by Geri Krotow
This was an aspect of navy life Ro equally relished and despised. If she did her job right and delegated as much as possible, her subordinates were able to achieve their greatest potential and earn valuable experience. Ro had no doubt that she’d be able take on this unexpected mission and rely on the intel shop to carry on with its basic functions.
Miles stared straight ahead at the commodore. Why on earth did today have to be the day she’d decided to stop being so harsh on herself, to really let go of her past, to forgive herself for clinging to the idea of a fantasy fiancé for so long? Worse, why had she picked today to be more open toward a new man in her life?
This assignment would be so much easier if it were her and Ross, or her and any of the other department heads working together.
But it was Miles—the only man who’d threatened her vow to steer clear of any serious involvement with the opposite sex since Dick had dumped her. Ro harbored no illusions that working closely with Miles would prove to be anything but problematic.
This case was going to be a bitch.
CHAPTER THREE
MILES DIDN’T LIKE the feel of this. He wasn’t a Commodore Sanders fan, per se. Au contraire. He found the senior navy pilot, like most navy aviators he’d met, to be pompous and a bit too free with his good opinion of himself.
The commodore was justified in wanting an officer or two from the wing to keep tabs, as much as possible, on the case. Miles would have done the same.
But Sanders had paired him with Ro.
It was hard enough seeing her almost every day, knowing she didn’t want to go out with him. Didn’t want much to do with him at all. The fact that she was the first woman who’d ever gotten under his skin to this degree didn’t help matters. Nor did it assuage his ego, which she’d flattened last year with her repeated rejections.
Add his freak show of an overreaction this morning on Deception Pass Bridge, and his future with Ro was bleaker than ever.
A pang of longing to work with an operational team downrange hit him. In the fleet there wasn’t time for personality conflicts or egos to get in the way. They had a mission and they accomplished it come hell or high water, often both. Even while clearing mines in a godforsaken field in Afghanistan, when he’d lost his leg along with his dog, he’d completed the mission. The SEAL team he’d been supporting had been able to go forward with no further loss of life or limb and successfully root out a group of Taliban.
“This is such a hard time for our wing, for the entire community. I don’t want anyone who worked with Perez to think for one minute that they could have prevented this or that it’s their fault. This is a horrible and perhaps inevitable outcome of war.”
Commodore Sanders said all the right words but Miles relied on his carefully trained powers of observation. The commodore kept looking down and didn’t make sustained eye contact with any of them. His speech pattern was faster than usual, indicating his excitement or anxiety over the prospect of being cast in the middle of a national news-making case. Miles suspected that guilt was eating at Sanders, no matter what the commodore said about no one needing to feel guilty. It was natural for a leader to feel responsible when one of his own came to injury. Or worse.
The bottom line was that they’d all failed Perez if he’d committed suicide. Miles didn’t believe in anything except the team concept when it came to his shipmates.
“I need you two—” the commodore looked at Miles and Ro again “―to be my eyes and ears on this case. Get to the beach and survey the scene of his suicide. Make sure the local LEA doesn’t turn this into anything overblown or sensationalize it. Sailors commit suicide. It happens. It isn’t always because of PTSD or pressure from the military, but even if it is, no one deserves the disrespect of a magnifying glass on his own death. Not my sailor, not on my watch.”
“Sir, it’s not anyone’s fault that Perez had PTSD, if that’s what it was.” Ro’s emphatic pronouncement gave the old man pause as he stared at his intel officer.
Miles fought to not roll his eyes.
Why did she have to be such a master of the obvious? This was what was wrong with support staff like intel. Ro was going to have to learn to toughen up and only worry about the investigation. How the commodore felt about the loss wasn’t the issue.
The commodore’s glance strayed again, but just for a moment.
“What are you waiting for? Get the hell out of here.” He finished his last sentence in a low growl, Sanders’s way of making a tough order less emotional for all of them.
Ro left first and Miles followed her. She turned around to wait for him in the hallway. For the first time he saw the cracks in her “work” face that revealed her frustrations and her questions about what had happened.
Ro was obviously as thrilled as he was that they’d been paired to do the investigation. He was surprised she hadn’t said so to the commodore, or simply refused to work with him.
Her blue eyes widened in query.
“What—”
“Not here.” He held up his hands and nodded forward. Ro clamped her mouth shut and turned around. It afforded him a wonderful view of her backside as he trailed her down the hall. Judging by the pronounced swing of her hips she was working up to a good fight.
He’d rarely looked twice at the few military women he’d worked with. EOD teams still didn’t have many females, although he’d worked alongside his share of operational and staff officers who were women. He knew he’d been in the midst of intense operational situations during those times and he could blame that for not being distracted by the opposite sex—he’d had a war to fight.
He also knew that was complete bullshit. He’d be aware of Ro if they were both in the Arctic bundled in cold-weather gear with only their eyes showing through tinted goggles. Even in the midst of a firestorm he’d want to kiss Ro like he’d dreamed of since he’d first laid eyes on her.
He’d noticed her the day he’d met her, the weekend before she reported to the wing. She’d been wearing tight jeans that revealed just how curvy her ass was under her khaki uniform. She’d been spitting mad that his friend Max’s dog had chased her mother’s cat up a tree. Her anger had boiled over when she realized he was perfectly certain he could rescue her mother’s cat from the sixty-foot fir tree. When he climbed back down the trunk with the fuzzy creature under his arm it had only ticked her off more.
He suppressed a grin at the memory.
They exited the plush corridor into the utilitarian part of the hangar, above the main aircraft parking area. Ro turned to face him again and he fell in step with her.
“Let’s go outside. We can take my truck to the beach.”
“I have to get my purse.”
“Do you have your identification on you?”
“Yes, of course I have my ID,” she snapped.
“Then you don’t need anything else. Not for now. Let’s keep walking and get out of here.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Sarcasm tinged her words and Miles smiled. He knew he sounded like a jerk to a softie like Roanna. It was clear to him that she was already bored at the wing after being there for not even half of her assigned tour length. Like him, she’d been out in the fleet fighting the war until circumstances brought her home. Like him, she wasn’t a native of Whidbey Island or Washington State. Unlike him, she showed no indication that the beauty and mystery of the Pacific Northwest had seduced her.
You haven’t seduced her, either.
He wanted her, all right. From the moment he’d watched her get her back up about her mother’s precious cat that was stupid enough to climb so far up a tree that it needed rescuing. A laugh escaped him as he remembered Ro’s face after he’d handed the bundle of white fur back to her mother.
“What’s so funny?” Ro’s mouth was set in a grim line. Her tension had been palpable in the commodore’s office an
d he’d wanted to squeeze her hand. Of course that would not only have been unprofessional, it might very well have earned him a smack to the head.
“Tell you in a sec.” He unlocked the truck.
They slid into his truck in silence. Only when they cleared the main gate did he speak.
“I was remembering the expression on your face when I climbed up and got Henry out of the tree for your mother.”
“It’s Henry the Eighth. You have to use his entire name.” She was sitting up straight, tense as a scared cat herself. But he saw the muscle twitching at the corner of her lip.
“You were so pissed off.”
“I was stressed. My mother is not the easiest person to please, and her cat is everything to her.” Ro relented and smiled. “I realize now how much I owe you. I had no idea you were an amputee. I get that, for a weapons expert like you, scaling a tree is no big deal. But you did it with one leg. For my mother’s stubborn cat.”
“Two. I have two legs, Ro, as long as I’m wearing my prosthetic.”
“I’m trying to give you a compliment here, Miles. Let me.”
He glanced at her and not for the first time was blindsided by her huge eyes. Her chestnut-brown hair floated around her face in a pretty cloud of spikes and curls. Her gaze, a sexy blue laser, conveyed so much more than her words ever had—at least to him.
He put his gaze firmly back on the road.
“If we need to work together on this, we need to agree to have each other’s back.”
“That’s a given, Miles. But it’s not about us—it’s about seeing that Petty Officer Perez is treated with respect and dignity.”
“Come on, Roanna. You’re naval intelligence. Do you really believe everything is as it looks?”
“I saw you watching the commodore,” she said, and he felt her shrug next to him. “He’s not the best I’ve ever worked for, either, but certainly not the worst. Either way, he’s our boss. We have orders.”
“To get to the truth. The truth may not be what he wants to hear.” He needed to keep his misgivings to himself; he sounded paranoid. The collateral damage of a life spent expecting an explosion at every turn.
She sighed as if she’d read his mind.
“This isn’t a Hollywood movie, Miles.”
“No, it’s not, Roanna. It’s for real—and we need to be on the same page. For Petty Officer Perez, for his family and for each other.”
* * *
ROANNA HELD ON to the handle above the passenger’s side window as Miles drove them to the area known as West Beach. They’d learned that AMS Perez’s body had been discovered by a dog walker early that morning.
“Good thing they found him while the tide was still out.”
“You’re not kidding. An hour or two later and he would’ve been shark bait.” Miles was a guy all the way.
“That kind of comment’s not necessary, is it?”
He flashed a glance at her, then brought his attention back to the road.
“No, but it’s important that we stay detached enough to do this right. Neither of us knew him that well, correct?”
“You heard what I said to the commodore. I was talking to Perez about switching rates, just yesterday afternoon.” Hours before he took his last breath. “But no, I didn’t know him that well.”
“He’d understand that we’re doing what we need to do to keep our sanity.”
Ro didn’t reply because that meant looking at Miles and whenever she caught a glimpse of his profile she got that funny hitch in her chest. Not from discomfort, but from realizing how natural, almost familiar, it felt to be with Miles.
She was even getting used to her body’s hormonal response to him, damn it.
“You have to admit this is pretty funny, Ro.”
“How so?”
“It’s taken a death for you to come to your senses about spending more time with me.”
She bit her lip and gazed straight ahead.
Just focus on the case in front of you.
She peered at the house numbers.
“Up there, that’s the one, isn’t it?” The sun had burned off any remaining morning fog, which was common on Whidbey Island. The house stood at least two hundred feet back from the road, and Ro knew the island well enough to know that the backyard led to a precipitous cliff a hundred feet above the stone-strewn beach. All the homes along this route backed up against the cliffs.
“Let’s check it out.”
They weren’t headed to the house—it served only as a landmark as it was the first home on the road, next to a large open area that residents used for picnicking and whale-watching. Ro was grateful she’d worn her uniform skirt with oxfords today. She usually preferred pumps with a skirt, but since she’d been putting in a lot of running miles her back was sore and she needed the lower-heeled shoes. Her pumps would never have survived tramping through gravel and across the windblown timothy grass to the edge of the cliff, not to mention the rocky shore.
There were still a handful of LEA agents wandering around the beach four or five feet below them. She and Miles needed to climb down the rough path to the tide line. This was the lowest point of the western island, punctuated by tsunami warning signs.
The LEAs were distinguished by reflective vests and evidence collection kits. A small area had been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape.
“What will we tell them we’re doing?” They needed to be in concert with their story if they hoped to appear credible. “We can’t say we’re investigating officers, not really.”
“No, but we can say we’re with the wing and we’re here to help.” Miles reached over and squeezed her hand. It was a brief, warm reassurance, but her reaction was so electric Ro felt as if he’d just kissed her. She glanced around to see if anyone else had seen his gesture.
“Relax, Ro, it was a friendly squeeze. Not a public display of affection. I’d never put your career at risk with a PDA. You aren’t affected by my charms so we’re good, right?” His flirting made her want to sneer at him. Kind of.
You’re starting new today. Remember?
“Um, yes.” She took in the scene in front of them one more time before she turned back to Miles.
“Let’s go.”
They started the climb down to the scene of AMS1 Perez’s untimely death.
* * *
RO HAD NEVER seen a dead body before. Except for at her great-aunt Ruby’s funeral, during which her seven-year-old self wondered why Aunt Ruby’s eyebrows weren’t their usual dark color. They’d seemed so odd to her, all thin and high-arched, giving Ruby an expression of extreme surprise. Even as a little girl she knew that someone at eternal rest probably didn’t look so startled. That was before she’d learned the nuances of eyebrow pencils. In retrospect Ro had figured out that the funeral parlor’s cosmetologist had mistakenly assumed that Aunt Ruby’s eyebrows should match her beauty parlor bleach job.
The sight of Petty Officer Perez wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, not at first. At least that was what she told herself. There wasn’t any blood; that much she could see from several paces out. Except for his face, he was clothed. As they approached his body and moved around it, she decided that first impressions were overrated.
The angle of his head was at once unnatural and revolting. It signified death as clear as any pool of blood would have.
As if a huge sasquatch had taken his head and twisted it around, his head faced into the beach gravel while his body faced skyward. She saw mostly the back of his head, but the large, black beach rock kept his head tilted at just the right angle to see his face with its bulging eyes in their final death stare.
Vomiting in public while in her uniform wasn’t an option, but she really wanted to. She averted her gaze and took deep, practiced breaths through her nose. Navy training pa
id off in so many different ways. How would she have guessed that learning to control her panic while doing swim qualifications in the helo dunker would keep her from throwing up at the sight of a dead sailor?
“First time seeing it this raw?” Miles’s voice wooed her back from the edge of her panic.
She let out a short gasp.
“Not all of us are in the field as much as you.”
“Not all of us sit behind computers and analyze data as much as you.”
His sharp words startled her. Anger replaced shock.
“Please don’t slip into your Cro-Magnon persona now, Warrant. You actually had me thinking that maybe you respected me as a partner in this investigation.”
“I respect hard facts and someone who knows what facts I need.”
The fact that they were actually sparring over the difference in their military occupations while Petty Officer Perez’s body lay yards away catapulted Ro from nausea to anger.
“You didn’t have a problem with my career choice when you asked me out.” There, that would shut him up.
“I wasn’t asking LCDR Brandywine out on a date. I was asking Roanna, the woman whose mother has a crazy cat, and who was new to Whidbey. I knew we could be friends.”
She met his eyes and steeled herself to outstare him.
“You didn’t know anything about me when you asked.” He still didn’t.
“I’m good at reading explosives.”
With her eyes still locked on his, her anger started to melt into something more visceral, more sensual.
Desire.
In front of Perez’s body. Self-loathing made her stomach churn again.
“This is sheriff’s business only, people.”
Miles broke their stare-down and turned to the man in civilian clothes who was flashing his Island County badge at them.
Get a handle on yourself, girl.
