Chapter Twenty-Five

Thorn

Paris, France

Sunday, Zero Forty Hours.

T horn had hoped to nap on the plane. The woman sitting next to him had a baby in her arms and as soon as they took off, the baby had started to cry. The woman was jostling and crooning to her little one. Every few seconds, she would send Thorn a frown to tell him she was sorry.

Honestly? It wasn't a problem. Thorn found the sound of a healthy baby crying to be wholesome. He'd been to enough countries where the babies were too malnourished to have the strength to cry. Their rounded tummies and stick thin arms and legs, the flies swarming their faces looking for moisture around the babies' mouths and eyes…not a peep. Thorn could sleep through a baby's hearty wails. What kept him up was when the infants were silent.

He'd tucked into the corner, resting his head against the side of the plane and told himself to sleep. Shoot, if he could sleep on a battlefield with explosions going off and a rock as a pillow under his head, this plane was as close to a five-star as he needed to grab some shut-eye.

But sleep hadn't come to him.

With his eyes closed, he saw Juliette's face. The fear. The determination. He thought through her choices, and he had to admit it, she had him confused. It was an odd kind of push-me pull-me of emotions. Emotions had no place in the field. You did what was necessary to complete your mission, and you washed your hands of it to move on to the next, and the next, and the next. It was exactly the way Brigitte had described it in his hotel room.

Something about Juliette made this different.

It was probably the fact that he couldn't put her in a neat category. The cryptic message Brigitte had left on the bathroom mirror did nothing to clarify the role Juliette played. She was staggering about, obviously impeded, but with the tenacity of a woman every bit as dedicated to her survival as the janitor had been back in the bathroom when Thorn had wrapped his arm around the guy's throat to save Dr. DuBois.

Obviously, she was brave.

Obviously, she was intelligent.

Brigitte had said, " ‘Good guys' is perspective. Everyone working for their government thinks they're the good guy."

No matter what was happening from his own perspective, Thorn felt certain that Juliette believed herself to be a good guy, here. That was something that a soldier should always remember. Evil wasn't fighting for evil. Evil fought for what they thought should be right.

Right also fought for what they thought was right. And sometimes had to do evil to achieve it.

The question wasn't really if Juliette was a good guy or a bad guy.

Her eyes told him that she believed herself to be doing something that was right.

Nope, he didn't get a single vibe from her that she was a criminal. Now, what they needed to figure out was did Iniquus's creed and obligations align with this woman's? Were they fighting for the same vision of good?

Thorn chuckled to himself as he scratched a hand through his hair. That was much too damn philosophical for this time of night.

The plane landed with a jolt. It woke the baby who the mother had just cajoled to sleep. Thorn thought that she was about to cry. She looked exhausted. He helped her get her bag down and offered her a smile when she thanked him for not being angry with her. The way she said it bothered Thorn, like she had specifically been afraid that she'd disturbed him because men shouldn't be disturbed. It wasn't her words as much as her inflection.

Now that she was standing in the aisle, Thorn could see the last of a fading bruise on her cheek bone. Anger brewed in his gut. But he forced it down. Survivors often developed a sixth sense when dangerous emotions swirled near them, and Thorn didn't want her to become anxious because of him.

He hoped that this flight was taking this woman and her baby to safety.

He'd never know.

Walking down the gang way and into the terminal, the woman turned toward baggage collection, and Thorn turned toward the exit. He used his thumb to swipe his phone, taking it off airplane mode. He read his text instructions and headed toward the rally point.

***

Now that he was in Paris, Nutsbe had sent him to one of the hangars for private jets. Two members of Lynx's Strike Force team ? Blaze and Gator ? were coming in from London with two of the primaries that they'd been securing. They'd be taking the same jet back to the United States as DuBois. Blaze and Gator would sit on DuBois and make sure he behaved until the FBI grabbed him at Dulles to ask him some pointed questions. And they'd wait until they were over international waters before they did the blood draw for Zoe.

The plan was for them to contact Zoe upon landing and meet her at her lab.

Thorn had been ushered into a conference room to wait for both of the teams to come in. Gage, Honey, and Thorn would be heading to a hotel just down the road to hit the rack while Nutsbe and Lynx did what they could from stateside to track Juliette down.

With any luck, by the time his team had themselves fed and underway, Zoe would be done with her science experiment, and they'd have at least some of their questions answered.

Thorn patted his thigh pocket where he'd stored his phone then pulled at the hook and loop closure.

He opened up the file that Lynx and Nutsbe had loaded up for him.

Ethical issues, Navy sailors, following ship attack 2000. The file title read. These issues were almost two decades old. That seemed kind of irrelevant to Thorn. After all, DARPA had hired the guy in, which required an FBI background check to get credentialed, so the guy would have access to sensitive compartmentalized intelligence. The FBI must have concluded that this ethics breech was water under the bridge.

Thorn glanced up to check the door, swept the room, then put his back to the wall as he swiped to open the file.

There were some notes at the beginning:

Dr. Dubois was contracted with the Navy to work with sailors with PTSD following the ship attack in 2000.

Sailors complained about the process of treatments that were not FDA approved.

Dr. DuBois admitted to using laboratory techniques he was developing in his research, effectively using the sailors for human research without the necessary scientific protections, including the subjects' knowledge or consent.

The techniques Dr. DuBois used included targeted use of memory implantations.

Based on Dr. DuBois's laboratory notes that were seized by investigators, Dr. DuBois's experiments were unsuccessful.

Thorn,

Most of that file was redacted. Below you can find the only portion that was left readable, Lynx.

Researchers in the field of thought processes have long sought out an explanation for memory. A physical basis for memory has been elusive to our scientific understanding of brain function. Dr. David DuBois believes that it is possible to transplant memories, much like a computer download, from one sentient being to another.

In his initial studies Dr. DuBois studied sea snails. Sea snails, like many marine organisms, transmit nerve impulses similarly to the way other mammals, including humans, do. In his experiments, DuBois trained a snail in a simple performance of self-protection when being shocked. RNA (genetic information) was extracted and implanted into a snail, which had not received any training. This snail changed its behaviors to include the performance of self-protection.

Thorn read it again.

Well, DuBois was supposed to be the foremost thinker on the subject of PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. It would make sense that if he was working with folks with traumatic events that he might want to find a way to manipulate memory. Experimenting on humans without consent, though, should probably have gotten his medical license revoked. It seemed to Thorn that a man who would do that felt that his theories took precedence over the sailor's free-will and that was about as anti-American as you can get. It was narcissistic to think that you had the answers. That your needs and goals and desires were more important than someone else's.

Thorn read through the material a third time.

Then he thought about DuBois being Juliette's dad. And he thought about the woman with the bruise on her cheek. Maybe Juliette was on the run because she knew her dad wielded a great deal of power. And she was in an untenable situation as a subject of that power.

There was that anger boiling in his gut, again. Thorn had quashed it down earlier to protect the woman as they disembarked the plane. But there was no reason for him to do so now that he was alone in this room.

Any person of power who wielded control to cause pain was low life scum in Thorn's book.

He rubbed a hand over his face to get his thoughts back in line. Sure, it was probably a normal reaction to find out his fellow sailors had been mistreated. But this emotion seemed bigger than that. This emotion expanded when he thought DuBois had been abusive to his daughter – well, to Juliette. That relationship hadn't been confirmed, yet.

He pictured the flash of her face on the video when she was kidnapped ? her eyes, the fear.

When Nutsbe was handing out assignments, Honey had said he should go down to track Juliette. That was Honey's specialization. Lynx knew that. But Lynx had been staring Thorn in the eye, then she'd intervened, insisting that Thorn be handed the assignment.

Thorn had never known Lynx to be wrong in the way she read people. She'd seen something playing out on his face.

He wondered what it was.