for the government’s involvement, they wouldn’t have been able to keep him in custody for this long. Not when they couldn’t establish a motive, and the only evidence he’d been involved in his partners’ deaths was circumstantial. But Tristan was also convinced Jason was better off under his watch than the government’s. “Did you kill them?”
“How should I know?” He finally showed some emotion, shoving his fingers through his unkempt hair and pushing off the bed to pace around the room. He was pale and too thin; the blue drawstring pants hung on his hips. “The only freaking thing I remember is my name.”
He grimaced and swore even more viciously. “What I thought was my name.” He gestured at the mirror and the people he still believed were watching their sessions even though Hayley had assured him otherwise many times. “They’re the ones who told me it’s really Jason.”
All of this she also knew. She uncrossed her ankles and set her notepad on her lap. “I’d like to try something new, if you’re willing.” She reached into the side pocket of her slacks, her fingertips brushing over the panic button as she extracted the short pencil that, along with the notebook, was all she’d been allowed to bring in with her. Jason wasn’t even allowed plastic eating utensils at this point because he was far too adept at causing damage with even the most innocent of objects.
He wasn’t suicidal. But he definitely had bouts of rage. Considering everything he’d been going through for the past several months, even those fits probably stemmed from reasonable cause.
“Hypnosis,” she finished.
He snorted and returned to sit on the bed with his back against the wall, his long legs crossed. “Doesn’t work.”
“How do you know?” She’d spent enough time with him now to feel confident that his condition wasn’t an act. He truly did not remember anything. Physical causes for his amnesia had already been ruled out before he’d been placed under Tristan’s “care.” Which left the psychological. He could very well have been involved in the death of his partners, but if so, she honestly believed he couldn’t recall the memory. “Do you remember?” she asked with a faint smile.
He bared his teeth in a humorless grimace. “Don’t quit your day job, Doc. You’re no good at standup comedy.”
Doc
. Too easily, Seth snuck back into her mind.
She stared hard at the blank pad she’d put in her lap until his image was once more pushed behind the barrier that separated her personal life from her professional.
“Hypnosis,” she continued calmly, “can be a very useful tool in recovering dissociated and repressed memories. But it’s nothing that can be forced on you, Jason. Not by me or anyone else. You have to be willing to participate. To try.”
“And when I do remember, I spend the rest of my life on death row. Or worse,” he added with a look toward the mirror.
“We don’t know that yet.”
His expression was skeptical to say the least.
“My plan isn’t to work on that right now,” Hayley continued. “Your entire life isn’t made up only with the time you spent in Central America. You had parents. Siblings. A childhood. You went to school. To college.” All of these things she knew from Tristan. But Jason couldn’t recall any of the details. “Let’s just start with retrieving memories from your childhood. When you learned you liked reading fiction, for instance,” she added. “Or we can spend another hour together twiddling our thumbs again.” She spread her hands slightly. The man was a prisoner. He needed to feel some control, particularly when it came to his own mind. “Your call.”
He thumped his head against the wall behind him a few times. “You went to a wedding this weekend,” he said abruptly. “I heard the gorillas talking.”
The work–life barrier in her head vibrated a little but held fast. “There was a wedding. A lot of people
Vivian Cove
Elizabeth Lowell
Alexandra Potter
Phillip Depoy
Susan Smith-Josephy
Darah Lace
Graham Greene
Heather Graham
Marie Harte
Brenda Hiatt