The door opens, revealing his worried gray-green eyes. “Jane?”
“What did you do?”
He blushes, and I can see the guilt all over his face.
I glance over at the wall of two-way mirrors and manage to speak about the facts I have gleaned thus far. “The bad guy might be a professor, but I suspect he was never her teacher. The man we are looking for could be a teacher at the university in Seattle—start there. Literature maybe. Or associated with the lit department.” I turn back, glaring at Dash. “You messed with something. You made a change in my story. Your face flashed, and one second you were Rory and the next you were you. I made up a lie in her mind to cover, but she could close up on me if she gets scared.”
He winces—so subtle that I barely catch it. He licks his lips, and I see the guilt everywhere, plastered across him. Even the way he leans against the door frame and nods at Angie, like he’s dismissing her, lacks all of his usual confidence. She hurries out, shooting me a look and brushing past him. I struggle with the strength in me coming back after a fifteen-minute slumber that felt like days.
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie.” I climb off the bed and stagger to him. “I have a setup. I have a way it goes. I let her lead me, and this made it more like it was me leading her.”
He wrinkles his nose. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. I hate being the bad guy. You make me the bad guy every time. I hate it. In your mind I have raped and killed and been a full-fledged psychotic. Imagine if I made you some kind of evil in my mind?” He offers a soft look. “I don’t want your subconscious to see me, your future husband, as a murderer or a pedophile or a serial killer. I don’t want to be that in your head.” His eyes lower to the floor. “Or your heart.”
I wince too, far more annoyed that he knows the secret to my success. It’s as if he’s seen behind the curtain. He’s seen the friggin’ wizard. In a tone that expresses the level of my annoyance, I mutter, “You’ve basically wasted my time. Now I have to go back in and try to convince her that everything is normal in her changing mind. If she panics, she shuts it down. Not to mention, she isn’t exactly getting healthier here. She needs to go back to the hospital.”
“We have a better medical team here than any hospital. She’s fine.” He sighs. “Pick someone else to do the dirty work.”
“No. How did you even do it?”
He grins. “I didn’t.”
“How?” I growl.
“Changed the recording.” He chuckles like it’s nothing, but we both know it’s something.
I nod. “I gathered, jackass. When I woke to your voice in my head, I knew instantly the recording was changed and it was your fault, but how did you change my plans and her visions at the same time?”
He clears his throat and glances at the girl on the bed next to mine. “Changed both of your recordings to a different repetition. For you we read the triggers and the hints you knew, describing the scenery and campus and city, just like we always do. But then we added Rory’s name in like a subliminal message the way you do with mine. It switches between me reading and Rory reading to confuse you. In the part where you describe him, I described Rory. It works every time to get you into the person’s mind and to ensure they open up to you. So I figured, why not subliminal messages to you to pick a different bad guy? I thought about using a random guy you don’t even know, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to send you in blind. Then you could panic inside of her. But when we started making the new recording, Rory volunteered. It was a subtle change, my description for Rory’s. It didn’t seem like a big deal.”
“Messing with my head isn’t the big deal. But you said you messed with her recording, the one that has soft sounds and makes my voice a comfort and lets her relax and let me in? You know better than I do that her recording is the key. Hers lets me in and makes her trust me. She has to hear my voice, hear me speaking and describing myself, so when I get inside of her mind I am a familiar face.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “You changed the words to change my plans, but really all you did was show her new faces to pin the crime on. I have to be able to see who she’s trying to show me, which is why I use your face. For me it’s the constant. Rory is always a brother or a side story. I need her to show me the bad guy. And guess what, genius? She doesn’t want to see his face. She doesn’t want to let me see. Can’t you imagine why?”
“I know, Jane. I taught you all of this. One face isn’t a big change. It’s a very minor change—just so that the man you would love wouldn’t be the man who took Ashley. I wanted it to be that maybe I would be the hero who saved you.” A slight smile twitches on his lips.