was still pissed. There was a lawsuit pending. But whatever. If Patil wanted money to compensate his shock, pain, and mental anguish, Kev would give it to him. Of course, money didn’t do shit for shock, pain, or mental anguish. He should know. He had plenty of money, and what fucking good had it ever done him?
He’d apologized to Patil, very sincerely. Bruno had gone to see the guy while he was recuperating from his surgery, to grovel on Kev’s behalf, since they wouldn’t let Kev himself anywhere near the man. But Patil had been unimpressed. Maybe it was the shattered orbital bone, the dislocated jaw. Kev could relate to that. He’d had a shattered orbital bone and a dislocated jaw himself when Tony had found him. He’d been too damaged to talk at the time, but he remembered the pain just fine.
It had an unsalutory effect on a guy’s sense of humor.
Bummer, for Patil, that he’d resembled the troll from Kev’s nightmares so closely. No. Correction. Not nightmares. Memories.
Not clear ones, nor particularly useful ones, but still, they were memories. Not dreams, or fantasies, or hallucinations. He was sure of it. If there was one good thing about going over a waterfall and getting pounded to pulp, it was that. He had a narrow bridge connecting him to his former self, and he was clinging to it.
He no longer went out, except for the nighttime poker. He just holed up in his loft, trolling cyberspace all day, sunglasses on, shades drawn. Looking for his memories under every rock he could turn up. Since he finally had a snowball’s chance in hell of finding them.
Osterman. He had a name for the monster who haunted his nightmares. He even had a visual reference, in the luckless Patil’s face.
Osterman was the name of the troll that stood guard at the door where his memories were locked. And a name was something to start with. It was a seed. Entire forests could be grown from a single seed.
He had a scarce handful of other data. The date, August 24, 1992. The warehouse south of Seattle where Tony had saved his life. A man had been beating him to death, Tony had ascertained, after watching on the closed-circuit camera for a while. Tony had been unwilling to get involved, but he didn’t like the look on the guy’s mug. He’d been enjoying himself a little too much. A few shots with Tony’s Beretta sent him scuttling like a rat, and Tony had been left with a comatose guy, soaked with blood and beaten to hamburger. No identity. None of his marbles, either. Dead weight.
The homemade tattoo on his leg that read “Kev” was as good a name as any, so he’d stuck with it. Though it seemed odd for a guy to tattoo his own name on himself. What, like he might forget it? Hah.
Then there was the fact that he spoke some Vietnamese, of all things. That, plus his combat skills had led old Tony to conclude that Kev was Special Forces, but Vietnamese? Special Forces would make sense if he spoke Arabic, Persian, Pushtu, Croatian, Spanish. He was thirty years too young to be a Vietnam vet. It didn’t track.
And the math, the science. Big bodies of human knowledge he was inexplicably familiar with. Theoretical physics. Biochemistry. Computer engineering. Earth sciences. Astronomy. The physics of flight. The history of aeronautics. The migratory patterns of birds, animals, and insects. Extensive first aid and field medic skills. Carpentry. He could sew, for the love of Christ. He connected the dots and got a scrambled clot. None of it made sense. But did any human life make sense?
Since the ride over Twin Trails Falls, his dreams had gotten clearer. They lingered after he woke up, instead of scuttling away to hide. Things were shifting in his mind, tectonic plates moving. Little puffs of steam, spouts of ash, but no dramatic realizations, no floods of returning memory, no “aha!”
Nothing so easy. Just feelings, images. Teasing, poking at him. Like his tiny angel, for instance. What the fuck was she about? She was too perfect, too iconic to be a real person, in that shining dress of hers. More like an angelic doll. A divine symbol, not a person.
Maybe he’d desperately needed a benevolent presence to counteract Osterman’s evil, and his brain had fabricated the little angel for protection. Maybe he’d been religious, before. Spiritual.
And then again, maybe not. He remembered throwing someone through a window. That didn’t strike him as particularly spiritual.
He shied away from analyzing the angel, though. She had saved his life and sanity. Whenever he slid into that paralyzed black hole in his head, he hung on to her, and she led him safely out. She’d led him out of the first coma, the one he’d been in when Tony first found him. She’d guided him back into speech again. Maybe a psychiatrist could explain her psychological function, but no thanks. He still needed her too badly to risk spoiling her magic with clinical explanations.
The first memory that had come to him after the waterfall had been of trying to convince some guy to help him, to believe him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was that he wanted the guy to believe. He remembered the man’s disapproving face perfectly. Long nose, thin mouth, curled lip. But not his name.
It was maddening. Total amnesia had been more peaceful.
He remembered Osterman gloating over him. He remembered a blond, leering man with a thick red face, too. An open flame, coming toward his face. The sizzle of contact. And pain. So much pain.
There were gentler memories. A bearded man with a seamed, unsmiling face. Boys. A weathered house in the woods. A rough table, a kerosene lamp, like a scene from another century. Maybe he was remembering a past life. Pioneer days. Hah. This life alone was enough for him to wonder about. Spare him the red tape of past lives, too.
He needed more. Frames of reference. Names, dates. Hard data.
Concentrate, goddamnit. He’d lost the thread. He stared down at the cards. They were floating, shifting. Double vision, glowing with a halo. His ears were ringing, tinny and sharp. He couldn’t screen out the soaps and deodorants of the men around the table. The detergents their clothes had been washed in made his nose burn. The earthier smells of their bodies, their sweat, their breath. Chiliker’s chronic lung infection, the alcohol emanating from the pores of the dealer to his left. Cigarette smoke, peeling paint, dust. Mildewy water damage.
The fetid stink made his head throb like a rotting tooth.
And everyone was waiting for him to snap out of his vague dream, get off his ass, and bet. Chilikers had checked, so had Laker.
Kev stared at the backs of his two aces. He couldn’t take this tonight. He’d play like a hothead rookie, end it fast. “Seven thousand.”
Stevens blinked. “All-in, nine thousand five hundred.”
Chilikers eyes darted to Stevens. He hadn’t expected that. “All-in, seventeen five,” he said, but his voice sounded nervous.
Laker folded, shaking his head.
Kev shrugged inwardly. What the hell. “I call. I’m all-in.”
They all stared at him for a long moment. 5.5:1 pot odds didn’t technically justify his drawing odds, but he wanted it to be over, and he was feeling reckless. Angry. Twitchy. Acting out, like a bad little kid.
“Two players, all-in. Turn over your hands,” the dealer directed.
Kev turned his aces, and looked to his left. Stevens had flopped a set of queens. Chilikers had turned the flush.
“Pair the board,” Kev said.
The
