Page 14 of Warped

Chapter Eight

X

With little choice, I allowed my new friend to steer me down the street and away from the hospital. The name he had used, ‘X,’ had strummed my nerve endings like a guitar pick. Was that really what I had been known as? I couldn’t deny that I’d recognized it. As soon as Harvey had said the name, my veins had flooded with adrenaline.

But if I was X, who the hell was Lee Mason?

The feeling of being left in the dark made me angry and agitated. I hated the idea of the man beside me knowing more about me than I did. I didn’t like the guy, but I had no idea why. I was clamping down on my irritation and frustration with everything I had, when my real instincts were to lash out and hurt someone.

“How far is your apartment?” I asked when we’d put a reasonable distance between us and the hospital.

Harvey turned to me with a frown. “You don’t actually think I’m taking you back to my place. What do you think this is, a fucking date?”

“You said that’s what we were doing.”

“Yeah, when I thought you were using an alias as a way of making sure no one was able to track you down at the hospital. I was helping you out, for old times’ sake, as a way of getting you out of there—I could tell the hospital wasn’t keen on just letting you wander out of there on your own with you claiming you didn’t have any memory. They probably thought you’d try to sue them or something if things ended up going wrong. I’m not too happy about them needing to pass on my address to the cops as your forwarding address, though, in case they need to contact you.”

“They asked you for that?”

“Yeah, ’course they did. You went in there with a gunshot wound and no memory. They have to follow that shit up.”

“Fuck, sorry.” I didn’t know why I was apologizing to him. It wasn’t as though I had asked for his help.

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I figured I owed you one.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You do?”

“We’ve had a couple of run-ins, you and I.”

“What, in work?”

Only serving to increase my frustration, he laughed. “Yeah, you could say that.”

My patience snapped. Without thinking about what I was doing, I just reacted. I spun around on him and grabbed him by the throat. Using my full body weight, I slammed him up against the wall of the building behind. He gave a ‘ugh’ of surprise and pain when he hit the brickwork.

“Stop fucking playing with me,” I spat. “Tell me who I am, or I swear to God, I will rip the words out of your damned throat.”

The cloud of my fury began to clear, and I realized I was pinning the man who’d offered to help me up against a wall by his throat. Not only that, pedestrians were walking by, some hurrying to get past, others slowing with curiosity, some murmuring their dismay to each other.

I let go of Harvey.

He clutched his throat, but to my astonishment, the laughter continued. “Now there’s the X I know and love,” he said, his voice raspy. “I knew you were still in there somewhere.”

I stepped away and placed both hands on top of my head. What the hell was going on?

“You need to tell me everything you know,” I told him. “Or I’m likely to go fucking insane.”

He picked himself off the ground. “And I don’t think you being insane would be safe for anyone.”

“Why do you talk like that? It’s as though I used to be a psychopath or something.”

Harvey didn’t say anything, but his lips twisted. “Well ...”

“I am not a goddamned psychopath.”

“Maybe not diagnosed.” He leaned in closer to lower his voice. “But you do kill people for a living.”

I stared at him. “That’s insane.”

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