The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit #1)(51)

I give him silence.

Chris turns to him. “Are you satisfied?”

Pierson pulls a sheet of paper from a folder and writes on it as he says, “Subject was found trespassing in a state of undress, is uncooperative or unable, and refuses to answer basic questions. Recommending psychiatric care until further notice.”

“What the fuck? Are you Baker Acting me? You can’t just do that!” They’re declaring me crazy so they can hold me in a medical facility.

Pierson slides the sheet of paper over to Chris and leaves without saying anything else.

Chris reads it over, then lifts it so I can see the text clearly. “You understand what this is?”

“No judge will agree to that,” I reply.

“We have one on the next floor. I’m pretty sure he won’t have a problem.”

This is some black-ops bullshit. When the Russian submarine, the Kursk, sank, I remember watching a video of the families of the sailors demanding answers from the Russian government and how one upset mother was tranquilized and dragged away by security people in white lab coats right on the spot. Don’t want to cooperate? This is how we handle you. In China, they don’t even bother with the lab coats.

So, a doctor signed a slip of paper declaring me crazy so they can hold me. Next they’ll be injecting me with something to make me so loopy I won’t even remember what happened.

Why?

“Cooperation is advisable,” says Chris. He places the sheet of paper back on the table and leaves me alone in the room.

It’s cold enough to be uncomfortable, and I have no sense of time. My hands are secured behind me to the metal chair, so I can’t get up.

I don’t have a lockpick and wouldn’t know how to get out of cuffs like these, anyway. Not to mention the fact that I’m in a locked room inside some government detention center.



Time passes. It could be an hour; it could be two. The bandage they gave me on the way has already soaked through, but the bleeding has stopped. I’ve gone from refusing to talk to wishing someone would come in here so I could tell them everything—which is nothing. I have to see Jackie. I also have to pee. I’m about five minutes from doing that right here.

The sound of the lock being turned fills the room. I watch the door as my next visitor arrives. I’d already given up hope of someone coming in and saying this was a mistake. I know it’s not. It’s part of their game.

The person who enters isn’t Chris or Dr. Pierson—it’s worse. It’s the woman from the secret boatyard. The woman who shot at me—and I shot back at.

She drops a duffel bag on the ground, selects a chair across from me, and sits for a moment, watching me with a faint grin. There’s something hard about her, like she’s gone through horrible things and thinks that’s normal—that everyone deserves her hard experience. She’s pretty but almost angry about it.

“I had a feeling we’d be seeing each other again,” she says at last.

I give her the same cold stare I gave the others.

She picks up the paper and scans it. “Scary? No? The really frightening part is what happens at the end of the three-day evaluation. The doctors could decide you need long-term treatment. If you were still uncooperative, they might determine there’s something medically wrong with you. A diagnosis would be made. Treatment applied. Some cures can kill you if you don’t actually have the disease they’re meant for.”

“This isn’t legal,” I say, breaking my silence.

“It isn’t? Which part? You studied the law. At what point did we break it? Maybe we use physicians and psychologists who are prone to saying what we want them to, but that’s not exactly a crime—not a provable one.”

“I’m allowed to have my own psychiatrist examine me,” I say, grasping for hope but knowing it’s futile.

“If this were a criminal detention. But it’s not. According to this, you’re not mentally fit to make demands, much less have them answered.”

I’m in a no-win situation. She’s got me in a legal box intended for terrorists and other enemies of the state. There’ll be no trial, because I’m not being charged with a crime.

I’m most worried about Jackie now. I can’t have her put through this—either never seeing me again or thinking I’m insane.

“You win,” I reply. “I’ll cooperate.”

She laughs. “You’ll cooperate? What do you think we think you know? If I suspected for a moment that you had any clue how to get what we’re after, you’d have already told us by now. I don’t want anything from you.”

“What’s with all this bullshit? Why take me to a DIA black site to scare me?”

“It looks like someone learned a new word.”

I don’t dare utter “K-Group.” Saying “DIA” may have been tipping my hand too much already.

“You are correct,” she says. “We’re concerned that Mr. Bonaventure has been funneling resources to terrorists, and we’re very anxious to recover any evidence relating to that. Do you have any information that might be of interest?”

It takes me a long, awkward moment to say, “No.”

She didn’t ask what she wanted to know. All I could think of was Winston Miller’s transceiver, anyway, but it seems rather unimportant now.