Luc put his arm around her shoulders. “You hypnotized Priscilla?” His voice was tight with emotion. “Why?”
“For the money.” Priscilla kept her gaze on the doctor as she answered. “Culvert hired him to be on hand for certain jobs that took place in a more public setting to hypnotize any witnesses into forgetting what they saw.”
“To pay off Laura’s gambling debts,” Luc finished.
“The good doctor had to do something to keep his lovely wife out of trouble,” Culvert said. “She had borrowed money from the wrong people one time too many. Our arrangement allowed Devins the opportunity to pay off her debts, which, I must say, kept climbing higher and higher.” He turned to the doctor. “You really need to get her help with her gambling addiction.”
She locked eyes with Culvert. “Why not just kill the witnesses?”
“I don’t kill innocent people.” He picked up the gun from the mantel, resting it against his right leg.
“A hit man with a code of honor?” Luc sounded as disbelieving as Priscilla.
Culvert narrowed his eyes. “I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. The US Army taught me how to kill, and I found I was good at it—very good at it. When I returned from yet another overseas assignment, I’d had enough of the military and decided to branch out on my own.”
“But you’re still a killer.” Dr. Devins’s voice had its old confidence back.
“I’ve known a day of reckoning would come. One’s luck always runs out.” Culvert stared hard at the psychiatrist. “That’s a lesson you should learn.”
“What, you believe there’s more to life than this?” Dr. Devins glanced around the cabin. “That there’s a final judgment?”
The two men eyed each other like boxers circling in a ring, waiting to see who would blink first. Priscilla sidled beside Luc, reaching down to interlace her fingers through his. Maybe they could get closer to the door while the two former colleagues were distracted by their conversation.
“No, more like the old adage ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,’” Culvert mocked. “Why don’t you tell Priscilla exactly what you did to her?”
Culvert and Dr. Devins both turned to look at her. Priscilla froze. So much for edging closer to the back door. To distract them from where she and Luc stood, she blurted, “What did you do?”
Dr. Devins blew out a breath. “You were easy. Culvert suspected someone was hiding in the kitchen. I waited for you to emerge, then followed you to the break room. The rest was simple.” His gaze hardened. “But you forgot the wrong thing! You remembered enough of the shooting to make it dangerous for both of us.”
Priscilla tried to wrap her mind around this new information. “But how can you hypnotize someone against their will? I thought they had to be compliant for it to work.”
“That’s a common misconception.” Dr. Devins straightened, a professorial tone coloring his words. “The truth is that most people can be hypnotized quite easily after witnessing a traumatic event. It’s often used to help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder overcome that syndrome.”
Anger built as Dr. Devins continued to explain the benefits of hypnotherapy for PTSD. He had tricked her into suppressing memories not of the shooting but of her marriage to Luc, effectively robbing her of seven years of her life.
“In a hypnotic trance, clients are able to reenact the trauma, this time substituting what they wish they had done with what they hadn’t been able to do in reality.” Dr. Devins continued as if addressing a classroom of undergraduates. “Thus, they are able to finally put the trauma behind them and reintegrate fully into their former lives.”
“And what about me and the others you hypnotized?” Priscilla stiffened as anger pulsed through her body. “How are we to move on when you’ve blocked our memories?”
Dr. Devins raised his eyebrows. “At this point, you don’t have to worry about that.”
* * *
The tension in the room accelerated with Dr. Devins’s ominous reply to Priscilla’s question. Luc gauged the distance between themselves and the back door. They had inched closer, but how many steps remained, he hadn’t a clue. Had he latched the door securely when he’d returned with the coffeepot water? He couldn’t remember if Culvert had been watching him upon his reentry into the cabin—and thus allowed Luc to take the opportunity to make a way of escape possible.