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“Are you a lie detector tech?” Alex asked pleasantly with feigned surprise.

“No,” the guard admitted, scowling.

Mission accomplished. Chasm in their status emphasized for good measure. Now to play his guard like a violin.

“You should think about training to become one. It’s interesting work,” Alex said in a conversational tone.

“Decent hours. Good pay in the civilian world. High demand work. More and more private companies are using lie detectors on their employees or during job interviews. Which means there aren’t nearly enough trained techs.

It would be a good career move for you if you ever decide to go civilian. ”

The guard nodded thoughtfully. “Thanks, man.”

Amateur . The guy had no clue that Alex had just neatly diverted him from playing bad cop for whatever interrogator was right now standing on the other side of that two-way glass.

He would bet the “good cop” knew what he’d done, though.

Should come in here any second to try to regain control of the situation.

Sure enough, the door opened. A man in a neatly starched white shirt and pressed slacks walked into the room.

Psychologist . Alex eyed this man more warily.

“Have a seat, Dr. Peters.”

“And you would be?” Alex asked.

“John Doe.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Doe,” Alex murmured as he took his seat. He planted both feet on the floor and both palms flat on the table. It was an unnatural pose, but designed not to give the interrogator any unconscious body language signals.

Dr. Doe’s mouth curved up sardonically. At a gesture from Doe, the future lie-detector tech retreated into the corner out of Alex’s line of sight.

Not that it succeeded in intimidating Alex. He would hear the guy coming long before the guard could lay a finger on him. He might absorb the blow, or he might move to block it depending on how the interrogation was proceeding. Either way, he had control of that element of the game.

“What brings you to Guantanamo, Dr. Peters?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you, Dr. Doe.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I gave a contact number for my boss to the MP’s earlier. Feel free to call Doctors Unlimited and verify my identity for yourself.”

Interestingly enough, John Doe’s mouth tightened slightly. So. Doe had been in contact with the CIA already. Which meant the fuckers in Langley had told this jerk to go through with this interrogation. What the hell ?

“What kind of tests were you running in the hospital’s lab, earlier?”

“I can’t discuss that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Alex answered politely, “Let’s just say it’s not on the approved list of conversation topics and call it good, shall we?” After all, there was no sense pissing this guy off more than he had to.

Doe leaned forward and planted his hands on the table to match Alex’s.

“Just so we’re clear, you’re not getting out of here until you talk.

I’m a specialist. You will tell me what I want to know before I’m done with you.

I’ll respect your decision if you choose to resist me, but any…

discomfort…you experience will be purely your choice and not mine. ”

This guy knew he was a spy. Knew the kind of training Alex had undergone. And Doe still thought it was possible to break him? The bastard had a big surprise coming.

Alex leaned forward and stared the guy directly in the eyes. He spoke slowly, enunciating each word clearly. “Try me. I dare you.”

And those were the last words he spoke. For the next hour, Doe pummeled him with questions, taunts, and outright threats.

For the most part, the guy disguised his growing frustration well.

But Alex was better. By subtle nuances of expression, he conveyed his amusement and contempt for the man’s efforts to make him talk.

Finally, Doe threw up his hands. “You leave me no choice. We’re going to have to drug you.

” The bastard said that like he was relieved to have gotten to this point.

Were those his orders all along? Put on a show for Alex that culminated in drugging away his inhibitions until he spilled his guts to this guy?

Warning bells clanged wildly in his head. Of course he hadn’t told the CIA everything about himself during his simulated interrogations last year. He’d been trained from the bloody cradle to be secretive as hell.

So. His employer still didn’t trust him, huh? He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. But it still pissed him off.

Did the folks back at Langley seriously think he was going to break under drugs? He was fully trained in how to resist the effects of interrogation drugs—unless they’d developed something new that they planned to try out on him.

Mentally, he frowned. The clandestine services usually tested new toys on enemy combatants and not their own assets.

In the mean time, he needed to deal with the asshole in front of him. He let a flash of derision over the idea of being drugged show briefly in his eyes and then resumed his deadpan expression.

Doe reeled back in his chair. The guy wasn’t sure what he’d just seen, but it was giving the man pause that Alex seemed totally unimpressed by the threat of psychotropic drugs.

“Who are you?” Doe burst out.

No need to answer. His identity had already been established well before either of them set foot in this room.

His ploy now was to occupy this man for as long as possible.

Good lord willing, Doe was the only interrogator on this, the non-prison side of the naval base.

Keeping him occupied in here meant he wasn’t messing with Katie.

Where was she, anyway? A few minutes alone with lie-detector boy, and he would’ve had the kid telling him where she was. The key would be to get rid of Dr. Doe for a while. To that end, Alex stared blandly at Doe’s continuing antics and flatly refused to be provoked into any reaction whatsoever.

Finally, Doe shoved back his chair and stormed out of the room. Aware that he still had an audience—future lie detector tech in the corner—Alex didn’t alter his position by a centimeter.

“Dude, you really ought to talk to him. It only gets nasty from here,” the guard murmured.

Alex didn’t bother to acknowledge the guy. Whether the remark was scripted or a genuine warning, he didn’t know and could care less. He merely closed his eyes and worked through a mental relaxation exercise.

By his reckoning, it would be dawn, soon. Lie-detector guy would go off shift. If he had to guess, Dr. Doe would replace him with a bruiser of a guard trained to hit stuff very hard. Not that it mattered. He knew how to deal with that type, too. Pain was a transient thing, blocked easily enough.

Doe stuck his head into the room and barked an order at Lie-detector-kid.

Something about taking him upstairs to Room 10 and preparing him for medication.

Going straight to the mind-altering drugs, were they?

Good call. He was actually surprised, though, that Doe didn’t give himself the satisfaction of watching a thug beat the crap out of him, first.

Two more guards joined the first one, and the trio oversaw his ride upstairs in an elevator. They took off his T-shirt, pushed him down onto a hospital bed, and strapped him down tightly. He considered resisting but decided it wasn’t worth the entertainment to his captors.

Doe came back with a woman in surgical scrubs, who efficiently set an IV in the back of his hand and taped the needle down securely. He briefly considered resisting her as well, but the guards were big guys and more manpower would be nearby.

The IV drip started. For now, it was a simple saline solution. But a stainless steel tray with several loaded syringes stood on a table beside the bed.

Doe picked up the first syringe.

Alex broke his silence to say, “I guarantee that no one in this room has the proper security clearances to hear what I have to say. Unless you want to create a severe shit storm of security violations that will land on your head, you might want to re-evaluate who’s in here if I do, in fact, start talking. ”

“Oh, you’ll talk.” And with that, Doe injected the serum into the IV line. Alex didn’t feel any pain at the site of his IV. Must be one of the new generation meds, then. A couple of the old ones burned like fire on their way into the body.

“We’ll give that a few minutes to work, Dr. Peters, and then I’ll be back to have a little chat with you.”

Alex ignored him. He was already hard at work filling his mind with harmless images from his childhood.

Soccer games on Saturday mornings. The dew had been cold and wet on the grass, a silver gray cobweb over the soccer field.

His shin guards, too big, slid down inside his tube socks and bugged him.

Grass clippings stuck to the wet soccer balls.

The more minute the details he filled his mind with, the better.

He registered vaguely that the guards, did, indeed step out into the hall when Doe came back. Alex’s vision had narrowed to a brightly lit tunnel with dancing images at the end of it. Shouting kids. Harassed coaches. Matching t-shirts.

“Can you hear me, Alex?”

“Yes, Coach. I’m listening.”

“Why are you in Cuba?”

“To play soccer.”

“Who sent you here?”

“My father. He wants me to fit in.”

“What were you testing in the lab?”

“My hands. Best part of playing goalie is getting to use them.”

“We’re going to give you another drug, Alex. It will amplify the effect of the CCRE.”

CCRE? What was that? He’d never heard it mentioned in his training last year.

The door opened behind Doe and a nurse came in. Different nurse from before. The nurse looked just like someone he knew named Katie. He liked Katie—the real one.

The hallucination made him smile a little. Yup, she was the reason he would fight to the bitter end. And win. He had to win this soccer game. He sank further into his boyhood memory, wrapping it around him like a thick blanket as the second drug was injected into his IV.

His head was starting to spin pleasantly and his body felt heavy and languid.

But as quickly as that sensation registered, panic followed it.

What had they done to him? How had they known to make the nurse look like a girl he liked?

They were all out to get him. Was she part of the plot, too? It was brilliant to use her. Evil.

“Gotta win,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” Doe leaned down a little closer to hear him.

And that was when the nurse pulled a rock out of a wrapped towel and clobbered Doe across the back of the head with it. Holy shit . The interrogator fell across Alex’s lap and then slid to the floor, with Katie-nurse attempting to slow the guy’s fall.

That was a good ploy to get him to trust her. He watched, bemused, as the hallucination frantically unbuckled the leather straps from his wrists, neck, waist, and finally, feet.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered. “Can you walk?”

“If I can play soccer, I can walk.” And hey. If she wanted to bust him out of here as a head game to gain his trust, far be it from him to stop her. He could always get away from her later.

She ran over to the window and looked out. “Can you jump out the window? We’re on the second floor. Did they teach you to drop and roll in soccer?”

“Of course,” he answered indignantly. “I’m a damned goalie.”

“Does your daddy know you talk like that?” she asked, amused.

“Hell, no!”

“Keep your voice down,” she ordered sharply. “Help me take this guy’s shirt off. It looks about your size.”

“But it’s white. Team colors are purple and black. Dumb colors if you ask me.”

“It’s a nice shirt. It’ll look good on you.” She buttoned him into Doe’s white shirt like he was a five-year old.

“I’ll go first,” he announced. “I’m the boy and you’re only a dumb girl.”

“Fine. Just get out of the way when you land. I’ll be right behind you.”

“’Kay.”

He swung a leg over the sill was just about to go when the woman stopped him with a hand on his arm. “No shouting on the way down. You have to jump without making any noise.”

“Poopyhead,” he muttered. He’d been looking forward to a good whoop as he went for a fly.

Grinning widely, she murmured, “Have fun. Just be quiet about it. We’ll get in huge trouble if we get caught.”

“I’m really good at sneaking around,” he whispered conspiratorially. He pushed off the edge and landed with a fall and roll his coach would have been proud of. He even remembered to roll again and get out of the nurse’s way.

While she clambered awkwardly over the sill, he turned away and jammed his finger down his throat. He gagged but didn’t vomit. He jammed his finger into his throat harder and held it there. There. He heaved and hunched over, retching.

The object he’d hoped would come up did. He picked the flash drive out of the remains of his last meal and shoved it in his pocket as the woman hit the ground beside him with an oomph . “Noisy girl,” he complained under his breath.

“Shh. Come with me.”

“Can I call you Katie?”

“Sure,” the blond replied. “Just do what I say, okay?”

They got on a bus of some kind, and he got really sleepy as it started and stopped a million times. Crap. He couldn’t afford to sleep. He had to be ready to slip away from this woman when the time came.

“You can take a nap if you want,” Katie told him.

Her shoulder looked soft and inviting, just like he imagined his mother’s would be. He laid his head down on it and closed his eyes. But he was faking. He had to stay alert. Wait for his chance to escape the woman and whatever twisted game she was playing.

His jitters mounted as the bus started and stopped over and over. Why the hell were they doing this to him? They must think he would spill his guts to this woman. Hah.

People on the bus were watching him. He felt their stares on his back, but every time he turned to check, they were already looking away.

He had to get under cover. Hide where they couldn’t find him.

Away from the woman who was obviously leading them all to him.

He had to get away from her if it was the last thing he did.