Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(108)

His eyes narrowed. “Rebecca, Argentina was where her secret lab was located. That was where she held Theo. If she was taking you there, she would have kept you there, too. She likely wanted you to solve her Theo problem.”

A chill went through her.

“Do you remember who was around you at dinner?” Tucker asked.

She shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t remember much. I remember walking into the cafeteria and then waking up. They told me there was something bad in the salad.”

“Or someone dosed you. We know she’d worked on the time dilation drug by that point. Tennessee Smith knows what that feels like.” Tucker started to pace. “I don’t understand why she would have done it if she was planning on taking you.” He stopped. “I did it. I did it to get rid of you. I did it to keep my place.”

It was easier to talk to him now that she could see a bit past who he’d been. The old Reasor never paced. He’d been almost preternaturally still. It had been unnerving. “You don’t know that. The only way to know that is to uncover the memories.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to. I know the others are hoping there’s some kind of cure out there, but not me. I won’t take it. I won’t go back to who I used to be. Would you? Would you unlock your Mr. Hyde?”

“Knowing what you did for McDonald could help the others,” she said, her doctor brain working on how she would do it. She would need scans and blood work. If McDonald had used Becca’s own research to perfect her treatments, then she should be able to do something about it. “Have you tried hypnosis? The human body will always attempt to heal itself, and it can be shocking how much it can do given time and rest.”

“Yeah, Ari’s tried that with all of us. Some of the others get flashes sometimes. I get feelings. Like I should be doing something. Like I left something undone. I don’t know why but I think about old-looking places. Places that look like London, but they’re not.”

She nodded. “That’s because she can’t erase your mind. She could potentially destroy the sections that deal with memory, but that would be a delicate procedure and one that would as likely hurt the parts she wanted to function as not. She needed to break down specific communication between brain synapses, and do it in a way no one has before. Not that anyone who isn’t psychotic would want to. I’m trying to do the opposite. I’m trying to find a way to break down the plaque that cuts off…damn it. She found a way to build it up and very quickly. In a targeted way.”

She could work with that. Especially if she had a lab. She needed those damn notes. McDonald wouldn’t have gotten rid of them and she would have had a failsafe.

“I’m sorry.” Tucker sounded tired.

The words burst through the momentary excitement of discovery, and guilt swelled inside her again. These men had been broken utterly and she was excited about a new project.

Because if McDonald figured out how to build up walls around sections of the memory center, then she had also known how to break them down. The key was here. She knew it was. It was held in these men and that research.

But the man in front of her was real, and she was shocked by the tears that ran down his face. Everything else about him was controlled, but those tears…

“You aren’t the same man you were.” That particular truth hit her soundly as she stared at him, unsure what to do. “You have nothing to apologize for because you aren’t the one who did it to me.”

“I don’t know who I was, what I did. I meet people and I wonder how I hurt them. I don’t ever want to know. I don’t want to lose this me. I don’t have any right to ask you this, but can you help me stay me?” His jaw tightened and he was obviously on the edge. “Please. I have to stay me or I need to…I can’t go back.”

She could walk away from him. She didn’t have to promise this man anything.

Except he was giving her a chance to choose. If it had really been Steven Reasor standing in front of her, she could have walked away, but this was a man named Tucker and he wanted to be good. She had no idea what forces had molded Reasor into a man they called Razor, but this man was different.

And he was in pain.

She’d promised her mother that she would be happy, but happiness sometimes wasn’t a choice. Happiness could be taken away, made into an impossibility due to circumstance. Maybe what her mother should have asked her was to always be true to who she was because then, even if her world got ripped away, she could be content.

She could hate this man for what he’d done to her in another life. Or she could see him as a man who needed help, and she’d dedicated her life to giving help when and where it was needed.

Becca stood and crossed the space between them. “I promise you, Tucker. I’ll do what I can to help your friends, to help any of them who want to get back what they lost, and I’ll make sure we don’t need your memories. I can do it. I can make this work.”

He broke then and his hands came out, as though he couldn’t not ask for comfort.

When his legs went out and he slumped to the floor, she went with him. She let her arms go around him and finally let go of that day. She’d been a victim, and nothing she could have done would have likely fixed the situation.

“Get your hands…” Owen stopped when she looked up at him, his words halting and face transforming from anger to confusion as he looked down at them. “Are you all right?”