Egan, p.19
Egan, page 19
“She won’t tell you where she got it, will she?” she asked, the emotional pain stabbing her heart.
“No, she won’t. We’re presuming it came from Yegorahn, but we’re not sure about that. Since she won’t tell us, we’re now left to wonder about the extent of her involvement in any of this. As you mentioned last night”—he raised his hand in an apology—“and I’m sorry for not speaking to you about it first because it feels as if I took something special between us and twisted it.”
She blinked at him. “I don’t even know what I told you last night to bring you to this point,” she admitted, bewildered.
“How your college boyfriend had been caught with a date-rape drug.”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything happening here?”
“I don’t know if you even know this, but your boyfriend committed suicide over it and protested right to the end that he was innocent.”
She stared at him, as a nasty suspicion entered her heart. “Please tell me that you don’t think my sister planted it?”
He stared at her for a long moment. “Would she have?” Berry immediately shook her head, and he motioned for her to calm down. “Think, Berry. Just stop and think for a minute. Don’t just react, but think about this.”
“I …” She stopped again. “I don’t… I don’t know. I would never have thought any woman would do such a thing, and I can’t even imagine what Cherry’s doing with that drug. Maybe it was planted on her here. Like maybe the Russians put it in her room.”
“Maybe. We did have some security cameras up, but unfortunately—between the weather and generator issues—they’ve been sketchy. It’s being reviewed right now.”
“And that would what? Prove that somebody was in her room?”
“Yes, potentially,” he replied, then hesitated. “But remember. It’s also your room.”
“Oh, Jesus,” she murmured, her stomach lurching. He immediately stepped forward and held her, encouraging her to breathe. “Deep breaths. Just try long, deep breaths.”
She gasped for air, as the potential connotations rushed forward. “I don’t know what you’re trying to imply with that,” she cried out. “What is it you’re thinking?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’m not sure anybody’s implying anything about the women either. We’re all just gathering information. What I can tell you is that a bottle was found in Cherry’s possession, and your sister isn’t talking. But given the history with that same drug, and her involvement at that time, I’m not sure what to think.”
At that, Berry’s own history played through her mind, like some slow-motion horror film, as she realized just how much they thought her sister might have been involved in. She opened her mouth to refute everything, and then slowly closed it. “I don’t know what to say. I really don’t.”
“So maybe, for the moment, don’t say anything. Give us a chance to talk to her. Give us a chance to see what she’ll do with it and to see what the colonel will do,” he added, with a wince. “Then we’ll go from there. What I do need you to do is keep an open mind.”
At that, she whispered, barely able to get the words out, “Rick really committed suicide?”
Egan slowly nodded. “Yes, I’m sorry.”
And, with that realization, Berry’s tears broke through and came down in a flood. “He was such a great guy. But … he made a mistake. He made a mistake with my sister, and I couldn’t forgive him for it,” she stuttered, forcing the words through her sobs. “What does that say about me?”
“You were a wounded young lady betrayed by your sister and a boyfriend you were serious about,” he snapped, his tone immediately harsh. “Don’t even start blaming yourself for that.”
She shook her head. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Remember. Don’t say anything right now. Just relax and try to let some of that information funnel through your head and see what comes up.”
“Okay. I’ll try.”
“Did you move all your stuff out of your room?”
“Yes, I did,” she said, then winced again. “But nobody’ll believe that, will they?”
“They will if we can prove it,” he stated in a soothing tone.
“Go search my new room then,” she stated immediately. When he hesitated, she added, “No way will that fly, Egan. You need to because I didn’t have anything to do with it, and I don’t want anything you’re doing to be tainted by a relationship between us. That will just make it look as if I am hiding something,” she explained.
When he turned to leave, she called out to him, “You better not do the search yourself. Get somebody else to do it.”
He nodded. “That would probably be best, but I was really hoping to not have to go there.”
“That is no longer an option, is it?” she asked, staring at him, trying to figure out how to even begin to handle this. She hadn’t done anything wrong, yet it still felt wrong.
“If I could have woken you up and done something about this,” Egan shared, “it would have been fine. If we had searched Cherry’s room and not found anything, it would have been fine.”
“But you did find something,” she said.
He nodded.
“Therefore, it’s not fine.”
He winced and nodded. “That would be everybody’s take on this, yes.”
“Dear God,” she whispered. “I don’t want to think that my sister could possibly be involved in this.”
“None of us want to consider it. I just don’t know that we have any choice at the moment. Especially since she’s not cooperating.”
Berry took a deep breath. “Can I talk to her?” When he stared at her, she shrugged. “That might be the easiest answer.”
Just then, there was a knock on the door, and Magnus poked his head in. “We really need to be doing something here, Egan. You need to get started.”
Berry faced Magnus. “Before that, could you go search my room?” Magnus frowned at her intently. “I have nothing to do with this, but, if my room isn’t searched, you know people will say otherwise.”
Magnus considered that for a moment and then nodded. “Good point.”
Sydney stepped back into the room and looked at her in a commiserating way. “I’m sorry, Berry.”
“Me too. I don’t even know what I’m sorry for though. This whole mess is just too unbelievable. We don’t know that she used the date-rape drug on anyone, right?”
“No, we don’t,” Egan replied. “What we also don’t know is whether it has anything to do with why Yegorahn was killed.”
Berry nodded slowly. “It seems as if there’s absolutely nothing I can say to make it any better, but I just can’t understand how or why Cherry would have had anything to do with this.”
“I’m not sure she did,” Egan told her. “Remember. There’s still a chance that it was planted there.”
“Maybe, and yet …” Berry stopped.
“Yet what?”
She looked at him, wordless. “If it wasn’t for Cherry’s involvement years ago with Rick Mendas, I would agree with you 100 percent that it had been planted. However, due to the fact that it’s the same drug, could that be a coincidence?” she asked, looking hopefully from Egan to Sydney and back again, but their expressions weren’t very encouraging.
“Anything is possible,” Sydney murmured. “The real question is a difficult one, both to ask and to answer. How much did your sister hate you?”
Tears came to her eyes, as Berry whispered, “I would hope the answer to that question would be not at all, but apparently I’ve been closing my eyes to some pretty rough realities—but I don’t get to do that anymore.”
At that, Sydney sat down beside her, wrapped Berry up in her arms and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
Berry held on for a long moment, then slowly loosened her grasp, looked up at the doc, and smiled. “What I don’t know yet is whether there’s really anything here for me to be blamed for. Is there something that I should have done, not done? I don’t know. It’s just … right now I feel—”
“You feel completely confused, and that’s normal,” Sydney told her.
Berry looked back at Egan. “I guess there was no other way to do this, was there?”
“If Cherry talked to us, it would sure help,” he said.
At that, Berry stiffened. “Let me talk to her. Even if you guys are there, let me talk to her because, if nothing else, I’m the one who will push her buttons. Even though she may not want to say what she ends up saying, chances are she’ll blurt out something, … good or bad.”
At that, Sydney looked over at her and nodded. “I think, in this case, you’re probably right.”
Just then Magnus walked back into the room. He looked over at Berry and smiled. “Nothing’s in your room.”
Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you for that much, at least.”
“That still doesn’t mean that some people won’t talk about your involvement. They won’t know that we’ve cleared you in some way. However, you moving out of your shared bedroom does mean you had a falling out with your sister, which might work in your favor to offset any gossip otherwise.”
“I get all that,” she replied. “And thank you for searching my room. I’m grateful to know nothing in my room shouldn’t be there.”
He just nodded, then turned to Egan. “The colonel is ready.” Egan nodded, and the two of them headed out. She watched as they left, then turned to look back at Sydney. “This is big, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s big.” Sydney snorted. “Not only is it a drug, it’s an illegal drug, and frankly one of the worst things anybody would want to see on a base like this. What I don’t understand is why your sister would have it.”
“I don’t either, and I guess I won’t be allowed to talk to her.”
“No, not until they come back anyway. Then maybe they’ll take you to talk to her, with them along of course. Do you think she would talk to you then?”
“I don’t know,” Berry muttered. “I guess it depends on whether she’s innocent or not.”
At that, Sydney hesitated, then sat down beside her. “Do you want to tell me what happened way back when?”
“Not really. It’s not something I’ve ever really talked about. I explained it to Egan last night, but I didn’t go into great detail.” Berry sighed. “It’s painful.” Then she quickly explained about her sister having had an affair with Berry’s college boyfriend, her long-term boyfriend.
“We had plans,” she added, with a soft smile. “Serious plans. We would travel, get married, the whole enchilada. … Then I found out that he slept with my sister, and my world came crashing down.”
“Of course it did,” Sydney whispered, shaking her head.
“Then throughout that whole nightmare—and I don’t even know how it came about—but somehow he was searched and found to have a date-rape drug on him.” She was silent for a moment.
“Was the search done at college?” Sydney asked. “As in one of the classes, not his dorm room?”
She nodded. “Yes. During class. So humiliating.”
“So why would he have it while he was at class? During the daytime?”
“I don’t know, and of course that started a whole big nasty mess. Rick was suddenly not exactly Rick because of it all, and he kept saying that it wasn’t his, that he had nothing to do with it, but nobody believed him.”
“And why did nobody believe him?”
She stared at Sydney, and tears came to her eyes. “I suspect nobody believed him because of my sister. Cherry was quite vocal with her complaints against him. Because he’d been found with it, I guess that’s all they needed back then. I don’t know,” she muttered, tears in her eyes. “Egan just told me that Rick, my college boyfriend, ended up committing suicide, probably because of that whole thing.”
“Do you ever recall seeing him with drugs?”
“No, not at all,” she replied, “and I did tell the police that, even though at the same time I was hurting because he’d turned around and had slept with my sister.”
“Do you think there’s any chance that it wasn’t consensual?”
“No, she told me that she’d had a bad moment and went to bed with him.”
“A bad moment?” Sydney asked delicately.
“Yeah, I know my sister,” she said, sniffling. “It was presented as no big deal, a one-time thing, a momentary lapse in judgment. I guess, at the time, I wondered if it involved the date-rape drug because that would allow me to not blame my sister, but I’m not sure that’s the case.”
“No, it sounds as if it may not have been. I guess the hard question that needs to be asked of you is if there is any chance your sister may have set him up?”
“Set him up?” Berry asked, looking at the doc in shock. “What do you mean?” The words came out broken, and she was too numb to hear them.
Sydney winced. “Set up as in, what if he didn’t have the date-rape drug himself? What if maybe somebody put it in his possession without his knowledge?”
“Are you suggesting that my sister may have done that?” she asked.
“That will be one of the questions, yes.”
“Jesus,” Berry wailed, “how did this get so messed up?”
“When people start lying and cheating, things tend to get messed up.”
“Right. And that would be my sister, Cherry. In light of the recent events and all, as much as I hate to say it, I can see her doing that. Would she have done it? It’s possible. But did she? Who knows. I walked away from all that at the time. I was broken-hearted and couldn’t handle any of it, but my sister said that he …” She didn’t know how to get the words out. “She left just enough doubt in my head that I wondered if the drug had been used on her, and that’s why the sex happened between them. I was looking for an easy answer anyway. I didn’t want to believe that the two of them did that to me. She told me just yesterday in her latest little truth session that she had seduced him. I look back at poor Rick now and realize that in no way was he prepared for somebody like my sister.”
“It doesn’t seem anybody could be,” Sydney noted. “It sounds to me that she only cares about one person.”
“Yeah, herself, and believe me, I’ve thought about that a lot, especially after she told me all that. But how much of that confessional talking was the drugs?” she asked, turning to look at Sydney. “Will she turn around and deny it all now?”
“I don’t know,” Sydney acknowledged, “but I suspect that you know that better than I do. Drug withdrawal does do some messed-up things, but I wouldn’t expect random confessions to be one of them.”
“Right, I guess I’m looking for excuses again.”
“Of course you’ll look for a way to excuse Cherry’s behavior, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find one.”
“Great,” Berry muttered. “That’s not exactly the answer I was hoping for.”
Sydney chuckled. “No, and we’re at a time and a place where this won’t be easy. You need to keep that in mind.”
“Absolutely nothing about this has been easy,” she stated painfully. “I can’t say I appreciate having my past heartache dredged up.”
“Worse now with the knowledge that the young man took his life,” Sydney pointed out.
“And I feel terrible for even considering anything other than that back then, and now with all the trouble up here?” she added. “And the stupid thing is, I’m only up here because my sister really wanted to come. I only agreed because she begged me to come along. She wanted to come up here, but she didn’t want to do it alone.”
“Is that normal for you?”
“No, not at all. The two of us haven’t gotten along for a very long time, but she told me that it would give us a chance to bond, with the two of us out in the middle of nowhere. So, we would have no choice but to sort out our differences,” she shared, with a half smile. “For some stupid reason I believed her. … What really concerns me in all this,” she stated, as she looked up at Sydney, “is how would she have gotten access to that drug?”
Sydney winced. “Unfortunately in this day and age, it’s pretty easy to get anything off the internet, and it’ll be untraceable too. Particularly if she didn’t identify the parcel and had it mailed to your parents’ place for instance,” Sydney explained. “It’s not really that hard.”
“Great.” Berry reached up a weary hand and brushed her hair off her forehead. “That really sucks.”
“Yes, it absolutely does, and I’m sorry that you’re caught up in the middle of it all. Again.”
“Yeah, me too,” Berry whispered. “I still struggle with the thought that Cherry would have had anything to do with that, after what we went through in college.”
“Which is why I guess I wonder if she could have set up Yegorahn too.”
Berry frowned at the doc for a long moment. “You’re starting to make my sister sound like a monster.”
“No, not at all, but we need some understanding, medically and legally, where your sister is at mentally in all this.”
“Why?” Berry asked bitterly. “It seems as if none of us even know what she’s capable of. Imagine how naïve I was back then. I can’t even believe this.”
“And yet you came up here with her.”
“Sure, I was interested in the training too. I always enjoy trying anything like this. She knew that. I think I took it to mean that she also wanted to potentially have a chance to bond again. We’re twins, after all, and everybody always says we’re supposed to be super close.” Berry shrugged, shaking her head. “Obviously I’m reassessing everything now.”
“Of course,” Sydney agreed, “and with good reason. I don’t want you to think all of this is coming down against you either because that’s not the intent here.”
“No, but how do I not feel that way? Knowing that so much evil could be going on in my sister’s head, to the point that this is even a possibility?”
“That’s really what we have to ask because is it, or is your sister being set up as well?”
*
Egan stepped out of the colonel’s office and looked over at Magnus, waiting for him in the hallway. “What do you think about having Berry talk to Cherry?”
