Kate Donovan - Parallel Lies

“He has that effect on everyone,” Zack assured her. “Do you remember talking to Johnny the way you’re talking to me now? In this kind of a mood? Calm like this?”

“I don’t know.” She squirmed in her chair. “I don’t remember.”

“Johnny gave you some instructions. Do you remember that?”

“I don’t know.”

“He told you to forget about your little chat with him. And you forgot it, just like he told you to do. That was good, Sabrina. But now I want you to try and remember what he said. Just a few words. Can you do that for me?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember any words.”

“Okay, shh. It’s fine. Let’s talk about your sister for a few minutes instead. Is that okay?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to call her Michelle? Or Shelby?”

“Her name is Shelby now.”

“Okay, that’s fine. When Shelby talked to you about Johnny, did she mention what they talked about?”

“Everything.”

“Right. Everything. But did she mention anything specifically? Do you think he asked about your father?”

“Dad?”

“Right. Did Johnny talk to Shelby about him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did Johnny ever ask you about him?”

“I don’t remember! I don’t want to talk about Johnny.”

“That’s fine. We won’t talk about him anymore. Let’s talk about your father instead. Would you like that?”

“Yes.”

“Did he ever talk to you the way I’m talking to you now?”

Sabrina nodded. “Yes.”

“Okay, good. Do you remember what he talked to you about?”

“We talked about Shell,” Sabrina murmured.

“What did he say about your sister?”

“He told me to protect her, because I’m the oldest. It’s my mission,” she added proudly.

Zack laughed. “How old are you right now?”

“I’m nine.”

“Did your father tell you anything else? Maybe when you were older? Did he share secrets with you when he talked to you this way?”

“No. He just told me to protect Shell. But I didn’t,” she admitted unhappily. “I let a bad man take her away.”

“Sabrina, listen to me. I don’t want you to think about that right now. Do you understand? I want you to think about Theo Howell.”

She felt the sense of calm return. “Uncle Theo?”

“Right. How do you feel about him?”

“I love him.”

“Do you have any other feelings? Feelings you can’t explain? Any desire to hurt him that confuses you?”

“Hurt him?” She shook her head. “No. Never.”

“And what about Perimeter? Do you want to destroy it?”

“No.”

“Do you want to hurt anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Who do you want to hurt?”

“I want to hurt Adonis Zenner. I want to kill him.”

“Okay, shh. That’s fine. What about Johnny? Do you want to kill him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You told me you hate him. But you don’t want to hurt him?”

“I want to find him,” she explained carefully. “And I want to pay him back for taking my sister. But I don’t want to kill him unless he makes me do it.”

“Okay, I understand,” Zack said, his tone soothing. “You hate him and you want to find him.”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I don’t trust anyone but myself. And Shelby.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“No.”

“You let me hypnotize you. That means you trust me a little, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You trust Uncle Theo, don’t you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Okay, Sabrina.” Zack’s voice was steady and inspiring. “You did great. I’m going to wake you up now. Okay?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll count to five, and when you hear me say ‘five,’ you’ll wake up. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“When you wake up, you’ll remember everything we’ve said. But it won’t upset you. You’ll feel refreshed. Rested. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m going to count now. On five, you’ll wake up. One, two, three, four, five.”

Sabrina stirred and opened her eyes, then smiled sheepishly. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Zack’s green eyes were twinkling. “You did great.”

“I didn’t remember anything Johnny said.”

“He made you forget the session. But it seems like that’s all he managed to accomplish. Your subconscious must have really resisted him.”

Sabrina sighed. “You were right about Dad. He really did hypnotize me when I was a kid. I don’t know why that bothers me, but it does.”

“Seems pretty harmless. He just wanted you to look out for your baby sister.” Zack’s smile widened. “You must’ve been a cute kid. Calling it your mission.”

“That’s how it was with Dad. He made everything so much fun and dramatic. Life and death. But still just a game. I loved it. Then everything changed.”

“When Adonis killed him.”

She nodded. “And now Shelby’s in danger because of her connection to Dad’s past. It’s so creepy to think of Johnny alone with her, hypnotizing her at will. Making her do things. Reveal things. Forget things.” She cocked her head to the side. “If you could use DT3 on me, could you make me remember what Johnny was searching for in my head?”

“Theoretically,” Zack admitted. “He gave you a post-trance suggestion to forget the whole session. With DT3, I could counteract that, unless he password-protected it. Then it would take more time and some serious hacking.”

Sabrina winced at the harsh term, even though she realized he only meant it in the computer sense. “So if Dad did that—hid information in our heads and protected it with a password—Johnny could be trying to hack into that? That would explain why it’s taking him so long, right?”

“It’s a possibility,” Zack confirmed. “But it doesn’t seem like Sully did anything like that to you. And since you’re the oldest, it’s logical he would have hidden it in your head, not Shelby’s.”

“That makes sense.”

Zack nodded. “My guess is, John’s after a simple memory. But it’s taking time—not because it’s password-protected, but because he’s fishing for it. Maybe he doesn’t know exactly when the event happened, for example. So he’s regressing her, probing, that sort of thing. Zeroing in on it, but it’s taking some time.”

“I like that better than the hacking scenario,” Sabrina admitted. “Do you think he’ll let her go once he gets what he wants?”

Zack hesitated. “I guess that depends on his ultimate agenda. And what shape she’s in by then, mentally and otherwise. I just hope she still believes it’s a romantic getaway. If she figures out what’s going on, or if he stops pretending to care about her, she’ll be scared.”

“If she figures out what’s going on, she’ll try to escape,” Sabrina countered. When Zack gave a skeptical shrug, she smiled. “I hope Derringer underestimates her the same way you do. That gives her a strategic advantage.”

“The only strategic advantage we have is time. He doesn’t know about the second message she left you, so he thinks he has three more days before you get suspicious. We need to use every minute, so I’m outta here.” He handed Sabrina the stack of reports from Connor. “Find me the picture that looks the most like Shelby. I want to circulate it to my crew.”

“I brought a great photo of her with me, just in case. It’s in the trunk of my car.”

“Good. You two girls change hair color so often, it’s tough to keep track.”

She bristled at the implied criticism. “We went brunette at RAP’s suggestion. But over the years, we gradually phased back to blond.” Fingering a lock of her own hair, she explained, “This is our natural color. Shelby’s is the same, only longer, and with some added highlights, so it’s a little blonder.”