Headlights suddenly swept the lot as a car pulled in. Kate couldn’t be sure, but she thought it was the same car that had passed earlier. She slouched down in the seat, wondering if the Porsche’s body was strong enough to deflect bullets. It seemed that it should be, given its outrageous price. She held her breath again, her body rigid, fearing that at any moment there would be a hail of bullets, and wondering if the committee ever awarded a Pulitzer posthumously. She could almost envision Sam accepting for her.
With the Porsche’s engine running, she couldn’t tell if the other car had stopped, but she could no longer see its headlights. Then she heard a door slam—very close by. She raised her head cautiously, then screamed as a face peered in at her.
The young man outside backed off quickly. Kate couldn’t hear his words, but he seemed as scared as she was—and that told her he was the caller. She rolled down the window.
“I’m Kate Stevens,” she said. “Are you here to see me?”
He nodded, his eyes darting around the lot. “Did you come alone?”
She told him she had, even though the lie seemed unnecessary now. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and there didn’t appear to be any way he could be concealing a weapon. She was beginning to think that she’d seen him before somewhere.
“This isn’t your car,” he said in a faintly accusing tone.
“No, it belongs to…a friend. I’m having car trouble and I didn’t want to risk a breakdown.” She opened the door and got out. “I’ve seen you somewhere.”
He nodded. “At New Leaf. I’m a counselor there.”
“Are you a friend of Tony’s?”
“Not really a friend. You know he’s disappeared?”
Kate nodded, but said nothing.
“I think they killed him,” he stated bluntly, then peered at her closely. “You’re not taping this, are you?”
“No,” Kate assured him. “Why do you think they killed him?”
“Because he was asking too many questions.”
“Tony told me that a group of counselors had talked a couple of times about the sudden changes in the kids there. Were you part of that group?”
He nodded. “Something’s going on, that’s for sure. We all agreed on that. But we don’t know what it is.”
He stopped talking and scanned the lot, turning in a complete circle. She asked if he was sure that no one had followed him here, and he said he was.
“It bothered Tony even more than the rest of us,” he went on, turning back to her. “He was the only one who’d worked at another camp and he said they didn’t have near the success rate that we do. So he started asking questions—you know, talking to the psychologists and the medical people. A couple of days ago—just before he disappeared—he told me that he thought he might be onto something. I asked him what it was, but he said that he didn’t want to talk about it until he was sure. He said something about getting some tests done, and then maybe he’d know.”
“What kind of tests?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Could he have meant psychological tests?”
He was silent for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. The psychologists run all the usual tests on the kids when they first get there, and the results are in their files that we all have access to.”
“You said he was talking to medical people. Could he have meant medical tests of some kind?”
“Maybe, but it’s hard to see what they could be. The kids are all tested regularly for illegal drugs because we can’t be one hundred percent sure that they’re not managing to have them brought in.”
He seemed increasingly edgy, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. Because she feared that he might suddenly take off, Kate switched gears and asked him if he knew where they sent the kids they couldn’t handle at New Leaf.
“That doesn’t happen often, but when it does, they send them to whatever hospital will take them.” He paused, frowning. “I had a kid last year who had to be sent away. It was weird. He was referred by the courts after he was convicted of car theft. He wasn’t the one who stole the car, though. He was just with the kid who did, and he was stoned out of his mind at the time. Anyway, he was actually a pretty together kid. No history of mental problems and no real drug history, either. Pretty bright, too.
“Things went really well for him—right up to the day he flipped out and tried to strangle a counselor. I wasn’t there at the time, but they told me that he just went berserk. One of his friends told me later that he’d said he was feeling kind of funny. He didn’t elaborate beyond that. It happened over a weekend when I was off, and they shipped him out immediately.”
“What was his name?” Kate asked.
“Stephen Walters. Why?”
“Could you describe him for me?” Kate tried not to let her shock show. Stephen was the name of one of the boys at the farmhouse. He was the one she’d talked to.
“He was about my height, kind of skinny. A white kid. Thin face and a big nose and big blue eyes. Medium brown hair. He had some acne scars on his cheeks.”
The description fitted perfectly—just as she’d thought it would. Kate’s stomach churned. She wanted to tell the counselor that she’d seen him, and that he wasn’t in a hospital and that things were no longer going so well for him. But she managed to keep her silence. She needed time to figure it all out first.
“Look, I’ve got to go. I don’t know why I came here anyway. I don’t really know anything. It’s just that I’m worried about Tony.”
“The police were at New Leaf about Tony,” she told him. “Did you talk to them?”
He shook his head. “There wasn’t anything I could tell them. I can’t afford to lose this job. The pay is really good, and I’m still paying off loans from grad school.”
‘‘Did any of the others in your group talk to the police?”
“No. We all decided that we couldn’t tell them anything that would help, and it could have gotten us fired…or worse.”
“I really appreciate your telling me all this,” she told him sincerely. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I promise you that I’ll do my best to find Tony. If you see or hear anything else, will you call me?”
He nodded. “You won’t tell anyone that I’ve talked to you?”
“I promise that I’ll keep you out of it,” she assured him. “All I ask is that you keep your eyes and ears open.”
“I will, but if something’s going on, they’re going to be even more careful now. Besides, there’s this research group coming in.”
Kate recalled that Tony had mentioned that. “Do you know their name?”
“It’s called the Organization for Responsible Drug Policy. I understand that they’re a new group, and they’re supposed to be studying boot camps. They’re going to be interviewing all the counselors about our work with the kids.”
Kate could just barely resist the impulse to shout “Aha!” The connection had been made. But what did it mean? She thanked her informant again and reminded him to call her if he saw or heard anything, and he returned to his car. As soon as he’d pulled out, Kate called Sam’s name, and immediately saw movement in the shadows near the rest rooms.
“Was he from New Leaf?” Sam asked as he jogged across the lot to her.
“Yes, and wait till you hear what he had to say!”
Sam reached around and pulled a gun from the back of his waistband. After putting it into the car, he leaned against the hood and listened as Kate repeated her conversation with the counselor.
“We’ve got a connection now, Sam—the ORDP!”
“A possible connection,” Sam replied. “They could be there for exactly the reasons they state.”
“But there must be dozens of these boot camps they could have studied. So why this one?”
“The same reason you were drawn to them in the first place—their success rate.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“Is it any more
of a coincidence than a connection between two seemingly unrelated stories?” Sam challenged.
“I’m beginning to wish that you’d stuck with your wars,” she muttered, but she knew he was right.
“On the other hand, if The Ferret comes up with a connection between New Leaf and Newbury, then we’ve got something.”
“I’d hate to think that one nerdy guy with an apartment full of computers is going to replace good old-fashioned investigative journalism.”
“He won’t. A computer can only look for what it’s told to look for,” Sam pronounced. “I wonder what sort of test Tony was planning to do.”
They were both silent for a moment, thinking. Then Kate offered tentatively, “What if those kids at New Leaf are being used as human guinea pigs to test some new type of drug?”
“You said that they tested the Scofield boy for drugs at the hospital after he went nuts,” Sam reminded her.
“Yes, but for what kind of drugs? I did an article about illegal-drug testing a couple of years ago. Before I looked into it, I’d always assumed that they just took urine or blood and then found everything that doesn’t belong there. But it isn’t that simple.”
“It isn’t?”
She shook her head. “You have to run a whole lot of different tests, and what ones you run depend on what you’re looking for. Besides, they’re not perfect, although they’ve improved in recent years.
“For example, at first, the test for marijuana could come back positive if you’d taken ibuprofen—you know, Nuprin or Advil? That caused a lot of problems for people before they got it straightened out. And all those tests cost money—big money.”
“So you’re saying that there could have been something in Charles’s blood or urine that the tests just didn’t pick up? But he’d been gone from New Leaf for quite a while.”
“Right. And his mother said that he wasn’t taking any medication,” Kate admitted reluctantly. “But why did New Leaf kidnap him…unless they were worried that at some point, something would be found?”
“We don’t know for a fact that they did kidnap him,” Sam reminded her.
“There are two things we need to do right now,” Kate went on. “First is to make certain that Charles Scofield is at the farmhouse. And second, we need to talk to a psycho-pharmacologist.’ ‘
“A what?”
“Psychopharmacologists deal with mind-altering substances. There must be someone at NIH we could talk to.” NIH, or the National Institutes of Health, was a government research facility in Bethesda.
“Okay. That should be easy enough. But the farmhouse is another matter entirely. Going back there would be too risky. Besides, if Scofield was there, I’ll bet they’ve moved him. I’m sure that your friend with the pickup recognized me.”
“They wouldn’t move him unless they had another place to take him to,” Kate responded. “I want to go back there at night, when we could sneak up on the place more easily.”
“And then what? Do a bed check?” Sam scoffed.
“Something like that,” she replied, undaunted by his skepticism.
“Let’s wait and see if The Ferret comes up with any connection between New Leaf and ORDP and Newbury’s contributors.”
“Okay. But tomorrow, we go talk to someone at NIH.”
Sam stared at her. “You’re giving in too easily. I can hear those wheels turning. You’re not going out there alone, Kate.”
“For someone who just spent three years dodging bullets, you’re being very concerned about my body.”
“Well, someone should be—and you’re not.”
A silence fell between them in the still night air. The Porsche’s engine continued to idle smoothly. Kate thought about Lisa’s remark that she and Tony had never discussed business. If only life were that simple for Sam and her.
“I don’t need a caretaker, Sam.”
“I think you do, but I’m trying hard not to be one.”
“This was my story until you butted in.”
“It’s still your story. You’re the one who will write it…if you don’t get yourself killed first.” He grinned at her. “Of course, if you do manage to get yourself killed, then I’ll write it. That should be enough to make you careful.”
She laughed, though a bit uneasily as she remembered her vision of Sam accepting a Pulitzer for her. “I’m going to write this story even if I have to do it from beyond the grave.”
“And then what, Kate?” he asked, his voice turning serious. “If this turns out to be the big story we both think it could be, then will you be satisfied?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said uneasily, though she thought she did.
“Let me put it this way. No one wants to see you get a Pulitzer more than I do, because that should end the competition between us.”
She thought about that and finally nodded. “You’re right, except that you’d still be one up on me.”
He rolled his eyes and at the same time hauled her into his arms. “Would you consider at least admitting that you still love me and can’t imagine living without me?”
“I do love you and I can’t imagine life without you,” she said, tilting her head back to stare up at him. “But that doesn’t mean it will work for us.”
“But it’s a start. When you told me you wanted a divorce, you said that you loved me but couldn’t live with me.”
“I still don’t know if I can live with you. I just said that I couldn’t imagine life without you. There’s a difference.”
“You’re playing word games again, Kitty-Kat,” he said as his mouth covered hers softly. “Now let’s get home before I’m tempted to find out if we can turn the Porsche into abed.”
KATE LAY CURVED against Sam, listening to his breathing slow as he drifted off to sleep. She felt like purring herself. She’d told him that once, not long after they’d become lovers, and that’s when he’d started calling her Kitty-Kat. She wondered idly if even the thrill of winning a Pulitzer could compare to the satisfied, voluptuous feeling she had now, as her body still registered his imprint, still felt him inside her. Tiny tremors rippled through her, reminding her pleasantly of Sam’s unique ability to satisfy her.
We have to make it work, she resolved. And then a moment later, she realized that she hadn’t thought that way before. Then, she’d told herself that it wasn’t working and it was time to cut her losses and get out. Now she wondered how she could have been so willing to give him up. Her mother, who thought Sam walked on water, had said that she wouldn’t come to realize what she’d lost until she lost it. Of course, Kate had ignored her; her mother was big on trite clichés. But now it seemed that just maybe her mother had been right.
Sleep hovered just out of reach as her mind spun from her problems with Sam to her story. Sam was sound asleep, his arm heavy against the curve of her waist. She both envied him and was irritated by him in about equal parts. Sam was always so sure of himself, so…For once, she couldn’t find the proper word. To Sam, the fact that they loved each other was all that mattered. Anything else was no more than a minor nuisance. He never agonized over anything; instead, he just pushed on, supremely confident that it would all come out well in the end.
Kate drifted closer to the edges of sleep, then pulled back as her mind continued to work on the New Leaf story. It troubled her to think how close she’d come to giving up on it several times to focus on Newbury and Armistead. Sam would dismiss that with a shrug, saying that he’d probably dropped stories that could have been big, but so what? There were always other stories.
Kate, however, couldn’t see it that way. Instead, she saw it as a failure of her reporter’s instincts—or a near failure, which to her was much the same.
The certainty that Sam wouldn’t understand made her want to get away from him. He stirred slightly and muttered what could have been a question, but instead of answering, she slipped out of bed. He rolled over and went back to sleep. That was Sam—passion one moment and sleep the next. No ly
ing in bed with his brain whirring over a story. No uncertainty about their future together.
Sometimes, she thought as she stood there for a moment staring down at him, I really think I hate him. Maybe there really was some truth to that old saying about love and hate being two sides of the same coin.
Kate went downstairs and made herself a soothing cup of herbal tea, then curled up in her favorite chair in the living room and stared into the dead fireplace. It seemed to her that they should have enough information by now to figure out what was going on. Leaving aside for the time being the question of the slimy congressman and his equally noxious chief of staff, she concentrated on New Leaf.
No one disputed that they had a much higher-than-average success rate with their kids—high enough to have aroused Tony DiSalvo’s suspicions…and perhaps to have gotten him killed.
But it sounded as though they’d had some rather spectacular failures as well; Charles Scofield and the boy, Stephen, whom she’d seen at the farmhouse, being just two examples. Furthermore, both had suddenly and inexplicably become homicidal, though acts of aggression hadn’t been part of their pasts. And both boys had said they were feeling weird before the outbursts of violence happened.
She continued to believe that drugs of some sort were involved, even though Charles had not been on any drugs. Or at least he hadn’t been on them since he left New Leaf. And yet, the people at New Leaf had almost certainly kidnapped him from the hospital to prevent some discovery that could threaten them.
It all sounded like the basis for some made-for-TV movie—that is, completely unrealistic.
With a sigh, Kate settled deeper into the chair. They needed some expert help at this point. There just wasn’t enough evidence of wrongdoing to go to the police. Somewhere in her voluminous files was the article she’d done on drug testing and the name of the expert on mind-altering substances she’d consulted at NIH. She remembered him as being very forthcoming, unlike so many government bureaucrats.
KATE’S EYES were threatening to glaze over. She glanced at Sam, who had adopted his TV persona and appeared to be hanging on to the psychopharmacologist’s every word. Or maybe he actually was. Sam had a mind like a sponge. He could suck up the most incredible amount of detail on the most arcane of subjects.
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