by J. Kenner
“What was the point of the domino?” I ask Cass, then realize I know the answer as soon as the question leaves my mouth. “Because of the business center,” I answer.
The Domino is a relatively new business park in Santa Monica. Specifically, it’s a co-development between Stark Real Estate and Steele Development, which means that Jackson and Sylvia worked on it together. And I can’t blame her for wanting to memorialize that in ink.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that it’s a very good idea. And despite my aversion to tiny needles, I shift on the bar stool to face Cass directly. “Can we go now?” I ask. “There’s something I want you to do for me.”
6
His dreams had been filled with a green-eyed beauty, and Jack woke with her still on his mind. And he hated himself for it.
He’d dreamed of the soft brush of her blond hair against his bare chest. The gentle pressure of her full lips against his skin. The flash in her feline eyes as she’d tilted her head up, then practically purred as she eased down his body, her soft hands exploring his skin, her generous mouth doing such extraordinary things before she straddled his hips and rode him all the way to heaven.
He’d awakened worn out and sated, the memory of her scent clinging to him as tightly as the hot, twisted bed sheets.
He tried to tell himself that his dream lover had been an anonymous girl. A fantasy woman. The blond-haired, green-eyed siren of his earlier dream in the hotel. But it wasn’t. The woman who’d so sweetly tormented him in the night wasn’t an ephemeral fantasy. She was Denise Marshall. And he had no business allowing her into his dreams, much less fantasizing about her lips on his cock.
She was his former partner. A professional, just like he supposedly was, although damned if he could remember any aspects of his career. And she wasn’t just his partner; she was another man’s wife. A man who was gone.
A man she wanted back.
He’d stood right here in this room and assured her that he was honorable. That he would never take what belonged to another man. That he would respect her pain and loss.
And all of that was bullshit, because damned if he didn’t fuck her in his dream.
Yesterday, he hadn’t known what kind of man he was. Not really. How could he have?
Today, he knew.
“Perhaps you’re being too hard on yourself,” Dr. Tam said when he met her in therapy later that morning. She wore a plain gray suit, her shirt buttoned up to her neck. Her dark hair was cut short, revealing small ears that contrasted the lovely, huge eyes that hid behind the large, plastic frames of her glasses.
He guessed her to be in her late fifties, and he knew from Seagrave that in addition to her work with field agents, she conducted independent research and was a frequent lecturer at medical schools around the globe.
Jack didn’t care about any of that. If she could peel back the curtain to reveal his memories, she was useful. Her credentials were just so much noise.
“Fantasy is an important aspect of life,” she continued, her eyes never leaving his face. “An important part of being human.”
“I already knew I was human,” he told her dryly. “Now I know I’m an asshole, too.”
“Because you made love to a woman in a dream?”
“Fine,” he said. “You’re right. I’m making too much of it.”
The words were a lie, of course. He didn’t know why, but Denise Marshall had gotten under his skin. She was a constant in his thoughts, so much that she felt like a talisman. As if her kiss could restore him. As if the only way he could find peace was in her arms.
It was bullshit, and he knew it. She was beautiful and he was lost. Lost in the world. In his own head. And he didn’t need Dr. Tam to tell him that he was clinging to her as a connection to his past. His former partner. His friend. He’d elevated her in his mind and turned her into something she wasn’t.
He got it. He didn’t need therapy to explain it.
And he damn sure didn’t need to share it.
He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Look, I’m sorry. But like I said, you’re right. I’m drowning in self-pity, but we both know I’m not exactly sure-footed here. My entire world is inside this building. My little prison. This tiny room. Seagrave’s office. At least he has a view.”
The room that was his new home had no view; just that damn mirror through which Seagrave and Tam and everyone else could watch him as if he was a goddamn hamster in a cage. And this office he was in now, while cozy with its walls of bookshelves and comfortable chairs and sofas, was nothing more than a disguised surgery center—where Dr. Tam used her words instead of knives to cut into his brain.
Only Seagrave’s office had a view. Not a lovely one—just a few rooftops and downtown structures. But at least there was sunshine.
“The accommodations are a bit bland,” she said. “But you understand why, I assume?”
“Less stimulation in my environment, more stimulation in my head.” He leaned back in the overstuffed armchair. “That’s the theory, anyway. I think it’s bullshit.”
Her brows rose over the tops of her tortoise-shell frames. “Oh?”
“How the hell can I recover my life if I can’t experience my life?”
“We’ve had this discussion, Agent Sawyer.”
He made a scoffing noise that she must have heard, but she continued without missing a beat.
“We don’t know if your memory loss was due to physical trauma, mental trauma, or a combination of both. We don’t know if your memory was intentionally wiped, perhaps through drug manipulation or hypnosis. In short, we don’t know anything except that you were a key player in an important investigation. You discovered something both urgent and dangerous. You signaled that you would be making contact with key intel, and three weeks later you called Colonel Seagrave from a hotel in Victorville, seemingly with no memory of yourself, the information, or what had happened to you.”
“Seemingly?”
“Surely you can understand why we must proceed with caution.”
He did, of course. Grudgingly he nodded. He understood everything she was saying, but that didn’t make it any easier. He’d been inside these walls for over a week now. It had been days since he’d seen Denise Marshall. In person, anyway. God knew she’d been showing up in his head regularly enough.
And it had been less than twenty-four hours since they’d told him he’d made contact, warning about an urgent threat. He disagreed with their rationale for waiting, but there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it. He was a prisoner here. A mind for them to probe. An unknown entity with no name, no resources, and nowhere else to go.
In other words, he was at their mercy.
The thought was not a pleasant one.
“You have a job, you know,” Dr. Tam said, studying him with those intelligent eyes.
“Do I?”
“You’re not a prisoner, Jack. You’re an asset.”
“If I’m an asset, the world is fucked.” The fact that he said it with a smirk didn’t mean he believed it any less.
“I want to talk about what you do remember. A truck you said.”
“You know what I said. We’ve been over this multiple times.”
“You recall being thrown out of a truck. You don’t remember the face of whoever tossed you. You aren’t even sure if the person was male.”
“I remember movement. I remember the impact when I hit the street. I remember the sting in my palms and the needle stabs to my eyes when I blinked from the sun. I remember a black shirt and the impression that it was a man standing in that open cargo door. I remember all of that, but I’m not sure about a single fact.”
“But you did walk, and you did end up in a motel in Victorville. That’s verifiable.”
“Has anyone here been able to locate the truck? Traffic cameras? Any satellites that happened to be taking snapshots? Any cars that passed me who called in a sighting of some battered man walking down the road?”
> “If we’d found anything, we would have told you.”
“Would you?” He dug his fingers into the padded armrests. “You haven’t even told me what agency this is. I’m going on faith that this is a government operation. Well, faith and observation.”
“Faith?”
“Apparently I worked for you. For this. I don’t like to think I was working for the bad guys.”
“We could be an independent organization of good guys.”
“Possible. But there was a paystub on your desk yesterday—old fashioned, by the way. Most people just get an email. But clearly government issue.”
She almost laughed, and he liked her more in that moment. “The funds are direct deposited. But I haven’t gone paperless. I file the stubs. I suppose that makes you right. I’m old-fashioned.”
“Convenient for me. As for Seagrave, there are quite a number of military commendations hanging on his walls. I doubt a man with that much cred with the military would chuck it all to go private.”
“You’re in the main office of the Western Division of the Sensitive Operations Command. The SOC is a covert, off-the-books paramilitary and intelligence organization that operates independently with oversight from the NSC.”
“You’re telling me just like that? I thought you didn’t want me to have details about my life.”
“I want you to trust me, Agent Sawyer. I need you to trust me—and Colonel Seagrave—to give you what you need. And to guide you as we think best.”
“In other words, you just tossed me a bone.”
“And you caught it.” She smiled at him, easy and friendly, and the tension that had been building inside him dissipated a bit. He didn’t understand her approach or agree with her choices, but he wasn’t a shrink. At least, he didn’t think he was. And for the moment, at least, he would trust her.
He spread his hands. “Alright. Go for it. Ask me questions. Get into my head. Do your worst.”
“How about we both do our best?”
He nodded. One crisp tilt of his head.
“I’d like to go back to the truck. You’ve told me everything you recall?”
He closed his eyes and let it all play back. “I could smell exhaust. I was bounced around. The truck had a roll-up door. And there were at least two people, because the truck pulled away as the guy who tossed me was still standing in the cargo area.”
“And your first memory?”
“The motion. Swaying. My hands tied behind my back. My ankles bound. My back aching from trying to stay seated. I was on a bench of some sort. You already know all of this.”
“You remember nothing prior to that? Nothing before the motion of the truck?”
“No.”
“So what does that tell you?”
“Not much, but it raises a hell of a lot of questions.”
“Such as?”
He drew in a breath, then met her eyes. “The biggest, of course, is whether the memory is real.”
She tilted her head. “You think it might have been planted?”
“I think I don’t know you people any better than I know myself.”
She surprised him by smiling broadly. “And now, Agent Sawyer, you’re beginning to live up to your reputation. Yes, that is a risk. It’s also possible that older memories are resurfacing.” She reached for a remote and clicked on a wall-mounted television.
He turned, frowning as the screen popped on, revealing a mission report with all names redacted.
“That report’s over a decade old,” he said, skimming the paragraphs that summarized a mission in which the reporting agent had been held captive, then tossed from the back of a cargo van. “I filed this?”
“You did.”
“So you’re saying that I might be pulling up old memories. Dumping them into the present?”
“It’s a possibility we can’t overlook.”
“Then how did I end up here? Like this?” He held out his hands, still red from the fading abrasions.
“Escape. Given up for dead and left at the side of the road. We may never know.”
“We won’t unless I remember. Why won’t you help me remember?”
“Agent Sawyer, we’ve discussed—” She cut herself off with a shake of her head. “Jack.” She began again, more gently. “I know it’s difficult, but you need to trust me. Telling you your past runs the risk of destroying that past. We must approach our work in small increments. Otherwise we risk burying your secrets permanently.”
He sat up straighter. “And if that’s a risk I’m willing to take?”
She leaned back in her chair, studying him. Then she seemed to make a decision. She reached for her tablet, tapped the screen a few times, and a new image popped onto the television screen. A video of a man. He was sitting on his knees rocking back and forth. “And then,” he said. “And then and then and then.”
The video changed. Another man, this one sitting on the edge of a cot, staring blankly into space, a smile on his face.
Another. A man playing chess against himself, muttering. “That’s all he does,” Dr. Tam says. “He plays chess. I think he’s trying to work it out. That somewhere inside his mind, he thinks that if he can beat himself, he’ll get out of his own head. But if you’re playing yourself, you can’t beat yourself.”
Jack felt cold. “Who are these men?”
“They could be you.”
He swallowed. “Agents you pushed. Who were force fed memories.”
“I didn’t push them,” she said. “I would have advised against that course. They were sent to me afterwards, with the hope that I could help. But I can’t.”
“Oh, God.” His gut clenched.
“I can tell you this much—you are an agent of this organization, and you took an oath upon joining. This risk is not yours to take. Your memory and your mental health are under my protection, and that is a responsibility I take very seriously even if you do not.”
He nodded slowly, hating what she was saying but also realizing he was in no position to argue. “Okay, but at least tell me what you can. How did I make contact? Was I working undercover? How long had I been in place? Do we have other assets in the field?”
He knew all the questions to ask. He knew how the job worked. He knew what he did as an agent. He just didn’t know what he’d actually done.
And right at that moment, he felt more frustrated than he’d ever felt in his life.
At least as far as he could remember…
“I want answers.”
“So do we all,” she said. “That’s why you’re here. That’s why we’re having these talks. So that I can guide you. So that we can take it slowly and not miss anything. Not bury anything.”
“What if I don’t want to go slowly?”
“You were a good agent once. You valued the mission over self. Over family.”
“I’m not the same person I was. Aren’t you the one telling me so?”
“I’m the one trying to help you find that self again.” She looked at him over the rim of her glasses. “Are you telling me that’s no longer your code?”
He wanted to say yes, that was exactly what he was telling her. He wanted to demand that she do anything and everything to excavate his damn memories, and fuck the risks.
But he said nothing. She was right. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—risk burying whatever dark secrets he’d stored away.
“We’ll do it your way,” he said. “But I can’t live like this. You want me to remember my life? Then I need to be allowed to live it.”
He watched, his heart pounding, as she nodded slowly. “I don’t disagree. I can speak to Colonel Seagrave. But I think we both know that you can’t return to active duty. Until we know what’s hidden in that head of yours, your clearance won’t be reinstated. The issues SOC agents deal with are far too sensitive.”
She was right, of course. And when he insisted that she let him put the issue to Colonel Seagrave himself, the older man simply repeated the doctor’s concerns.
Jack nodded, then took a sip of the coffee Seagrave had offered him. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “But what about matters not related to national security?”
For a moment, older man simply studied him. Then he put down his coffee cup, leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers beneath his chin and asked, “What exactly did you have in mind?”
7
Ryan Hunter sits at the head of the conference table, his fingers dancing over a keyboard as he skims a screen, then lifts his face and surveys the table. Lean, with chestnut brown hair and commanding blue eyes, Ryan is a natural leader. “Where do we stand, Noble? Your team ready to go?”
A lanky man, Winston Noble’s wind-worn face speaks of the West Texas plains where he used to work as the sheriff before moving to California for reasons that I still don’t know, and don’t intend to ask. Not after seeing the haunted look in his eyes whenever his past is mentioned. He has a slow, easy way about him, and his thick Texas twang disguises a sharp intellect. Winston’s a man that no one sees coming. More than that, he’s one hell of a nice guy and an excellent leader. One I’d serve under without hesitation.
“I’d like to join the team,” I say, swallowing the bite of dry toast I’d been nibbling on. The daughter of a Chinese diplomat was snatched during a family vacation in Washington, DC. The call came in at six this morning. It’s eight now, and Winston’s crew is wheels-up at nine. Under the internal rules of the SSA, Quince and I are both still on Local Assignment Status for another thirty-six hours, a policy designed to ensure that agents recover sufficiently following a rigorous mission.
I’m hoping that Ryan will overlook that fact. Because knowing that Mason is back in LA and holed up in an SOC observation room where I can’t see him without command level approval from Seagrave is absolutely messing with my head.