He rubbed a hand through his wavy, yet kinky hair. The biracial man had cool gray eyes. Although chilling, they complemented his steel-colored tailor-made suit. Handsome and lean, he had just enough muscle, indicating he implemented a flawless workout regimen.

“No, I’m not Trent.”

Beasley walked in behind the man she knew as Trent Winehouse—who had just denied being Trent Winehouse.

“She doesn’t know who I am?” Not-Trent questioned. He rubbed a hand against a neatly-cut beard then placed his hands on his lean hips.

“No, she doesn’t.” Beasley gazed at Not-Trent with worried eyes. It was clear that the hierarchy was topped with this new stranger. He was the boss of them all.

“That’s good for you,” he said. His shiny Armani shoes stopped right in front of her cage. He squatted, staring at her with squinted eyes. His mouth just slightly agape, a subconscious mannerism, as if he spent mounds of time ruminating. Then his head whipped around to Beasley.

“I retract my last statement. Her mild case of amnesia is not good for you! Who the fuck does she think she is if I am Trent? And what’s with that faint bruise around her neck, the scarring at her knees, the fucking blood on her calf leg? Beasley, speak!”

“I…” Beasley placed a hand over his heart, breathing slowly. “I’m not sure.”

“Shall I mention—?” Not-Trent paused, his irritation blew away as he gave a reassuring smile to Mary Jane. Then his gray eyes darkened as he stared at Beasley. “I could murder you for slapping her face on every billboard from here to Texas. You better be glad I’m not selling her to any Russians or Japanese. The Arabs wouldn’t even consider this crap! But what you better understand is, that she’s even more important than any bitch you’ve ever laid eyes on. She’s mine.”

“Bu—”

“My pet does not wear cheap makeup. Did you think I wouldn’t see it? I’ve just about had it with your fuck-ups. Let this bullshit redirect into my court. I’m going to surgically remove your heart with no anesthetic!”

Beasley’s fleshy cheeks jiggled as he nodded.

Not-Trent glanced at Mary Jane, his polite coolness returned. Somewhere within his spirit, a switch flipped and shut off for emotion. His voice was soft and soothing. “What do you remember about me, honey?”

Mary Jane looked to the left then the right and folded her arms.

I’m not playing any games with you.

“C’mon, honey.” Not-Trent’s gray eyes liquefied into a warm metal. They pulled her in with every kind of lustful thought. He knelt, gazing eye-to-eye at her level. “Well, if you don’t recall exactly who I am, we can always part ways with very fond memories of each other. You looked at me with desire when asking who I was. You love me?”

She frowned. Something wasn’t right.

He stood up and his fine, tailored suit draped over every muscle of his body. “She was supposed to be in her cage, frightened beyond belief. Waiting for me! Waiting for me to save her. Waiting for me to tilt the fucking world and make it all better for her. Then I see her on a billboard and had to come running!”

Mary Jane glared at him, and he stared back like she was his sex kitten.

“We’ve had a lot of issues with this one.” Beasley rummaged in the pocket of his own suit. “I wouldn’t suggest—”

“Wow, this is pure comedy.” Not-Trent gave a cocky smile, eyes on her. “I don’t know how this fat fuck can even fathom that I require his opinion.”

Tightlipped, Beasley walked to the cage with a key in his slightly-trembling fingers. The deadbolt snapped unlocked. He pushed the door open, undid the latch on her ankles, and waited for Mary Jane to come out. He nodded his head for her to exit. His eyes, finally, pled for her to comply. With a huff, he looked to Not-Trent. “I don’t know what’s wrong with MJ.”

While he looked at Not-Trent for instruction, Mary Jane leapt up from her kneeling position and lunged at him. Beasley fell to the ground. His body flew back to the floor. The chains around her wrists clamped against Beasley’s throat, and she squeezed tightly. Then Not-Trent grabbed the back of her neck. His manicured nails digging into her flesh as he pulled her up, her legs dangled in the air before he tossed her against the wall.

“Honey, control yourself,” he ordered in a calculating tone, mouth pinched at the sides. “Sweetheart, nobody in this world but me can hit you. I guarantee I will patch your ass back up again too.”

Beasley struggled to breathe, turning on his stomach and knees.

Mary Jane saw the rage and disgust in Not-Trent’s eyes as he glared at Beasley. He stepped past Beasley over to her, gave a warm smile, and reached a hand out for her to stand up. Shit, and I thought I was bipolar. Ignoring the gesture, she turned over and got up, her chains clanked around her hands as she stood almost a foot beneath him.

Not-Trent did his best to hold in his aggravation as he ushered her back into the cage and swiftly locked the door behind her. “It appears you should stay in here until you recall a few manners.”

“I-I’m g-g-gonna,” Beasley grunted and got up, one leg after the other, his eyes brimming with fire. He stared at Mary Jane, who blinked a few times in return. “I’ll kill the little whore!”

“Beasley, the only task at your disposal is breathing unless instructed not to. Do you comprehend?”

Beasley stepped back toward the door.

“Tr—” Mary Jane gulped and started over, “Could you tell me who I am?”

Still not breaking their connection, he took a seat, his eyes continued to roam over her, lips slightly agape.

“Y-you loved me once.” Mary Jane hated herself for attempting to appeal to any shred of humanity in the sociopath. Something told her in his sordid mind, he believed he’d once loved her. “Please?”

“Regardless of your temperament, I have always loved you. To the dismay of my heart, I always will,” he replied wryly.

To another woman—who hadn’t viewed Not-Trent lash out—his enduring glance would have had her swooning. Trying to hide her repulsion, Mary Jane smiled. At least they were making leeway with her identity. “I love you too.”

“No, you don’t.” He shook his head. “That’s why you’re here. Tell me who you think I am.”

She folded her arms, lips tensed.

“If you want to die knowing who you are, not as some Jane Doe, tell me! Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am?”

She sighed. “Anya Randolph.”

He pointed to himself, his body tensed. “And me? Who am I to you?”

“Trent Winehouse.”

At that, Not-Trent’s athletic body shook with a laugh. “Oh, Mary Jane, you were always so naive. It’s breathtakingly beautiful.”

She looked at the playfulness in his eyes. The lust.

“Does the film—the hit blockbuster—The Eradicator ring a bell?”

She shook her head no.

“Charlene Shaw?” He waved a hand. Still, she shook her head.

“You and a friend had plans to see The Eradicator II when…” Not-Trent pulled at his silk tie in pure discomfort. “The A-list actress Charlene Shaw played Anya Randolph. Trent Winehouse was her hero in the movie...Charlene was one of your favorite actresses, so I couldn’t forget her name if I wanted. You always said that action was your favorite genre. Those movies made you happy.” His tense demeanor had faded as if the memories were welcome. “Anyhow, in The Eradicator, Charlene is working Trent who is ex-CIA or something. They’re lovers in the summer blockbuster you’ve been imagining.”

He abruptly stood up and walked toward her. His hand slipped through the bars and grabbed her chin. He pushed it upward to get a clear view into her eyes. Not-Trent snatched the prescription glasses from beneath the handkerchief in his front pocket. They went hastily over his eyes. “Hmmm, this is a breakthrough!”

Not-Trent went to the door as Beasley’s head popped inside. He shoved a hand into the air, indicating that they needed more time, and Beasley slipped back out before he did.

“Damn it, Beasley. I could kill you! I should kill you.”

Mary Jane listened intently as his voice rose in anger. Though the door was cracked open, their voices lowered. Not-Trent mentioned something about saving something from a cage, but Mary Jane couldn’t distinguish much of the conversation. Then Not-Trent came back into the room. Walking slowly to his chair, he said, “I’ll grant your wish. I hope you’re prepared to know exactly who you are.”

Trent pulled one arm after the other out of his suit jacket in a fluid, suave movement. He folded the jacket neatly, placed it on the back of the chair, and sat down with a wide grin.

This small act brought back a flood of memories into Mary Jane’s mind. Every thought she’d ever had since she was a child came back. Growing up with a mother who spent most of her time looking for love rather than taking care of her two daughters. Sleeping on naked mattresses with bedbugs. Roaches scurrying everywhere. Washing her clothing in the bathroom sink with a bar of soap. Taking care of her younger sister. Magic tricks for the night’s dinner. Moving at the drop of a dime because the current boyfriend was too demanding for Mother, hit Mother, or left Mother for another woman in town.

Now, the snippet of a memory that MJ was plunged into while driving that old Corolla was grounded in reality. The two girls walking home and bickering about going to the police meant the entire world to Mary Jane. Their mother had finally wrangled a rich man who was even more cruel than the others. Now, her memories of being a secret agent were displaced by another life.

“Megan!” Twenty-four-year-old Mallory threw the bottle of pain medication onto the living room floor of her lavish Beverly Hills mansion. The pills scattered around the Italian marble. Her stilettos stomped on a few of them as her younger twin sister, Megan, flew to the floor to save her beloved Norco, Vicodin, and Xanax.

“Stop it!” Megan’s hair draped over her face as she cried. She pushed back a few clumped tendrils before shoving handfuls of pills in the pockets of her holey, soiled sweatpants. “These are mine. You can’t control me!”

“I’m trying to save you.” Mallory bent down into a fog of liquor and other toxic drugs that pumped through her younger twin’s body. She placed a hand on the ragged USC sweater Megan had to have stolen while panhandling in the area. “Please, Megan, you have to stop. I can’t support you anymore. You broke your arm. Do you know how ridiculous it was to hear that you had broken your arm to get more prescriptions? I’m taking you off my health coverage.”

“Why, Mal? Is your spending money being cut? That’s farfetched! You don’t even have children to waste money on! Tell me if your loving, intelligent, chemist husband is cutting your allowance. How will you please Peter without designer clothes?” Megan snorted back tears and snot, obviously waiting for a rise out of her sister. Not receiving any argument after her string of insults, Megan shrugged. “Awesome. You don’t love me anyway!”

“You can’t love yourself, with the way you treat your body. I love you enough to stop enabling you, Megan. No more money. No more doctor visits at my expense,” Mallory said.

Megan stood up and kicked the side of the white leather couch. Smiling devilishly at her older twin, Megan stepped toward a landscape painting that dominated the span of the living room wall. She yanked and yanked at it until one half came crashing down, tilted, and cracked.

“Well, I hope you’re done,” Mallory said, folding her arms. “I’ve already found a good rehabilitation place for you. I’ll visit you all the time.”

Her sister tossed up her middle finger, stomping toward the stairs. She did not take offense, knowing her younger twin had once been her everything in the nightmare of the world their mother had created. She followed Megan upstairs saying, “While you’re packing your things, don’t ruin the guest room looking for the coke you stashed. In the bottom of the wall aquarium? Really? You’ve gotten good at hiding your drugs, but not that damn good. I spent half my life raising you and Mother!”

Megan sneered. “I’m leaving and not to a stupid rehab place, no matter how much money you spend on it. I hope this time when you feel guilty and look for me, you can’t find me. I hope I die! I hope when you come lookin’ I’m six feet under, and don’t even think of burying me next to Mother! I hope I get cut into tiny pieces and…”

Mallory put her hands over her ears. She always hated this part of their arguing. This was the reason why she and Peter didn’t have children yet. Well, one of the reasons.

But Megan was right. After listening to her go back and forth from being guilty to the victim, she’d tell Megan to leave. A month or two later, either Megan would call, claiming to be clean, or she’d go looking for her twin.

“You’re my twin sister, but you don’t fucking love me!”

Mallory wrapped her arms around her sister, hugging her tightly. It was in Megan’s eyes that her bold statement was a lie. Mal loved her more than anything in the world. She’d endured torture for Megan to flourish when their mother finally settled down.

The man their mother loved only wanted one child. And the little sister had a good life. Mal had always had it the worst, until she met Doctor Peter Grienke.

Mary Jane gasped as tears flooded her cheeks. She recalled it all. Her stream of memories preceded and succeeded all others. It wasn’t like the “Anya Randolph” premonition in which she’d only had just that one fragment of time spent with Trent Winehouse. No, this one was complete. As was the one where she and Megan had walked down the street in the nice neighborhood, where the ambulance was stopped in front of their home.

Growing up with a mother who followed her latest and greatest boyfriend, a redneck hillbilly who farmed marijuana, a drug dealer in Chicago, and more. She and her younger twin only had each other. They’d keep quiet around the men as they grew up, because a few of them had wandering eyes.

“I finally left them,” Mary Jane whispered.

“Megan was turning into your mother,” Peter agreed. “You barely finished high school with keeping her father off you.”

“He was not her father—our father, Peter!” Mary Jane gritted out.

He held out a calming hand. “I know, honey. You called him…what was it?”

“The good uncle.” She sank back against the bars and sobbed. It was a play on words. The man was vile, and ‘uncle’ well, that was another term she twisted because who didn’t want a cool uncle when they were young?

“Because he treated Megan nicely. They went to dinner every weekend. You worked at Little Caesars Pizza after school. You weren’t a part of the same crowd Megan was in while you both attended high school in Long Beach,” Peter sighed. “You are very resilient, aren’t you? A man who fucked your beautiful body after your mother and sister went to bed happy. And then I saved you, Mary Jane…I think I’d rather call you Mary Jane for now.”

She held in her disgust for him as he smiled. Yes, he had saved her. Mary Jane recalled attending courses at Long Beach City College. She’d moved out with the little bit of financial aid she had, via purchasing a car and living in it. Then she’d gotten a job at Nordstrom’s beauty counter. Peter had just bought a Rolex, and he’d seen her behind the counter. He’d stopped as if mesmerized. He’d been charming.

“What does my lovely wife recall last? You do recall defying me, don’t you?”

With a reluctant nod, tears streamed down her face again. Peter had told her not to search for Megan. To let her be. He’d threatened her.

But there was nothing new about that. There was always this innate urge to keep her sister safe, no matter the consequences when she did.

“I did. I went looking for her, Peter.”

“Keep talking, beautiful. Let it all out.” His demeanor was dreamy, his tone soothing, but Mary Jane knew he was angry. There was a certain stiffness about him. It angered him immensely when she did not listen.

“I’m sorry, Peter, but I had to search for my blood. I did everything you asked. Everything else. ‘Sit there. Look pretty,’ I did it. ‘Research my new investors and be prepared for conversation at the gala this evening,’ I did that, Peter, because I love you. But just thinking about my sister somewhere lying dead in a ditch due to the company she kept, well I couldn’t—”

“So you defied me. You always defied me!”

Her shoulders shook as she cried. She recalled the charming Peter she’d met and how brilliant he was. Too intelligent for his own good. Mary Jane now remembered that she’d taken self-defense lessons from a judo master in Hollywood to keep slim for Peter and to also release some of the aggression from having the life she sought-after as a child. She had the perfect life with Peter. The life of a trophy wife. It was ironic, the crazy saying that ‘grass isn’t always greener’ never penetrated until she stopped coveting and truly had the ‘perfect’ life.

She recalled being in high school and seeing her sister finally survive and thrive when their mother married. Their mother married a man who was outwardly kind and good, but the bastard was disgusting.

Megan internalized the guilt, later turning toward drugs.

Mallory, well, she became numb to it, and Peter had given her a dream come true only to snatch it away.

“Your last memory, Mary Jane,” he cut through her thoughts. “Tell me?”

“Okay,” she murmured. “It was three months later.”

“As usual,” he sneered. “You were ever so predictable.”

She rolled her gaze away from him and continued. “I went searching for Megan. She’d always been so outgoing, even as a drug addict. Friends at Venice Beach who worshiped her like the sun and the moon or a motorcycle bar she frequented in L.A.”

“She wasn’t at any of those places, was she?” Peter probed. “You know where she was, didn’t you?”

His face was calm, yet his tone had been filled with venom. Vile thoughts licked at Mary Jane as she concentrated on the best neighborhood they’d lived in as adolescents. The premonition she had before driving into Santo Cruces Police Station had been a dream. “The cops will help,” she mumbled to herself.

“What’s that?” He then began to chuckle as it dawned on him. “I remember. You, Megan, and the Bitch,” he referred to her mother, “had finally moved into a nice neighborhood. You’d have those dreams that the cops would help, didn’t you?”

Though Peter made fun of her, she gave a subtle nod. “I did. I would dream of the nice house that we lived in and that the cops were coming to take away the man who lived there…” She paused to shake her head, still unable to say it. Mary Jane shoved a hand through her hair and sighed. “I can’t believe it. I’d always search for Megan every few months. Most of the time, I’d catch up with her in Venice or the next stop. But that place was my very last stop.”

“Did you go in?” Peter’s lips curved into a sinister smile. He held up an iPad. “This program helps me. It’s like a novel of your current memories. Usually there are prods attached to your skull, but I’m assuming Lyle did a good job the first week you were here, reconfiguring and connecting your psyche to my computer system. I know your memories. When they’re all erased, I’ll write a new set. Cognition and computer coding. It’s fun.”

She glared at him through tearstained eyes.

“But did you go in, Mary Jane? Bat those pretty eyelashes at ‘the good uncle’ and save your sister for the umpteenth time?”

Entire body tensing, she held still. A while ago, Mary Jane was certain. Anya Randolph was just a movie. She’d somehow dreamt the movie Peter told her about earlier. But, now she had to analyze the mind of Mallory Portman-Grienke.

Her memories end abruptly. The only adult memories she had were of an actress in a movie and those with Megan. The memories end at...the Chevron gas station around the corner from the good uncle’s house. She’d punched at the steering wheel with rivers of tears falling down her cheeks. Mary Jane bit her lip, pulling the puzzle pieces together. That fucking creep wanted her in a cage, and Beasley was supposed to keep her there.

“Did you knock on the door, say ‘hello daddy,’ because, honey, the man was not your uncle or just your mother’s next piece of shit boyfriend. He was her husband, your stepfather—just as taboo, right?”

He chuckled while waiting for a response. “It’s okay that you don’t recall. The memories at the forefront of your mind—the newest ones—are the easiest to erase for good. It appears they’ve been effectively erased.” He nodded to the iPad again. “However, it takes four entire weeks to cleanse the brain. You should be operating on middle school memories at best. Apparently, Lyle and Beasley aren’t doing their jobs.”

Instead of placing all her cards on the table, Mary Jane kept quiet. She needed Hurricane to return. This asshole was screwing with her mental stability. And out of all the thoughts swarming through her mind, Mary Jane knew one thing.

Hurricane could save her.