Page 16 of Trapped

“How is he?”

“Confused. Like we expected.”

“What happened?”

“We talked,” she answered, making her voice as matter of fact as possible. They’d done a lot more than hold a conversation. But she wasn’t going to get into anything she wouldn’t have told her mother.

“Talked about what?”

“Old times. And his current situation.”

“But you didn’t give anything away.”

“I didn’t like lying to him. I told him not to spill his guts to Montgomery.”

“We don’t know how much we can trust him.”

“I trust him!”

“They could already have messed with his mind enough to make him report that he talked with you.”

“No!” she said automatically.

Ignoring her, Martin went on, “He could have a time bomb ticking inside his head. He could be the Manchurian Candidate—being prepped as an assassin. You don’t know what kind of crap they’ve shoveled into his brain.”

She couldn’t deny that. When she sighed, Martin picked up on it immediately.

“What?”

“He thinks he’s in Thailand. They told him he was part of a diplomatic mission that got caught in a bird flu epidemic. They have him in the bunker for his own protection.”

“Or that’s a story he told you.”

“I’m sure he believed it.”

“Why?”

She kept her gaze steady and her voice even. “First, because that’s a lot to make up on the spur of the moment. Second, I’m a trained psychologist. That’s why you picked me for this job.”

“And because you went to school with Baker.”

“Yes.” She gave him a frustrated look. “And third, you can’t have it both ways. Either he’s lying to me, or he’s saying what they made him believe.”

“Unfortunately, you don’t know which.”

“I volunteered to go on this mission because I want to . . . save him. Don’t make my job harder.”

A look she couldn’t quite read flashed in his eyes. “Believe me, I’m not trying to add to your problems. I’m trying to make sure you get out of this alive.”

“Don’t you want to come out of this alive?” she snapped.

“What do you think?” he answered.

She stared at him for another moment, then turned and walked to one of the cots along the wall and sat down. She’d told him she could tell when someone was lying to her. She wished that applied to Phil Martin. He was hiding something. She knew that much, and she hoped it wasn’t something that would sink the mission.

She stretched out her legs, rotating her ankles in their low-rise hiking boots. She would have lain down and slung her arm over her eyes, but she didn’t, because she knew Phil was watching her carefully.

“When I said he was in danger, he asked to come with me. That was a logical response on his part.”

---