When Susan didn’t say anything, Linda threw up her hands. “This is a waste of my time! I’m trying to do you a favor and you won’t help yourself. Fine. If that’s the way you want it then that’s the way it’s going to be. Mr. Smith.” With that Linda strode from the hold with Juan right behind. He closed the hold’s door and spun the lock.

“Jesus, you can be scary,” Juan said.

Linda was checking the camera feed on her BlackBerry and didn’t look up when she said, “Apparently not scary enough. I thought she’d crack.”

“What’s she doing?”

“Trying not to wet herself.”

“So now we wait her out?”

“I’ll go back in a half hour,” Linda said. “That’ll give her enough time to think about what’s coming.”

“And if she still won’t talk?”

“Without enough time to properly soften her up I have no choice but to use drugs, which I hate by the way. It’s too easy to get the subject to tell you what you want to hear rather than the truth.” Linda looked back at the little screen. “On second thought…” She held up a hand with her fingers splayed and ticked them off silently. When the last digit curled into her palm Susan Donleavy began screaming from the other side of the closed hatch.

“Come back! Please! I’ll tell you what he’s going to try to do!”

A shadow crossed Linda’s eyes. Rather than satisfied with her work she appeared sad.

“What is it?” Juan asked.

“Nothing.”

“Talk to me. What’s the matter?”

She looked up at him. “I hate doing this. Breaking people, I mean. Lying to them to get what I want. It leaves me, I don’t know, dead inside. I climb into someone else’s mind to ferret out information and in the end I end up knowing everything about them — how they think, what their hopes and dreams are, every secret they thought they’d never tell. In a couple of hours I will know more about Susan Donleavy than anyone else in the world. But it’s not like having a friend confide in you. It’s like I’m stealing that information. I hate doing it, Juan.”

“I had no idea,” he said softly. “If I did I wouldn’t have asked you to do this.”

“That’s why I’ve never told you. You hired me because I have a certain background, and skills that no one in the crew possesses. Just because I hate part of my job doesn’t mean I don’t have to do it.”

Juan gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You going to be okay?”