Page 132 of Irreversible

I shrug. “I’m not sure what you expected, tossing me in here under your name…but I’ll do my best.”

In this case, my best is nothing.

“So, I should expect the nurses to start cursing the name Luke Tanner. Got it.” He glances at the untouched plate of food and back at me. “How are you holding up?”

“It’s better than my previous accommodations, I suppose.” That’s all I can give him for now. “I’m alive.”

There are no chains, cuffs, or continual threats of death here, but I’m still a prisoner—both in this bed, and my own mind. The bastard that eluded me is living rent-free in my head, taunting my helplessness while he gets farther and farther away. Meanwhile, I’m bored out of my skull. It turns out I actually miss having an incessant conversationalist in the room next door.

I wonder what she’s doing right now. If she thinks I died in there.

Dammit, stop thinking about her.

Throwing my head back against the pillow, I exhale. “I’m about to lose my shit in here.”

After Tanner and the FBI busted the ring wide open, I spent the night combing the woods, hunting futilely for my sister’s murderer. My old partner finally found me the next morning, face down on the side of a road. When I woke, I was in a medical facility, groggy from anesthesia after undergoing surgery to repair my broken body.

And the man Everly dubbed The Timekeeper?

He was long gone.

Interestingly enough, my old friend had me discreetly transported to a private medical facility under his name. Aside from him, no one has come to visit or question me, which means the authorities don’t know I’m here.

Obviously, he has something up his sleeve, but he isn’t sharing. Granted, I haven’t been in the best shape. In the beginning, I was so delirious that hearing medical staff call me by the name Luke sent me into an identity crisis, triggering dreams that I was a mild-mannered man named Luke Tanner, who had a dissociative personality named Isaac Porter, avigilante who spent his nights fighting supervillains with his sidekick, a shapeshifting songbird named Jewel.

It’s possible I got a little violent…

I earned myself a heavy sedative and a long nap, which I don’t have time for.

“I figured you were a little stir-crazy.” Tanner brings his briefcase closer, flicking the latches open. “Now that you’ve had a few days to recover, I thought you might be interested in the information I’ve pieced together.”

“It’s about fucking time.” So far, he’s told me nothing, except that Everly Cross and her husband are alive and well, and the leader of the ring is in the wind. Wincing, I shift higher on the bed. Tanner snags the paper cup from the table, offering me the pain medication, but I knock it out of his hand, desperate to be lucid for the first time in days.

“Don’t be dramatic. You’re no good to anyone until you’ve recovered.” Handing me a file, he sits in the chair next to the bed. The vinyl creaks beneath him. “I’m not sure how much you already know, but you were being held in a wilderness area, in an abandoned lab once used for?—”

“Animal testing,” I finish. That became obvious once I saw outside the room I’d been locked in.

“Right. It hadn’t been used since the late ‘80s—until your black-market kingpin found it several years ago and set up shop.” He nods at the file in my lap, and I open it. A glossy black-and-white photograph sits on top.

My blood pressure rises. “The bastard has a professional headshot?” I look up, incredulous, though I suppose I shouldn’t be. “Does he have a resume, too?”

“Of sorts.” He leans over and taps the next page. “Your guy’s name is Leonard B. Vincent. Once had a failed stint in the fashion industry, then tried his hand at being an actor. When Hollywood didn’t embrace him, he got a master’s degreein business and followed his true passion: black-market trafficking. He’s good. No police record, genius IQ, sociopathic tendencies, et cetera, et cetera. Seems he found a niche filling special requests for the very rich, dealing in anything he could get paid for: illegal adoptions, egg and organ harvesting, the sex trade.”

I hear an echo of Everly’s voice through the wall.

“I think they take my eggs.”

“…and then there was you,” Tanner finishes. “That was creative.”

“Leonard B. Vincent.” I growl the name through my teeth and push the picture away. “If the B stands for Bruce, my life is ruined.”

“Your Batman thing is weird,” he deadpans.

“Spoken like a Captain America fan.”

He gives me an exasperated sigh. “Listen, theCaptainrepresented the American dream during a tumultuous time for the country. He’s an icon. Do you really want to have this argument right now?”

“No argument to be had; I already knew you had terrible taste.” Suddenly exhausted, I lean back onto the pillows and exhale. “I guess I should be thanking you.”

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