Читать книгу Strike Zone - Dale Brown - Страница 20

Jennifer leaned back against the chair, waiting while the captain questioning her sorted through his notes.

Her head felt as if it had begun to tilt sideways. She hadn’t eaten dinner, and lunch had been half of a chicken sandwich. Except for two trips to the restroom – escorted, though at least the security people had the decency to stay outside – she’d been in the room for nearly six hours. At least she wasn’t hooked up to the lie detector anymore.

She felt as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. Cortend was the Queen, yelling, ‘Off with her head, off with her head.’

Jennifer rubbed her arms, trying to get some circulation going. She needed to stretch – she needed to run, just get the hell out of this rabbit hole, where everything she said was turned upside down.

‘You could make things easier,’ said the captain.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Cooperate.’

‘I am cooperating,’ Jennifer told him.

‘Why would you help the Chinese?’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘Don’t get mad. I’m trying to help you.’

‘You’re not.’ Jennifer sat up straight in her seat. ‘You think I’m a traitor, don’t you?’

The captain didn’t answer at first. ‘I think you might need help,’ he said finally.

‘Oh, so you’re going to be my friend, right?’

He made a show of sighing, as if she were the one being unreasonable.

‘I’m not a traitor,’ she said.

The word sounded so odd, so foreign, that Jennifer had to say it again.

‘I am not a traitor.’

Until that point, tired and hungry, she’d been sustained mostly by anger. But now that foundation too slipped away. Jennifer Gleason had proven herself several times under fire, but this was something more fierce, more deadly. She’d never felt brave before – she’d just done what she had to do. It was easy almost, because she knew she could do it. She knew who she was – Jennifer Gleason, Dreamland scientist. And everyone at the base, everyone knew who she was. They trusted her, they liked her, and, in one case at least, loved her.

But the look in this man’s eyes told her that trust was gone. She felt her whole idenity slipping through a crack in her ribs.

Jennifer Gleason: traitor.

She wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t. But she worried that no matter what she did, she’d never convince anyone else of that again.

Not her friends. Not even Dog.

‘So, when you were in college,’ said the captain, putting his papers down. ‘Tell me about your friends.’

‘My friends?’

‘You had friends?’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

The captain pursed his lips.

‘I don’t remember who my friends were,’ she said honestly. ‘At this point, I don’t know if I have any friends at all.’