Someone had enjoyed his work. He’d reveled in it.
“Stay where you are, Liam. Don’t move the memory forward. Tell me what you see. Not the bodies. I know you have that memorized. What else do you see?”
He forced himself to look past the blood. It coated the furnishings, soaked the rug. Anywhere he stepped, he would get it on him. He looked at the small table in front of the couch. It was littered with crap, but the mirror caught his eye. It was an old mirror with a pink plastic handle, but it was the residue on it that really made him think.
“I see evidence that someone was snorting coke. Eve, I’ve never touched that shit in my life. SAS would have my ass. They check from time to time and almost always before and after a mission like this. They might do it under the guise of a checkup, but everyone knows what they’re looking for.”
He’d never so much as smoked a joint. He wouldn’t have just snorted a bit of coke for fun. Rory was another story. Rory was spontaneous. Sometimes too spontaneous. He was impulsive, and it was important to keep Rory grounded or he might lose him.
Take care of your brother, Liam. He needs you. He could still hear his mother’s words even under hypnosis. They had become a part of his life. They had become his shame.
“Stay with me,” Eve said.
He took a long breath. This, Eve had explained, was like a painting and he was in the center, merely observing. He could control the memory, slow it down or force it to speed up. He was safe as long as he stayed in control. “I don’t remember any of these people. Not even little flashes of them when they were alive. There’s a bill from the pub lying on the floor. That must be where we met them, but we’re miles away from there. Miles from the inn we were staying at.”
“I want you to stay calm now, Li. I want you to let the phone ring again. I want you to find Rory for me.”
This was the moment when he inevitably lost control and the memory took over. This was where his brain always shut down, and he came out of the hypnosis screaming.
But something was different. He felt more settled, calmer. He could do this.
The phone rang. He hated that sound, but he allowed it to ring. It trilled, pointing the way to something he didn’t want to find.
“You have to follow it, Li. It’s okay. This happened years ago. It can’t hurt you now.”
She was wrong. This would always have the ability to devastate him. This was his failure in life. Still, he let that ring fill his head. He stood there for a moment as time sped up. He concentrated on remaining in the moment. He felt the phone in his hand, the way his fingers seemed to struggle to hold it. His knees felt weak and nausea churned in his gut.
And that smell. Blood and the wharf. Someone had left a window open. In the distance, he could see the docks. He could hear the sound of water churning. Were they right on the water?
Liam forced himself to turn. Voice mail came on again. Rory didn’t have a personal message. It was just a computerized voice requesting that he leave a message and then a long beep.
But he’d heard the ring long enough. He hung up his phone and saw it. What he didn’t want to see.
Rory’s boots were on the floor. They stuck out just past the edge of the couch. Something was wrong with those boots. It was something about how they were sitting on the floor. His brain couldn’t quite handle the input. Why were the boots wrong? He shook his head. The boots could only mean one thing.
His brother was laid out on the blood-soaked floor.
“Rory?” His voice sounded smaller, younger. A boy calling out for his younger brother. Please get up. Please.
Nothing. No movement. The boots were still, as though someone had painted them there and they weren’t actually real. As though they were nothing he could reach out and touch.
And the ringing began again.
His phone. Someone was calling him.
Don’t answer. Don’t answer. Don’t answer.
Panic welled up. Fire seemed to flare from the corners of his eyes. Control. He was losing control. Don’t answer. He stared down at the phone. Bad things would happen if he answered that phone.
“Wake up, Li. Come out of it.”
Liam focused. He was in Eve’s room. Fuck. He wiped the sweat away. It was dripping down his brow and into his eyes. He was standing up. He’d been lying down. Confusion. He hated the feeling. One minute he’d been back there hearing that phone ringing and the next he was here doing god only knew what.
“You were trying to get out the window, Li. You seemed very intent on throwing yourself out the window.” Eve was out of breath, her normally perfect clothes askew. There was a fine tremble in her hands.
“Did I try to hurt you?” Fuck all. It was the last thing he wanted to do. Eve was his friend. She was trying to help him, and if he hurt her he would never forgive himself. Hadn’t he hurt enough people he cared about in his time? Why wouldn’t he ever learn?
She shook her head. “No. You did not. Liam, you didn’t hurt me. You were just trying to get out the window for some reason. I had to stop you, and it was a near thing.” She took a long breath. “I think you’re close to something.”
Yes. He was close to losing his bloody mind. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I got further this time.”
Eve reached out, taking his hand in hers. “You were much more in control for longer. It will get better. But next time I think we should invite someone with a little more upper-body strength to sit in.”
He gave her hand a squeeze and then backed away. “I don’t think so.”
“Why? Li, Ian wouldn’t judge you for something that happened years ago. If I know Ian, he probably knows more than he’s saying. He wouldn’t have brought you on board if he didn’t trust you.”
“If Ian knows something, why wouldn’t he bloody well tell me?” Ian didn’t know a thing. He couldn’t possibly. If he knew, Ian would have told him. Ian was the one damn person in the world he trusted completely. Ian had saved him when all evidence was against him.
Eve found her way back to her chair on shaky legs. “If Ian didn’t think you were ready he might have kept it from you. I’m not saying he knows a damn thing, Li. I’m just saying that he likely looked into the incident even if you asked him not to.”
He hadn’t. Liam had looked into it himself, calling on a few people he trusted, but all he’d been able to discover was that he and Rory were missing and considered dead.