Page 92 of Ballistic

“After some speech therapy, during which she didn’t bother to participate much, she finally spoke.” He relayed her story with the same enthusiasm as if he were reading it straight out of a medical record. Like a dictation. “She called herself Nicoleta, and spoke with what we determined to be a Russian accent at first, which she later dropped. Over time, she relaxed quite a bit. Trusted the staff here. Became much more agreeable, and we felt that, with the proper medication, she could be discharged. That lasted about two months before she was readmitted for stabbing a young man at her school, whom she claimed tried to rape her.” Again, he spoke robotically, as if a kid trying to rape her didn’t boil his blood the same way it boiled mine right then. “Fortunately for her, and with a bit of persuading from myself and the school administrator, the young man’s family opted not to press charges, but she was to continue her sessions with me. Nearly a year passed before her mother suffered a massive heart attack.” His brow finally pinched together in a troublesome way. “Instead of calling for help, Eden sat beside her and watched her die. When police arrived, she told them that her mother had been part of some plot to kill her. Again, she found herself readmitted under my care, and it was during those sessions that she told me about Dmitry, his bodyguard Aleksey, and how she befriended this well-known crime lord. She also told me about the supposed snuff video in which she’d allegedly been pushed into a river with an anchor tied to her ankles.”

I didn’t like the disbelief in his tone, or the dismissive body language he was throwing off. “The video exists. I’ve seen it. She’s not lying about that.”

“I can assure you, Mister Wolfe. I’ve conducted thorough investigations into this. and the woman you saw in the video wasn’t Eden.”

“Would you like me to show you?” I set the snifter on his desk and reached into my pocket for my phone.

He raised his hand. “No need. I’ve seen it, in all its disturbing depravity.”

The guy probably didn’t realize the fragile line he was walking right then. I was about two shakes from popping his eyeballs right out of his skull. “Then, how can you deny it?”

“Because I’ve met with the woman who starred in that video. It’s a fake, Mister Wolfe. She lives in Birmingham with her husband, who happens to be an incredible and renowned heart surgeon at Detroit General. The video was filmed while she was in her first year of college and needed some extra money for tuition. She’s quite humiliated by it, and hopes, at some point, it’ll stop making the rounds on the dark web.”

No. Didn’t make sense. Nothing about that video seemed fake.

Fingers curled around the arms of the chair, I shook my head. “No. I saw her eyes. I know it was Nic—Eden.”

“You don’t even know her real name.”

“You’re saying she made this up?”

“I’m saying the breakdown she suffered, along with the abuse and trauma at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend, has deeply affected her ability to separate reality from the fantasies inside her head. It’s because of this, I made the recommendation that she remain in permanent placement, as I felt she was a danger to others.”

“Others? As in, the men who tortured and raped her?” The more he spoke, the more I wanted to punch the asshole in the face. “So, what’d she do, escape this place?”

His brows winged up, and he crossed his fingers. “By creatively persuading our staff, yes. He’s no longer working here, incidentally.”

“Bullshit. If that were true, and you really thought she was a danger to someone, the police would be all over it. Escaped mental patient? That’d have the whole damn city on your ass.”

“She’s very manipulative when she wants something.” His lips stretched only slightly, and he dropped his gaze from mine. “And incredibly difficult to deny.”

“You fucked her, didn’t you?”

Clearing his throat, he shifted in his seat.

“And so … what? These men she was after. They’re innocent? Because I’ve done some research on my own, and fucking children isn’t considered innocent by society’s standards.”

“Neither is staging the torture and rape of a young woman. No, they are, by no means, innocent. But I’ve not seen any evidence of them having murdered.”

“And Dmitry?”

He shook his head and shrugged. “As far as the authorities are concerned, he doesn’t exist. There’s not a single trace that this man was, or ever has been, a major criminal in the underground scene. He’s … a myth, from what I’ve gathered. Probably what criminals tell their kids before bed, to scare the shit out of them. She believed him to be a father figure. A protector, which, again, may very well be the result of abuse she suffered.”

I rubbed my hand down my face and across the back of my neck. Could feel the creeping sensation of insanity branching beneath my skin. Hell, maybe it was the hospital itself doing that to me.

“She left you because you discovered her truth.” He kept on as I stared down at the paisley-patterned rug beneath my chair, trying to wrap my head around everything he’d told me. “That’s what she does. The moment I confronted her, she escaped through a low-level ward by manipulating the staff. I don’t know what purpose you may have served in the course of your time together, but I can assure you, without a doubt, that it was merely to give her some footing.”

“It doesn’t make sense that she would risk her life, allowing herself to be kidnapped by some fucking depraved psychopath for a fake porn video.”

“Perhaps you don’t know the extent of mental illness. In her mind, all of it is as real as you sitting in my office right now and hearing the truth you’re obviously choosing to deny.”

I shut out the fucked-up picture he was painting by clamping my eyes, and breathed hard through my nose. “That’s it, then. You’ve fed me your bullshit, so now I’ll leave.” Eyes snapping open again, I pushed up from my chair, needing to get the hell out of there. Needing to get as far away from that crazy shit as possible.

“I’m asking you for one favor, Mister Wolfe. And please consider the consequences, if you decide to ignore it. In the off chance that she does return to you, I’m asking you to contact me immediately, without letting her know you’ve done it.”

“And what are the consequences, if I don’t?”

“You’ll be considered an accomplice to murder and face charges for harboring an escaped mental patient.”