“Faina Kassis?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anyone else in the apartment with you?”
“No.”
“Is there anyone else in the cab with you?”
The cab swayed around the corner. “The driver.”
“Okay, Edie. You’re at your massage appointment. You’ve checked in at the desk, you’ve waited. Now tell me where they take you.”
“The room is small and grey. The carpet is grey. The massage table is covered in sheets. There is a wood desk with a computer. It’s off. An iPod on a docking station with a speaker. Papers in a folder. A plant in the corner. It’s fake.”
“Who is in the room with you, Edie?”
“Pino.”
“Where is Faina Kassis?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me where you are during the massage.”
“Lying facedown on the massage table. I’m not wearing a shirt or bra. My body is covered with a sheet. It smells like lavender. Everything smells like lavender. There is music. Sound. Water over rocks. Flute.”
“Are you relaxed?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Okay, Edie. You are going to stay relaxed and breathe. You are going to listen to your breathing and to the water over rocks and the flute. I am going to ask you next about the massage. First, other sounds will happen around you. Movement. Talking. Shouting. You won’t hear any of it. There is no need to pay attention to it. Breathe, listen to the music, smell the lavender. Pay attention to my voice and your voice. Only my voice and your voice. Can you do that, Edie?”
Easy. So easy. Pain was nonexistent. Concern had not come with her into this room.
“Yes.”
Breathe. Water over rocks, the lilt of a flute as it climbed and descended. Arms fell free, weightless and easy. Breathe.
“No, I’m not going anywhere.”
That voice didn’t exist. Edie wanted it to, the elusiveness of dreams.
“Ms. Kenny, I need you to come with us now.”
“No.”
Voices were not there. Not in this room. The scuffle, a fight, was happening somewhere else. Edie’s stomach dropped, worry wormed its way through her stomach.
“I want to get up,” she said.
“You can get up anytime you want, Edie. Nothing is holding you. Can you try something first?”
She was afraid. Something was missing. “Yes.”
“Describe the water over rocks. Is it fast or slow?”
“Slow. Bubbling. High notes and low notes. It never stops.”
“That’s good. Remember, you hear only my voice and your voice right now.”
“Edie—”
“My voice and your voice, Edie. No need to pay attention to anything else right now.”
She wanted to. That voice was in her chest as she breathed. It was in her chest. A warmth and a weight, a touch and a reassurance. Edie did not pay attention to the door closing, but worry spiked and she put her hand over her chest to hold the voice in. She relaxed again.
“How are you feeling, Edie?”
“Calm.”
“Good. Tell me what happens next?”
“Pino comes into the room. He is quiet and serious. Shy maybe. He tells me he will massage only shoulders and neck today. He changes the music. I…” Edie finds only blankness. A darkness. A gap.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t remember.” The words were a whimper.
“Tell me about the music.”
“Strings this time. Quite beautiful. Not a composer I recognize.”
“Is there anything else different?”
A haze of light, a kind of glow. “Yes, there’s a pink light. I can see it through my closed eyes. But not really. It moves slowly, and it’s hard not to see it. I follow it. I feel sleepy.”
“Feel sleepy like that now, Edie. It’s safe.”
Strings started high and drifted in smooth precision up and down the scale. The glow seemed to follow. Edie watched and slept. New voices.
“I hear voices. Words. Can I hear the voices in my head?”
“Yes, Edie. You can hear the voices in your head. Tell me what they are saying.”
“No.”
“Can you still hear the voices?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You can tell me what they are saying.”
“I can’t.”
“Edie, what are they saying?”
Her head hurt. She pressed her hand to her chest. Where was she?
“Edie, you are going to breathe in while you count to four, then breathe out as you count to four.”
That voice was not the warm voice in her chest, but she paid attention to it. She followed the command.
“Where are you, Edie?”
“Lying on the massage table.”
“Good. What are you hearing?”
“Music. And poetry.”
“Do you like poetry?”
“Yes. I used to read it a long time ago.”
“Did you ever memorize poetry?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me the poem you’re hearing, Edie.”
She wanted to speak but struggled.
“The strings are playing, aren’t they, Edie?”
“Yes.”
“Listen to the strings and tell me the poem.”
They went together. That was okay. “The savageness of man lies not in the actions but in the echoes of silent history.”
“Very good. Tell me the rest.”
“Fortune has no will where flowers refuse the fertile soil of deliberate thought.”
“Keep going, Edie.”
“Waves can tell lies as oceans undermine the sanctity of every natural law.”
“Excellent. Keep going.”
“Men who do not falter as they lie know not the hearts of a truth-speaking nation.”
“Well done, Edie. Tell me the rest.”
A blank. A break. A greyness.
“There is nothing else.”
“Is there a key to the poem?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there a way to unlock it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did the voice tell you anything else?”
The blankness and greyness. Fog. “No.”
“Is the voice still there?”
“No.”
“What do you feel?”
“The sheet covering my shoulders.”
“Is there anyone else in the room?”
“No, I’m alone.”
“Okay, Edie. When I snap my fingers, you are going to wake a different part of your brain. You will remember everything that happened. You will remember that you have been safe. All your memories are still your own.”
Snap.
Edie opened her eyes. The light in the room seemed dimmer. She had an odd sense of time having passed without her being aware of it. But her thoughts were clear and sharp. Then a wave of anxiety hit her in the chest and she locked eyes with Dr. Crask before looking behind her. Skye’s chair was empty.
“Where’s Skye?” she said.
Crask put up a hand.
“Let me complete the session, Ms. Black. Can you tell me where you are?”
Her modulated voice was a smoothness that made Edie suddenly angry. “I’m in the fucking OPP Headquarters, my name is Edie Black, you are Dr. Diana Crask, it is Thursday afternoon, and I want to know where Skye Kenny is right this instant.”
Dr. Crask’s looked quickly at the one-way mirror and then back to Edie. She seemed oddly subdued. Uncertain.
“You shouldn’t have been able to hear that. When she left. I successfully induced an altered state, you were responding to suggestion. We retrieved…something. But you shouldn’t have been able to hear that.”
Edie said nothing. She sat very still. It was stillness or screaming right now.
Dr. Crask looked back at the window. “We’re done.”
Edie turned to the door when it opened, need
ing to see Skye’s tousled, messy hair, her long stride as she crossed the room, the laser focus of her gaze. But Superintendent Donaldson walked into the room.
“We have some questions for you regarding the information you just shared under hypnosis. Are you well enough now, or do you need a break?”
The conciliatory tone, the vague assumption of frailty, the condescending look was nearly more than Edie could stomach. She swallowed the torrent of anger and accusations and channeled the energy into what she needed. Information.
“I am perfectly well, thank you. I am not, however, open to being questioned after you broke our agreement for Ms. Kenny to remain with me anytime I was being questioned.”
Donaldson was clearly unhappy with her language. “There was no official agreement, Ms. Black.”
Edie smiled. It was cold. “Hide behind that if it makes you feel better. It was an agreement. You broke it. I have nothing to say.”
Donaldson flicked his gaze to the one-way mirror and back again. Edie tried not to think about the number of eyes and camera lenses directed at her right now.
“Ms. Kenny has not been cleared at this level of the investigation—”
“That’s your problem, not mine. And it existed when you agreed to allow her to be part of this.”
“The information is a matter of national security, Ms. Black.” Donaldson was clearly losing his patience.
“Yes, I believe it is,” Edie said calmly. As he escalated, she relaxed. She could handle obstinate all day. “And unless you can find a specific, plausible, and ironclad reason why Skye Kenny should be barred from continuing to do the job I have hired her to do, this matter of national security is getting no help from me.”
She was gambling. As Donaldson stewed over her ultimatum, Edie considered the fact that maybe she had very little else to contribute to this investigation. She got the sense Dr. Crask had guided her through revealing everything she knew. But Donaldson didn’t know that.
“I’ll be back,” Donaldson said tersely, and he left the room.
Dr. Crask still had the look of uncertainty as she regarded Edie. Edie held her gaze but didn’t speak.
“I would not have agreed to them removing Ms. Kenny if I believed it would cause you stress. I truly did not anticipate that reaction. I should have. I hope you will accept my apology.”
Strict ethics, that’s what JC had said. Edie appreciated Crask taking responsibility for an error and her public, even documented, apology. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to forgive.
“I would have pulled you out if you’d continued to show an elevated stress level,” Crask continued. “Regardless of what I was asked to do. But you were able to calm down, and I made the professional judgment to continue.”
Edie recognized how skillfully Crask had guided her through the hypnosis. She was left with the clarity of a dream and an odd awareness of having been present and not. Even with Crask’s skill, it was sensing Skye that had helped her descend. It was the feel of Skye in her chest that she’d held on to, the voice that had become breath along with her breath as she’d twisted through panic in her hypnotic state. She’d felt her inside. Edie put her hand to her chest, mimicking the motion she’d made while she was under. Right there. Skye was right there. How? How had she let her in, so close, already? A mistake, maybe. Among so many mistakes. Was this simply a reaction to stress? A lifeline, not love.
Edie stood quickly and walked to the covered windows. With a quick, jerky movement she pulled up the blinds, searching the cloudy sky and cityscape for an answer. She didn’t see one.
“You said ‘regardless of what you were asked to do,’” Edie said, turning to Crask. She needed to refocus, solve a solvable problem. “I’d like you to tell me what they asked you to do.”
“I informed you at the beginning of our session the goal of the hypnotic induction,” Crask said, a little authority returning to her tone and posture. “All questions were directed at that goal.”
“It was recorded.”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to see it,” Edie said. “Beginning to end.”
“You’ll have to ask Donaldson.”
Edie’s gut said Crask was skillfully maneuvering her around something. Sleight of hand, the suggestion to look elsewhere.
“Just before you pulled me out, you said I would remember everything. That my memories would still be my own.”
Crask nodded.
“You didn’t have to do that. You could have removed the whole episode.”
“Absolutely not,” Crask said, clearly affronted. “I could not ethically remove memories from you without your permission. Even with your permission.”
“But you were asked to, weren’t you? By Donaldson or someone else.” She waved vaguely toward the mirror without looking at it. She didn’t care who heard.
Crask’s lips thinned, and she said nothing. Edie hadn’t really expected her to, but her body language was confirmation enough. Edie looked back out the window, and the two women waited in complete silence.
Nearly ten minutes later, the door opened again. Donaldson stood in the doorway and indicated with a jerk of his head that Crask should exit. She made no acknowledgement of Edie as she left. Then Donaldson stood aside and allowed Skye to enter the room before closing the door behind her.
Skye looked murderous. From the spark of fury in her eyes and the set of her shoulders to the way she moved across the room as if hunting prey. Edie held up a trembling hand. She didn’t want Skye to come any closer. She needed distance, recognizing how easy she found it to be pulled into the force field of Skye’s protective energy. Wasn’t that all it was?
Skye stopped in the middle of the room at Edie’s nonverbal request.
“They took me out. I didn’t know how much I should fight. You were already agitated, and I didn’t want to make it worse.” Skye poured out words like a confession.
“I know. It’s all right.”
“It’s not,” Skye said darkly.
“Where did they take you?” Edie said. Stick to facts. Seek information.
“Down the hall. JC was back there,” Skye said, indicating the mirror. “I had to trust she’d watch out for you. I’m sorry, Edie. I should have fought. I should have anticipated the fuckers would do this.”
“I’ve asked to see the video footage, but if JC witnessed the whole session, then that’s good enough for me.” Edie needed confirmation from JC that she remembered everything. Her gut said Crask had told her the truth, that she would not have taken any of Edie’s memory of the hypnosis session. But Edie needed to be certain.
“Are you okay?”
“I’d like to see JC.” She turned to the mirror and raised her voice. “I’d like to see Constable Caldwell.”
“Edie?” Skye took a step closer.
Edie shook her head and took a step back. Skye looked bewildered, hurt, and then her expression closed down. Soldier Skye. Alert and impassive. Immovable.
A moment later, JC stepped into the room. She looked pissed. “Edie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Edie was sick to death of apologies. “Did you witness the entire hypnosis session? From the time I entered the room until Dr. Crask brought me out again. Did you see it?”
“Yes. I saw it all.”
“Good. Then I’d like to sit down with Donaldson. Or whoever is calling the shots. I’m ready to talk about what we just figured out I’ve been carrying around and what we’re going to do with it.”
JC and Skye both observed her with calculating expressions. Edie refused to shrink under their combined gazes. She felt strong, maybe a little shaky at her core, but she had the will and the presence of mind and the energy to move forward. As JC looked at Skye, shrugged, then led the way out of the office, Edie rested in her conviction that nothing was going to stop her.
Chapter Thirteen
“I’m going to stop you right there, Ms. Black.”
Edie sighed.
Whatever three-day course Donaldson had taken twenty years ago on how to resolve a conflict situation wasn’t working, and his inefficiency aggravated Edie almost as much as his condescension.
“What are you objecting to this time?” Edie said.
They’d already been at this for an hour. Donaldson from the RCMP combined forces, Petrie from the Canadian Firearms Program, JC, Crask, and Edie. Skye, who had said absolutely nothing, just hovered like a dark cloud at the back of the room, both threatening and comforting. They were trying to discern the meaning to the lines of verse Edie had delivered during her hypnosis. The team was convinced Edie had also been given a key to the code, or had been in the presence of said key.
“We have to make absolutely certain we have retrieved all information, Ms. Black. We cannot move forward without that understanding.”
“But why not move forward with what you’ve got?”
She was fully serious, but Donaldson and Petrie were looking at her like she was dense.
Edie sighed and tried again. “Look, I gave you those lines of verse, but I don’t know what they mean. And I really don’t think I have the key.”
“I think Ms. Black is right,” JC said, sitting forward in her seat. “It’s shitty security to keep the key with the lock.”
“Then we’re stuck,” Petrie said, throwing his pen on the desk and leaning back. “Until our guys can crack this code with what we’ve got.”
They wanted different things, that was clear. Now that Edie had the information out of her head, she wanted whoever put it there captured. She wanted freedom. For herself and for Faina.
If the lines of verse were really linked to illegal arms trade, law enforcement wanted dates, times, and locations of a drop. They wanted quantity and types of arms.
Something didn’t make sense. The information was linked to Alex Rada. The people who had attacked them in the alley were linked to Alex Rada. But he was the one who had put the information in Edie’s head in the first place. Which meant they didn’t need Edie to get the information back. They needed Edie to protect the lock and key.
“They’re protecting the technology,” Edie said, speaking mostly to herself. “The concept of embedding information in the human brain. It’s proprietary. And next to useless if law officials are aware of its existence.”
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