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“Yes, but I told you it’s more than physical.” He tapped the side of his head. “Tempest messed with our minds, too.”
She bunched the bedspread in her hands. “How? That didn’t happen in our lab.”
“No. That occurred in the debriefing unit in Germany where we went after every assignment.”
She pinned her hands between her knees as her eyes darted to the hotel door. Max Duvall could be crazy. This could all be some elaborate hallucination, one that he’d shared with Simon Skinner. Then her gaze tracked to the metal rod of the lamp, which he’d folded as if it were a straw. So, he was crazy and strong—a bad combination.
“How did they do it? The brainwashing?”
He squeezed his eyes closed and massaged his temple with two fingers. “Mind control—it was mind control and they did it through a combination of drugs, hypnosis and sleep therapy.”
“What is sleep therapy?”
“That’s my name for it. The doctors would hook us up to machines, brain scans, and then sedate us. They said it was for deep relaxation and stress reduction, but...” He shook his head.
“But what?” She wiped her palms on the bedspread. The air in the room almost crackled with electricity.
“It didn’t do that. It didn’t relax us, at least not me and Simon. After those sessions, a jumble of memories and scenes assaulted my brain. I couldn’t tell real from fake. The memories—they implanted them in my brain.”
She gasped as a bolt of fear shot through her chest. “They wanted you to forget the assignments.”
“But I couldn’t.” He shoved off the window and stalked across the room, pressing his palms against either side of his head. “Simon and I, we remembered. I don’t know how many others did.”
He really believed all of this, and he blamed her for administering the serum. Maybe the men at her house had been there to protect her from Max. The pressures of the job had driven them both off the deep end. Simon had snapped, and Max was nearing the same precipice.
“I-is that what drove Simon to commit violence? The implanted memories?”
“No.” He pivoted and paced back to the window, a light sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead. “The implanted memories were fine. It was the flashes of reality that tortured us.”
If she kept pretending that she believed him, maybe he’d drop her off at the airport without incident. She could make up family somewhere, a family that cared about her and worried about her well-being. A fake family.
“The reality of what he’d done for Tempest pushed Simon past the breaking point?”
“It’s the serum.” He turned again and swayed to the side. He thrust out an unsteady hand to regain his balance. “Simon tried to break the cycle, but you can’t go cold turkey. I told him not to go cold turkey.”
A spasm of pain distorted his handsome features, and Ava tensed her muscles to make a run at the door if necessary. “I’m not sure I understand, Max.”
“The pills.” He wiped a hand across his mouth and staggered. “I need the pills. I’ll end up like Simon without them.”
She braced her hands on her knees, ready to spring into action. The pills, again. He’d been going on about blue pills at the lab when he rescued her, too.
Max was talking gibberish now, his strong hands clenching and then unclenching, his gait unsteady, sweat dripping from his jaw.
“What pills?” She licked her lips. Her gaze flicked to the door. If she rolled off the other side of the bed, she could avoid Max, pitching and reeling in the middle of the room. Then she’d call 911. He needed help, but she didn’t have the strength or the tools to subdue him if he decided to attack her.
“Pocket. The blue.” Then he pitched forward and landed face-first on the floor.
Chapter Five
“Max!” She launched off the bed and crouched beside him. If he decided to grab her now, she wouldn’t have a chance against his power.
His body twitched and he moaned. He had no power to grab her now. She could make a run for it and call hotel security. The hotel would call 911, and he could get help at the hospital from a doctor—a real doctor.
