All In
Page 40On-screen, Sterling and Briggs exchanged a meaningful glance. Clearly, they’d picked up on that, too.
“Understood,” Agent Briggs told the lawyer. “Moving along, Ms. Howard, we were hoping you could lend us your expertise on hypnosis.”
Tory glanced at the lawyer. No objections.
“What do you want to know?”
“Can you describe the process through which you hypnotize someone?” Briggs asked. He was keeping the questions general.
Treat her like an expert, not a suspect, I thought. Smart.
“I generally start with having volunteers count backward from one hundred. If I want a bigger impact, I might use a technique that gets a quicker result.”
“Such as?”
“It’s possible to shock someone into a hypnotic state,” Tory said. “Or you can start some kind of automatic sequence—like a handshake—and then interrupt it.”
“And once someone is under,” Briggs said, “you can implant certain suggestions, cause them to act in certain ways?”
Tory was many things, but naïve wasn’t one of them. “If you have something specific in mind, Agent Briggs,” she said, “just ask.”
“That would depend,” Tory replied evenly, “on whether or not the person you were hypnotizing was open to getting a tattoo in the first place.” I thought she might leave it there, but she didn’t. “Hypnosis isn’t mind control, Agent Sterling. It’s suggestion. You can’t alter someone’s personality. You can’t make them do something they truly do not want to do. The hypnotized person isn’t a blank slate. They’re merely…open.”
“But if someone were open to getting a tattoo—”
“Then, yes,” Tory said. “I might be able to implant that suggestion. But seeing as how I value my job and not getting sued by angry audience members, I try to stick to things that are a little less permanent.”
Alexandra Ruiz’s tattoo was made of henna, I thought. Less common than a regular tattoo—and less permanent.
“Can anyone be hypnotized?” The questioning bounced back to Agent Briggs.
“You can’t force someone under who doesn’t want to go.” Tory leaned back in her seat. “And some people are more easily hypnotizable than others. Daydreamers. People who had imaginary friends as children.”
Beside Tory, the lawyer looked at his watch.
“How quickly could someone learn to do what you do?” Briggs asked Tory.
“To do it as well as I do it?” Tory asked. “Years. To be able to hypnotize someone, period? I know people who claim they can teach it in under ten minutes.”
I saw the next question coming.
Tory’s eyes darted toward the lawyer. “I believe,” he said, standing up and gesturing for Tory to do the same, “that my client has indulged your interest long enough.”
Aaron, I thought. She taught Aaron.
The footage cut to static. After a moment’s silence, Lia spoke up. “Every single word out of her mouth was true.”
The real question, I thought, is what she wasn’t saying.
“I want to go.”
I looked up to see Sloane standing in the doorway.
“Go where?” Michael asked her.
“To Tory Howard’s Imagine,” Sloane said. “Aaron sent us complimentary tickets. I want to go.”
I thought back to the way he’d rescued Sloane from the head of security, the way he’d ignored the shoplifting, the way he’d sworn that if he had known about her, things would have been different.
I thought of Sloane’s father telling her to stay away from his son.
Dean was the one who opened the door. He accepted the box, his expression guarded. I wondered if he was thinking of the gifts I’d been sent once upon a time—boxes with human hair in them, boxes that marked me as the object of a killer’s fascination.
We waited for Judd to open the box. There, against a backdrop of sedately striped tissue paper, was the shirt Sloane had tried to steal.
There was a card inside. I recognized the handwriting as Aaron’s. The message said simply, I’m not like my father.
Sloane stroked her hand lightly over the silk shirt, an expression halfway between heartbreak and awe settling over her features.
“I don’t care what anyone says,” she said softly. “Not Briggs. Not Sterling. Not Grayson Shaw.” She gingerly lifted the shirt out of the box. “I’m going.”
All six of us went. Judd seemed to believe that was the lesser of two evils—the greater of those evils being the possibility that Sloane might find a way to go alone.
As we found our seats, I scanned the auditorium. My gaze landed on Aaron Shaw a moment before he registered Sloane’s presence. In an instant, his entire demeanor changed, from perfectly polished—every inch his father’s heir apparent—to the person I’d caught a glimpse of back in the security office. The person who cares about Sloane.
He made his way through the crowd toward us. “You came,” he said, zeroing in on Sloane. He smiled, then hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About earlier.”
For a moment, in that hesitation, he looked like Sloane.