Acts of Honor (6 page)

Unreasonable for a civilian. But maybe not for a Shadow Watcher.

She wasn’t sure she could get used to being suspicious of everyone. She was sure she didn’t want to have to, and she was equally sure she had no choice but to do it if she wanted to succeed and stay alive.

Damn him for pulling her into this.

Foster unfolded a napkin and pressed it across his lap. “You’re very astute, Sara. How did you know you wouldn’t be performing this mission from your office?”

Still uneasy with the intimacy of him using her first name, Sara shrugged. “All of these patients are security risks. When men—” She paused, frowned, and tilted her head. “Are all five of them men?”

“As it happens, they are.”

Something in his tone warned her that an all-male rule didn’t apply to his group, which also warned her that the needs of the military held priority over the needs of the individuals serving in it. She wished she could deny the wisdom and value in that but, unfortunately, she couldn’t. “When men with top secret clearances suffer mental challenges with moments of lucidity, the military sequestering them seems prudent.”

The waitress put two frosty mugs of beer on the table. “Care for menus?”

“None for me,” Sara said, certain if she put anything solid down her throat, it’d come right back up. She hadn’t had this serious a case of jitters since prom night in high school when her date, Rick Grayson, had spilled half a jug of Mogen David wine down the front of her white dress, and she’d spent most of the night alone in a Laundromat wrapped in a stolen towel, laundering her dress to avoid having to convince her mother she hadn’t been drinking.

“No, thank you,” Foster said to the waitress. When she walked out of earshot, he turned his attention back to Sara. “Braxton.”

A sliver of ice slid down the mug to the table. “Excuse me?”

“That’s where you’ll be going. Braxton Facility.”

“Never heard of it.” Sara lifted the mug and took a sip. The cold felt good sliding down her throat. Numbing.

“Few have,” Foster admitted. “It’s a private mental facility owned by the government, about thirty miles north of here.”

Getting a grip on how Foster’s mind worked, Sara set her mug back down on the table. “Only no one knows the government owns it.”

“Correct. Just as you suspected, all military members who pose security risks are sequestered there for treatment. As I said at your office earlier, you’ll have your usual list of five patients. One of them will be my operative.”

He wouldn’t tell her, but she felt obligated to ask. “Which one?”

Foster stared at his mug. “None of your patients’ identities will be disclosed.”

“So much for the honor system and building trust.”

“Honor and trust have nothing to do with it. This isn’t my decision. It’s standard operating procedure at Braxton. On admittance, patients are assigned a number and, thereafter, they’re addressed only by it. Even the staff doesn’t know the patients’ identities.”

Sara stared at him, her jaw agape. “Unbelievable.”

“Totally logical,” Foster countered. “All of these patients occupy extremely sensitive positions. To reveal their identities is to expose them and their families to unnecessary—and potentially lethal—risks. It also renders them unsalvageable in their respective career fields.”

She’d like to argue, but the policy held logic.
Unsalvageable.
God, but she hated that word. And she had the distinct feeling there was a lot more to this military than the reams of red tape she had experienced in her dealings with Foster about David. “What was your operative doing when he went missing?”

“Investigating an incident with suspected international repercussions. But we’ve conducted a full-scale investigation, and nothing that occurred there accounts for subsequent events.”

Sara thumbed her mug handle, wondering exactly what that investigation had entailed and who had conducted it. Asking Foster would be an exercise in futility. “How did he get to Braxton?”

“We have no idea. Security found him wandering around on the grounds. No ID on him, of course. Braxton ran a routine fingerprint search and picked up a specific coding on his computer file that referred them to AID, and finally to me.”

Sara tasted the beer again. What had been cold and refreshing now tasted bitter. But it wasn’t the beer. Southpaw tasted pretty good. The context of the conversation had turned her bitter. “Was he counseled immediately?”

“Why?” Foster seated his mug atop a paper coaster, squaring it over the four-leaf clover imprinted in its center.

“Patients who receive CISD—critical incident stress debriefing— immediately after the inciting incident stand the best odds of recovering.”

“I’m not sure how much time elapsed between the inciting incident and when he was found on Braxton grounds. He was missing seven days. We don’t know when or where the incident occurred. We don’t even know what occurred. But he was seen by Dr. Fontaine, the facility director, immediately thereafter. Everything we know is in the chart. Same is true for the other four patients. When you arrive at Braxton, you’ll have full access to them. I do know he’s experiencing all of the classic symptoms and criteria necessary for a PTSD diagnosis.”

Expecting that, as he couldn’t be diagnosed if any one of the criteria had been absent, she still suffered a twinge of disappointment. The odds that he had received the CISD briefing were slim to none. Receiving it on arrival at Braxton could have helped, but to be at all effective, they needed to know the nature of the incident, and they didn’t. “When do I leave?’

Foster slid the salt shaker down the table, near the pepper. “Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock.” He reached into his briefcase and then slid a sealed envelope across the tabletop. “Report to Dr. Fontaine. The rest of your instructions, your ID card, and some military background information are in there.”

Red lettering was emblazoned across the front of the envelope. “For Your Eyes Only. Read and Destroy.” Suppressing a shiver, Sara tucked the envelope into her purse. She had a lot to do between now and eight A.M. To talk to Brenda, Lisa, and Lisa’s Grandma Quade. Close up her house, meet with Dr. Kale, talk with her current patients, and
 . . .

“Don’t be late,” Foster said. “Keep me updated by phone. Call at twenty-one hundred hours whatever nights you have something to report.” He waved a fingertip toward her cell phone. “And don’t use that. There’s a convenience store about five miles from the facility. Use the phone there.”

Twenty-one hundred. Sara snapped the flap on her purse shut and counted off the hours. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen
 . . .
nine P.M.

Having to count to translate time proved a nagging point. Sara wasn’t ready for this. She didn’t know enough about the inner workings of the military. In her five years of confrontations with it about David, she thought she had gained a gutful of knowledge. Now, she knew better. She was in serious trouble. How could she carry off posing as an officer? “Do these special instructions mean you think the phones at Braxton are tapped?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.” A pleased gleam lit in his eye. “And cell phones aren’t secure. Anyone could be listening in, ally or enemy.”

The beer in her stomach soured on the spot. “I see.” And, God, but she wished she didn’t.

“Not yet.” Foster stood up, dropped a ten on the table, and then scooted his chair back into place. Its legs scraped over the wooden floor. “But you will soon.”

Finishing her beer, Sara watched him leave. Dread dragged at her belly, warning her he was right. And that she would hate it, too.

No sign marked the turnoff, which had to make it difficult for families first visiting to find the place, but Sara spotted the dirt road leading to Braxton. Dodging one of a million mud puddles, she hooked a left and cranked up the heater—last night’s rain had turned the October air surprisingly chilly—and conceded that her conversation with Brenda had been chilly, too.

Only after Sara had confided that this was her best lead yet for information on David had Brenda agreed to hold off marrying H. G. or G. H., or whatever-the-hell-his-name-was, Williamson. God alone knew if she’d keep her word. For everyone’s sake, Sara hoped Brenda did wait.

Dragging a hand over her winter-white wool slacks, Sara came to a guarded iron gate and braked to a stop. On both sides of the guard shack, tall chain-link fencing stretched across the road and disappeared into the pine woods. Razor wire topped it. Red and white signs posted every three feet warned that the fence was electric. Beyond the shack, as far as she could see, lay only more dirt road and woods. Nothing identified this as the facility, but instinctively she knew it was Braxton.

A burly guard in his mid-thirties stepped out of the guard shack and approached the window. A badge attached to his shirt pocket read BUSH, and from the stripes on his sleeve, he was a sergeant. A shiny pistol hung holstered at his waist, and he looked too comfortable wearing it not to know how to use it.

The dread dragging at her stomach increased tenfold. She rolled down the window of her car, and a gust of wind swept in, carrying the cloying smell of pine.

He stopped a safe distance from the car. “You lost, ma’am?”

“No, Sergeant Bush, I’m expected. Dr. Sara West.”

He scanned a clipboard and then looked back at her. “Yes, ma’am. You’re staying on the premises, I see. FYI, the gate locks up for the night at twenty-one hundred sharp. We don’t open it again until seven hundred. Security reasons, ma’am. No exceptions.”

She converted the times and resisted the urge to spit nails. She wasn’t even in Braxton yet, and already the first problem had arisen. How was she supposed to call Foster at nine P.M. from the convenience store when Braxton’s security force locked down the facility at nine P.M.?

Bush thrust a clip-on name badge through the open window. “Wear this at all times—attached to your left collar point. If you’re caught inside the facility or on the premises without it, you’ll be detained and fined. No exceptions.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Sara didn’t have a collar on her winter-white sweater, so she clipped it to the neckline where a collar would be if she’d had one.

Avoiding her eyes, Bush saluted. “Welcome to Braxton, Major.” He waved her through the gate.

Sara drove on, and when the road curved sharply to the right, she saw the facility. Lush islands of evergreen foliage and four stories of gray stone with white-shuttered windows obscured by bars. To the distant north of the building lay a hedge maze, a pond, and what appeared to be a grass airstrip; closer in, a concrete helicopter pad. She understood the pad. It was necessary for emergency life-flights. But a grass airstrip?

A bitter taste filled her mouth, and a shiver slithered up her spine. A stately building in a serene setting. Yet looking at it gave her the creeps. Braxton seemed more like a fortress than a mental facility. But, she reminded herself, it was a special facility where high-risk, mentally diminished patients harboring classified information were sequestered. And the fortress aspects kept others out just as it kept patients inside. There was solace in knowing that.

She pulled into a parking slot near—of all things—an airplane, and stared up at the building. That sense of unease crept through her chest, and certainty filled her. Braxton
was
a fortress. Getting into it and functioning while here might be difficult, but her instincts shouted that those difficulties would seem minuscule when compared to the challenges of her getting out of Braxton.

Had Foster known that before bringing her in?

Unsure, Sara left the car.

Security was as tight inside the building as
it had been outside it. Beyond the information desk, she stopped at three mandatory checkpoints where everyone entering the facility reported to have their passes, thumbprint, and eyes matched to those in the computer files. Going through the identification process made her feel like a crook.

After she passed the third security system check, an armed guard named Reaston who was the size of a small giant personally escorted her through a maze of barren corridors to the office of the facility director, Dr. Fontaine. She tried twice to engage Reaston in conversation, but he refused to utter a single word or even to look her straight in the eye. Odd, but even those they passed in the halls avoided meeting her gaze and refused to return simple, courteous greetings. Getting the cold shoulder set her teeth on edge. Were people shunning her, or Reaston?