Acts of Honor by Vicki Hinze Read Free Book Online Page A

stories of gray stone with white-shuttered windows obscured by bars. To the distant north of the building lay a hedge maze, a pond, and what appeared to be a grass airstrip; closer in, a concrete helicopter pad. She understood the pad. It was necessary for emergency life-flights. But a grass airstrip?
    A bitter taste filled her mouth, and a shiver slithered up her spine. A stately building in a serene setting. Yet looking at it gave her the creeps. Braxton seemed more like a fortress than a mental facility. But, she reminded herself, it was a special facility where high-risk, mentally diminished patients harboring classified information were sequestered. And the fortress aspects kept others out just as it kept patients inside. There was solace in knowing that.
    She pulled into a parking slot near—of all things—an airplane, and stared up at the building. That sense of unease crept through her chest, and certainty filled her. Braxton was a fortress. Getting into it and functioning while here might be difficult, but her instincts shouted that those difficulties would seem minuscule when compared to the challenges of her getting out of Braxton.
    Had Foster known that before bringing her in?
    Unsure, Sara left the car.
    Security was as tight inside the building as it had been outside it. Beyond the information desk, she stopped at three mandatory checkpoints where everyone entering the facility reported to have their passes, thumbprint, and eyes matched to those in the computer files. Going through the identification process made her feel like a crook.
    After she passed the third security system check, an armed guard named Reaston who was the size of a small giant personally escorted her through a maze of barren corridors to the office of the facility director, Dr. Fontaine. She tried twice to engage Reaston in conversation, but he refused to utter a single word or even to look her straight in the eye. Odd, but even those they passed in the halls avoided meeting her gaze and refused to return simple, courteous greetings. Getting the cold shoulder set her teeth on edge. Were people shunning her, or Reaston?
    Uncertain, Sara followed the guard into an office where a meek-looking woman of about forty—Dr. Fontaine’s secretary, Sara presumed—sat at a desk covered with orderly stacks of files. “Dr. Sara West,” Reaston said.
    The secretary nodded, dismissing him, and then ushered Sara through the sparsely furnished outer office into the director’s inner sanctum.
    It looked as tired as the rest of Braxton’s interior. Two deep-green visitor’s chairs with worn leather seats, a well-used executive desk that had water rings and dull spots in its cherry-wood surface—which was amazingly empty of anything work-related—a credenza with a photograph of a woman, probably Fontaine’s wife, and a photo of a sailboat on the wall. Not a file, a computer terminal, or even a calendar was in sight. Even the obligatory green plant was absent. There was, however, a lot of professional wallpaper. Every degree—the most impressive from Harvard—and award the man ever had won was prominently displayed in a thick gold frame, at least a dozen of them. This was not good. Fontaine was an egomaniac. Sara had trouble relating to egomaniacs.
    Fontaine had his back to the door and the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear. He wasn’t wearing the traditional uniform of dark-blue slacks and light-blue shirt or medical whites, but he still reeked of being military: precise, exact, and detached—just like Foster. Fifty and graying, Fontaine wore a brown suit and absently rubbed a nauseating yellow tie. She didn’t need to see his face to know the man was angry; his tone spoke volumes.
    “Yes,” he said to the unfortunate person on the other end of the line. “I do understand the severity of your situation, but this shoestring budget is killing me.” He paused, listened, and then went on. “I know that, Carl. But I’m telling you I