am?»
«Tell you what, you let me go, and I'll ask you plenty of questions about your race. Until then,
I'm slightly distracted with how this happy little vacation on the good ship Holy Shit is going to
pan out for me.»
«I gave you my word-«
«Yeah, yeah. But you also just manhandled me. And if you say it was for my own good, I'm not
going to be responsible for my comeback.» Jane looked down at her blunt nails and pushed at her
cuticles. After getting her left hand done, she glanced up. «So this 'job' of yours… you going to
need a shovel to get it done?»
The patient's eyes dropped to his plate, and he forked at the rice, silver tines slipping in between
the grains, penetrating them. «My job… so to speak… is to make sure you won't remember any
part of this.»
«Second time I've heard that, and I've got to be honest-I think it's bullshit. It's a little hard to
imagine me breathing and not, I don't know, recalling with the warm and fuzzies how I was
draped over some guy's shoulder, hauled out of my hospital, and drafted as your personal
physician. Just how you figure I'm going to forget all of that?»
His diamond-bright irises lifted. «I'm going to take these memories from you. Scrub this whole
thing clean. It will be as if I never existed and you were never here.»
She rolled her eyes. «Uh-huh, ri-«
Her head started to sting, and with a grimace she put her fingertips to her temples. When she
dropped her hands, she looked at the patient and frowned. What the hell? He was eating in his
lap, but not from the tray that had been here before. Who'd brought the new food in?
«My buddy with the Sox cap,» the patient said as he wiped his mouth. «Remember?»
In a burning rush, it all came back: Red Sox walking in, the patient taking her razor, her tearing
up.
«Good… God,» Jane whispered.
The patient just kept eating, as if eradicating memories were no more exotic than the roasted
chicken he was sucking back.
«How?»
«Neuropathway manipulation. A patch job, as it were.»
«How?»
«What do you mean, how?»
«How do you find the memories? How do you differentiate? Do you-«
«My will. Your brain. That is specific enough.»
She narrowed her eyes. «Quick question. Does this magical skill with gray matter come with a
total lack of compunction for your kind, or is it just you who were born without a conscience?»
He lowered his silverware. «I beg your pardon?»
She so didn't care that he was offended. «First you abduct me, and now you're going to take my
memories, and you're not sorry at all, are you? I'm like a lamp you borrowed-«
«I'm trying to protect you,» he snapped. «We have enemies, Dr. Whitcomb. The kind who would
find out if you knew about us, who would come after you, who would take you to a hidden place
and kill you-after a while. I won't let that happen.»
Jane got to her feet. «Listen, Prince Charming, all the protective rhetoric is fine and dandy, but it
wouldn't be relevant if you hadn't taken me in the first place.»
He dropped his silverware into his food and she braced herself for him to start yelling. Instead,
he she quietly, «Look… you were supposed to come with me, okay?»
«Oh. Really. So I had a 'Jack Me Now' sign pinned on my ass that only you could see?»
He put the plate onto the bedside table, shoving it aside as if he were disgusted by the food.
«I get visions,» he muttered.
«Visions.» When he said nothing further, she thought about the Mr. Eraser trick he'd pulled with
her head. If he could do that… Jesus, was he talking about seeing into the future?
Jane swallowed hard. «These visions, they aren't sugarplum-fairy kind of stuff, are they.»
«No.»
«Shit.»
He stroked his goatee, like he was trying to decide exactly how much to tell her. «I used to get
them all the time, and then they just dried up. I haven't gotten one… well, I had one of Butch a
couple of months ago, and because I followed it I saved his life. So when my brothers came into
that hospital room and I had a vision of you, I told them to take you. You talk about conscience?
If I didn't have one I would have left you there.»
She thought back to him getting aggressive with his nearest and dearest on her behalf. And the
fact that even when he'd been stripping her of the razor he'd been careful with her. And then
there was him curling up against her, seeking comfort.
It was possible he'd thought he was doing the right thing.
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