had to know where you were at all times since Tucker and Dante and Sasha came in and out.”

“I wouldn’t have known who the janitors were,” she admitted. “That’s shitty of me, but it’s true. I would have known the other guy. I’m going to the kitchen. I won’t like sneak out the back or anything. You can stay here and plan the rest of my life. I guess I should be happy you don’t turn me over to the police and be done with it.”

“We wouldn’t do that.” How did he make her believe?

She simply turned and walked to the small galley kitchen at the back of the cabin.

“It’s okay,” Ezra said quietly. “She can’t get out without us knowing. The most she can do is walk through the kitchen to the other part of the cabin and get back into bed without you. If she opens one of the outer doors or windows, the alarm will go off.”

So that’s what Dante and Sasha had been doing while they’d been debriefing Rebecca. “I’m sure she’s thrilled that she’s locked in.”

“Well, it appears she’s accepted that she’s staying. I’m glad she understands about Green and what he’ll do to her.” Ezra sat back and rubbed his thumb between his brows as though trying to stave off a headache. “He used us to do his dirty work. If we’d gotten that package, he would have found a way to take it, maybe even used the authorities. I’m a burned CIA agent and most of the crew are known and wanted criminals. He can fuck with us and no one will give a damn.”

“Then why change up the game? Why not let us get it and…” It came to him. “He found out someone was setting her up and he’s using it. He walked into a situation that was already going on and used it to his advantage. Someone was setting up Becca for a big fall. Do you think Green is working with MSS?”

He wouldn’t put it past the bastard to work with Chinese intelligence if it furthered his own agenda.

“Or MSS was already in place and he used that, too,” Ezra replied. “The fucker was always good at finding an advantage. I think this all fell into his lap and he shifted strategies. So we’re going to do the same thing. We can’t find that data. All right, we’ll take the brilliant neurologist, pair her with Walt, who can learn almost anything in rapid-fire time, and see what we come up with. While they’re working, we’ll keep searching for what we need.”

They would keep looking for a hint that anyone else had the drug and if they did, they would try to put a stop to it. They would look for leverage, for a way to save his brothers and get them any kind of normal life.

He would be away from her. He would have to work to get her back to her life, to a life that couldn’t include him.

Ezra looked up, his expression grim. “Owen, it’s obvious you want her. Maybe I was wrong about sending you with the others. Talk to her. You don’t have to be here. You don’t have to go with us. If you want, you can stay in London and try to find some normalcy.”

But he was the only one of them without a global warrant out for his arrest. He was the only one who could show his face in certain places. “She doesn’t want me. I’m needed here. I’ve spent the entire time I can remember trying to figure out my place in all of this, but now I know I’m supposed to be with this team. I’m supposed to make sure this group of men can live a life since I had a hand in taking their old one from them.”

“Guilt will eat you up if you let it,” Ezra said. “All that stuff you said about Tucker, you know it applies to you, too. You’re not the same man.”

“But he’s still there, deep down. That selfish bastard still lives inside me. Do you know there was a part of me that was happy when we found out she can’t go back?”

Ezra nodded as if he understood completely. “Because you want her in our world, and now none of us has a choice. I get that, but it’s not like you manipulated things to get her here. Would you have done that?”

He wouldn’t have taken her work from her. “No. Never. She’s worked too hard to do that to her.”

“Then you’re merely adapting like the rest of us.” Ezra sat back with a heavy sigh. “Do you know what my first thought was when I realized my ex-wife was working this case?”

“Was it something violent?”

“Maybe. She likes a bite of pain,” he said, the words almost too quiet to hear. “I thought thank god it doesn’t have to be over. How stupid is that? She was there to work against me and deep down I was okay with that because it meant I would see her again. I’m a stupid fucker. She cheated on me.”

He and Ezra had different definitions of that word. “I thought you weren’t married at the time.”

Ezra was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve always been married to her and yet I know there was a time before Solo. Kim. I call her Solo because it’s far easier to deal with the operative than the woman underneath. I wish I could separate them sometimes.”

“I think she still loves you, if that’s any comfort.”

“Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

And it wouldn’t be for him either. “Becca doesn’t know me. She knows who I’ve shown her. She fell for a lie.”

“Was it?” Ezra asked. “You didn’t step into that elevator with plans to seduce her, did you?”

“No.” But it hadn’t taken him long.

“It would have been simpler for you to have introduced yourself the way you were supposed to. You know we had an argument about why you changed up the plan. Some of the guys thought you might have done it because Big Tag took you off lead.”

“I didn’t.” He wasn’t surprised they thought that way though.

“Tucker bought the whole line about how you realized she needed to be played differently,” Ezra pointed out.

“I told you what happened. I wasn’t lying.”

Ezra chuckled and sounded a bit amused. “Oh, you were lying, but mostly to yourself. A couple of us knew why you’d done it. Me and Robert and Jax. We knew it had been about her. You see we all know what it’s like to meet a woman and know. We might not have known exactly what we knew, but it was there deep down. Like a memory of something beautiful, a hint of some life we used to lead. You saw her and something clicked into place.”

And he hadn’t been able to say the words he should have. He hadn’t been able to lie about his attraction to her. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from kissing her. “I love her, Ezra.”

“Yeah, I got that.” The boss gave him a sad sort of smile. “It’s okay. Stay with her. Stop punishing yourself. It’s time to let that go.”

“And how will she feel when she finds out who I was?” It was his greatest fear, that she would learn what he’d done and turn away in disgust.

“When she finds out you were so desperate to save your mom and sister that you made a poor choice? Somehow I think she’ll forgive you for that. Everyone else has. Even Erin. Oh, that woman won’t ever let you know it, but she disagreed with Big Tag about pulling you from the lead. And Big Tag didn’t pull you because he was still angry with you. He pulled you because you stay in the shadows and show no ambition to move out of them. He pulled you because you let your guilt rule your life, and that means you’re likely to do something stupid like sacrifice yourself at the earliest opportunity.”

He would argue but the truth was Ezra was right. Big Tag was right. “I owe them. I owe the Taggarts a lot.”

“Jesus, I hate these things.” Erin Taggart sighed and pulled out a chair at the table, slumping into it. “Sorry, I can’t sleep. The bed here sucks and Theo’s mumbling in his sleep. Nothing scary. He’s talking to Case about beer. I can’t have a beer so I don’t want to listen to him talk about beer. Then I come out here and you two are having a feels talk. Haven’t I vomited enough for one day?”

He had no idea how to handle Erin. It was best to simply apologize. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t murder you. Doesn’t change anything,” she shot back.

“Erin.” Ezra managed to make her name an admonition.

The redhead sighed and sat back. “Owen, we’ve all done shit we’re not proud of. You should have trusted your team, but you panicked. She had your family. I personally would have let my brothers or father rot, but apparently you loved your family.” She shuddered. “Fuck, I’ve been around Avery too long. My partner’s wife is a freaking saint and I’m going to take a play from her book. You know what you owe me, Shaw? You owe me a good life. You owe it to me to try to find some happiness and to make better choices this time around. I forgive you and shit. Now can someone make some hot chocolate or something? It’s going to be a long night. I hate this job.”

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 working 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 she 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.”

His eyes narrowed. “Rebecca, Argentina was where her secret lab was located. That was where she held Theo. If she was taking you there, she would have kept you there, too. She likely wanted you to solve her Theo problem.”

A chill went through her.

“Do you remember who was around you at dinner?” Tucker asked.

She shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t remember much. I remember walking into the cafeteria and then waking up. They told me there was something bad in the salad.”

“Or someone dosed you. We know she’d worked on the time dilation drug by that point. Tennessee Smith knows what that feels like.” Tucker started to pace. “I don’t understand why she would have done it if she was planning on taking you.” He stopped. “I did it. I did it to get rid of you. I did it to keep my place.”

It was easier to talk to him now that she could see a bit past who he’d been. The old Reasor never paced. He’d been almost preternaturally still. It had been unnerving. “You don’t know that. The only way to know that is to uncover the memories.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to. I know the others are hoping there’s some kind of cure out there, but not me. I won’t take it. I won’t go back to who I used to be. Would you? Would you unlock your Mr. Hyde?”

“Knowing what you did for McDonald could help the others,” she said, her doctor brain working on how she would do it. She would need scans and blood work. If McDonald had used Becca’s own research to perfect her treatments, then she should be able to do something about it. “Have you tried hypnosis? The human body will always attempt to heal itself, and it can be shocking how much it can do given time and rest.”

“Yeah, Ari’s tried that with all of us. Some of the others get flashes sometimes. I get feelings. Like I should be doing something. Like I left something undone. I don’t know why but I think about old-looking places. Places that look like London, but they’re not.”

She nodded. “That’s because she can’t erase your mind. She could potentially destroy the sections that deal with memory, but that would be a delicate procedure and one that would as likely hurt the parts she wanted to function as not. She needed to break down specific communication between brain synapses, and do it in a way no one has before. Not that anyone who isn’t psychotic would want to. I’m trying to do the opposite. I’m trying to find a way to break down the plaque that cuts off…damn it. She found a way to build it up and very quickly. In a targeted way.”

She could work with that. Especially if she had a lab. She needed those damn notes. McDonald wouldn’t have gotten rid of them and she would have had a failsafe.

“I’m sorry.” Tucker sounded tired.

The words burst through the momentary excitement of discovery, and guilt swelled inside her again. These men had been broken utterly and she was excited about a new project.

Because if McDonald figured out how to build up walls around sections of the memory center, then she had also known how to break them down. The key was here. She knew it was. It was held in these men and that research.

But the man in front of her was real, and she was shocked by the tears that ran down his face. Everything else about him was controlled, but those tears…

“You aren’t the same man you were.” That particular truth hit her soundly as she stared at him, unsure what to do. “You have nothing to apologize for because you aren’t the one who did it to me.”

“I don’t know who I was, what I did. I meet people and I wonder how I hurt them. I don’t ever want to know. I don’t want to lose this me. I don’t have any right to ask you this, but can you help me stay me?” His jaw tightened and he was obviously on the edge. “Please. I have to stay me or I need to…I can’t go back.”

She could walk away from him. She didn’t have to promise this man anything.

Except he was giving her a chance to choose. If it had really been Steven Reasor standing in front of her, she could have walked away, but this was a man named Tucker and he wanted to be good. She had no idea what forces had molded Reasor into a man they called Razor, but this man was different.

And he was in pain.

She’d promised her mother that she would be happy, but happiness sometimes wasn’t a choice. Happiness could be taken away, made into an impossibility due to circumstance. Maybe what her mother should have asked her was to always be true to who she was because then, even if her world got ripped away, she could be content.

She could hate this man for what he’d done to her in another life. Or she could see him as a man who needed help, and she’d dedicated her life to giving help when and where it was needed.

Becca stood and crossed the space between them. “I promise you, Tucker. I’ll do what I can to help your friends, to help any of them who want to get back what they lost, and I’ll make sure we don’t need your memories. I can do it. I can make this work.”

He broke then and his hands came out, as though he couldn’t not ask for comfort.

When his legs went out and he slumped to the floor, she went with him. She let her arms go around him and finally let go of that day. She’d been a victim, and nothing she could have done would have likely fixed the situation.

“Get your hands…” Owen stopped when she looked up at him, his words halting and face transforming from anger to confusion as he looked down at them. “Are you all right?”

She nodded as she felt a shudder go through Tucker. “I am.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” Tucker said, his voice tortured. “But you should know that I did. I hurt her, Owen.”

“You didn’t,” a feminine voice said. When Becca glanced up she saw they weren’t alone. Ariel stood in the doorway next to Ezra, with Robert behind her. “You didn’t hurt her, but someone who wore your skin did. I think we should talk about this. I’ll make us some tea. Why don’t the rest of you go back to bed?”

Go back to bed with Owen. That seemed like a bad idea. Even being in the same room with the man was dangerous, and after her talk with Tucker, she was on the edge again.

Ezra stepped away, pulling a phone from his pocket.

“Thank you, Dr. Walsh,” Tucker whispered. “I’m still sorry. I’ll try to stay away from you. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

But he was the only one who knew anything about medicine, and she wasn’t certain he would have forgotten what he’d learned from Dr. McDonald. That kind of knowledge could remain even when personal memories did not. She might be able to coax some of that information out of him and might lead them one step closer to a cure.

Sometimes bad things happened, and it was up to her to make the most of them, to try to see the positive that could come from it.

“I’m okay. You’re Tucker. You’re not Steven. And we’re okay, you and I.” She let Owen help her up. “Good night, Tucker. I’ll see you in the morning. We can fight it out over the last raspberry yogurt.”

“It’s all yours.” Tucker managed to make it back to his seat.

Owen didn’t let go of her hand. “Good night. We’ll see you all in the morning.”

She followed him out, a piece of herself settling. But the larger piece was still in turmoil and it was all about Owen. Maybe it was time to have it out with him, too.

Ezra stepped back in. “We need to move out now. There’s a team on the way. I don’t know how the fucker found us, but he did. Big Tag says we’ve got maybe five minutes. Owen, take Dr. Walsh in my SUV. Ari and Robert, go with them.”

Owen’s hand found hers and he started into the living room.

“I’ll go wake my sleeping prince,” Erin said. “We’ll stay behind and deal with the fallout. I can’t wait to answer all those questions.”

“Tucker, take Nina and hop in the van with River and Jax. I’ll take Dante and Sasha,” Ezra said, reaching for his backpack. “You know the protocols. Let’s move.”

Owen frowned at his boss. “You know what this means?”

Ezra nodded tightly. “I do. We have to deal with it later. Scatter now and implement a twenty-four-hour blackout on communications. See you on the other side, brothers.”

It looked like her night was taking a turn for the worse.