Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(106)

He glanced up and she could see the dark circles under his eyes. “We had a couple of known aliases. I was a part of what we call the B team. We mostly stayed in Europe where it was easy for us to move around. I think I was held somewhere in Asia once. I can’t be sure. But that was what we had to go on. We couldn’t find a man named Reasor who was close to her. I know the name. I know the nickname, too.”

“Dr. Razor.”

A shudder went through his body and his gaze was on the hallway. “Yeah. Dr. Razor because he cuts so deep.”

“You liked the nickname.” It was odd to be standing here with a man she’d thought was dead. Hoped and prayed was dead. “You bragged about patients giving it to you, but I convinced myself you were being an ass. You were often an ass.”

His eyes came up again. “So I’ve heard. Can you tell me what I did to you?”

Could she? She wasn’t even sure what had been done to her at all. “It doesn’t matter if you’re not you anymore.”

“It matters. It matters to me. It obviously matters to you, too, since that was a look of terror on your face this afternoon. We’d been lucky that I hadn’t worked for you before. I’d actually asked to be put on your service, but I was told I hadn’t earned the honor yet.”

Carter. Carter always placed himself on her schedule when he could. Right up until Monday when he’d sent in one of the female interns. She’d liked working with Annie. The young woman was funny and smart. Had Carter thought it was an insult to place Annie on her service? “It would have screwed up your plan.”

She’d lost her appetite, but her throat was dry. She opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. It looked like someone had stocked them up. There was lunch meat and a couple of bagged salads. Some cheese, grapes, strawberries and yogurts. Maybe she could handle the yogurt.

“Do you recognize any of the others?” Reasor asked.

Raspberry. She could do that. Her hunger was gone, fled in the light of her current company, but her weakness remained. “No. Except for Tomas.” That wasn’t his name. “Theo. I remember him. I saw a lot of Dr. McDonald’s patients, but I remember him in particular because she seemed fascinated by him. It was kind of a shock and everyone gossiped about it when she would bring him in because that was a woman completely obsessed with her work.”

“Did I hurt Theo?” The question came out on a tortured gasp, and it was easy to see he was trying to keep control of his emotions.

Was he faking it? Or was he the real deal? “She never left you alone with him.” Why hadn’t Theo known… “She must have used the drug on Theo after they visited the lab. Toward the end of the summer, she was in and out. She left you in charge most of the time.”

“Of course, I was.” He glanced up, his eyes wide and empty. “The spoons are in the drawer by the sink. Raspberry is my favorite.”

She found a spoon and forced herself to sit across from him. “That’s surprising. You used to be a carnivore. You made fun of the bunnies in the group. That’s what you called them. You said there wasn’t a point to eating something without a face. I often worried about your fiber intake.”

He huffed, a slightly amused sound. “I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the occasional burger, I do, but I like yogurt a lot. I don’t eat a lot of meat around River. She’s a vegetarian. Jax is pretty much one now, too. I eat whatever someone puts in front of me. I’m not that great in the kitchen but I’m trying.”

“I don’t know if I can believe you.” She wasn’t sure she even wanted to. She’d hated this man for so long that the idea he might be likeable was foreign. But if the drug did what she suspected it did, it could be true. If this man had the connections in his brain destroyed, he wouldn’t remember who he’d been. He would have woken up and not understood what was going on. He would have been afraid. Perhaps not like she’d been afraid, but it was something they had in common.

“Please tell me what I did to you.” It was a quiet plea, but she could hear the desperation behind it.

What would it be like to wake up in a strange place with absolutely no identity memory? Fear and sorrow and rage had been fueling her since that moment she’d seen Reasor, but curiosity was starting to swirl around in her brain.

What Hope McDonald had done was horrifying, but the need to know how she’d done it was there. It was like a physicist looking at the atom bomb. The man or woman looking at it would be sickened by what it could do, but the scientist…the scientist would need to know how it worked.

If she figured out exactly how it worked, could she reverse it? Could she give them back what was lost?

“You were cruel,” she said quietly before taking a spoonful of yogurt. It was tart and sweet and cool on her tongue. She had to force herself to swallow. “To everyone really, but to me in particular. You were McDonald’s star pupil. You didn’t want anyone to take your place.”

“Where did I go to school? Was I friends with anyone? I’m sorry. I have a lot of questions.”

“Yale Medical,” she replied. “At first I thought we would get along because we were both so young. We had a lot in common. We’d both gotten through school quickly and were considered real talent in our fields. At least that’s what McDonald told me. I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of you before. I didn’t hear a lot about you after. You didn’t have friends, per se. At least not on the team, but there was a reason for that. Most of the team came and went. Six weeks here, two months there. She had a core team of four researchers. Three of them are dead. Veronica Croft is the only one left. She worked with you quite closely.”