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A FAINT WHIMPER CREPT over the chilly cement down the hall from behind her and Daniel. Not far. She didn’t want to face the men, find out what she’d done to contribute to the fall of her nation. But she could help someone else, if they needed it.
She turned, ignoring Daniel.
He yanked on her arm. “Where are you going? We need to get out of here.” His lips barely moved but the seriousness rasped in his voice.
Rachel yanked from his grasp. I don’t know if I can trust you. “I know, but I need to check on whoever that was. I know a lot of people who are missing and I can’t just leave them here, if I can help them.” She bit her lip. “Maybe you can find out what they want.” She jerked her head toward the corner which protected them from the view of her husband, Josh, and the other man who spoke. She didn’t want to face them. Not at that exact moment, even though she’d have to eventually. If Daniel went on ahead, he could smooth the way for her, lessen the suspicions or at least tell them she’d released him, a prisoner of Gustavson’s.
He didn’t look relieved to have a job. But Rachel didn’t care.
She walked the opposite way, listening for some sign that he did the same. But his shoes were silent, too.
The first door she came to was Daniel’s, given away by the broken glass littering the floor. Firmly shut, the second door had a skirt of water around its base. The window above the panel had been left open. Josh’s torture room.
Rachel gave the water wide berth. If her shoes got wet, they’d squeak and she’d lose her advantage of silent movement. In the game she was in, any advantage, no matter how slight, was valuable.
The hallway looped in a large circle. She’d turned in almost a complete crescent shape and had two more doors in her field of view that she could visit. Then the hallway took a sharp turn, leading back the way she’d come but in a different angle. She’d be smack in the middle of the group of men she wanted to avoid in no time.
Directly opposite the third doorway, a man lay wounded and obviously dead. Rachel stepped past him quietly, glancing into the room where Andy had been held. Empty. She didn’t stop. The screaming had to have come from the last door, or even further.
The fourth door, at first didn’t reveal anything new to her search. Tom’s room. A chill wafted from the room into the mildly warm hall. Rachel shivered. How had the teenager survived it? He hadn’t been afraid of the cold before, but who knew if his patterns had changed with the new exposure.
She glanced down, her gaze caught by a shaking exposed knee, at least it looked like a knee. The shape and angle appeared to be like a knee, but the coloring was off, like someone had splattered makeup in a bucket and then dipped the leg inside. She’d never claimed to be a medical doctor, but holy hell, if the rest of his leg looked similar, Tom wasn’t walking anywhere soon, if ever.
Another step closer, another. He didn’t move. The sudden thought that he might be dead slowed her approach. Rachel wasn’t prepared to face his death. There was more to be said about seeing random bodies lying around like the man she’d just passed versus a body you knew, had spoken with, and fed. Tom was more than all that. He was a patient who’d captured a small part of her heart and she’d been happy to welcome him to the safety of her family.
His bent head came into view. His shoulders shook. Oh crap, he was crying. She didn’t do so well with tears. Not since... well, not since she’d left her practice and kind of shut things down for a hiatus. True, the hiatus was supposed to be three months and had lasted almost two years, but that was beside the point.
She stood beside him, unsure what to say or what to do. He’d held it together during the Polar Method. Not one of the seven adults who’d willingly undergone the Polar Method had responded so well. He’d been cold, but hadn’t cried out, or shown any signs of weakness.
But there he sat, huddled next to the door, his damaged legs close to his body, his head bent down. And he cried.
Courage and humility. He had them both.
Rachel wanted to comfort him, but didn’t want to embarrass him in the moment of weakness. She watched him another moment and then didn’t care what he thought. If Cole had been through half of what Tom had, he’d need a hug. Rachel crouched beside the teen boy and wrapped her arms around him.
He flinched, looked at her, and then buried his face into her shoulder. No sobs manifest in the close proximity, but his upper body shook with emotion.
She couldn’t help but wince with the reality of just how terribly his legs had been injured, the mottled skin peeking from the torn jeans slapping her in the face. She pulled back when the shaking slowed. “Tom, are you okay? Can you walk?”
He shook his head. Raw and raspy, his voice sounded like his legs looked. “No, Dr. Parker. I think my legs are broken. They crunch and stuff when I move them.”
Rachel winced. Crap. No wonder he’d whimpered. She would’ve screamed. At least, she assumed it was him who’d made the pain-filled noise.
He couldn’t move and Rachel wasn’t big enough to move him – height didn’t guarantee strength. She slumped to the ground beside him, leaning against the open door. She pulled her knees up to match him and watched out the door into the empty hall.
The kid most likely needed space. She’d be company, but let him cope with the aftereffects of the Polar Method. She’d been there once. “Don’t worry about crying, Tom. Don’t hold it in. You just underwent a severe torture method designed to weaken everything about you. The fastest way to get over it is to allow your body to react. If crying is what it needs to do, let it.”
He sniffed. The moisture didn’t help with the sound. “How do you know?”
A sigh wouldn’t be enough of an answer, but one escaped anyway. “I... well, I designed the test. It’s one I’ve gone through and I know the effects of even longer exposure.” She looked into her lap. “I’m sorry. You’re going to be okay. Just let it out. You weren’t subjected for long, so your recovery shouldn’t be more than a day or so.” She looked at his legs and then his face which had a suspicious shadow. “Your injuries won’t seem so severe tomorrow, after your body and emotions have had a chance to steady.”
“You designed this?” Tom’s voice shook, not with cold, but growing anger. “How could you do it? Why would you want to hurt people like that?” He swallowed, the pain obvious. “Why is our enemy using it against us? Did you give it to them?”
Rachel shook her head and reached out a hand to touch his arm. Tom pulled back, wincing as he jarred his leg. His disappointment palpable, Tom’s demeanor changed. Rachel felt the chill before she spoke. “It wasn’t designed to hurt people. I created the Polar Method as an alternate method to water-boarding POWs or something else equally harmful. When someone gets cold, it affects physiology and mentality toward temperatures, but nothing that will harm them or even kill them.” She implored him to understand with her eyes. “There’s a level at which you can’t pull the person back, like hypothermia but deeper. But hypothermia isn’t the worst thing that can happen. It doesn’t hurt quite as bad to be cold as it does to be, say burned or electrocuted.” She glanced pointedly at his knees. “And people aren’t supposed to be injured that badly when they undergo the Polar Method.”
Tom’s eyes didn’t soften, but he relaxed the hard posture to his shoulders. “Being cold is terrible. It’s not like I was uncomfortable in fifty degrees. I was freezing. Shivering. And you can die from hypothermia! What if I’d gotten frost bite? I could’ve lost digits and suffered nerve damage from too long exposure to the cold temperatures.”
“I agree. You could have. But constant monitoring on the patients prevents the most severe of those and in most cases, people recover quite well and go on without any significant change or sign of post-traumatic stress disorder.” She tried to smile to make it sound less clinical, but failed. PTSD hadn’t been completely ruled out, but he didn’t have to know that.
“Patients?” A new voice interrupted her thoughts.
Rachel turned her head toward the husky man standing above her. She arched her brow. “Yes, patients. And you are?”
“Major Dilbeck. I take it you’re Rachel Parker, Ph.D?” He stepped back, allowing Andy, Josh, Daniel, and the other men into view.
She stood, as gracefully as possible under the circumstances, and brushed her hands off on her jeans. Hair had to be all over the place. Blood and dirt probably covered her skin. But she lifted her chin. What would they do? Kill her? Okay, bring it on. Plus, Andy and Josh wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
Right?