Chapter 58
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Ken
Ken realized shortly after their return to the house that his eyelids were drooping and he couldn’t stop yawning. “Okay, naptime for me, sorry.” He glanced at his watch. “I haven’t slept in eighteen hours. Wake me up if you find something or need me.”
“Of course,” Hamish said.
Ken headed out to the sofa in the living room and stretched out there, awakened with a start what felt like seconds later by the sound of the helo landing in the backyard.
Disoriented, he sat up, confused that the light looked so different, very dim, nearly dark. When he checked his phone, he realized he’d been asleep for almost five hours.
Hamish walked into the room. “Ah, good. You’re awake.”
Ken rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, sorry I collapsed.”
“No worries. I didn’t spot anything so far that raises more questions than we already have. After what you told me this morning, I figured we’d let you sleep as long as possible.”
About that time, the front door opened, and two of Trevor’s men walked in with enough food for everyone for dinner.
Ken washed his face in the powder room and when he returned to the dining room, Peyton and Trevor were walking in.
“Well?” Ken asked.
Both men looked a combination of infuriated and exhausted.
“Let’s tell this story once,” Peyton said.
“After dinner, because I’m fucking starving.
Ken, can you set up a conference call on speaker between you, Dewi, Trent, Badger, and Duncan after we eat?
And make sure to warn them not to be anywhere near Gillian or Asia or Tamsin.
Or anyone,” he added. “Needs to be a secret call.”
“Sure.”
They settled at the dining room table, eating mostly in silence. Ken didn’t need any special Prime powers to sense that Peyton and Trevor had obviously uncovered something big.
Something that bothered them.
Once they finished, Trevor and Peyton asked Ken, Hamish, and Jake into the office, closing the door so Ken could set up the call.
“How’s it going?” Dewi asked upon answering. “Are you missing my—”
“You’re on speaker on this end, babe,” Ken cautioned, making Dewi pause, then laugh.
“Love you,” she said.
“Love you, too. It’s me, Trevor, Peyton, Hamish, and Jake.”
“Hey, you fuckin’ rat bastard,” she said. “Ken put that tracking collar on you yet?”
Peyton laughed. “Love you, too, Dewster. Trent, Duncan, Badger, you there?”
“Aye,” Badger said. “We’re all here in the cabin wi’ Dewi. What’s goin’ on?”
Peyton settled into the chair behind the desk while the rest of them stood or sat around the desk on chairs from the dining room. He sounded exhausted in a way Ken couldn’t remember him sounding.
Considering all the shit they’d been through, that was saying something.
“Hyacinth Lewis isn’t Hyacinth Lewis,” Peyton said.
“I’m sorry, say whut?” Dewi asked.
“You heard me,” Peyton repeated. “Hamish informed us that the woman we believed was Hyacinth Lewis is not, and that her real name is Frannie. He saw one of the photo albums today and, long story short, she’s not the real Hyacinth.”
“She’s not Tamsin’s mother?” Trent asked.
“She is,” Trevor said, “but she’s apparently not the real Hyacinth Lewis.”
“She’s definitely not Hyacinth Lewis,” Hamish said. “I knew my sister-in-law for decades, and that woman is not her.”
Dewi sounded understandably confused. “I… What? What? How can she not be Hyacinth Lewis? Why then would Faegan… Whut?”
“Trevor and I literally just returned from questioning her again, and she insists she’s Hyacinth Lewis,” Peyton said.
“And she’s not lying—she truly believes she’s Hyacinth Lewis.
But there’s a gaping black chasm in her memories from before she married Faegan.
We never thought to probe that far back because we all naturally assumed she was Hyacinth. ”
“It’s like a 404 error,” Ken wearily quipped.
In the office, everyone looked at Ken, and he realized they didn’t understand.
“You know. A 404 error. Like, you click a link to go to a page on a website, and it isn’t working?
A lot of times, you’ll get an error page that says something like 404 file not found.
It was active at one point, but the destination file was deleted, and no one changed the link. ”
“Exactly,” Peyton said. “The information was deleted from her mind.”
“Yup,” Ken said.
“Are we sure there’s not some sort of honest error?” Dewi asked. “Maybe he made her get cosmetic surgery or something?”
“We thought of that,” Peyton said. “We’re certain that’s not the case.”
“How do we know there is another Hyacinth?” Duncan asked over the phone. “No offense, Hamish, but you haven’t seen her in how long?”
“Ask Tamsin what kind of cook her mum is,” Hamish cryptically said.
“What?” Dewi asked.
“Just do it.”
“Hold on.” It sounded like Dewi grabbed another phone and made the call, apparently walking to the back of the cabin.
She returned with the answer moments later.
“Tamsin said she’s an amazing cook and always has been.
Now you assholes better give me an excuse to feed her for asking a whacky-assed question like that, because you have to admit that was a fuckin’ weird question to ask her out of nowhere. ”
Hamish barked a laugh. “That more than anything’s all the proof I need,” he said.
“Hyacinth literally couldn’t cook to save anyone’s life.
Woulda burned the house down tryin’ to boil water.
Frannie was an amazing cook. She might be Tamsin’s mum and Faegan’s wife, but she’s not the Hyacinth I knew.
I’d believe the Goddess herself would appear in front of me before I’d believe Hyacinth learned how to cook. ”
“Does she have any memories of Donnel?” Badger asked. “Or Hamish? Or Bryn?”
“No,” Peyton said. “Once we started digging, now that we suspected pieces were missing, she said the same thing—that they left, she doesn’t remember when, and she has no idea where they went.
Same answer, every time, like it was scripted.
Donnel, Bryn, and Hamish. She insists she’s Hyacinth, but she can’t recall her parents’ names, her maiden name, or even if she had siblings.
She can’t remember any details of her childhood. ”
“How is that possible?” Dewi asked.
“It’s not,” Trevor said. “It’s like her life started when she married Faegan.
Her name is Hyacinth Lewis, she grew up in Wales near this house, and acts like that’s all she should know.
She doesn’t even question that she doesn’t remember.
When we pointed that out, she looked at us like we were deranged for questioning that she couldn’t recall anything before marrying Faegan. ”
“I’m sorry,” Duncan said, “but I find it impossible to believe a shifter her age can’t remember the names of their parents or siblings, much less the name they were born with.”
“Or that she forgot Hamish was ‘dead’,” Ken added. “I mean, that’s not the kind of information you forget.”
“Is there any explanation for this?” Trent asked.
Peyton scrubbed his face with his hands.
“This isn’t the result of a brain injury or lobotomy or drugs or hypnosis.
The only thing that could accomplish an annihilation of memories without doing physical brain damage is a Prime Alpha.
She hasn’t just been ordered not to speak of the memories, or can’t remember them because she can’t access them either due to brain injury or hypnosis or Prime order.
They’ve been completely wiped from her mind.
They aren’t repressed—they’re not there. They do not exist. They never existed.”
“Exactly,” Trevor said. “Like someone reprogrammed her with only the information she needed to know.” He stood and paced the room.
“As someone who supposedly lived through two world wars here, the woman, regardless of who she is, should at least have that knowledge, and yet she doesn’t.
There isn’t a single shifter who lived here then who can’t tell you horror stories about both wars. ”
“Then we’re back to a 404 error,” Ken said.
“If you tell someone to forget everything they ever knew, and then tell them only what you want them to know going forward, that’s a lot easier than implanting new facts in lieu of old ones to keep all your lies straight.
Reformat her meat computer with a factory reset.
Remove all the third-party software except for the BIOS and operating system. ”
Peyton nodded. “Would take a lot less time, too.”
“A matter of minutes,” Duncan grimly said. “With zero risk later. If you completely wipe her mind, there’s zero chance of her saying or remembering something you don’t want her to.”
“And she can’t betray any secrets about why that happened,” Trevor said.
“What about her being a good cook, though?” Dewi asked. “Doesn’t your theory fall apart there?”
“Not necessarily,” Trent said. “Ken’s analogy is perfect—you do a full factory reset.”
“Tell her to maintain all her skills but remove all memories of how she learned them,” Duncan said. “It fits.”
“And,” Ken added, “if that’s what happened, couldn’t whoever fucked with her mind set a trigger that another person could feed her information?”
“Like Faegan,” Peyton said.
“Exactly,” Ken said. “Also likely explains why she stayed with him all these years—he ordered her to.”
“And thus she remained,” Hamish said. “Yma o hyd.”
“What?” Dewi asked.
“It’s the family slogan Father had carved over the front door here when he built this house. It’s a Welsh saying that means ‘we’re still here,’ although I hope he’d be horrified by Faegan’s interpretation of it.”
“Terrific,” Dewi muttered. “Another fucking language I gotta learn.”