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“I need my memory back,” Benny said baldly. “Since I hope we get to this level of detail eventually, you should know I’m pretty sure they successfully killed me more than once and brought me back.”

For the first time, Hancock looked genuinely shocked. “What makes you say that?”

Benny shrugged, a little uneasily. “I don’t know. It’s mostly a feeling. But my twin, Beth, experienced pain so intense it made her black out. She said she felt like she was dying.”

The psychiatrist considered that for a moment, then gave a short nod before looking at Jordan. “You can sit over there, out of earshot.” It was clearly an order, not a request.

“No,” Benny said. “I want her here. I want her to hear everything. She’s part of it.”

“How so?” Hancock asked, not giving an inch.

“Because we were lovers before he was hit by that car,” Jordan said flatly. “He can’t remember any of it.”

Again, the psychiatrist seemed to weigh their words before giving a short nod. “All right. As long as you’re comfortable with her hearing anything that might come up.” She focused on Benny again. “Tell me about the last thing you remember.”

He leaned against the cushions, closed his eyes and thought hard.

“I was having a beer with Tate. We were talking smack. Beth was puttering around somewhere.” He searched the memory. “I think we were getting ready to go into our last session with you the next day.”

He opened his eyes and looked at Kendra. “I remember Tate talking about separating because he just didn’t have it in him anymore. I’d been having some of the same thoughts, but I wanted to finish out my time. I remember knowing Jordan and Warren were thinking about getting out too. Warren for retirement, and Jordan because they’d sidelined her after the crash. Same with Clay. They’d taken them out of the jobs they loved because of the public exposure the crash brought to all of us and the Air Force as a whole.”

He looked at Jordan who nodded. “That squares with what I remember.”

They both looked at Hancock. “That sounds about right,” she said. “But nothing after that? You can’t remember anything past that point?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been trying to remember when Jordan and I got together since she told me it happened right after we finished therapy, but I can’t. It’s like my brain just won’t go there. Like something is stopping it.”

Kendra was silent for several seconds. “I’m not going to diagnose you based on one conversation, especially given the extraordinary circumstances you’ve described. But dissociative amnesia is one possibility we need to consider.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning your brain may be protecting you from memories associated with severe trauma. Sometimes our brain just won’t access memories or sensations when they’re connected to something the mind simply isn’t prepared to process.”

Benny frowned. “Then why don’t I remember Jordan? Why don’t I remember being with her? Hell, I don’t even remember getting our cat, and apparently I’m the one who rescued her.”

Kendra thought for a long moment before answering. “One possibility is that those memories became intertwined with whatever happened to you afterward. They may have been the memories you relied on when you were frightened or in pain. The places you went mentally when whatever you were experiencing threatened to overwhelm you.”

Benny really didn’t like the sound of that.

“At some point,” she continued, “your mind may have stopped distinguishing between the memories that caused the trauma and the memories you used to survive it. They became part of the same psychological landscape.”

“So you’re saying remembering Jordan, remembering how I couldn’t say no to some little kitten, could put me right back in that room?” His stomach tightened. “Back into the reality of being tortured to death, maybe more than once?”

“I’m saying it’s possible.” Hancock lifted one shoulder. “The brain is extraordinarily complicated, and trauma responses vary enormously from person to person. I’d be lying if I pretended I could tell you exactly what happened after talking to you for twenty minutes.”

Benny looked over to get Jordan’s thoughts and saw dawning horror on Jordan’s face. “What?” he asked, his body tensing automatically as he glanced around the room for a threat that wasn’t there. “What is it?”

“Who says the nanites stopped with healing your body?” she asked softly.

He stared at her, not understanding where she was going with the question.

“What if they erased your memory too?”

For a second, Benny couldn’t breathe.

It felt as if the floor had dropped out from beneath him. Because the words had a horrible ring of truth to them.

They’d assumed his mind had hidden the memories to protect his sanity.