“Yeah.” Toni looked relieved to focus on something else. “I’ll be right back.”
“And ask Baxter if he can join us please?”
“You want me to call him a unicorn?”
Katherine smiled. “Not until I can see his face when you say it.”
* * *
They weighted the corners of the paper with a wine bottle, two wineglasses, and an abalone shell that sat in a corner of the deck.
“The clear common denominator is the study of course,” Katherine started. “But Kaylee threw everything off.”
“How?” Toni said.
“She wasn’t a participant,” Baxter said. “She was and is a graduate student. Which means that she might have participated in conducting the study, but she wasn’t a subject. So if this aberrant behavior was somehow caused by the study itself, how do we explain Kaylee’s episode?”
“She knew something?” Toni said. “Katherine said she’d dropped a couple of hints. Maybe whoever is behind this knew that she might expose him or her.”
“That could give motive, but we still don’t know how he or she is actually triggering these episodes. Why would Kaylee have been vulnerable?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I think it has something to do with fear.” Katherine pointed to Sarah Jordan’s page. “Pinpointing fear. Sarah’s greatest love and source of happiness was her horse. It could be easily imagined that something harming her horse would be a great fear.” She pointed to Justin McCabe. “Justin’s greatest fear was obvious. His brother had been killed in a school shooting, and his episode takes that to another level. Not only being killed in a shooting but actually causing one.”
“Then there’s Abigail,” Baxter said.
“Do you think she was afraid of Mario?” Katherine asked. “I never sensed anything like that between them.”
“She might not have been afraid of Mario,” Toni said. “But the general fear of someone she trusted hurting her? I think any woman can relate to that.”
Baxter said, “If police reports are to be believed, Abby lashed out at her own partner for no apparent reason. Random violence against or from the person she trusted the most? It’s not a stretch to imagine that as her greatest fear.”
“Have you been able to speak with her again?” Katherine asked.
Baxter shook his head. “As far as I know, none of her friends have heard from her. At least not the ones I know. Her family is very protective.”
“Which brings us to Kaylee.” Katherine put her hand on Kaylee’s paper. “Same target: her greatest fear—falling over the ledge of a tall building—but one big difference. Kaylee wasn’t in the study; she was helping to conduct it.”
Toni leaned forward. “Okay, so explain biofeedback in more detail to me. You kind of went over it before, but I’m having a hard time picturing it. Could it be done to someone without their knowledge?”
“Absolutely not.” Katherine shook her head. “Biofeedback therapy depends on making the subject aware of their subconscious physical responses as a way of controlling them and lessening their effect. So a subject must be aware. They must be a willing participant in the therapy for it to have any effect. Added to that, there are sensors physically attached to subjects during the first phase of the treatment.”
“What about, like, hypnosis?”
Baxter and Katherine exchanged a look. “Here, my dear, Katherine and I will part ways. I am a believer in effective hypnosis treatment because I saw how much it helped my brother quit smoking. Katherine, on the other hand—”
“Wait.” Toni turned her attention to Katherine. “Really? I mean… really? You see actual psychic visions that predict the future, but you find hypnosis hard to believe?”
She glared at Baxter. “This is what you call throwing someone under the bus.”
“But it works,” Toni said. “My brother quit smoking too.”
“I simply think it’s debatable that hypnosis is any more effective than a placebo.”
“You think hypnosis is fake?”
“No. People underestimate the placebo effect of going to see a hypnotist.” She gestured to the papers on the table. “The placebo effect is very powerful. And hypnosis has nothing to do with any of this.”
“But,” Baxter said, “hypnosis and biofeedback do have some commonalities, and there is evidence that people can be hypnotized without their knowledge, which is not possible with biofeedback.”
Katherine couldn’t argue with that but… “I’m not going to say it’s impossible. I’m just saying I have my doubts.”
“Hypnosis could explain the amnesia too.” Baxter folded his hands and frowned, staring at the scribbles across the paper. “But Katherine is also right—the common thread between all these people is the biofeedback study. And that study had nothing to do with hypnosis. It wasn’t utilized in any way that we know of.”
“Maybe the study was just convenient,” Toni said.
Katherine turned to her. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe the study wasn’t the avenue for messing with these people’s minds,” Toni said. “Maybe the study was just where whoever is doing this found their victims.”
* * *
Katherine couldn’t sleep that night. She lay awake, casting her mind out to the students who had participated in good faith in order to advance the treatment of a condition she suffered from herself. And in doing that, they had become potential targets for whoever was playing this twisted game.
Baxter rolled over and put an arm across her legs. “Darling, you need sleep.”
She was sitting against the headboard, staring out the window at the fog-covered sea. “I don’t have visions in my sleep,” she said. “What if something else is about to happen? What if I can stop it?”
“You’re not going to be able to stop everything.” He blinked up at her. “You can’t take on that responsibility.”
“I feel like I have to.” She gripped his hand in her own. “We’ve worked so hard because the legacy is so bad, Baxter. Professors, academics, we did take advantage of vulnerable people. We have caused harm in the past. So much.
