Was she? A part of her already knew the answer. The rest of her continued to struggle with loyalty. “I need proof.”
He didn’t respond immediately, but he folded his arms and blew out a long breath. “Go to work tomorrow. Find out for yourself.”
To say she was stunned would be an understatement. “Just like that? You’re going to let me go?”
Another nod. “We need to know. We need your help. Sending you back in, is the answer to both.”
Though neither of the other women said anything, Joss could feel their regard. The patients were compelling. Drake himself seemed honorable and above fault… Yes she was saying this about someone who’d kidnapped her. That he was willing to release her, to let her go back, without any caveat terrified her.
In her gut, she knew it meant he was right.
Dammit. Dammit. She was in.
“How do I contact you again?”
Chapter 8
“You let her go?” Garrett stared at him. The poisoner never had been a fan of trust. “Just like that? We hold her for a handful of days and now she goes back. To what, let them know exactly where we are?”
Drake didn’t let Garrett’s mood ruffle him. Sometimes, Garrett just needed to yell. The fact that Ilsa sat calmly drinking a cup of tea while Amanda chewed through a sandwich and Simon stared out the window contemplatively told him the others were no more worried about Garrett’s tantrum than he was.
“I thought the whole point of taking her was to give us the inside track at that facility. Or has that changed?” Curt on the best of days, Garrett bit through each word as though it required serious crunching.
Giving him a beat, Drake waited to see whether Garrett was done or if he would continue to harangue them. When the other man simply continued to glare, Drake inclined his head and nodded. “The plan hasn’t changed. We needed her to be on our side. I spent three days trying to break her down. That didn’t work. Offering her freedom accompanying the hard facts we are facing, did.” It was really quite that simple.
“You don’t think that three days of being held hostage will impact her desire to, quote, help us?” Disbelief etched every single word.
“I have no idea. I only have my faith.” As expected, the moment he said the word faith, Garrett threw up his hands. “You don’t have to believe me, brother. You don’t even have to believe her. We made a choice. We tried it the hard way and now we’re trying it my way.”
“She recognized me,” Amanda interjected after she finished her sandwich. “I terrified her.”
“That just means she has common sense.” Garrett wasn’t impressed. “Though it suggests the chick encountered you while you were under the influence.”
Though her powers relied on nuclear fission and fusion, Amanda at times seem to possess an almost Zen-like quality. Of course, she’d also blown up an MRI before. Simon’s influence couldn’t be discounted. Very little ruffled Simon, while Amanda seemed all passion and tempestuous energy. Together… Well, together they were better. “I still have a lot of blanks to fill in from my time with them. I wanted to ask her how she knew me, but I didn’t think we should oversell it since she already seemed to be coming to our side.”
“She was,” Ilsa agreed. “Patient A disturbed her. He scared her. You could see it in her eyes, even though her expression didn’t change. BB, on the other hand… BB horrified her. He looks so very young and most good people can’t stomach the idea of horrible things happening to children.” No matter how clinical the good doctor tried to sound, it was impossible to forget she was the one who saved all of their lives—both those upstairs and those standing in that room. “I think hearing about the Marine was the last nail in the coffin.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time someone serving in the military found themselves the subject of an experiment they had no control over.” It was the first time Simon spoke since they entered the room. Though Drake conferred with the telepath and, through him, conferred with Garrett, something continued to trouble him.
“Why didn’t you just scan her?” Garrett demanded as he turned to look at Simon. “Wasn’t that going to be the final bit of our plan? You scanned her and, if she is complicit, you take her over, get us inside, and we get Michael and Rex back.”
“I can’t scan her.” The response shocked Drake. Until that moment, he’d thought Simon was simply putting it off and had been in quietly encouraging him to do so.
“What do you mean you can’t scan her?” Drake demanded before Garrett could ask. “Because she’s leaving?”
Simon shook his head. “Some people just aren’t susceptible. The more disciplined the mind, the less influence I can have on it.”
Not seeing an insult in the words, despite the implication, Drake studied his friend. “But you were able to take her over to use the facilities and stuff?”
“She was unconscious. There was no mind there to resist me while she was asleep. There was also no access to her waking memories. It was all muscle control and autonomic reflexes.” Simon rubbed his thumb and ring fingers together as he studied all of them. “Not every mind is an open book. It would take severe effort to take control of one of you, particularly while you are awake and fighting me. Rory, for example, keeps me out using formulas, but even she has to be focused. Some people are simply blanks. It could be a result of her upbringing, her training, or simply her DNA.”
“In other words, we were pretty much screwed if she didn’t agree.” Trust Garrett to cut right to the heart of the matter. “That doesn’t mean we can rely on her to deliver the information to us. Or even better, not deliver it alongside an ambush to take the rest of us out.”
Ilsa cleared her throat. “We have none. At some point, during each meeting, whether it was Michael meeting Rory, bringing me into this scenario, or rescuing Amanda… We’ve all had to trust. I had to trust all of you, and that may have seemed easy because I trusted my friend. Believe me when I say it wasn’t. I don’t want to believe in the future you keep telling us about. To believe in you means I have to believe in that.”
“Same here,” said Amanda. “I’m missing a lot of pieces of myself from the time that they held me. I’m used to keeping secrets. I’m used to fighting for people, even people I don’t know. So, maybe it makes it easier for me to say your cause is my cause because they overlap.”
“Rory didn’t believe us in the beginning, either. If she were here, maybe she could tell us when she started to believe Michael.” Simon sighed, the weight of the world existing within that soft exhalation. “I don’t know whether we can trust Joss Archer or not. I don’t even know if sending her in to get these answers will net us anything more than more questions.”
“I have no reason to trust any of you,” Joss said from where she stood in the doorway. Dressed in fresh clothing, she taken a few minutes to herself. They still had to get her to the mainland. “You’re also forgetting the larger question. How do I explain to my bosses why I’ve been gone?”
For some reason, her swiftness to engage them and confront the issues at hand filled Drake with pride. “I suppose reporting an illness would not go over well?”
She favored him with a dry look. “Well, it wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t failed to call in for three days… now four.”
“We did that for you,” said Ilsa. “We found a card in your wallet with the call-in number and the code to enter.”
That was news to Drake, and Joss looked embarrassed. “I don’t know whether to say thank you or feel bad,” said Joss. She stole a glance toward him, and he raised his eyebrows. “They have a complicated system, and I could never remember the different numbers for the different operation centers, so I kept it in case of an emergency.”
Garrett tapped his fist against the counter, a light steady rhythm. “Why should we trust you?”
Seemingly nonplussed by the request, Joss eyed him. “Why the hell should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Garrett, please,” Si
mon said, with patience in his tone. “The point of this exercise is not to alienate the possible alliance Ms. Archer brings to the table.”
“I thought the point of the exercise was to rescue your friends.” Joss didn’t pull her punches. Though when her gaze collided with Drake’s this time, she didn’t look away. “What day is it?”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“Crap.” She scrubbed a hand across her face. “I missed Sunday dinner with my parents in Jersey. So, if this all turns out to be a pile of bunk, trust me when I say you’re going to regret it.”
Drake heard her snarl, he had to smile. While he did believe her, he also found the exasperation in her tone charming. “I’m sorry we had to do this this way.” While an apology wasn’t the first thing on his tongue, he felt that should be said. “By the same token, if you are lying to us… If you are trying to set us up for capture, you will be the one who regrets it.”
He really didn’t like threatening her. It left a sour taste in his mouth and a burning sensation in his gut. For the first time since Ilsa deactivated the chips, he wished his chip were active. He wished it could tell him what he needed to know about Joss Archer.
“As long as were both clear,” she said with the first hint of a real smile. “So how does this work?”
One by one, everyone in the room looked to him. Drake wasn’t used to being in charge, but he understood. This was his idea. His fool’s errand. As such, he needed to mitigate any possible fallout.
“If you haven’t heard from me in twenty-four hours, abandon the facilities. Go dark.”
Though Garrett’s expression tightened, he didn’t comment. Ilsa’s knuckles went white around her coffee cup. Amanda looked straight at Simon. The telepath only nodded.
We will never abandon you.
Drake already knew they wouldn’t, for that was what brotherhood was about. Turning, he looked to Joss once more and said, “You have to leave the same way you arrived.”
She made a face. “I draw the line at a second concussion.”
He grinned. “Trust me.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” she muttered.
In truth, what were they all trying to do? Trust was far easier to offer than to give.
* * *
At least when Drake told her that she would be leaving the same way she arrived, he only meant she wouldn’t be able to see anything. As far as she could tell, they traveled on a boat. That meant they’d been on an island. What island and where, she didn’t know. She’d taken the sleeping pill as he requested, a low dosage designed to knock her out for a short period of time. It kicked in right about the same time as the motor kicked on.
When she woke, she was back in her apartment. Oddly enough, she was sitting in the same chair where she’d been waiting for Drake on that first night. At least he’d been right about the drug’s effects. It took her a moment or two to get her bearings, but she had no lasting grogginess. The scent of coffee filled the air, and she followed it into her kitchen.
Backing up the steps, she glanced into the living room. Hadn’t he broken glass to get in there the first night? Had she fired her gun? She could’ve sworn that at least one of the tables had been broken. Nothing looked disturbed. Even the television was still on the same old movie station she preferred to watch.
In the kitchen, she studied the island where coffee maker sat percolating away. She hadn’t put the coffee on nor had she set a timer. A single card sat in front of the coffee maker.
The card read: Hope the coffee helps with any possible headache, I put my number in your phone under Rizzo’s pizza. Good luck.
Below that it also said, thank you.
So, she hadn’t dreamed it. Weird how she’d almost hoped she had. If it had been a dream, then maybe there weren’t scientists out there torturing people and transforming them against their will. If it’d been that nightmare, at least she could’ve woken up and felt like she was still on the side of the angels. What the hell had she gotten herself into?
Her phone buzzed an alarm. The message on the screen gave her a forty-five-minute warning to make her train. Crap. Not only had she not dreamed about the crazy people in the experiments…she’d missed her damn weekend.
The coffee and a couple of aspirins killed the headache before she even made it to the subway. It was any other day, right down to the same pedestrians on the street to the same passengers on the train. She rode with them so regularly, she recognized them. Though, like any typical New Yorker, she didn’t say much to them. She did exchange a nod or two with those who seemed most familiar. One woman gave her a quick smile and said, “Good to see you again.”
Weird, but then these were her people. They were her neighbors. Like her, they lived in Brooklyn and rode the train into their jobs then came home and took care of their families.
These were her people.
How could she reconcile helping the strangers who’d kidnapped her with protecting the strangers she’d protected her whole life? When she entered the military, she taken an oath and sworn to uphold the Constitution, to protect and defend it, and she’d been more than willing to lay down her life.
Would she have been equally as willing to undergo those experiments? Would she have volunteered if they’d made the offer? What if they’d told her doing so would save every person on this train? But how could anyone actually know that?
At least on the battlefield it was them versus us. Over there, she knew who the enemy was, for the most part. Being home made it so much more difficult. To top it off, she was throwing her lot in with men who’d kidnapped her. Yes, she really needed to get over that last part or not focus on it or something. Her gut said Drake had done what he needed to do and had done his damnedest to not hurt her.
Her intellect argued she was justifying his bad choices because she wanted to. Really, it was just easier overseas, fighting in the sandbox, dealing with jihadists. Who the fuck ever thought she would’ve believed that?
By the time she arrived at the compound, she changed her mind no less than ten times. The largest problem being, when she walked through the gates, she had every intention of compromising the security she was there to enforce. It was one thing to refuse to work for monsters. It was another to agree to investigate her employer on the off chance they might be monsters.
Of course, evil won when good men refused to do nothing. She could choose to do nothing. She could choose to believe Drake and all the others were some dark figment of her imagination. Or at least they were all bat crap crazy. The only problem was her gut said they weren’t. She didn’t know what they were for sure, and she wasn’t entirely positive she could ever embrace the concept of time travel.
At the gates, she greeted Johansson with a nod and her ID. She endured the body scan and fingerprint identification required to even step inside. While she waited for them to go through her backpack, she studied the surroundings. It was just another damn day. How many times had she walked to the same gates and undergone the exact same entry authorization?
Too many, she realized. Way too many. She’d gotten comfortable and settled into her routine. Even for the one bag and tag she’d participated in, she believed her boss. They were doing right by their country. Find maybe one of the alphabet agencies engaged in questionable practices and on more than one occasion during the war, the questioning of prisoners had gone above and beyond.
Enhanced or not, they were her people, too.
“Archer!”
She turned at the sound of her CO calling her name. Rodney Braxton, retired Army special ops, had been her colonel overseas during her first tour. When she’d mustered out, he’d also been the first one to offer her a job. “Yes, sir?”
“Come with me, please.” He pivoted, walking away with the full expectation she would fall in step behind him. She didn’t disappoint. An order was in order.
He headed for his office rather than the locker room where she would normally change. Checking her watch, she determined she had
fifteen minutes before she would absolutely need to head over to the locker rooms or risk being late for check-in. Braxton said nothing while he held open his office door and motioned for her to enter.
After closing the door, he circled the desk and took a seat. His office looked more like a corporate vice president’s than one for a chief of security. Since this wasn’t his permanent office, but only his office at this facility, she could only imagine that’s what they’d given him when they hired him and his company.
“Take a seat.”
After setting her backpack down next to the chair, she said she sat down and raised her eyebrows as she faced him. “What’s up?” She could have been called into his office for any number of reasons, and she refused to think about where she’d spent the last four days being the automatic reason why she’d been summoned into see him. On the other hand, it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of expectation that he know she’d been taken. Ball was in his court.
“How are you feeling today, Archer?” Braxton had always seemed like a solid guy. In his late forties, early fifties, he possessed a weathered visage and a knife scar extending from the corner of his right eye to the top of his disfigured ear. The stories about how he gotten that scar changed every time she heard it. Despite the potential fierceness indicated by the old wound, he’d never given her a reason to think him anything other than a solid soldier.
“To be honest, I have a hell of a headache.” When in doubt, rely on honesty.
“You missed two shifts,” Braxton said leaning back in his chair unfolding his hands against his stomach. Though he’d put on some weight since his retirement, she didn’t for a moment think him incapable of action.
“My apologies, sir. I was really not myself.” In more ways than she was ever going to tell him.
“I would imagine, based on your records, Archer, you haven’t missed a shift since you came to work for me.”
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