Anamnesis: A Novel (25 page)

I wanted to wait
until I’d gotten myself together before I sent Olivia a text to come back, but
it seemed wrong. I didn’t want her around Hugh, or anyone else who put her at
risk. Yet how could I face her after seeing that? Should I lie about what I
found? Dealing with Whiteout was all about withholding information for the
greater good. Or personal gain. Or to protect yourself. I liked to think I
didn’t support any of those things. Hypocrisy at its finest.

Using the change I’d scrapped from Hugh, I
hopped a bus to get back downtown to Olivia’s apartment. Just as I sat down, my
phone buzzed with a text from her.

Are you okay? The alarm went off, we’re
headed back now.

My thumb hesitated over the ancient keys
as I gathered a response.
I’m fine. Meet me back at your apartment.

The bus felt worse than usual. As my gaze
shifted around the other riders, I imagined they all knew my secret. They could
see me replaying what I’d seen, a projector in my mind displaying the girls and
their assailants.

It was natural to replay traumatic
incidents. Avoid judging yourself. Fucking self-help books.

As soon as I got into Olivia’s apartment I
was going to raid the vodka bottle in the freezer. I would come clean; I did
find something, but it was graphic. If she let me describe the men in the
videos to her, maybe we could find them off that alone. Then no one would have
to see them.

A cool automatic female voice announced my
street was coming up. I made my way to the center of the bus and was out the
moment the doors swung open. The two block walk to her building felt good. If I
focused hard enough on my footsteps, the nipping cold on my face, I had brief
seconds of emptiness in my mind.

Someone was just entering the courtyard
when I arrived, and I slipped into the complex before the door swung shut. I
sat on a bench in her courtyard while I waited. The bag of memory cards was
necrotic in my jacket pocket. It ate away at me. I wanted them gone. I needed
this to be over.

“Ethan?”

“Fuck, I didn’t expect you so soon.”

A healthy, albeit stressed, Olivia crossed
the courtyard towards me. Not tied up and sobbing. Not being used up like she
was nothing.

“How did you get in here?” She sat next to
me and folded her arms across her chest. “Never mind. What happened? I thought
you were going to wait until I got back?”

“I couldn’t,” I managed, my voice meek. It
was time to tell her. But not until I had a drink in me. “Can we go up to your
place?”

She frowned and looked at me skeptically.
“Sure. Come on.”

Neither of us spoke as we made the trek up
to her apartment. Once in, I headed straight for the freezer and guzzled the
burning liquid straight from the bottle. The ice cold glass felt good against
my lips, the warmth spreading throughout my body even better.

I took the bottle to the stools by the
kitchen island and sat next to Olivia.

“What did you find?”

“Olivia, first of all I want to—”

“Cut the bullshit. I know you found
something. I don’t want a preface or your fucking interpretation. I want the
truth.”

My jaw hung open. I looked away from her
enraged face at the bottle. This was it. “I found memory cards under the floor
board in his closet.”

“Did you take them?”

“Yes.” I reached into my pocket and
dropped them onto the counter.

Olivia barely glanced at them before
getting up and retrieving her laptop. She plugged a small silver box into it
and went for the baggie. I put my hand over it to stop her. Her skin was cold.

“Listen to me.” She tried to push my hand away.
I clenched the bag. “You fucking listen to me. Once you see what’s on here,
there is no going back. You will never forget it. It will only bring you pain.”

“You can’t decide that for me,” she
shouted.

“I’m not deciding for you. I’m warning
you. We can still figure out who’s in these without you having to see them. Let
me describe the other three to you. Find them on the internet and show me their
faces and we’ll know.”

“Am I on one of those videos?”

My mouth went dry. I couldn’t stand
looking at her and focused on the condensation on the vodka bottle instead.
“Yeah.”

“It’s my life and I’m missing pieces of
it. I don’t care how terrible the experiences are; it’s my right to know. If
you could get video of all your missing life during the trials, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” I said honestly. I was unsure
before, but now, it was clear. “After remembering what I did to Andrew Cole,
after the nightmares I have? No. Seeing what happened to me won’t change who I
am. It’s too late for that.”

“Well, I’m not you. I want to see.”

At least I tried. When all else was dark
and I was tearing myself apart for letting her watch it, I could at least
remind myself I tried. I took the bag and retrieved one of Eagle first.

I was a fucking monster. I didn’t want
Olivia to watch any of them, but if she was I was going to get the information
I needed from her. If that meant showing her the one of her and Captain last,
so be it.

She popped the memory card into the silver
box and clicked away on her laptop. A loud burst of audio began of a girl
crying. Olivia hit mute.

“That’s Hugh’s father.” She turned it off
immediately and tossed the memory card aside. Her face was always pale, but it
looked gray now. “Next.”

I gave her one of Bolt. The memory cards
got jumbled in the bag. The video she watched now was different than the one I
saw, but it was the same man. He was tying cord around each joint on a young
boy, one that looked about Skid’s age. Olivia waited until she saw the man’s
face when he lay next to the boy, then shut it off.

“Lincoln Johnston. Captain of SPD. Next.”

I set a memory card with Captain written
on it in front of her. I knew it was the same one I watched. I recognized a
smudge on the upper right corner of the label. She opened the video.

Captain’s face came on screen as he neared
her. Olivia started to speak, coughed, then said, “That’s the mayor. That’s
Lewis Ward.”

She didn’t turn off the video. She kept
watching, her face surprisingly blank. I got off the stool and took my bottle
of vodka to the couch, far away from the laptop. I couldn’t imagine what drove
her to keep watching, or what horrors were in the rest of the video.

But I had my names. Despite all the
fucking terror of the day, I knew all the men behind it and one of them was
already dead. Ward, Hugh’s father, and Lincoln Johnston.

A half hour later she closed the laptop.

“I need you to leave.”

I sat up and turned to see her. Olivia’s
eyes were deadened. Her voice was hoarse. “I’m sorry you had to see it.”

She shrugged. “I wanted to. Now I did and
I want you to leave. I want to be alone.”

“What are we going to do? I can’t leave
you now, not after this.”

“
We
aren’t going to do anything.
You are going to leave my apartment because I need to be alone right now.”

I set the nearly empty bottle on the
coffee table then stood. My body swayed. I’d crossed being buzzed and was
almost drunk. “This is it, Olivia. We’re at the eleventh hour. Hugh probably
already knows the memory cards are gone. They’re going to realize your dad is
missing. They aren’t stupid. They probably have a backup plan on how they’re
going to deal with something like this. Maybe they’re going to leave the
country.”

She laughed. The sound was so harsh I
stopped talking, stunned. She crossed the room and came up to me. “They aren’t
going anywhere. Whatever we do, they will make us disappear. Like Kaylee and
Laurel, like all the people in those videos. Hell, the mayor’s gala is
tomorrow. I’ve spent months planning a fucking party for the man who has been raping
me for God only knows how long.”

Olivia’s expression became distant as she
delved into her own mind. Something shifted in her. I didn’t know exactly what,
but something had.

“Get out, Ethan. This is over.” Tears
finally welled up in her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore.”

I didn’t bother arguing. I had my names. I
was going to find one of the Melnikov family’s exiled hitters, scrounge up some
money, and have them killed. There was nothing I could do to reverse what
Olivia had seen. Like she said, it was her decision.

An impulse to embrace her came over me so
strongly I couldn’t resist. I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed once. To
my surprise, she returned it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Goodbye, Olivia.”

I felt Olivia’s absence. It was as though
a part of me was left behind in her apartment. There was no follow up. There
was no plan. We were done. I knew our friendship—or whatever it was we had—was
over. I’d hoped it would be under better circumstances, but realistically knew
it went down the only way it could.

The weight of my backpack and duffel bag
felt heavier than usual, because I knew I truly had nowhere to put them. I
exited the apartment complex and found myself standing on the street.

Deep breath. Plan. I needed a plan.
Anything to anchor me in the floating bleakness of my life.

I knew the names. I had a gun. I bet most
of the men would be at the gala tomorrow, assuming they didn’t leave the
country. Where the gala was, I had no clue, but I’m sure I could find out.
Maybe I did have it in me to kill them.

Then my old plan for Hugh came to mind. I
knew exactly where Hugh was. From there it would be easy to get his dad. Fuck,
maybe I could even bait Captain and Bolt, too. One tidy execution of justice in
the craftsman house.

My stomach churned. There. That was the
plan. I needed to do it before doubt crippled me. I headed for the bus stop,
intent on capturing Hugh as soon as possible.

“Sorry, E.”

A sharp pain started from the back of my
skull down my entire body. Then everything went black.

D
onovan’s cologne
was the first thing I smelled. I’d recognize it anywhere. He wore too much of
it and it wasn’t that great even though I knew it cost a couple hundred bucks.

We were in his Hummer. As I opened my eyes
I saw two of his men on either side of me. Donovan was in the front seat. A
cigarette hung limply from his mouth. The smell of it made my skin crawl with
need. Handcuffs dug tightly into my wrists. It was almost dark outside, but the
ambient floor lighting in the Hummer provided enough light for me to see.

“You been avoiding me?” He laughed. “I
thought I wasn’t going to find you, but then, look! We were driving up to the
club and there’s Ethan, standing like a dumb fuck on the sidewalk. Bad luck.”

The back of my head ached dully where
someone hit me. I tilted my head down in search of my bags. They were nowhere
in sight.

Donovan always liked me, but not enough to
keep me alive after what I’d done. To them, I tried to disrupt a delicate
hierarchy and that didn’t come without consequence. Even if Donovan didn’t want
to kill me, his father and uncle would make him. Really, I was surprised I’d
lasted this long.

“So, elephant in the room. You killed
uncle Cheslav.” Donovan twisted around more so he could see me better. “And I’m
sorry, E, but you know what we have to do.”

“I didn’t kill him!” My head jerked as I
said it. The world was shimmering black before my vision returned to normal.
There was a wisp of hope now. Someone else had killed Chuck. Not me. “I shot
some other guys, but when I left your uncle was fine. Hysterical, bleeding out
a bit, but fine.”

“You shot him in the leg. It hit a vein or
some shit. He bled out before we could do anything.”

“Fuck. It was an accident, Donovan. I
swear I didn’t mean to kill him. If I’d known who the girls were ripping off, I
would’ve said no. I would’ve told you about it.”

“You know it doesn’t matter. You pulled
the trigger. We all watched it on his security cams.”

That smudge of hope faded. “Okay.”

“I have to say, I’m not just killing you
because of that. You know I didn’t like Uncle Cheslav much. It was Trisha, you
know? You always liked her too much. She told me you two were sleeping
together, that you gave her your Whiteout so she could get away from me. I
don’t know how much of it’s true, but some of it must be.”

“You found her, then?”

“She didn’t make it far after that night
with Chuck.”

I didn’t feel sorry for her. Like everyone
on the planet, she had what was coming to her. You don’t screw over the Melnikov
family and get away with it. Trisha knew the risks going into it.

Fuck this. I was so close to revenge,
justice, whatever you want to call it, and in the blink of an eye it was over.
Now I was going to be killed in one of four ways Donovan favored. They’d tie
chains around me and drop me in the Puget Sound, throw me to their dogs in the
fighting pits, get me jacked on acid and drown me, or dismember me. For someone
who seemed almost goofy at times, Donovan was truly cruel when he wanted to be.

Fuck
that
. I wasn’t giving up. I
felt fire welling up in my stomach and chest. Maybe it was the vodka, or maybe
it was courage. I hadn’t come this far to sit back and take it. All this time
I’d told Olivia we’d come too far, we were in it. I was in it now and I was
going to figure it out.

I ran my tongue over my teeth, worked up
some saliva and swallowed. The only thing that would save me now were words and
cleverness. I could do this.

“For what it’s worth, I wasn’t in on that
thing with your uncle,” I said, trying honesty for once. The fit was
uncomfortable, but it was all I had. “Trisha told me she would take me to a
Whiteout supplier and I could ask him some questions. She tricked me to get the
Whiteout you gave me. She and Chastity ran off together.”

Donovan sucked on his cigarette and tapped
ash into an empty Starbucks cup. “Oh yeah? Why’d you want to talk to a Whiteout
supplier?”

Crystal clear, right in front of me, was
the angle I needed. Donovan’s daddy issues. Donovan’s need for power and
control.

The driver turned onto the ramp to the
freeway. I knew this route. We were going to their warehouse in south Seattle.
Dismemberment it was. At least it bought me some time to talk.

“This is going to sound crazy, but give me
a chance. Remember when you found me on Alki? How jacked up I was and couldn’t
remember most of my life before?”

Donovan nodded. I had the attention of his
henchmen now, too, who watched me with curiosity.

“I was part of a drug trial for Whiteout.
It messed me up. They were doing a bunch of illegal testing and once they were
done with me, they tossed me aside knowing I wouldn’t remember any of it. I had
all those conspiracies about it, the blog. Then, seven years later, Whiteout
pops up on the streets. I started digging. I had to know if it had anything to
do with my lost time.” I let it sink in for a moment. “So I was looking for the
suppliers because I was trying to backtrack. I wanted to know who invented the
stuff, who was dishing it out. I wanted revenge against them for ruining my
life.”

I omitted Olivia. There was no point in
dragging her into what was already a serious clusterfuck of a situation.

Donovan dropped his cigarette butt into
the coffee cup and retrieved another. He saw me looking at it with longing and
handed it to me. I brought my bound hands up and took it awkwardly, sucking the
thing down like my life depended on it. He fixed himself another one. Sharing;
this was a good sign.

“Did you find the supplier?”

“I don’t know where they’re getting it
made, but I do know who’s behind it.” I had to tread carefully. My only
bargaining chip was knowledge. “I know the names of all the men behind it.”

“Tell me, then,” Donovan said. His face
was neutral but his eyes bore through me. One of the henchmen rattled off
something in Russian. Donovan shook his head.

I cleared my throat and met his gaze. “Why
should I? You’re going to kill me.”

“I know what you’re doing, E.” Donovan
grinned. It was menacing. “In the face of death, people do the same shit every
time to save themselves.”

“But I have something you want. I have
your key to the source of Whiteout.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I have a
middleman that bring me Whiteout from the source. I get a good cut. It works.”

I felt my grasp on him weakening. I had to
push harder. “I know you’re sick of being beneath your father. Without Chuck in
the picture, you’re one step closer to owning this city. Imagine if you were
the only Whiteout dealer, if you had every part of the operation under your
thumb. Imagine that power. Imagine the money.”

“Okay. Say I believe you. How’s this gonna
happen? How are you going to get me all that?”

Good things don’t come to those who wait. Good
things come to those who manipulate the fuck out of life and don’t wait for it
to grind them down.

“The men behind it are high class. They
have a lot to lose and we both know those are the best kind of people to deal
with. But they won’t go down easy. You gotta get all of them at once or they
won’t talk. They’ve got a pact to protect each other. If you get all of them, I
guarantee you can break them.”

“All that if I let you live, huh?”

“Yeah.” I took a drag on the cigarette and
smiled. “One last thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Once you get what you want out of them,
kill them. Kill every last one of them.”

Donovan chuckled. “Wouldn’t do it any
other way, E.”