Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(93)

Ezra’s gaze was steady on him. “Then we should get her talking.”

He got it. He had a day or two or Ezra would force them to leave her behind. Just moments before he might have agreed with that plan, but seeing that look in her eyes…he wasn’t sure what he was doing. He needed to be cold.

“Be honest with her,” River said. “I’ve been where she is, and Jax didn’t win me back by being a bastard.”

“I did it with sex,” Jax admitted with a grin.

River’s eyes narrowed on her husband. “You did it by convincing me you loved me.”

“I don’t love her.” Owen couldn’t love her. It would be dangerous to love her. Dangerous for her. Damn dangerous for him. He couldn’t love the woman who’d had a hand in doing this to him and his brothers. She couldn’t love a man who’d betrayed his team.

River looked at him, disappointment stamped on her features. “Then be kind to her because it’s the right thing to do. Having some kind of revenge on her won’t help any of us now, and yes, it’s easy for me to say because I’m not the one who lost her memory. But it’s still the truth. I know that if I was in her position, you would have two choices. Convince me to help you by showing me your cause is just. Or torture me until I have to talk.”

“No one’s bloody well touching her.” The words came out before he could think about them.

River and Jax shared a look. Yes, he’d just given away more than he’d wanted to.

There was the sound of a car coming up the gravel drive and it had Owen reaching for his pistol.

Buster sat there and thumped his tail.

“It’s fine,” Jax said, looking down at the monitor. “It’s the boys.”

Ezra unlocked the door and Dante strode in followed by Sasha and Tucker.

“You will have to talk to him,” Sasha said, shaking his head. “He’s now absolutely certain he’s a serial killer.”

Dante huffed. “So much drama. If you were a serial killer then be happy that now you are not. Stop whining about it or I might become the serial killer.”

Tucker’s jaw was tight. “She knew me. She took one look at me and she ran. How could we have been wrong about that? She called me Reasor.”

“Hutch checked on the passports Hope might have used on each of you,” Ezra said. “It’s obvious we missed something. But we couldn’t find any evidence that a doctor named Reasor ever set foot in Kronberg. That name isn’t on any accounting or human resources documentation. As far as we can tell, Dr. Reasor never existed.”

“Except I did,” Tucker insisted. “McDonald erased me. She erased my memory and then she got rid of my existence.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ezra replied. “She didn’t have that kind of power.”

“But she worked with people who did.” Tucker was pacing the floor, his hands shaking slightly. “She worked with The Collective. They could do things.”

“It’s very difficult to completely erase a person,” Ezra said quietly.

“You don’t think we’ve pointed this out to him?” Dante sank down to the couch. “We spent hours on the road trying to explain this to him. But he’s right about one thing. She was terrified of him.”

He had a few words to say to Dante. “Maybe she should have been terrified of you. Did you even think before you sank that needle into her neck? You had no idea what kind of reaction she would have to that drug.”

If it bothered Dante at all, he didn’t show it. He merely shrugged and sat back. “I decided she would react more poorly to being taken into custody.” He frowned suddenly, looking to Ezra. “I had no choice. I had very little time to make a decision, and if you’d seen her, you would have done the same thing.”

“She wasn’t in her right mind.” Sasha backed up his friend. “I’ve seen people with that look in their eyes. She was ready to fight like a wild cat, and she wouldn’t have listened to reason. Dante did the only thing he could.”

“Don’t do it again,” Owen warned.

Dante’s eyes flashed. “You’re not in charge of me.”

He needed to make a few things clear to the man. “I’m bloody well in charge of her, and you’ll do well to remember it.”

Dante sent him his middle finger. “Fuck you, Shaw. You shouldn’t be here in the first place. I should have known you would take her side.”

“She was there,” Sasha argued, pointing toward the screen that showed Becca staring at the door as though wondering when they would come back, what they would do to her. “She was in that lab. No one who wasn’t there would have said those things. She worked with McDonald. Hell, she worked on Theo and you’re defending her?”

“We don’t know what she did there.” It was perverse, but he couldn’t call back the words. He was well aware that moments before he’d made those arguments himself, but that was before she’d cried in relief at the sight of him.

“We know that she ran away and never spoke of the experience,” Sasha said. “If she found out what was happening and she didn’t tell the world, she’s just as guilty as McDonald.”

“We have no idea why she ran, if she ran,” he shot back.