"I'm sorry if you feel pressured"

"Cornered is more like it. And you don't give a shit, as long as you can do your precious research."

Even the prisoners she'd worked witheven Justin Grayhad not been so openly hostile. "I honestly do want to help you, Alan."

"Great. Let's get started then." He scrawled his signature on the waiver documents. "Come on, rewire my brain and make me healthy."

Normally she would use the initial session to take a detailed history, run some baseline medical and psychological tests, and determine if there were any physical problems that might complicate the procedure. But Dr. Alvin had already acquired that information, which she had reviewed, and she didn't want to postpone the use of MBI until the second session. She was well aware that if Brand remained uncooperative, there might not be a second session. Her best chance of winning him over was to show him how painless the technique really was.

At her request, he moved to the straight-back chairthe MBI chair, as she called it. Two plastic straps with metal buckles dangled from the armrests. "You going to strap me in?" he asked warily.

"Those are for some of my patients from County. Since I don't like having the deputies in the room when I work, the patient has to be restrained."

She began attaching small adhesive electrodes to his exposed skin. The electrodes would allow her to monitor his brain function, heart rate, and muscular tension on parallel readouts on the computer screen.

"You work with some badass characters, I hear."

She smiled. "They're not as badass as they used to be."

"Yeah? Even Justin Gray?"

"I didn't think his participation in the program was public knowledge."

"Publicmaybe not. But word gets out in the department. If you can turn that crazy son of a bitch around, you're a miracle worker."

"I do what I can," she said. She began taking the EEG, ECG, and EMG readings, then lowered the MBI appliance onto Brand's head while he sat stiffly, his shoulders hunched, fists gripping the armrests, like a prisoner in an electric chair.

She spent a moment reprogramming the appliance. Before each session she liked to make subtle adjustments in the hope of optimizing the field exposure protocol. When she was ready, she pulled down a window shade, shut the door to the waiting room, and turned off the overhead light.

"What's with the darkness?" Brand asked. "You planning to run a seance while I'm under?"

"The treatment is directed primarily at the back of the brain, where the occipital region is located. That's the part of your brain that processes visual information. Bright light can interfere with the neuronal inhibition."

"Interfere how?"

"You'll be entering a relaxed state characterized by an alpha brain-wave rhythm. Perception of light could trigger a startle response that would shift your rhythm to beta."

"In other words, I'd wake up."

"You won't be asleep. You'll just be relaxed."

"Hypnotized," he said uneasily.

"Relaxed. The way you'd feel if you were meditating."

"Yeah, that's something I do a lot." He punctuated the comment with a snort. "How much will I remember once I come to?"

"That varies. There's nothing in the MBI procedure per se that would induce amnesia. However, because we're dealing with painful memories, you may find yourself reluctant to bring them to conscious awareness. The mind has many strategies of dissociationof suppressing material it finds disturbing or threatening. I've had patients who recall all the details of a session the very first time, and others who didn't remember much until we had worked together for weeks."

"So I could tell you stuff and not even remember that I said it?"

"Initially, that's possible. Our goal is for you to come to grips with the memories consciously, but that may take time."

He pushed down on the armrests, as if about to rise from the chair. "Look, I've already come to grips with the damn memories, okay?"

She laid a hand on his shoulder. "If that were true, you wouldn't be skipping work to watch two animals tear each other apart."

He sank back down. "Okay, okay."

"Now there's one more piece of equipment you need to wear. The coils," Robin said, "produce a loud clicking noise, loud enough to cause hearing damage. As a precaution, both of us will use noise-canceling headphones and we'll speak into these headset microphones, which broadcast on a walkie-talkie frequency. The equipment is shielded to prevent any magnetic interference. I'll hear you on my headphones; you'll hear me on yours."

"This goddamn high-tech stuff," Brand grumbled.

"It's for our own safety. The coils can be as loud as one hundred twenty decibels."

She attached his transceiver headset and her own, then pulled the swivel chair away from the desk and parked it alongside Brand, within reach of the MBI gear. She sat down.

"All right, Alan," she said softly into her stalk microphone, using the calming voice that came naturally to her at the start of a procedure. "I'm turning on the appliance. You'll feel a slight tingle in your scalp."

"Fire away," Brand said, trying for bravado. His voice came through her headset clearly.

She flicked a switch, and the fifteen preselected coils started ticking.

"Everything okay?" she asked over the muffled background noise.

"I guess."

"Just relax now. You'll be entering a quiet, peaceful state of mind. Imagine yourself in the woods, resting on the grass with your back against a tree. It's shady and cool. Birds are singing. You feel peaceful and utterly at ease. Sleepy amp; Are you sleepy, Alan?"

"Sleepy." His voice was a monotone, hollow and distant.

Both the EEG and the rhythm of his breathing confirmed that he had entered the alpha state, the twilight realm between sleep and waking. The MBI's suppression of his higher cortical functions had acted like a powerful hypnotic suggestion, dissipating his nervous tension. His eyes were closing. The muscles of the eyelids were unaffected by the appliance's motor inhibition.

"All right now, Alan. I'm going to guide you out of the woods and into a memory from your past. We're going back to the night when Eddie Valdez was shot."

Brand shook his head slowly. "No."

"It'll be okay, Alan."

"No." Stronger.

She hesitated. Such resistance even in the trance state was unusual. She tried a different approach.

"Here's what we'll do. We'll go back to that night, the night Eddie Valdez died, but you won't have to go through it the way you did before. Instead, you can stand outside the scene and watch as it happens. Just stand and watch from a distance, like watching a movie. Is that okay?"

Brand was silent.

"Alan. Is it okay if you just watch?"

"I can watch amp;"

"Then that's what we'll do. Remember, it's only a memory, and you're just watching it. You can get away from it at any time just by asking me to make it go away. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Nothing can hurt you. You're perfectly safe. AH right?"

"Yes."

"I want you to go to the memory of that night. I want you to remember the parking garage. Can you see it?"

"I see it."

"Tell me what you see."

"It's dark. Cars everywhere. Parked cars."

"Is anyone there?"

"There's two. Two in the shadows."

"One of them is Eddie Valdez?"

"It's Eddie, yeah."

"And the other is"you, she almost said"the police officer. Right?"

Brand made a soft noise like a groan.

"Alan, it's not you. It's someone you're watching. A police officer. That's all."

"Cop," he murmured.

"Do you see him with Valdez?"

"I see him."

She released a breath of relief. They were past that hurdle. "Tell me what's happening."

"They're talking."