Some Gave All Read Online Free Page B

a normal human would react to that.
    “I’ll find out the truth,” Vincent said in a low, fierce voice.
    “But did
you
see anything like that?” Mr. Riley blurted. “Her chained to a bed? In
pain
? This guy, this Private X, would you have known him? Or the other one, Karl Tiptree?”
    The man’s despair was hard to take. When he burst into tears and sank back onto the sofa, Cat sat down beside him and took his hand. Vincent turned away again.
    “We’ll find out,” she assured him.
    “Find out quick,” Mr. Riley pleaded. “I don’t have much time. I can’t die like this. Wondering.” He gestured toward the portrait. “They told me her death was quick. That she didn’t feel a thing. There was no body to bury. But there’s a headstone with her name on it in Arlington National Cemetery. Military honors. Killed in action. I’ve been there every single year on the day that I got the visit from the army with the notice. June twenty-first, two thousand and two. My roses… she always loved them so. I’ve let the house go, can’t manage, but you should see my rose bushes in the spring. I put them on her grave. Her
empty
grave.”
    Just like I put calla lilies on my mother’s empty grave
, Cat thought. For over ten years, she hadn’t known that her mother had been moved, her new plot marked with a headstone bearing only her first name out in a field behind an abandoned Muirfield safe house. Cat suspected that her biological father, former FBI agent Bob Reynolds, had done it, but she hadn’t asked, and she was loath to have any contact with him whatsoever. His team had begun this nightmare, and he had made Vincent’s life a living hell.
    And Roxanne Lafferty’s as well, if she was still alive.
    “We’ll help you, Mr. Riley,” Cat promised. She glanced up at Vincent, who still kept his back carefully turned, so she couldn’t see if the glow in his eyes was intensifying. She had to get him out of there.
    “We need to go,” she gently told the old man. “I have to take this letter for a while.” Analysis for DNA and other forensic data would be strictly off the books, of course. And as soon as they left, she and Vincent would start looking for the FFNY, and digging into Tiptree’s past.
    “I made a copy of the letter,” he said. “For me. I can’t stop reading it. Staring at those words.” Another tear rolled down his cheek and he gave his head a quick, angry shake. “Being sick has made me weak.” He turned to Vincent one more time. “Son, you need to tell me what you saw. What happened there.” His chest shook with the effort to inhale. “Why you had ‘amnesia’ for ten years.”
    Vincent finally turned around. The glow had vanished. He was entirely himself.
    “Mr. Riley, I don’t want to put you in any danger. The less you know, the safer you’ll be.”
    The man smiled grimly. “I’m already dying. You’re a doctor. Surely you can see that.”
    Vincent lowered his head, acknowledging the truth. “You must have other loved ones to protect.”
    “I’m alone. This is it.” He swept an arc, taking in the room. “For the love of God,
tell
me.”
    Vincent glanced over at Cat, and she gave him a quick nod. This man deserved to know
something
. Maybe they couldn’t tell him all of it, but Vincent would be careful with the truth. Cat trusted him to divulge as much as he deemed appropriate.
    “There were drug trials in Afghanistan,” Vincent said after a pause. “And Lafferty was among those who were experimented on. The drugs were supposed to make… the subjects… stronger, faster. To give… them… an edge in combat.”
    She noted that he was not including himself in the experimental group. That was wise.
    “Things didn’t go as planned. She had a reaction to the… medication, a seizure. A doctor gave her an injection, and then she was escorted away. I visited her in the infirmary later, and she seemed fine.”
    Cat listened hard. Was that the truth, or was he trying to comfort