Acts of Honor (23 page)

“If you’re late getting back, I can’t open the gate for you.”

“I know.”

“What is it you need? We can put out a call. Somebody around here’s bound to have it.”

“I’d rather not do that,” Sara insisted, scrambling for an answer.

“Don’t worry about it, Dr. West. We help each other out all the time.”

Sara hit on her answer. “Not with feminine hygiene products. I’d rather not announce to all of Braxton that I’m having a period.”

Reaston stammered, and his face turned red. “Try to hurry.” He opened the gate and waved her through.

Smiling to herself, Sara hit the gas and drove down the dirt road. When the lights from the guard shack faded behind her, she shrugged out of her lab coat. The corner of the ID badge dangling from her collar stabbed her in the thigh. She shoved it over on the passenger’s seat.

Five miles down the road, out in the middle of no-man’s-land, she spotted the convenience store. It stood alone, a white cinder-block building with a flat roof and a sandy, weed-infested parking lot. The store was pitch-dark, but Foster’s recommended phone was bolted to the cinder-block wall beside the front door. The shelf meant to hold the phone book was empty. The directory dangled from a silver cord, its pages fluttering in the crisp breeze.

She pulled into the empty parking lot and stopped in front of the rusted-out Coke machine. Its red paint looked dull and weather-worn, and it reminded her of Jarrod.
Joe.
She had to think of him as
Joe
or she’d slip up in front of someone else, and word would get back to Fontaine. Protective or rotten to the core, Fontaine had more ears than employees inside Braxton, and if he was rotten and not patient-protective, then a slip could cost Joe his life.

She fished two quarters out of her purse and looked around. Through the store window, she saw lights from a drink cooler and debated. Should she leave the headlights on, or turn them off?

Safer not to be spotted. She cut her headlights and the engine, and then got out of the car and stumbled on a beer can. It splattered beer on her shoe and smelled potent. The wind raised goose bumps on her skin. Since the sun had set, it had gotten nippy. And no moon. The sky looked desolate with no moon illuminating it.

Stepping over the concrete curb marker, she felt her way to the phone, lifted the receiver, and dropped a coin into the slot.

No dial tone.

She pushed the coin-release button. Nothing happened. She tried another coin. Still nothing. “Great. Just great.”

She hung up and then made her way back to her car, certain Foster had planned this additional little complication to torment her. He had specified this store and this phone.

Back in the car, she checked her watch. Nine o’clock, straight up and down.

No phone. And she couldn’t get back into Braxton. Not tonight.

She drove to the nearest phone, which proved to be at another store nearly fifteen miles farther down the road. Foster didn’t answer. No surprise there, as it was nine-thirty. But Brenda did.

Sara couldn’t admit even to herself how good it felt to hear her sister’s voice. “It’s me.”

“What’s wrong with your voice?”

She touched the skin at her neck. Still tender and bruised. “I picked up a little sore throat. That’s all.” No sense in telling Brenda that Joe had nearly killed her. She’d been after Sara for years to change careers, and she would make Lisa call their parents—since their mother wasn’t speaking to Brenda—and then their folks would start harping on Sara again, too. No, thanks. She’d gotten a bellyful of “why do you want to work with crazy people?” from them already. “No news on David yet, but it shouldn’t be much longer. I don’t want to say much on the phone,” she said, knowing Brenda was holding her breath, hoping. “How are things there?”

“Lisa’s being totally unreasonable. Will you talk to her?”

Totally unreasonable in Brenda’s eyes could mean Lisa had left her room a wreck—perfectly normal for a twelve-year-old—or she’d run away. Sara wasn’t in the mood for guessing games, or a twenty-questions session. “Put her on.”

A few minutes elapsed. Then Sara heard, “Aunt Sara?”

Lisa. She hadn’t run away. Saying a silent thank-you, Sara looked up at the stars, then down at the dirt. “Hi, honey.” She stepped on a wood roach crawling near her foot. God, but it was huge. “How are you?”

“Maxed out.”

“Your mom didn’t marry—”

“No, she said she’d wait a couple of weeks. God, Aunt Sara. It’s so embarrassing. Gwendolyn Pierce says even if Mom doesn’t marry H. G. or G. H. Williamson, she can never come over here again. They’re Catholics. They stomach stuff. They don’t get divorced.”

The cold breeze ruffled over Sara’s skin. Wishing she had kept on her lab coat, she rubbed at her arms. “You okay with that?”

“No,” she flatly stated. “But I don’t get to choose, do I?”

Sara stared at the dirt. “Apparently, you don’t. But who your mom marries is definitely her decision.” And in this case, God, but Sara resented that. “How are things otherwise?”

“Okay. Taylor Baker invited me to the Autumn Festival. Mom says I’m too young to date, so I’m meeting him there.”

“I see.”

“Don’t snitch, Aunt Sara. He’s the only good thing in my life right now.”

“Just be careful. Don’t fall too hard too fast, okay?”

“I won’t. He’s not the one, but he is fun. He makes me laugh.” Lisa’s voice dropped a notch. “Mom said she wouldn’t get married, but I saw her looking at bridal books today, and we both know what that means. She’s got the itch. Bad. And I heard her tell Mary Kitchens, the lady next door, she was considering a Christmas wedding. I didn’t want to tell you before because I was scared she was listening in. But now I know she isn’t.”

“How do you know?” Sara watched two men walk out of the store, chugging beers. They crawled into a rusted-out pickup truck and pulled out, their spinning tires churning gravel, their tailpipe spitting smoke.

“She’s on the sofa in a lip-lock with the judge. I’m in the kitchen.”

“Lisa, are you spying on them?”

“No way. It’s gross. They’re
sooo
old!”

Biting back a smile at the “sooo old” remark, and glad to hear Lisa considered lip-locks gross, Sara watched a woman drop a letter into the mailbox slot right beside the phone, and then enter the store. Her sandals flapped against her heels.

Staring at the mailbox, Sara remembered something important. “Lisa, I need a favor. I’m mailing you an envelope.” Sara pulled the envelope holding Fontaine’s peacock-blue notes from her purse. “Do
not
open it. I want you to take it to my office and give it to Dr. Kale. Put it in his hands. That’s vital, okay?”

“Sure, Aunt Sara. What’s up? You sound nervous.”

“I’m fine. Tell Dr. Kale I urgently need verification of the dates the documents were written and to know if they were all written by the same person.” With luck, the only page that would be dated differently would be the sample of Fontaine’s writing she’d lifted.

“No problem.”

“Lisa, this is critical.” The wind whipped at Sara’s hair. She smoothed it back from her face. “I’m counting on you.”

“I’ll get it done.”

“Thanks.” Sara dropped the envelope into the mailbox’s slot. Her heart lurched, and she swallowed hard. “You need anything from me?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

“You name it, kid.” Sara smiled.

The line went silent. In a tiny voice, Lisa whispered, “A miracle.”

Sara’s smile faltered. Staring at a star, she spoke past a lump in her throat. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The dial tone droned. Sara hooked the receiver and then walked into the store. Heat blasted her in the face, and the Coke machine stood nearly empty.

“We’re having problems with the cooling system,” a male clerk about forty with thick glasses and a crooked nose warned her. “It won’t hold a charge. A guy’s supposed to be out first thing in the morning to fix it.”

That wouldn’t be a lot of help to her at getting a cold drink now. “Do you have anything cold?”

“Just beer.” He nodded to an ice chest on the floor at the far wall. Cans peeked out from crushed bits of ice.

Sara pulled out a frosty can, snagged a box of tampons from the shelf, and paid for her purchases at the cash register.

Outside, someone was using the phone. A guy wearing a dirty white T-shirt and cutoff jeans. Barefoot. A blue bandana held his hair tied back in a ponytail that was longer than Lisa’s. It rubbed against his shoulder blades.

Sara waited near her car and looked around. Isolated area. Dormant fields, ditches, and tons of bugs, but few people. In fact, she scanned up then down the road; except for the Ford parked on the side of the building, hers was the only car around. She suspected the Ford belonged to the store clerk, so where had the guy on the phone come from? He must have walked for miles.

“Yeah, I’m at Tim’s out at the crossroads.” He slurred, as if he’d had one beer too many. “Move your ass getting here, Callie. I ain’t waitin’ all night.”

Jerk.
Sara
bit her tongue to keep her mouth shut. She needed to save all of her outrage for Foster.

The guy hung up, gave her the once-over, which she ignored, and then walked back inside. His T-shirt was hiked up in back, and the top of his underwear stuck out above his jeans. About as sexy as a mudpack, that. What did Callie see in him?

Sara considered going over the phone receiver with an antiseptic wipe, but figured, why bother? The beer would kill the germs. She dialed Foster’s number. It rang three times. Finally, he answered.

“Hello.”

“It’s me.” She automatically looked around and then chided herself for it. Absurd. Out in the middle of nowhere, who cared who she talked with on the phone? She wasn’t a spy, she was a doctor. “I tried calling earlier. The phone you chose was out of order.”

“Yes, I know,” Foster said. “So, Dr. West, where are you calling from, and what do you have to report?”

“Another store,” Sara said, resisting the urge to shout at him. “And not a lot to report aside from a ton of interference, which I said I wouldn’t tolerate.”

“From who?”

“Fontaine. He’s having conniption fits because I got his research money—at least, I think he is. To, tell you the truth, Foster, I’m not sure about Fontaine. He’s either a very good man doing his best to protect his patients, or he’s a cold, calculating bastard.”

Foster chuckled. It sounded strange. Sara didn’t think she’d ever before heard the man chuckle. “You should know which by now,” he said. “You’ve been there five days.”

“I’ve known you for five years, and I still can’t decide about you.”

“Maybe I’m a bit of both.” He changed the subject. “So what have you learned?”

Maybe they all were a bit of both. “Well, I’ve damn near been killed.”

“Oh?”

He wasn’t surprised. He tried to sound it, but Sara sensed Foster knew all about Joe and the choking incident. Now who would have told him?
How
would anyone have told him? She was here at the store because the phones inside Braxton weren’t secure. “I want hazardous-duty pay.”

“I’ll arrange it.”

“A lot of it.”

“Very well.”

Hell, she was on a roll. Might as well go for the moon. “And I want you to get Fontaine off my back.”

“You’ll have to handle him, Sara.”

“You don’t understand. He’s interfering at every turn, issuing orders on my patients, countermanding my decisions, and making me miserable. He even bugged my name badge.”

“I understand Dr. Fontaine is a challenge. But you need to understand that if I interfere on any front at this point, then your cover is shot and so is my operative.”

Unsalvageable.
“Your covert stuff sucks dead canaries.”

“Very often, yes, it does.” Foster paused, as if sipping from a drink. “So, tell me why you’ve been at Braxton for five days and you still don’t know anything about it.”

“I’ve been a little busy, nearly getting murdered by one of your patients and trying to get a handle on my patients.” She debated mentioning Fontaine’s peacock-blue notes and quickly decided against it. “About my patients,” she started, figuring she might as well begin at the beginning. “The primary criteria for a PTSD diagnosis is that the patient experienced a traumatic event which threatened death or injury and felt fear, helplessness, or horror. If the symptoms persist for longer than a month, and they’ve caused significant distress or impairment, then we typically see evidence from three other symptom clusters.”