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“I can’t believe that worked!” JB crowed for the second time. He tipped his beer to Noah, who clinked his against it. “We haven’t done that in years. We’re still in sync.”
“I guess we haven’t lost our touch,” Noah said around a mouthful of pizza.
“I’ve got to know where you learned to do that,” Rowe said. “I remember seeing you do something similar with that kid we caught after my house went up in flames.”
“Whoa! What?” JB gasped.
Noah shook his head. “Arson case from a few years back,” he said quickly, turning his attention to Rowe. He didn’t want to go into it. The arsonists that had torched the home Rowe had created with Mel still left Noah feeling uneasy. Shit went south in that house, and no matter what Rowe said, Noah couldn’t get rid of a lingering feeling of guilt. If he’d been paying more attention, things could have ended differently. “I used some of what I learned about hypnosis on the kid, but it wasn’t true hypnosis. That was more about reading tells. Little facial tics.”
“Whatever,” Rowe said with a wave of his hand. “I still gotta know. Where did you learn it?”
Noah grinned around the crust of his slice of pizza. Rowe was not one to give up on something when it piqued his curiosity. He was a dog with a bone. “So, a Ranger, a PsyOps, and a CIA agent walk into a bar…”
“Oh, fuck you!” Rowe snarled. He jumped to his feet with his empty beer bottle in hand. He tilted the bottle toward JB, silently asking if he wanted another. JB nodded. “If you don’t want to tell me, then don’t.” Rowe stomped off toward the kitchen to dump his empty into the recycling and grab some fresh from the fridge.
Noah grabbed his napkin and wiped his mouth before turning on the couch toward the kitchen. The open format reminded him of Lucas’s penthouse in Cincinnati. “I’m being serious.”
Rowe returned with three fresh beer bottles in hand. He set one in front of each of them before flopping back in his chair. “Then go for it, comedian.”
Noah smirked at Rowe. He couldn’t help teasing him a little bit. Rowe was older and while Noah might have spent more time in the military, Rowe was no slouch. He’d kept up with various techniques and weapons. He maintained a vast array of contacts both in the military and with intelligence agencies. It was all too rare for Noah to learn or know something before his boyfriend.
“I was selected to be a part of a unique team for a special mission. After the mission, we were sitting around a safe house. The PsyOps guy pulls out a bottle of thirty-year-old whiskey. So, we start drinking and swapping random stories. No real details of people and places. Just the crazy shit. Of course, one of us starts talking about the weirdest interrogations. CIA pops in with hypnosis. Psy Ops is laughing his ass off and saying that there’s no such thing. That it’s just a stupid magic trick. CIA seems to laugh it off. Later, he’s acting like he’s getting ready to leave. PsyOps puts his hand out to shake CIA’s and the CIA dude hits him in the chest. Just a tap. And the guy is out in the blink of an eye. It’s a five-second hypnosis trick. CIA gets me to film him clucking like a chicken, then brings PsyOps out of the trance. He doesn’t remember a thing, but he freaks when he sees the video.”
“Did he kill the CIA guy?” Rowe asked.
“You could tell he was thinking about it. I think it helped when the CIA guy taught us some of the basic tricks. It’s all about voice, eye contact, and messing with certain patterns we come to expect. They create openings to speak right to a person’s subconscious.”
“That’s just crazy,” Rowe murmured as he grabbed another slice of pizza.
Noah nodded as he picked up his fresh beer. “It was, but I practiced it out of curiosity. Something to do when I had some downtime. Tried it out a few times on JB.”
“And seriously pissed me off when I realized what he was doing,” JB added.
“So, I taught JB. When we both got good, we started working in tandem with targets. Some people are good at blocking out one person, but it’s harder when two people are doing it. They end up locking in on one person’s eyes and voice. When that happens, that person takes the lead.”
“The same way Jeff focused on you,” Rowe said to Noah.
“For interrogation, it’s not great. You can get some basic details. The more they have to think and dig around in their memory, the more you risk the person waking up. It’s better for implanting commands and ideas. If the command feeds into their own emotions and desires, the better the likelihood it’s going to lock in.”
