Acts of Honor (44 page)

Her heart stuck somewhere between her breastbone and throat, Sara watched the screen. Jarrod appeared. Lying in the woods on the ground, just as she’d seen him. Blood covered his chest. It hadn’t been a stun gun.

Two men she hadn’t seen squatted down beside him. “Get the medics out here,” one yelled. “He’s still alive.”

Her heart slammed against her ribs. He was alive. It had been him. And he was alive.
Thank you, God. Thank you.

A cut in the film, and she saw Jarrod in a hospital emergency room, lying on a gurney. Half-conscious, he called out her name.

A woman who looked like Sara—exactly like Sara—stood at his bedside, clasping his hand. “It’s okay, Joe. I’m right here.”

“Sara.” He looked up at her. “I’m going to die.”

“Don’t say that.” The woman’s voice dropped, anguish flooded it.
“Please.”

“Shh, don’t.” He pressed her hand to his lips. “Promise me you’ll have the family you want with someone else.”

Tears slipped down the woman’s face. Terror slid through Sara. How had they cloned such an accurate disguise of her? When had they done it? When they’d given her the first blackout shot? But how did they know about her wanting a family? Aside from Jarrod, no one at Braxton knew it. He damn sure wouldn’t have told them.

“Promise me,” Jarrod grated out.

“I promise.” The woman’s voice cracked.

“I loved you, Sara.” Jarrod lowered their hands to his side, gasped, and died.

Sara’s heart shattered. She blinked hard, fighting tears. Swallowed a knot of them down from her throat, knowing she couldn’t let any emotion show. Not now.
Oh, God. Jarrod was dead.

Dead. And she couldn’t react, couldn’t mourn him.

Owlsley studied her. She struggled under grief and loss, sucked it down deep inside, and buried it. Jarrod would expect it. No, he would demand it. How could these bastards justify this?

“As you can see, Sara, we know the truth. You and Jarrod had planned a family together. That’s hardly the type of thing that would happen in a professional relationship. Now, I want you to be honest with me.”

She forced a strength she didn’t feel into her voice. “I have been honest with you.” Jarrod. Dead. Dead. “Your informant for that charade was wrong.”

“Let’s discuss your DoD contract. How did that come about?”

She was a POW. It was time she started acting like one. She reeled off her name, rank, and serial number.

“This is no time for you to get patriotic or flip, Sara,” Owlsley warned her, removing his glasses. “I want the truth, and one way or another, I’m going to get it. You can make it easy on yourself, or as difficult as you like. It doesn’t matter to me.” He replaced his glasses on his nose. “Now, who arranged for that contract and sent you to Braxton? What was your mission there?”

Fontaine had prepped Owlsley well. “Sara West. Major, United States Air Force. Serial number four-three-five, seven-two, sixteen-ten.”

“What diagnoses have you made on your patients, Sara?” Owlsley persisted.

She repeated her name, rank, and serial number.

The beefy lieutenant clutched at her shoulder, let his fingertips dig in. Pain streaked up her neck, down her arm, but Sara didn’t flinch. Physical pain, no matter how intense, couldn’t compare with the pain of losing Jarrod.

“Let me teach her a little respect, sir,” the lieutenant told Dr. Owlsley.

“No.” Owlsley spared the lieutenant a glance. “Sara doesn’t defend herself. She defends her family.”

The lieutenant nodded, a dark gleam lighting in his eye. “Brenda?”

“No,” Owlsley said. “Lisa.”

Sara’s heart raced. Brenda. Lisa. What were these people going to do?

The overhead light snuffed out. The lieutenant shoved at her chair, turning it to face the two-way mirror. “Watch, Dr. West. You’ll enjoy this.”

Lisa sat huddled on the floor in what was obviously a cell. Her hands were bound with duct tape. She was blindfolded. Even from this distance, Sara could feel her fear. Two men were in her room. Sara bit her tongue until she tasted blood, forcing herself not to ask what the men intended to do to Lisa—if it was Lisa. Her being here would explain how Owlsley knew about Sara wanting a family—and about her wanting that family with Jarrod. But the girl in that room could be the woman who had masqueraded as Sara with Jarrod on the tape.

Dispelling that notion, Sara’s clone walked into the room. She rushed over to Lisa and jerked off the blindfold. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“Aunt Sara.” Lisa began crying hysterically. “Why are you doing this? I thought you loved me.”

“I do love you,” Sara’s clone insisted, soothing Lisa’s tangled hair with a gentle hand. “I’m a prisoner here, too, honey, and you’re refusing to cooperate with them.” The clone sat down beside Lisa on the floor, cradled her shoulder with a protective arm. “I warned you that I’d be confused. I can’t tell them anything, and you won’t. How can you do this to me?”

Lisa calmed and sniffed. “I wasn’t sure it was really you.”

“It’s me,” the clone assured her. “Lisa, this is very important. Those men are going to rape you unless you answer their questions. I can’t stop them. Do you understand? I can’t stop them.”

Sara’s flesh crawled, her heart skipped a beat then raced out of control, and a fear so deep she couldn’t say where it started or stopped suffused her. Rape Lisa? No. Oh, God, no.

Lisa went rigid. “They can’t do that. It’s against the law.”

The clone stroked Lisa’s hair. “They’re going to do it anyway, honey. You have to tell them what they want to know. Please. I don’t want you hurt.”

“But there’s nothing to tell them. I already told you. You didn’t tell me anything about any of this.”

The men advanced. Sara’s terror tripled. She stood up, shouted at Owlsley. “Stop them!”

“Certainly,” Owlsley said, his voice cool and detached. “Just as soon as you answer me honestly.”

“This is a training exercise, for God’s sake. She’s an innocent child. How can you justify letting those idiots rape her?”

“I don’t have to justify anything, Sara. But if you let this happen, you’re going to have a lot to justify. Mainly, to Lisa.”

The clone’s voice caught Sara’s ear. “Catch me up on things at home. Did you tell your mom anything about IWPT?”

“She’s so hyped-up about marrying Williamson, she doesn’t have time to talk about anything else. She doesn’t even think about anything else.”

“You’re lying to me, Lisa. Now, they’re going to hurt both of us.” The clone feigned deep disappointment, stood up, nodded to the men, and then left the room.

The men advanced on Lisa.

Sara’s blood ran cold. She broke out in a cold sweat. “Owlsley, you’re a doctor, for God’s sake. You took an oath to heal. You
can’t
let this happen!”

“I’m not letting anything happen. The choice is yours, Sara.”

The men ripped at Lisa’s blouse. Her scream filled both rooms. “Damn it,” Sara shouted. “Stop them!”

Owlsley rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “I demand honesty.”

Sara inwardly crumbled, her defenses breached and destroyed. She’d tell him anything, do anything, to prevent this. “If those men touch Lisa, I’ll die before telling you anything. I swear it.”

“You are not in a position to negotiate.”

Lisa screamed. “All she talks about is marrying Williamson. That’s all she thinks about—and that’s the truth.”

Lisa’s words reverberated in Sara’s head. She went statue-still, dropped back down into her chair.
Williamson?
Not
H. G. or G. H. Williamson?
And—Sara thought back—not once had Lisa uttered the word
stuff.
It had ended up in every conversation they’d had since she’d turned ten. Why not now? A memory flashed through Sara’s mind. A memory of Sara and Brenda and Lisa standing in the dirt at the store, talking. Brenda wasn’t marrying Williamson. She knew David was alive. She’d taken off the engagement ring.

Sara looked back into the mirror. The girl wasn’t Lisa.

She couldn’t be Lisa any more than the woman talking with Jarrod had been Sara. Had the man who’d died been Jarrod?

“Well, it’s decision time, Sara.” Owlsley propped his hands on the tabletop. “Do you sit by and let those men rape your niece?”

She stared at the girl through the mirror. She was someone’s daughter, but she wasn’t Brenda and David’s, and she was acting of her own will. That much was clear. She wasn’t Lisa.

God, please don’t let me be wrong about this. If I’m wrong, I’ll never forgive myself.
Sara turned, leveled Owlsley with an uncompromising gaze. “If you have that girl raped, then it’s on your conscience, not mine.”

Irritated at not achieving his desired response, he frowned at her. “So it’s true, then. You will allow your own niece to suffer the worst indignity possible for a woman to suffer just to save yourself.”

“She’s not my niece.” Sara looked him right in the eye. “She looks like Lisa, moves like Lisa, even sounds like Lisa. But your Lisa-clone doesn’t think like Lisa any more than your Sara-clone thinks like me.”

Owlsley’s face mottled red, and the veins in his neck bulged. “Well, then. I’d say it’s time we see how Sara West does think.” He snapped a sharp nod to the lieutenant. “Take her to the lab.”

Two armed guards escorted
Sara to the electric chair.

The blindfold had just been removed. Inside the building, the lighting was dim, and her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted. She stumbled and looked down to see why she’d tripped. During transport, someone with a bad attitude and a warped sense of humor had tied her shoestrings together.

The beefy lieutenant clasped her shoulder and shoved her down onto the chair. She landed with a thump that jarred her teeth. Jarrod had drawn the chair, had told her about it. But Owlsley hadn’t yet found out what he needed to know from her. He couldn’t damage her yet. This had to be an intimidation tactic.

The soldiers worked quickly, efficiently. One at each side, they strapped her forearms to the chair arms and cinched down the straps, stemming the blood flow to her fingertips. They whitened and began to throb. She tried to flex them, but failed. The damn bands were too tight.

With utility knives, the soldiers split open the legs of her prisoner’s jumpsuit and then shackled her ankles to a wooden base bolted to the floor. The heavy metal gouged into her chafed skin, and pain streaked up to her knees. “Is all of this really necessary?” She refused to flinch, remembered Jarrod’s words, and repeated them. “I’m a POW. I get the message, okay?”

Hearing his words aloud infused her with strength. She
could
get through this. She had the tools. Jarrod had given them to her.

The lieutenant backhanded Sara across the mouth.

The sound echoed in the cavernous metal building, inside her head. Her lip split. Tasting blood, feeling the sting of the man’s hand on her face, Sara refused to react outwardly, just buried her outrage within. Her time would come.

“You’re supposed to pull back,” the second guard whispered to the beefy lieutenant. “She’s bleeding.”

“What’s the difference?” The lieutenant sent him a knowing glance. “In here, a split lip is nothing.”

“But she’s a major.”

“You mean she
was
a
major.”

Was?
Sara’s stomach flipped over. She ordered herself to calm down. They couldn’t be going to damage her now. Not without breaking her. Owlsley and Fontaine had to know what she’d unearthed and who she’d told about it. They had to know the extent of the breach in their operation.

The beefy lieutenant spared her a feral smile. “You ought to feel privileged, Doc. You’re the first woman to get this training.”

Sara swallowed her fear and a sharp retort. She didn’t need another slap. Her ears were still ringing from the last one.

They circled her chest, neck, and forehead with thick leather bands, jerked them tight, and then attached them to the back of the chair. Her chest and throat didn’t have room to expand. Trussed up, she had to fight for every breath.

She worked with it, drew in shallow puffs to combat the restrictions, but her oxygen intake still rapidly diminished. Spots formed before her eyes. Sweat beaded on her brow, trickled down between her breasts.

Don’t panic. You survived the boa constrictor, the jammed elevator, the box and nearly drowning, and the god-awful torture with Jarrod and Lisa. You know how to fight this.

Following her instincts, she dove into anti-stress techniques and focused outward, disassociating and reminding herself that every indignity was inflicted for one reason: to inspire fear. That, she couldn’t give them. Not without forfeiting her mission to save the patients, Lisa, and Jarrod. He couldn’t be dead. He was at Braxton. At Braxton with Shank and Reaston and Koloski and the rest of the friendlies. Jarrod was a Shadow Watcher, and Shadow Watchers didn’t forfeit missions, or anything else. Instead, they died. They knew the drill—duty first—and the Shadow Watcher creed: “Accomplish the mission. Whatever, wherever, whenever.” And living by it, they routinely survived seemingly insurmountable odds. If the methods worked for them, then they would work for her—provided she had the courage to employ them.