Free Jack Ryan 1 - Without Remorse by Tom Clancy Page A

breathed as it dropped free. Cody-193 was on its own.
    Sarah had a light dinner cooking. Kelly smelled it even before opening the door. Kelly came inside to see Rosen sitting in the living room.
    'Where's Pam?'
    'We gave her some medication,' Sam answered. 'She ought to be sleeping now.'
    'She is,' Sarah confirmed, passing through the room on the way to the kitchen. 'I just checked. Poor thing, she's exhausted, she's been doing without sleep for some time. It's catching up with her.'
    'But if she's been taking sleeping pills -'
    'John, your body reacts strangely to the things,' Sam explained. 'It fights them off, or tries to, at the same time it becomes dependent on them. Sleep will be her big problem for a while.'
    'There's something else,' Sarah reported. 'She's very frightened of something, but she wouldn't say what it was.' She paused, then decided that Kelly ought to know. 'She's been abused, John. I didn't ask about it - one thing at a time - but somebody's given her a rough time.'
    'Oh?' Kelly looked up from the sofa. 'What do you mean?'
    'I mean she's been sexually assaulted,' Sarah said in a calm, professional voice that belied her personal feelings.
    'You mean raped?' Kelly asked in a low voice while the muscles of his arms tensed.
    Sarah nodded, unable now to hide her distaste. 'Almost certainly. Probably more than once. There is also evidence of physical abuse on her back and buttocks.'
    'I didn't notice.'
    'You're not a doctor,' Sarah pointed out. 'How did you meet?'
    Kelly told her, remembering the look in Pam's eyes and knowing now what it must have been from. Why hadn't he noticed it? Why hadn't he noticed a lot of things? Kelly raged.
    'So she was trying to escape ... I wonder if the same man got her on the barbiturates?' Sarah asked. 'Nice guy, whoever it was.'
    'You mean that somebody's been working her over, and got her on drugs?' Kelly said. 'But why?'
    'Kelly, please don't take this wrong ... but she might have been a prostitute. Pimps control girls that way.' Sarah Rosen hated herself for saying that, but this was business and Kelly had to know. 'She's young, pretty, a runaway from a dysfunctional family. The physical abuse, the undernourishment, it all fits the pattern.'
    Kelly was looking down at the floor. 'But she's not like that. I don't understand.' But in some ways he did, he told himself, thinking back. The ways in which she'd clung to him and drawn him to her. How much was simply skill, and how much real human feelings? It was a question he had no desire to face. What was the right thing to do? Follow your mind? Follow your heart? And where might they lead?
    'She's fighting back, John. She's got guts.' Sarah sat across from Kelly. 'She's been on the road for over four years, doing God knows what, but something in her won't quit. But she can't do it alone. She needs you. Now I have a question.' Sarah looked hard at him. 'Will you be there to help her?'
    Kelly looked up, his blue eyes the color of ice as he searched for what he really felt. 'You guys are really worked up about this, aren't you?'
    Sarah sipped from a drink she'd made for herself. She was rather a dumpy woman, short and overweight. Her black hair hadn't seen a stylist in months. All in all she looked like the sort of woman who, behind the wheel of a car, attracts the hatred of male drivers. But she spoke with focused passion, and her intelligence was already very clear to her host. 'Do you have any idea how bad it's getting? Ten years ago, drug abuse was so rare that I hardly had to bother with it. Oh, sure, I knew about it, read the articles from Lexington, and every so often we'd get a heroin case. Not very many. Just a black problem, people thought. Nobody really gave much of a damn. We're paying for that mistake now. In case you didn't notice, that's all changed - and it happened practically overnight. Except for the project I'm working on, I'm nearly full-time on kids with drug problems. I wasn't trained for this. I'm a