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He’d buried it because he hadn’t yet tagged the enemy, or his allies.
    “I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital. People were calling me a traitor, and accusing me of deserting my men.”
    His resentment of that came through in his clipped tones, in the stiff posture of his broad shoulders. So did his confusion. Tracy didn’t trust it, or him. “Did you talk with anyone? Make any statement of any kind?”
    “No, no official statements.”
    “None?” She couldn’t hide her surprise. Surely the Military Police and agents from the Office of Special Investigations had attempted to gain statements from Burke. “Not even to the MPS or the OSI?”
    “No,” he reiterated. “But Lieutenant Carver talked to me.”
    “Who is Lieutenant Carver?”
    “Colonel Hackett’s aide,” Adam said, reeking of his do-your-homework-Fluff attitude. “I’m told that my commander or his representative has to visit me at least once a month. Carver was it for August.”
    So Burke had read the facility’s rule book. What wasn’t noted in it was that, while the prisoner’s commander or his representative did have to make monthly visits, his representative usually was a sergeant. “What did Carver say?”
    “He lied. He said the team had been blown to hell and back by a bomb because I’d screwed up and led them onto an active bombing range. I saw their bodies. My men were not blown to bits. Their bodies were intact and unmarked.” Burke grimaced, dropping his eyelids to halfmast. “Carver also informed me that I was facing a courtmartial and a dishonorable discharge, and that the prosecutors would be seeking the death penalty.”
    “Why didn’t you tell him about O’Dell’s orders, or about the canister?”
    Burke snorted, sounding almost amused. “I tried telling the truth about O’Dell changing my orders early on at the hospital. They called me a damn liar and said O’Dell had been off-duty all day. He wasn’t, and Carver already had lied to me. Why waste my breath?”
    Tracy puzzled through Burke’s rationale. “No. Not wasted breath. You stopped talking because Carver and O’Dell both work for Hackett,” she said, getting a fix on how Burke’s mind worked. “You didn’t know which side of the fence Carver sat on.” Enemy, or ally? When in doubt, shut up. She’d bet her bars that if asked, Janet would confirm silence as one of their Intel drills.
    “That, too.” Burke’s eyes glinted approval. “Until I knew, the less said the better.”
    Tracy resented liking his approval, even as she wished everything he had told her was true. Not for intimated multiple murders and a conspiracy, for God’s sake-but as a sign that Burke had proceeded in trust and good faith and that he was being sincere. But he wasn’t. Somewhere deep inside her, she knew Adam Burke was lying to her. “They say you deserted your men because you got lost and led them onto the bombing range instead of to Area Thirteen.”
    “I wasn’t lost. I went to Area Fourteen because those were my orders. I left my men there because those were also my orders.”
    “Are you proposing that this incident was a conspiracy which might, or might not, include Colonel Hackett and Lieutenant Carver, as well as Major O’Dell?”
    Burke slid her a hooded glare. “I’m not proposing anything. I don’t know what the hell happened out there. All I know for fact is O’Dell issued me orders, and I followed them.”
    Burke wanted to say more. Sensing it, she encouraged him to do it. “But … ?”
    “But,” he said, then hesitated before going on. “Everything that has happened since then proves-at least, to my satisfaction-that I was set up to take a fall.”
    He believed it, Tracy realized. Every word of it. Delusions?
    Rationalization? He had to be suffering from one or the other. Could mental instability be her legal hook?
    “Set up by whom? For what purpose?”
    Hands in his hip pockets, Burke turned to look her straight in