Authors: Vicki Hinze
She wanted to kiss him, but didn’t. The moment seemed too special for that, and she had the feeling that they both needed time to accept this. Shuffling deeper into the maze, she laced their fingers and again saw the scars peppering his arms. “Joe, where did you get these?” She touched her free hand to his forearm.
He looked down at the scars. “I was taken hostage by hostile forces on a classified mission a few years ago. When I wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, they put me in a rat trap.” He stopped walking, went statue-still. Staring at her, he blinked, and then blinked again. “Sara.” His voice sounded soft, uncertain, tinged with fear. “I know who I am.”
Surprise rippled up her spine, and butterflies swarmed in her stomach. Sara pressed her fingertips over his lips. “You don’t have to tell me.”
He kissed them, then lowered her hand. “You can’t help me unless you know the truth.” He gave her a wary look. “I have a problem with trust. It happens when you’ve been stabbed in the back one time too many. But I know in my gut I can trust you.”
“How can you know that?” Guilt hit her hard, slammed through her. He didn’t know about Foster. He didn’t know she had come to Braxton with a hidden agenda. And he didn’t know Foster would kill her before letting her leave.
“I just know,” Joe insisted. “It’s not all clear to me, but I’ve had glimpses, and I know you won’t betray me.”
“But someone did.” Foster, maybe? Fontaine? The wind caught her hair, and she swept it back from her face. “Do you know who?”
“Not now, but it’ll come.” He let a fingertip drift down her face. “Will you help me, Sara?”
She nodded, caressing his hand on her face. “Of course.”
Joe gave her a gentle smile. “You need to know what I know.” He took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “My name is Major Jarrod Brandt. I’m an Intel investigator.”
Determined to be totally honest with him, Sara swallowed hard and hoped he’d listen to her. “You’re a Shadow Watcher.”
Surprise flickered through Jarrod’s eyes. Surprise, and suspicion.
She had to squelch it, and she borrowed from Foster to do it. “The creed. ‘Accomplish the mission. Whatever, whenever, wherever.’”
“Colonel Foster sent you.” Jarrod stepped away, digesting.
She nodded. “To help you.” She wanted to reach out to him, but couldn’t. He had to decide where they went from here. “I think Foster knows that I’ve learned you’re one of his operatives, but I haven’t admitted it to him.”
“Identified, I become unsalvageable.”
She nodded again.
“Thank you, Sara.”
Taking the risk, she clasped his hand, and he let her. “How did you get here?”
“I’m not sure.” He plucked a dead leaf off a bush of fragrant jasmine. “I was sedated.”
Sara stopped beside him. Watched him finger the leaves. “What do you remember?”
“I was on a mission,” he said. “Orders came down to evacuate and report elsewhere immediately. I wept.” He looked from the leaves to her. “There’s a gap I don’t remember, but I know two guards strapped me into a chair.”
“The electric chair?”
He nodded. “But it wasn’t electric. No headgear.” Still, he shuddered. “My instincts warned me that this chair and what would happen in it weren’t part of the program, but I didn’t listen. Then, it was too late.”
Joe was growing too agitated. Sara had to give him some breathing space. “How did you come to join the military?”
“They recruited me into Air Force Intelligence right out of UCLA. I was a technological advancements expert. Hard to believe that was eleven years ago.”
And not at all hard for Sara to believe that since then he’d honed his skills and become expert in more areas—most of which, she’d bet the bank, had military applications and were classified Top Secret, which left him free neither to discuss them, nor to admit them.
Strolling by, Sara plucked a leaf off a bush. “Are you ambitious?”
“Depends on your standard. I decided early on I wanted to act honorably in my own eyes. That never changed.”
Simple ambition, simple man. Sara glanced his way. “I like that.”
“It’s challenging, especially when you’re saddled with a commander in chief who spends the lion’s share of his time evading the truth.”
“He embarrasses you,” Sara speculated.
Jarrod nodded. “I’ve often considered putting in my papers and getting out of the military, but to do that I’d have to leave the country vulnerable.” He spared her a sidelong look. “In my job, one person
does
make a difference.”
“And leaving the country vulnerable violates your personal ethics.”
“Yes, it does.”
She liked his attitude, and his style. “Comparatively speaking, embarrassment seems like a minor burden to carry.”
“I’ve thought so enough to stay on. I admit I’m cynical, and I trust few people now, but I hang on to the hope that tolerance for conduct unbecoming will become unacceptable again and the spirit of the law will win out over people seeking loopholes in the law.” He stared straight ahead, as if he weren’t totally comfortable with letting her see parts of himself he typically didn’t expose. “It’s probably idealistic, but in a world where the absence of punishment constitutes praise and too little proves noble, all a man has is hope.”
She also loved his philosophy. He seemed calmer now, more surefooted. “So why did the guards strap you to the chair?”
“I don’t know—yet. It’s fuzzy, but I know I was betrayed. I feel it down to my bones.”
“You were tortured. I feel that down to my bones,” Sara said, eager to ask him about “I wept.”
Swift footsteps sounded on the stone path, and William suddenly appeared at a bend in the maze. “Dr. West.” He sounded winded. “Dr. Fontaine wants to see you immediately.”
“Thank you, William.” Sara grimaced. The RN was dressed totally in white, shirt to shoes, intentionally trying to affect Joe.
Jarrod sucked in a sharp breath. Sara spun around and looked back at him. His eyes were blank.
Damn it.
“Joe?”
“Where are my crayons?” He patted at his pockets. “I need my crayons.”
William’s whites had triggered Joe’s detachment. She pulled the box from her lab coat pocket and then passed the crayons to Joe. “Here they are.”
Joe clutched at the box, crushed it in his fisted grip.
She could pulverize William for this. Instead, she had to pretend she had no idea what had happened. That was safest for Joe. Sara clasped his arm. “Come on. We have to go back inside now.”
Sara walked him back to his room. William followed, and when she’d gotten Joe settled in and left his room, she wasn’t at all surprised to see Mick Bush in the hall, waiting to escort her to Fontaine’s office.
At least now she understood. Joe hadn’t meant “I wept” as in “I cried.” To him, “I wept” was a place he’d been sent on a mission. A place. It was one of the military’s acronyms.
But an acronym for what? It could be anything, or anywhere. The military had millions of acronyms. And Joe was a Shadow Watcher, subject to go anywhere to do anything. How did she find out—without arousing suspicion or revealing that she was looking?
The answer popped into her mind and rooted.
Shank.
Sara listened to Fontaine
raise the roof for the second time that day, repeated her offer to move her patients to another facility, and then made her way back to the second floor.
The thrust of Fontaine’s remarks, she blew off. But one of them, she couldn’t get out of her mind.
Major, only the DoD can remove you from Braxton, but I can make your worst nightmare seem like a sweet dream. Stop pushing me
. . .
He could do it. She believed it. If he had shouted that remark, she would have blown it off, too. But he hadn’t. His delivery had been cold, quiet, and calm—a thousand times more terrifying than his blustering.
Shank was coming up the hall. Sara stopped at the station, turned her back to Beth, and motioned Shank into the med room. “I need some saline.”
“Sure, Doc.” She pulled the red coiled cord from her pocket, keyed the lock, and then opened the door and stepped inside.
Sara followed her. The door swung shut behind her. Keeping her back to the window, she asked Shank a question she doubted she would answer. “What does ‘I wept’ mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Expected, but still disappointing. Sara resisted a sigh. “When I asked before, and you denied knowing, I knew you weren’t being honest. I didn’t push because I’m not in a position to be totally honest with you. Others could get hurt.” God, but Sara hoped she wasn’t going too far. “But I need this information, Shank, and it’s vital that I get it quickly.”
Shank grabbed a plastic bottle of saline off the shelf and shoved it at Sara. “I know it doesn’t mean that Joe wept literally, but I don’t know what it does mean. Flat out.”
“I think it’s an acronym for something. Actually, for some place. But I have no idea where to find out for what.”
“Could be any of a thousand things.” Shank worried her lip and grunted. “I really don’t know.”
“Okay.” Sara propped the saline in the crook of her arm. “I’m going to talk straight, and pray I don’t regret it. A lot of people are at risk, Shank.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve needed privacy and access to a computer for days, and I haven’t been able to get it. Beth works twenty hours a day, and the computer is right next to the monitors in Isolation. Someone is always at that desk.”
“Try the lab—down in the basement. It’s the most deserted place around, and”—she paused to check her watch—“in fifteen minutes, it’ll be empty. I’ll be calling down for someone to come up and draw blood.”
“Thanks.” Sara nearly wept with relief. The fear coiled in her stomach loosened. Shank was helping her.
“Sara.” Worry shone in Shank’s eyes. “Be careful. You’re treading on dangerous ground. The minute you access those files in the computer, Fontaine will know it. He won’t let it slide.”
“I know.” Sara shrugged, plenty worried herself. “I’m violating the Privacy Act, probably a dozen military regulations, and definitely breaking facility policy. It’ll cost me some rank and maybe my license. Only God knows what else. But it’s the only shot I’ve got. If I can find the common link between these patients, then I can help them. There
is
a link, Shank. I know it.”
“I agree, but you’re missing my point.” Shank turned her back to an avidly watching Beth and lowered her voice. Her reflection shone in the glass separating them. “You’re risking your life, Sara. And the lives of your patients.”
So cool, so calm. Shank wasn’t exaggerating or embellishing. She believed exactly what she was saying. “No,” Sara said. “Maybe mine. But Fontaine won a Purple Heart, a Meritorious Service medal. He’s a jerk, but he won’t kill the men.”
Shank cocked a brow. “Whatever his personal agenda is, you’re screwing it up. He’s an egomaniac facing exposure. Don’t tell me he won’t kill the men. He’d murder his mother. And so would his wife. She’s as bad as he is. Flat out.”
A sinking feeling bottomed out in Sara’s stomach. “What can I do? I don’t have another option.”
Shank looked her straight in the eye. “You take the risk.”
“Yes.” Sara’s chest went tight. “Yes.”
“I’ll get the word out.”
Sara frowned at her. “To whom?”
“The friendlies.” Shank lifted a hand. “Don’t ask, just be grateful.”
“I am.” Sara squeezed Shank’s hand. “Truly.”
The hallway was dark and deserted.
Sara made a maze of her path down to the lab to be sure Mick Bush wasn’t following her. The basement felt damp, smelled musty. Recessed into the ceiling, every fourth light was on, making long shadows on the white tile floor. Her footsteps sounded hollow. She stopped, listened, but heard nothing indicating anyone coming up behind her, so she walked on.
Turning at a corner, she slowed down. Light spilled out of an open doorway just ahead and streaked across the hallway floor. On the wall beside the door, she read a blue sign with white lettering—Lab—and then looked inside.
Not a soul in sight. Murmuring a silent thank-you to Shank, Sara paused at a long lab table. Considering the size of the facility, the lab was large and well equipped. The lights were all on, specimens stood lined up like soldiers on a second table, and tubes of blood had been racked in oscillators that soundlessly rocked.