Authors: Vicki Hinze
They went down the stairs and then out to the pond. It was eerie out there at night. Dark and shadowy, a moonless night. Chills lifted on Sara’s arms, and she rubbed at them.
Shank shifted on her feet, obviously uncomfortable. “Sara, there’s something about Foster you need to know. He’s going up for promotion to general. He’s wanted that rank since God was a baby, and he’ll do anything to anyone to get it—including to you. That star has always been Foster’s passion and his obsession.”
“In other words, you think he’s corrupt.”
“It makes me sick to think it, much less to say it, but things point in that direction. Flat out.”
“My feelings are mixed. I know it looks bad for Foster, but something is niggling at me, Shank. Something’s telling me to be careful about condemning the man without knowing all the facts.”
“Honey, with Foster you’ll
never
get all the facts.”
Of course I’ve got a hidden agenda. I’m AID, for Christ’s sake.
“I know that, too,” Sara said, recalling Foster’s own comment. “We have a long history, and it hasn’t been a pleasant one.”
“Then why did he bring you in on this?”
“I have no idea.” Sara grunted, slapped at a mosquito on her sleeve. “I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure that out, but I still haven’t.”
“Well, there’s got to be a reason. Foster only leaves to chance what he can’t avoid. He didn’t just pull you out of a phone book.”
“We’ve been going toe-to-toe for over five years, and I’ve given Foster more static about his military red tape than any one man should have to hear. I can’t imagine why he chose me. He knew from the start I’d push the limits and break the rules to get to the truth.’’
“Maybe he wanted them pushed and broken.”
“I considered that,” Sara said. “I’ve also considered that he could be working with Fontaine and the head honcho at IWPT, and now that he’s up for promotion, Foster wants his star
and
respectability.”
“Burying the skeletons.” Shank inched closer to the pond’s edge. Water lapped at the bank. “It’s possible.”
“I’m hoping I’ll get a handle on him at IWPT.”
“That’s possible, too.” Shank glanced back over her shoulder. “I heard back from my friend. IWPT’s director is Dr. Carl Owlsley. He’s doing research on noninvasive microwave laser technology under a high-dollar contract with DoD.”
“Did you say
Carl
Owlsley?” Sara had heard that name before. In Fontaine’s office. When she’d first reported to Braxton, Fontaine had been on the phone with Carl, demanding money.
“One and the same.” Shank dropped her voice. “There’s more, Sara. My source says Fontaine and Owlsley are working this together, and Foster is right in there with them.”
There was their sought-after, direct link between Fontaine and Owlsley. But Foster? “How does your source know that? Is there hard evidence?”
“Of the first order, unfortunately,” Shank said. “When I called to give Foster your twenty-four-hour ultimatum, I got really suspicious of him, so I reported the Fontaine/Owlsley, IWPT/Braxton connection to the IG—the Inspector General’s office. They referred me to the AID, who eventually referred me around to Foster. He put me in Braxton. You, too. And unless I miss my guess, Joe is one of Foster’s men, and he put him in here, too. No matter how you cut it, Foster knows what’s going on at IWPT.”
“But is he perpetuating it, or trying to stop it?”
“That I don’t know. But I’ve got a bad feeling about you going there as a trainee. Flat out.” Shank clasped Sara’s arm, squeezed, and her voice trembled. “Don’t do it, Sara. Please.”
First Jarrod, then Brenda and Lisa, and now Shank. Sara wasn’t ready to fight this battle a third time, but it appeared she would have to do it. “I have no choice. Look at ADR-40, and Lou and Fred. Do you want more men destroyed?”
“Of course not.”
“If we don’t find out what they’re doing, then how do we stop them?”
“We don’t.” Grim resignation settled over Shank. “But you’ve got to know that they have no plans of ever letting you leave Braxton alive.”
“A possibility, but I’m bound by confidentiality laws not to disclose anything, and Fontaine’s wife was allowed to leave.”
“Fontaine’s wife isn’t on any European vacation.” Shank snorted. “She’s supposedly at a facility undergoing intensive therapy. The confinement got to her.”
“Supposedly?” Sara picked up on the uncertainty in Shank’s voice. “What do you think happened to her?’
“Nothing. I think she’s acting as a go-between for Fontaine and Owlsley. Some things you don’t want discussed even on secure lines.”
Tension knotted her neck muscles. Sara rubbed at them. “Makes sense.”
“Scary sense.” Shank turned and started walking back inside. “You’d better stop by and see Joe. He’s worried, Sara. The man’s in love with you.”
“He cares, but it’s not love. Men who have been betrayed—”
“Are as vulnerable as everyone else to falling in love again, and he did. I knew it the morning he ate breakfast so you wouldn’t worry about him.”
“You watch over him for me, okay?” A lump lodged in Sara’s throat.
“I will.” Shank sighed. “I take it you love him, too.”
“Oh, boy. I know all the rules about ethics—”
“Honey, forget them. Patients are plentiful, but a good man is hard to find.”
“He fired me.” Remembering their lovemaking, Sara warmed.
“Good. No guilt or being torn on ethics issues.” Shank sidestepped a palmetto, then skirted a bed of fragrant flowers. “You gonna tell him you love him?”
“I thought about it but, no, I can’t.”
“He’d like to know, Sara.”
She shuffled down the stone path, her footsteps heavy. “Not if I don’t come out of IWPT okay. He’ll feel pity, bound. I don’t want that for him. I want him—”
“Loved.” Shank sighed again. Deeper. “I know. You don’t want him dragged through that with you.”
“No, I don’t. He’s been dragged through enough already.”
Sara talked with Joe
for a few minutes inside Isolation. Mindful of the camera and listening devices, she caught him up on her meeting with Brenda and Lisa, and with Shank.
He stepped into the corner, a blind spot for the camera. “So you’ve resolved your issues, then?”
“As much as possible.”
“Good.” He hugged her hard, then squeezed her shoulders. “Be careful, Sara. Think ice.” His gaze seared, committing to memory her every nuance. “And come back to me.”
The urge to tell him she loved him slammed through her. She fought it hard. It wouldn’t be fair to him. She kissed him instead, and then left him without looking back, afraid if she did, she wouldn’t have the courage to go through with this.
Midway down the hall, she stopped. She might not get back. She might not come out of IWPT as well off as ADR-40. And if she didn’t, then Joe would wonder forever. He would be as tormented as Brenda had been because he wouldn’t know for fact that he had been the one.
Sara turned and ran back to Joe’s room. He was watching her through the little Plexiglas window, his hand pressed against the pane.
She lifted her hand and touched it to the glass, matching their fingertips, and then mouthed the words, “I love you, Jarrod.”
“I know.” He smiled, his eyes glistening. “I love you too, Sara.”
She smiled back, taking his words down deep inside. No matter what came, she had them to hold on to. No matter what came
. . .
IWPT looked exactly as Jarrod had described it.
The typical gate, guard, tall fencing, and a long and deserted asphalt road between the gate and the actual compound. Sara drove past an obstacle course, complete with tires, low-strung barbed wire intended for belly-crawling, and what she had called monkey bars in grade school, where the kids crossed an expanse, hand over hand, bar to bar, from one end to the other.
Two large white buildings faced each other on the main street. A third building, smaller than the others, was tagged as the administrative building. According to a sign, quarters were located one street over, though she couldn’t see anything of them through the thick trees. Between the two large buildings—the core of the training center—stood rows of small boxes. The coffins.
Sara suppressed a shudder. Short of breath, she quickly looked away. Off in the far distance, nearly obscured by a wooded thicket and disconnected from the rest of the compound, sat a huge metal building. No sign or directive identified what was in it and—she double-checked—the building didn’t appear on the map given to her by the gate guard.
The warehouse Jarrod had mentioned.
Sara parked and then entered the administration building, where a professional, but totally dispassionate, Sergeant Emerson signed her in.
“You need to execute this release.” Doe-eyed, in her late twenties, the sergeant shoved the paper across her desk to Sara.
It was an inventory listing of her personal effects and a notice that they would be confiscated until her training had been completed. Passing over her purse and car keys had her stomach in knots. Poising the pen over the form had her nauseous.
She quickly scrawled her name and then pushed the paper away.
Emerson retrieved it. “Report to Dr. Owlsley to be profiled at fourteen hundred. Building One.”
Sara nodded. “Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
Summarily dismissed, Sara went to her quarters and located her assigned cot. It was a dormitory-type setting with two rows of twelve beds separated by tall metal lockers. Considering they’d taken everything but the clothes off her back, the lockers seemed wasted. She lifted the handle and checked. Empty.
At the end of the room was a community bath with four stalls, three showers, and a sign on the wall that read “Latrine.” The place seemed innocuous, impersonal, and—except for her—unoccupied.
The military had perfected that impersonal facade to an art form. She checked her watch—one forty-five—and headed over for her appointment with Dr. Owlsley.
During the three-block walk, Sara did breathing exercises, reminding herself of all that it was imperative for her to remember—and to forget. She would forget Jarrod. Not mention him at all during the profile. Owlsley would use him against her, and Jarrod was her ace in the hole. Her refuge and, hopefully, her saving grace. She would remember his advice and warnings. And, she reinforced to her subconscious, she would remember that her outstanding emotional issues had been resolved. Admitting that she was terrified was paramount to admitting defeat before even starting, so she denied it. Firmly and with conviction. And she prayed her will proved strong enough to carry her through this.
After a ten-minute wait in a sterile reception area devoid of magazines, the typical television tuned in to news, or piped-in elevator music, Sara was ushered into an office she deemed plush by military standards.
A deep-cushioned, forest-green sofa faced a mahogany executive desk that gleamed. Behind it, sunlight streamed in through two large windows. Outside them, a white-lattice partition covered with winter-dormant roses blocked the view. Dr. Owlsley sat behind his desk in a tall leather chair that swiveled. Currently, his head was dipped, and he sat slumped over a file. Her file.
He looked up. “Major West.”
“Good afternoon, Doctor.” Sara forced a smile. Looking at him, it was hard to imagine him deliberately hurting anyone. Somewhere in his mid-fifties, sharp-featured, and damn near blind. The thick lenses in his glasses distorted his eyes so much she couldn’t determine their color, and he had that pseudo-vacant look common to scientists preoccupied by their current projects. He couldn’t be military. His skin had a yellowish cast that starkly contrasted with his white lab coat, and he was a good thirty pounds overweight—a transgression that could get a military member hauled before a board and demoted—and even more telling, he slumped.
His coloring concerned the physician in her, and knowing just how intensely researchers tended to focus and to block out anything unrelated to their work, she elected to mention it. “Dr. Owlsley, I don’t mean to intrude, but have you had liver function studies done lately?”