Page 28

“Am I under arrest?” Katie demanded.

“No, ma’am.”

“Then can I go, now?”

“Where are you going to go?”

“I need to see my partner.”

“The doctor? Umm, your paperwork will need to be all in order. I’ll have to go check on that…” Her captor’s voice trailed off vaguely. No matter how polite this Marine was being, he was detaining her. And as far as she could tell, the guy was doing it illegally.

“What’s the hold up? I’m an American citizen, here.”

“This is Guantanamo. We do things differently down here?—“

She cut him off. “Is this American soil?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have certain rights. Look. I grew up on military bases. I know the deal. I’m going, now.”

“Ma’am, you can’t just barge out the door and bomb around the base.”

“Why not?”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

The poor guy had no answer for that and merely sputtered. She took pity on him and asked more temperately, “Who gave you the order to keep me here? Maybe I can have a little talk with him or her.”

He answered reluctantly, “Base intel officer.”

That startled her. Why was military intelligence trying to hold on to her? Someone must have reported her presence here up the chain of command, and an order must’ve come back down the chain of command to keep her in custody.

What she didn’t understand, though, was why they appeared not to want her and Alex to see each other.

She asked pleasantly, “Did the intel officer also tell you not to let me see Doctor Peters?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The guy sounded deeply relieved to confess that. As if she would now cooperate fully with him. She snorted mentally. Wild horses were not going to keep her away from Alex.

“Are they interrogating him?” she asked lightly.

“I don’t think so. Last I heard, he was at the hospital.”

“Is he hurt?” she demanded sharply.

“Not that I’m aware of. They killed the guy with him, but he’s all right.”

What guy? Why did Alex come in with someone? And why had the Americans killed that someone? The mystery deepened.

One thing was for sure. She was getting out of here and finding Alex as soon as she could figure out a way to do it.

She sighed in feigned resignation. “Okay, so I’m supposed to stay here until further notice. Is there anywhere I could maybe lie down for a while? It’s been a rough couple of days and I’m exhausted.”

“We’ve got a break room with a couch in it. I’ll show you where it is.”

She followed the soldier docilely down the hall and made sure to give the guy a big yawn as she stretched out on the couch.

Oh, Lord, it felt good to lie down. She suspected that were it not for the stim pill Alex had given her, she would be unable to move right about now.

As it was, exhaustion tugged at her, coaxing her to close her eyes for just a few minutes.

The guy turned out the lights and pulled the door shut for her. She figured he would give her a little while to fall asleep before he would think about peeking in to check on her. Which meant she had to go right now.

She opened the window behind the couch and was relieved to discover it was properly greased and slid up silently. She had to push out the screen and winced at faint screech it made as she got rid of it.

She climbed out and awkwardly hung onto the sill with both hands. It was a drop of about twelve feet. She took a deep breath and let go.

Ouch! She’d landed in a bush that poked the heck out of her. She bit her lips to keep from making any sound as she extricated herself from the attack bush.

Now, to find Alex.

Hospital. Where was the base hospital? She figured it would have emergency power, so she headed for the nearest lit building at a jog. Unfortunately, it turned out to be some sort of operations center. She picked the next nearest building with lights and headed for it.

A few Jeeps passed by. She dived for cover when she had time, and when she didn’t, she pretended to be out for a late-night jog and waved jauntily at the drivers. Without exception, they whistled or called back. Not many girls in these parts, apparently.

The third lit building, sitting high on a hill overlooking the bay, turned out to be the hospital.

The orderly at the front desk was completely unwilling to grant her access to the building, however.

Unlike Alex, she was a terrible liar, and worse, she was too tired to come up with a brilliant lie on the spot.

She finally retreated from the front entrance and made her way around the far side of the building to the emergency room entrance. She crouched outside in the dark to ponder what illness or injury she was most likely to succeed at faking.

A police car was parked in front of the emergency room’s double doors, and as she failed to think of anything halfway believable, a military cop stepped outside. Two more cops came out, hustling a fourth man along between them.

Oh my God. Alex. And it looked like he was under arrest.

The car pulled out from under the portico and she ran after it. Of course, she couldn’t keep up with the speeding vehicle, but she did see that it went back to the first lit building—the operations center.

Cursing under her breath, she jogged back that way.

Now what?

Alex stared at the walls of the holding cell and could scream in frustration. He’d gotten to the very end of the tests before the cops—led by the lab tech from before—barged in and bodily dragged him out of the lab.

At least he’d managed to turn off the chromatograph and erase the results it had recorded before he powered it down. He’d swallowed the tiny flash drive he’d saved the test results on and prayed the Marines didn’t see him do it before they grabbed him.

Why would the Americans stop him from completing those tests? Wouldn’t they be eager to know if the Cubans were secretly storing chemical weapons close by? Not to mention they’d been smuggled out of the Middle East? It made no sense, whatsoever.

Apparently, he was under arrest, now. By whom, no one had bothered to tell him. And of course, there was no mention of exactly what he’d done to merit being thrown in here and locked up in the dark.

None of this made any sense. He was an American government employee.

He’d given his real name to the MP’s who’d picked him up, and had given the bastards André’s phone number to verify his identity.

Sure, an identification might have to run up through channels, but how hard could it be for an American military installation to get a yes/no answer from the CIA on whether or not Alex Peters was one of the good guys?

He felt his way around the windowless cell and located sink, toilet, and concrete bench in under a minute.

He retired to the bench to make himself comfortable.

God knew, he had plenty of experience with incarceration.

Four years’ worth in his early twenties.

He’d gone on a drunken joy ride with the express intent of getting himself locked up rather than working for his father as a spy against the United States.

What were they doing to Katie? Was she locked up, too? Were they interrogating her? If he were in charge, she would be the one he tried to break. The untrained female civilian was a much softer target than the hardened, field-experienced spy.

Unable to sleep, and too irritated to sit, he paced the cell in the dark, swearing colorfully in a variety of languages. Not even a strip of light crept in under the door. He suspected the sensory deprivation was intentional, meant to disorient and unnerve prisoners.

He snorted. His prisoner training had included many days of blindfolds and light deprivation. Except of course, for interrogations, which were conducted under blindingly bright spotlights that had given him massive headaches.

As time stretched on and no one came to let him out, his alarm mounted. Why hadn’t the CIA given the Marines a green light to release him? Why the delay?

His finely honed instinct for dealing with intelligence agencies told him something was afoot. Surely, the CIA wouldn’t have spent a full year training him with the intent to throw him to the wolves on his very first mission abroad. And why the forced separation from Katie?

The trick, besides not panicking, was to keep an accurate sense of time.

He set a mental alarm for four hours from now and laid down to catch a nap while he waited for his captors to make their next move.

He expected it would come in the wee hours of the night when his biological clock was set for sleep.

He was right. He’d been lazily dozing for less than a half-hour after he’d woken from his nap when the overheads lights were thrown on. He swung his feet to the floor as his cell door banged open loudly.

“Get up! Get up! Get up!” the guard yelled aggressively.

Alex, already seated on the edge of the bed/bench gave the guy a sardonic smile and stood up casually.

Irritated not to have surprised him from a deep sleep, the guard grabbed Alex’s arm roughly and attempted to throw him through the door.

Not only was Alex expecting something passive-aggressive like that, but he’d studied martial arts basically since he could walk.

It took more than a hard shove to knock him off balance.

Apparently, this was not a polite visit to release the fellow American asset.

What in the hell was the hold up with the CIA?

“Left or right?” Alex asked blandly.

“Left, asshole.”

“That’s Doctor Asshole to you. I’m a surgeon.”

Not that he thought the guy cared, but it was good to establish a certain status with thugs like his guard. Sure enough, the guard walked a little farther behind him and didn’t “accidentally” slam him against any walls as they walked down the long corridor.

The guard directed him up a flight of stairs, down a short hall, and into an interrogation room, complete with cameras and a lie detector machine sitting on a small, rolling table in the corner.