Backblast

by Candace Irving

  "Equipment?"

  She nodded. "Possibly…lost equipment?"

  John's hand made another pass through the unruly growth on his jaw. Anyone else might've deemed it identical to the first. It wasn't. There'd been a pause at the start. It had been almost infinitesimal. And, yet, that pause had reverberated through her gut like a bunker buster bomb going off deep inside a stateside hardened target.

  John knew something. Something he was loath to share.

  Even with her.

  "John?"

  Another pass though that unruly thicket.

  The aftershocks multiplied. "You know why Riyad's got it out for you, don't you? And you know what Durrani meant by that comment. The two are tied together, aren't they?"

  "I think so. I need to look into it first. Confirm a few things."

  A few classified things. Otherwise, why not offer them up now, given everything that was going on?

  "Christ." That scarred hand made yet another pass, causing her gut to clamp down hard, because this pass had been followed up by an even more telling sigh. One that was almost a growl. "I need to get off this boat, Rae. Make a phone call in private, several in fact. Call in a few markers. Get some damned answers."

  "And then?"

  "And then I'll share. With you—and Palisade."

  Another bunker buster dropped in, and this one exploded deeper still. If John hadn't even confided in the general yet, this was worse than she'd feared.

  16

  Her bed was moving.

  No…rocking.

  Regan kept her eyes closed, savoring the soothing motion as the fog of not nearly enough sleep ebbed, leaving behind a budding headache as well as the nagging need for caffeine that had caused it. She was still in her rack aboard the Griffith.

  But John was not.

  It had taken sixteen months, but she finally understood how he'd felt the night they'd slept together in Hohenfels. She'd heard his confusion and loss as he'd woken to an empty bed and called out for her…while she'd been sneaking out the back door.

  Yes, she'd had an excellent reason for leaving then. And, yes, he'd had an equally solid reason as to why he'd slipped out of this metal cradle and her stateroom in the middle of the night. But that didn't make this cold emptiness any easier to bear.

  Worse, she had all that remaining blood to confront.

  The stains would've dried and would be set in by now, turning the tan leather of her combat boots a nauseating shade of rust. It was in the cracks and crevices of her sidearm too, along with her holster and her keys. Even her credentials had been embedded with Durrani's parting revenge.

  Where she'd find the hydrogen peroxide to get it all out while trapped on a warship in the middle of the Arabian Sea, she had no idea.

  Sickbay?

  Not an option. Mantia would be there.

  She'd successfully avoided the ship's doc last night, but only because of Chief Yrle's quick thinking and willingness to cover for her. She wouldn't be so lucky again. Not after the way her hand and forearm had begun to flail around like gasping fish out of water before she'd even left the brig. The doc would insist on examining her. Quite possibly, deem it necessary to shoot off an obligatory physician-to-physician assessment to Fort Campbell…and Gil.

  If Mantia didn't opt instead to head directly to whichever stateroom Palisade had been assigned and rat out her decompensating psyche the moment the general woke.

  What time was it?

  Her alarm hadn't gone off. Regan felt for the wide, grosgrain band on her wrist. Her watch wasn't there. Confused, she opened her eyes.

  Near pitch black greeted her.

  John must've turned off the desk lamp prior to his departure. With the stateroom's porthole sealed shut, all she could make out on her wrist was the fact that her watch wasn't encircling it. Had she dumped that on her bed last night, too, and simply forgotten? Or had she taken it off in the shower and tossed it on the floor in front of the toilet, along with her socks?

  Either way, it was just one more nauseating piece of gear to clean.

  The only silver lining of the morning would be embedded in her clothes.

  Since she'd had no idea of her destination when she'd packed for this trip back at Campbell, old habits had kicked in. She'd stuffed two additional sets of ACUs and two blue "CID" suits into her duffel, every one of them blessedly bloodstain free.

  But the suits would need ironing. On a ship.

  The camouflage won.

  She was going to have to clean her boots anyway. God willing, she wouldn't have a follow-on meltdown in the process. Frankly, she didn't have the time. She had two Marine embassy guards, and a handful of chopper and Osprey pilots and their crews to interview. A murderer to find and a cave victim to identify. A traitor to locate.

  A partner to investigate.

  John wasn't the only one who desperately needed to get to a phone. One call to Mira Ellis and she'd have all the information she needed about Sam Riyad. Even if it took Mira trading in a few NCIS special agent markers of her own to get it.

  Last night, shortly before John had pulled her back into his chest and gruffly ordered her to sleep, she'd told him about Riyad's end run around her planned chromatography tests on the coffee dregs with the microTLC Colonel Tarrington had loaned her—and especially how the disbelieving spook had rerun Tarrington's tests on the translator's blood with John's stained ACU top.

  That hadn't seemed to surprise John either.

  But he'd already asked for her patience while he conducted his own, unorthodox investigation into the spook, so she hadn't pressed it.

  As for her investigations?

  Regan swung her legs out of the bunk. The uniform tee John had removed from his torso last night so that he could use it to cover hers slid down to mid-thigh as she stood. With her eyes adjusted to the dark, she headed for the shadowy flap of steel that formed the stateroom's desk and reached into the void for the switch.

  Her night vision evaporated on a flare of blinding white. She swung away from its source toward the chair John had shoved up against the end of the bunk as she willed her vision to readjust to the manmade light of day. It did. But as she spotted the boots on the deck, tucked between the chair's legs, and the nest of gear clustered together on its seat, she was forced to lean back into the wall unit for support.

  It wasn't enough.

  She slid all the way down the steel unit until her ass hit the gently rolling deck. Her vision blurred again as the tears welled up…and spilled over.

  There she sat, for how long she did not know, absorbing the implications.

  Sixteen months ago, between those torrid sessions in John's bed, he'd confessed that he'd rarely dated as a teenager and had stopped altogether at twenty after he'd discovered his sister was alive. Between caring for Beth, his commitment to the Army and getting his degree at night so he could get commissioned, he'd had very little spare time and even less desire to squander what he did have on anyone other than his sister. Once Beth had settled into college life, he'd dated a bit between deployments, but none of his relationships had gone well—especially his last.

  His ex had ended things a year and a half earlier, at the eleventh hour on the eve of his deployment to Yemen, no less. When John had asked why, he'd discovered that he possessed a litany of selfish sins up to and including the fact that not only was he late for almost every date—the ones he didn't cancel outright—he'd never once marked a special occasion or anniversary. And he had never sent flowers.

  Evidently his ex had finagled knowledge of the abuse he'd suffered as a boy out of his sister and had decided that John just didn't have "normal" inside him.

  In short, he was not, nor would he ever be, relationship material.

  John had admitted the truth to Regan that night in his bed. He'd never thought about flowers, or cards and gifts. As for the other accusations his ex had tossed at him, she was right about those too. The job came first with him. It had to. His men's lives were on the line, hi
s country's safety. He couldn't just drop what he was doing—especially when he was on a mission—to make a call or text.

  Once his head was in the game, it stayed there. By the time he got back to camp, he was either writing up his after-action reports and too damned exhausted to do more than crash on a cot or a bedroll somewhere, or he was already prepping for the next push.

  He'd thought his ex had understood.

  But after that night, he'd gone over his paltry relationships in his head and had eventually admitted that maybe his ex was right. Maybe the way he'd grown up with his bastard of a father had scarred him. Permanently.

  Hell, even when he was stateside, the gestures that women always seemed to want from him just…weren't inside him.

  Regan hadn't argued with John then, nor could she argue with him now. Not until they'd had a chance to get to know each other better. John might be right. Flowers just might not be in his makeup. Ever. She had no problem with that. Wouldn't even miss them. Because as she stared at her keys, watch, boots, holster and sidearm—and, yes, even those CID credentials he still wasn't crazy about—she knew the gestures that were important to her were inside him. Several hours ago, her boots and her gear had been saturated with Nabil Durrani's blood…and now they weren't.

  Every single item was spotless.

  While she'd slept, John had gathered them up and taken them somewhere to eradicate every last trace of that monster, so she wouldn't have to. In the process he'd managed to burrow himself so deeply into her heart she suspected she'd never be able to get him out. The only question left was…did she want to?

  Three light raps on her door offered a reprieve—from herself.

  Unless they'd come from John.

  "Yes?" Great. The tears had shredded her vocal cords.

  "Sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to wake you. I can come back." Yrle.

  She cleared her throat and tried again. "That's all right, Chief. I'm up. Just give me a minute to finish getting dressed."

  Finish?

  Regan glanced down at the baggy Army tee that clearly did not belong to her. She hadn't even begun to dress. What's more, with her face as blotchy as it was bound to be after that silent crying jag, normal voice or not, there'd be no doubt as to what she'd been doing in here.

  She retrieved her watch first, glancing at the time as she wrapped the olive-drab grosgrain band around her wrist and velcroed it into place.

  0713?

  Good Lord. She didn't know if John had accidentally or deliberately killed her alarm while he'd been cleaning, but she'd overslept by nearly two hours.

  She pulled herself together and swapped the man's rumpled uniform tee for one of her own and a fresh set of the ACUs in her duffel. She was dressed—boots, credentials, thigh-holstered sidearm included—in under two minutes. Making a beeline for the sink, she blew through another two as she collected the items within and shoved them in her hygiene kit so she could brush her teeth, wash her face and French braid her hair.

  She was folding up the length of the latter and securing it at the nape of her neck with several pins as she reached the door.

  Yrle stood on the opposite side, patiently holding Regan's iPhone.

  "Morning, Chief."

  "Good morning, ma'am." Yrle held out the phone. "Here you go."

  Regan retrieved her electronic lifeline—at least on dry land and near accessible, abusable cellular towers—and noted the crevices around the black case. Like her boots and her gear, her phone was devoid of blood. "Thank you."

  The chief shook her head. "It wasn't me. Major Garrison stopped by my office a few hours ago with your boots and sidearm. He took care of that too. But I hadn't yet had a chance to copy the audio file of the interview, so I held onto it after he left."

  Regan nodded.

  "Ma'am?"

  A slight shiver scraped up Regan's spine as the chief glanced over her shoulder. "Yes?"

  "Make sure you change your password…immediately."

  The shiver intensified.

  "Why?" But she knew.

  Riyad.

  Durrani must have hexed her DNA juju before he died, at least where this woman was concerned, because the chief nodded. Then rechecked her six. Satisfied that no one was behind her, listening, she swung back. "You asked me to watch for anything usual."

  "And?"

  "I caught him with your phone after I'd finished with the audio file."

  The shiver morphed into an outright chill. "Do you know what he was looking at?"

  "Yes, ma'am. He'd accessed one your text streams. The one between you…and Major Garrison. I was on the phone with Ops, arranging the flight for Durrani's autopsy, when he came into the shack. He saw me turn around before I hung up and quickly returned your phone to my desk, so I got curious. When he left, I typed in your password and the stream was still open. He hadn't had time to close it."

  Why would he even look?

  The moment John had departed the ICU back at Campbell, he'd gone into mission mode. She hadn't heard from him since.

  Unlike his ex, she hadn't expected, or really wanted it. She'd known that whatever he'd been sent to do was serious or Palisade would never have pulled him from her hospital room three hours after she'd woken from that coma. Hence, she'd wanted John focused on whatever he'd needed to do. So he'd come back in one piece. Without any more scars on his body, or his soul, to show for it.

  She'd even admitted to their comms drought with Agent Riyad yesterday, right in this stateroom.

  Either the spook hadn't believed her…or Riyad had intentionally set out to search for the texts she'd saved on her phone. The texts John had sent sixteen months ago in Hohenfels, when she'd been using him to investigate his houseguest for plotting a terror attack…right around the time someone had also followed John to that CID parking lot.

  The chill spread into an ice-cold void that settled low and heavy inside her. Dread began to seep in, filling it.

  What the hell did John have on Riyad?

  And what did Riyad believe he had on John?

  And there was the personal violation against her—from a fellow agent and so-called current partner. Add on the standard creep factor and the invasion of privacy to the rest, and she was seriously pissed off.

  But to rain down on Riyad would expose Yrle. Something she refused to do unless the situation became critical.

  Regan nodded, carefully smoothing her facial features, despite her lingering ire and larger, looming concerns. "Thank you, Chief. We'll keep this between us."

  Relief filled the woman's eyes. "Major Garrison asked me to pass a message along, too. He said you have a meeting with General Palisade in the ship's wardroom at 0800. If you'd like, we can head there now so you can eat breakfast first."

  Regan glanced at her watch. She had almost forty minutes until that meeting.

  More than enough time for what she needed to accomplish.

  She shook her head, ignoring the dull throb that was already arguing with her coming counter proposal. Caffeine could wait. "Where are the guards?"

  "Corporal Vetter just left for chow. Staff Sergeant Brandt's in sickbay."

  "What's wrong with Brandt?" The Marine had seemed fine yesterday during their interview.

  "The sea state got to him last night. You know what they say: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. He was so dehydrated from throwing up, he finally crawled into Medical early this morning. The doc still has him in one of their racks, hooked up to an IV. He should be good to go soon, especially since the seas have calmed considerably."

  Hopefully, the doc would keep the staff sergeant connected to that IV for a bit longer. At least until she'd had a chance to snoop through the Marine's belongings—without Brandt in attendance. The corporal's, too.

  Before John had ordered her to sleep last night, he'd told her the coffee Hachemi had consumed was already in the conference room when he'd arrived for their final interview. Which meant both guards were at the top of her suspect list, whether she wan
ted them there or not.

  "Just a sec." Regan headed back into the stateroom to hook the fingers of her right hand around the handle of her crime scene kit. So far this morning, the digits appeared willing to cooperate with her brain. Accidental or not, she was thankful John had killed her alarm. The extra sleep had done her nerves a world of good.

  Kit in hand, she closed the stateroom door behind her and locked it with considerably more finesse than she'd opened it with the night before.

  "Let's go."

  "Where to, ma'am?"

  "Brandt's rack, then Vetter's." If the corporal had recently sat down to eat, there was more of a risk of the staff sergeant showing. Frankly, she'd prefer to keep both Marines ignorant of her activities and suspicions until the last possible moment.

  Yrle nodded. "We put them up together in chief's country for security reasons. This way."

  Regan followed the woman through the Griffith's passageways, nodding a return greeting to half a dozen enlisted sailors and a butterbar ensign along the way.

  Chief Yrle came to a halt beside a slim gray door and knocked once.

  No response.

  Selecting a key from the hefty ring attached to her waist, Yrle used it to unlock the door. She pushed it open, then hooked an arm inside to flip on the overhead lights. "After you, ma'am."

  "Thank you." Regan preceded the woman inside.

  The stateroom was nearly identical to hers, though slightly smaller and with no private shower or latrine. The upper bunk had been neatly made up. The twisted sheets and blanket of the lower one, as well as the round metal trash can on the deck and tucked up near a mashed pillow, attested to its owner's nightlong ignoble activities.

  As did the smell.

  Though the tablespoon of water at the base of the gray can suggested it had been rinsed out via the stateroom's sink, the stench of vomit hung in the air.

  No rush then.

  And no wonder the quarters had been abandoned. She seriously doubted the staff sergeant who'd unwillingly created that odor or the corporal who'd been forced to endure it would be back anytime soon.