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As soon as Doc returned from Colorado, he came to check on her. He examined her stitches and quizzed her with a barrage of questions. “You’re healing well, but I don’t want you to overdo it. Still no physical exercise for a few days besides walking. I would like you to take a five-minute walk every hour for the next few days and see if you can extend that to fifteen minutes without pain or light-headedness.”
“When do you think I can return to duty?” Laura Lee asked.
“Four or five days until I’ll think about limited duty. You won’t be back on the PGP Install Team for at least three weeks to a month, though.”
She frowned and sighed.
“Laura, a ruptured appendix is a serious condition. You had a life-threatening infection and major surgery. You need to give your body time to recover.”
“I know you’re right,” she moaned. “Okay, I’ll take it easy and walk every hour for you.”
Later that night, Brad Dupont visited her as he had every evening during his break from Ops. “You seem off tonight,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, yes, I’m mentally preoccupied. Doc came and saw me today. It’ll be a few days until he releases me to return to duty, but it will only be limited duty for three weeks to a month. And he said that wouldn’t be back on my PGP Install Team.”
Brad smiled. “Maybe they’ll put you back in Ops overnight with me.”
With him was the only part that sounded appealing.
“Oh, not what you’d want,” he said, seeing her reaction.
“It’s not you. It’s Ops. And I have a huge problem, Brad.” Was she really going to do this? Was she going to confide in him?
“What problem?”
She rubbed her forehead. “If I tell you, you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone. And I mean notanyone. Not even Yvette or Garcia.”
“This sounds serious.”
“It is,” she said.
Brad Dupont knew he shouldn’t make her a blanket promise. If it was something that important, if she had broken a rule or something, he may have to tell someone. “I promise.” He’d deal with deciding to tell based on what it was.
“Did you know I was put on probation for not completing my FBI coursework?”
It shocked Dupont to hear this. He didn’t know of anyone at the agency who’d ever been put on probation. He shook his head. “If you were having problems, there are a lot of people you could have asked.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “I finished it a long time ago. I haven’t submitted it because I saw Michael Cooper’s certification, or rather I should say I saw the signature of the man who did the final review of it, and I know him. I can’t let him see my name come across his desk.”
“Why?” Brad asked, confused. But when he looked into her eyes, he saw fear. “Laura, how do you know him?”
“He raped me, and blackmailed me,” she stated plainly. Brad’s facial expression showed his shock. Why she told him more of the specifics of what happened than she’d told Caleb, she wasn’t sure.
“Laura, are you sure it’s the same guy?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said with confidence. “He was a professor at my college, the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I knew he was also an FBI Agent and taught at Quantico. When I saw Michael’s sign off, I recognized his signature and name. And during that first stint I did a few months ago in Ops, I looked him up in the FBI database. It’s him, alright.”
“Who have you told about this?” Brad asked.
“Just Caleb, well, part of it. I didn’t tell him what my past experience with West was, just that we had a not so good history.”
“Holy shit, Laura, it’s a lot more than a not so good history.” Brad Dupont ran his hand over his head. “You haven’t told Lassiter or Shepherd?”
Laura Lee huffed out an exaggerated sigh. “No, of course I haven’t.”
“Why not?” he pressed.
“Brad. I should have pressed charges against him, but he set me up and he threatened to ruin my career before it even started if I did. Worse yet, he could have gotten me thrown out of the ROTC program. The Army could have prosecuted me or, at the very least, cancelled my financial aid and presented me with a bill for all they’d already paid. He had me over a barrel and he knew it. At the time, I knew when I graduated and went away to OCS, I’d be away from him, away from school, and he couldn’t hurt me anymore.”