Page 70 of Bad Moon Rising
“I can’t remember a single thing about myself. Do you know anything about me?”
Peter stood abruptly and looked around as if expecting ghosts to attack him from the walls. “I want you to leave. Don’t come back. I fulfilled my part of the deal. I can’t help you.”
“Are you sure you remember nothing?” Nova stood.
“Please, leave,” he said, although didn’t raise his voice. Instead, his face remained tight and pale. “Anyone who’d purposefully use that drug and leave themselves a zip drive knows something that will get me killed for being associated.
Smart man.
Nova held out her hand. Peter took it to shake with her. She jerked away and backed up a step as if he’d given her an electric shock. She stared at her hand.
Roman asked in his smooth tone, calling forth the voice to force compliance, “Tell me exactly what she said to you when here last time.”
Peter’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “You said you would return and to give you the flash drive. Then you left.”
“Did she pay you?”
“I think so,” Peter said. “Yes. There’s money in my account. But I can’t remember.”
Shit. She must’ve voice-coerced him into forgetting the last time she was here. At least, in her last life, she remembered how to do this skill inherent to their species. This was a dead-end, but at least they had the flash drive. He said, “Forget we were here, Peter. Forget us entirely.”
Roman took Nova’s arm, led her up and out of the apartment. “Pull up your hood and keep your face down.”
“Why didn’t you ask him more?”
“You wiped his memories. Let’s go see if we can open the drive.”
“How do I go about wiping a person’s memories?” she asked.
“We don’t have time to discuss this right now.” He stumbled against the side of the apartment building’s entryway, lightheaded.
She caught his arm. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You have to tell me what’s going on. Otherwise I can’t help you.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
…
An hour later, on the plane, Flynn put the flash drive into the side of a laptop, one he said wasn’t his main computer but a backup. He muttered something about not screwing up his good computer.
“It’s not emitting any signals. But the drive is encrypted with a password.” Flynn asked, “You wouldn’t by any chance remember the password, would you?”
“Try Nova or amnesia,” she said, distractedly. Roman rested a few seats away, head tossed back, faking sleep. Whatever he hid, she bet had to do with him not following orders to kill her. Her gut said whatever was going on inside him couldn’t continue forever. The curse was going to kill him. Seemed they had a new clock ticking down their time to figure things out.
Flynn shook his head. He made a few more attempts and cursed. “Suggestions?”
“Try Roman,” she said.
“I’ll be damned. We’re in.” A moment later, he announced, “There’s one file. An mp4.”
“Let me see,” Roman said as he rose and settled next to her. Her thigh tingled where it touched his, and his warmth soothed her. She wanted to touch him everywhere to assess his level of damage. Maybe she should be reassured she couldn’t see his future death. When she’d touched Peter, she’d seen him in a hospital, tubes going into his body. He’d been frail and failing until he died.
Why couldn’t she see Roman’s death or Flynn’s? Or Evie’s, for that matter. Did they not die? Maybe she couldn’t read lycans.
Roman said, “Play the file.”
