by Geri Krotow
The detective was tall and blond like Miles but with longer hair and not quite as muscular, and his physical appeal wasn’t missed by Ro. Obviously he noticed her, too, as his gaze lingered a bit longer on her than Miles as he checked them both out.
“We’re from the wing, Detective. We’re just here to observe and make sure Petty Officer Perez’s remains are handled properly.” Miles spoke with authority. It was clear he didn’t expect much resistance from the detective.
“IDs?”
Miles and Ro whipped out their military identification without comment. Before September 11, 2001, a uniform was enough identification. Not anymore, as it was too easy for a terrorist to get a uniform and try to pass himself off as a good guy while attempting to take down a military base.
“Okay.” He handed them back their IDs. “I’m Detective Ramsey. You can stay as long as you don’t get in the way. Don’t ask questions, and for God’s sake don’t contaminate any evidence. Stay out of the taped-off area. Perez has already been assigned a CACO, as I’m sure you know.”
The detective was trying to push their buttons. Searching for a hole in their explanation.
“Yes, he has, but the CACO’s job is primarily with the surviving dependents, as I’m sure you know.” Ro didn’t want to start off under the shadow of the Island County sheriff’s doubt. They’d most likely need information from him at some point, and would have to build trust with Detective Ramsey right from the get-go.
She offered him a smile.
“We appreciate what you’re doing here, Detective Ramsey.”
“Do you, Commander Brandywine?” He looked over his shoulder at the water for a brief moment before he resettled his ice-blue gaze on Roanna. The man knew the navy and he’d memorized her name already.
“Then you’ll appreciate it when I tell you that if you hear anything in the next few days about Perez, his friends, family, whatever, you’ll bring it to me.”
“That’s a job for NCIS, isn’t it, Detective?”
Miles’s voice held an edge. Ro got it. First the detective had told them to be impartial, uninvolved observers. Now he was asking them to provide him with information, possibly privileged if not classified information.
“Of course. And my team is questioning everyone, as well. But since you’re both insiders, and here to ‘represent the wing―’” he paused, his brow raised as if he knew exactly what they were doing “—there’s a good chance you’ll stumble across something I won’t. People may be more willing to open up to you. And since I’m allowing you to stay and observe this part of the investigation, it’s only fair that you make me privy to whatever insights you glean.”
“We report to the wing commander, Detective.” Ro’s anger bit at the back of her throat. She was willing to play nice but she had her limits. This civilian really thought they’d enter into some kind of private deal with him? That they’d tell him something before they told their chain of command?
“LCDR Brandywine is correct, Detective, but of course we’re open to information sharing. We’re all after the same results.” Miles was smooth and unemotional.
Detective Ramsey nodded.
“Good.”
They exchanged business cards before the detective walked away. No doubt his mind was already back on the case. Ro waited until Ramsey was out of earshot before she faced Miles.
“Are you crazy? I’m not going along with your method of doing business, Miles. You’re going to get us both a court martial!”
“Get a grip, Ro. All Ramsey asked is that we help him out if we can. There’s no harm in that. Plus, in your usually overanalytical manner, you’re missing the big point here.”
She sighed.
“Which is?”
“On the off chance that this isn’t a suicide, then someone at the wing may have killed Perez. The detective knows that the navy will circle its wagons if this becomes evident. He’s pegged us as his way in.”
Someone they worked with, killing Perez in cold blood?
She shook her head.
“Doesn’t matter. It is a suicide and, bottom line, we report to the commodore.”
“Of course we do. But it doesn’t hurt to make friends when we can. No matter how certain we might be that this is probably a suicide, we’re not the experts with the evidence. The sheriff’s department is.”
* * *
MILES HAD TO hold back a smile three times while he spoke to Ro.
She was the überprofessional she thought she should be, and she was shit-hot at her job. But she was too uptight, too by-the-book. His operational background was going to have to be what got them through this, especially if the case turned sour and wasn’t a suicide.
His one gripe with navy intel had always been that it was so easy for the spook types to do a slick PowerPoint presentation on enemy territory and weapons stats. But they weren’t the ones on the ground with zero visibility from a sandstorm, fighting off Taliban who’d grown up in the area and knew it like the back of their hands.
He watched her expression as she took in the whole grisly scene. It was normal to feel sick the first time—hell, every time—you saw a dead body. Especially one that had recently met its violent end. Suicide made it more emotional, too. If a young sailor who was apparently happy with his job and life was willing to kill himself, how close were they all to this kind of despair?
“You dealt with this a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan.” She didn’t ask, but assumed she was right.
“Probably not as much as you, or someone else who hasn’t been there, thinks. Some of the folks I worked with didn’t see anything too rough. Some saw way more than their share of death and destruction.”
“And you?”
He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t look into her rich violet-blue eyes and tell her the worst. She didn’t need it, not today.
“I’d say I was somewhere in the middle.”
Ro took out a notebook from her jacket pocket and began writing notes.
“What are you afraid you’ll forget?” From what he’d seen of her briefings, she had a near-photographic memory.
She shot him a quick glance. “As you said, it’s my first time doing this, seeing this.” She motioned at Perez’s body. “My emotions are running higher than usual so I don’t want to risk forgetting simple details.”
“So even when you’re upset, you control it? Is there anything you don’t try to control, Roanna?”
Her nostrils flared and her mouth set in a determined line. He’d pushed too far.
Oh, he’d love to kiss her until her annoyance with him turned into something more enjoyable....
“Just keeping it professional and giving Perez my best effort, Warrant.”
“Right.”
He wanted to tell her that no matter how many notes she took she’d never get the image of Perez’s body out of her mind, not entirely. He wanted to shout at her and tell her to put the notepad away and rely on her gut. Let her emotions do whatever they needed to and allow the bigger picture to come into focus.
Instead, he shoved his hands in his own pockets and looked out toward the sea.
CHAPTER FOUR
RO ENTERED HER small foyer with a deep sigh of gratitude. It had been a long day and wasn’t over yet. From the AOM to the meeting with the commodore and then the awful scene at the beach, she felt like she’d been at sea—as though one day was really a week long. Time seemed immeasurable.
She only had an hour, tops, before she had to meet with Miles again. Her years at the academy had taught her the value of power naps as well as power breaks. She’d have to make the next fifty-eight minutes feel like a weekend.
Her home wrapped its arms around her and her shoulders let go of the weight they’d carried since Miles had tackled her this morning. She didn’t have many peop
le over, and that was by design. This was her oasis from all things navy-related. When she’d returned stateside after her last wartime deployment she’d decided it was the right time to purchase a house, no matter where she ended up via her navy orders. The fact that Dick had dumped her, and she’d accepted that she was truly alone, only hastened her quest to find her own home.
Oak Harbor, Washington, was a long way from Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she’d rented a condo while assigned to the aircraft carrier. The wilds of the Pacific Northwest contrasted sharply with the crowded suburban sprawl she’d grown up with in New Jersey.
She was thousands of miles from her family and childhood friends.
It was exactly what she needed and still wanted. Each month when she paid her mortgage, she was above all else grateful that she was a homeowner, free and clear of anyone else’s emotional tentacles.
She dropped her fitness and lunch bags onto the bench she’d reupholstered last Saturday. Had that only been a few days ago? Less than a week?
Her whole life had changed this morning.
She’d thrown Dick’s ring away. Let go of the shame, self-pity and sorrow she’d worn like out-of-date costume jewelry.
Finally.
Guilt tugged at her conscience as she untied her oxfords and slipped out of her uniform skirt. The investigation needed to be first and foremost on her mind.
Except it was the image of Miles, as he drove his big blue pickup truck, that flashed across her mind. The way his hand caressed hers for that brief moment on the West Beach cliff. The promise of heat in his eyes.
Why did all her emotions have to rise up at once? It was as if she’d cursed herself the minute she’d gone to throw that ring away. Miles had shown up and, ever since, she hadn’t been able to control her attraction to him the way she had for the past year.
Even the gruesome death of a good sailor wasn’t enough to take her mind off Miles and what it might be like to actually get to know him.
“Stop it.” She whispered the request to herself as a form of prayer.
While she and Miles were at the scene of Petty Officer Perez’s death, his body had been moved to the morgue. They spoke to the coroner and asked about a timeline for his investigation and the need for an autopsy. The coroner had been cryptic but respectful as he’d relayed that he would be required to do an autopsy even though the preliminary investigation pointed to suicide, just as the commodore had said. The coroner had made it clear that his business didn’t involve the U.S. Navy.
Still, Miles told her he was hopeful they’d get into the autopsy, which would probably be performed tomorrow or Sunday. Time was of the essence.
Miles suggested they take a break for dinner and regroup in a couple of hours. They needed to keep the commodore appeased, yet the reality was that between NCIS and the local LEAs, there wasn’t much wiggle room for two non-JAG naval officers to glean extra information. They’d have to track down every possible lead they could within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, before sources shut down.
As soon as she had pulled on her jeans and cream-colored nubby wool sweater, she went into her kitchen and got a bottle of sparkling water from the refrigerator. She slid her feet into plastic gardening clogs and walked out onto her patio.
The cottage-size home afforded her a wonderfully wild garden area out back, nourished by the moisture and rain-forest climate of Puget Sound. Her patio was the only level spot in her entire backyard. The ground sloped up to her neighbors’ wooden fences—fences she never saw except when she did her annual cleanup of brambles and fallen branches.
Ferns, junipers and other low-climbing evergreen growth blanketed the yard, offset by random patches and containers of flowering plants. Roses thrived in the upper left corner of her garden, while the half dozen whiskey barrels she’d planted with fuchsia and seasonal bulbs gave the green carpet pops of vibrant color.
She took a swig of her water and smiled when the bubbles tickled her nose. Even if she only had five minutes of free time in a day, she spent it here.
With her knitting needles, of course.
Her fingers itched to go back in the house and get the chemo cap she was working on but she wasn’t convinced she had enough time. She looked at her sport watch. Miles had said they’d “connect” after dinner; she assumed he’d call her on her cell within the next half hour or so. She made a mental note to go out to Whidbey Fibers, her favorite yarn haunt on the island, as soon as her work schedule cleared up. Which, judging from today’s events, wasn’t going to be until the commodore felt the entire investigation was over. She’d completed a few of the knit hats she was donating to the yarn shop’s charity drive. The owner collected hand-knit or crocheted hats for chemotherapy patients who’d lost their hair. Ro heard they donated the caps to head trauma patients, too, down at Madagen Army Hospital in Fort Lewis.
If nothing else, focusing on someone, something, other than herself gave her a sense of belonging in the community. Plus it kept her close at heart to her deceased Aunt Millie, her mother’s sister, who had died much too young from cancer. She still missed her, fifteen years after her passing.
Knitting also took her mind off her job.
Impossible at the moment.
It bothered her that the commodore had basically assigned her and Miles to be his lackeys. His orders to them weren’t by any means illegal or unheard of; commanders used their staff subordinates to be their proverbial eyes and ears all the time. It was an effective way to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. But this could turn into a freaking murder investigation and, for the life of her, Ro didn’t see any reason the commodore needed to put both her and Miles, two of his busiest staff officers, on the case.
Of course, he was probably worried about political fallout.
Being politically correct had become ingrained in the navy and other armed forces in the fourteen years since Ro had graduated from the naval academy. Every commander, no matter how morally upstanding he or she was, needed to be very careful when it came to personnel matters. One mistake, one instance of even the appearance of a mistake, could and did end otherwise stellar careers.
Of course, she’d witnessed commanders who should have been fired and never were. And she was justifiably proud of her service to her country and the navy. The great majority of her bosses had been of the highest integrity and served their nation well.
There had been a few jerks, too. Some got their due.
She couldn’t say the commodore here was a bad leader and certainly not a bad person. She just didn’t respect him with the intensity she had other leaders. Maybe if she’d worked with him earlier in her career, she’d have witnessed a more enthusiastic leader when it pertained to the operational side of their missions. She knew him now, when he was gunning for flag rank, and she found it difficult to see past her impression of him as a bit self-absorbed and career-motivated. Again, nothing surprising given his rank and résumé.
The commodore wanted her and Miles to cover his ass, period. So the wing wouldn’t be sullied by unfair comments in the press, sure. But she couldn’t help assuming that the commodore wanted to ensure that he made the next rank.
Wasn’t that what they were all aiming for, no matter where they were in their careers?
Wasn’t she?
* * *
“GOOD GIRL, LUCKY.” Miles scratched the boxer-mix behind her cropped ears. She rolled onto her back and bared her belly for a proper rub.
“It’s okay. Sorry I was gone so long today, gal.”
Lucky was staying with Miles while her owner, another staff officer, was deployed to Afghanistan. Brad had never stated it aloud but Miles knew that leaving Lucky with him had been more of a favor to Miles than anything else.
Miles’s explosive ordnance partner when he’d been in combat had been Riva, a Belgian Malinois. Riva had lost h
er life saving Miles’s when a land mine detonated in an area they were sweeping. She’d received a hero’s burial with honors, as she’d so valiantly and selflessly earned.
Her death had nearly crippled him emotionally. He’d known the odds were against both of them when he went into that godforsaken field but it didn’t make losing her any less painful. His counselor and doctors told him his extended grief for Riva was how his mind kept him from focusing on the loss of his leg and his operational career. On a mental level, he knew that. In his heart, however, there’d always be a special place for Riva.
He figured he’d get his own dog in time. He wasn’t ready yet. It wouldn’t be fair to compare a new pup to Riva.
“Woof!” Lucky gave him the sign that she needed more than a belly rub.
“Okay, let’s go for a little walk. You can’t come with me tonight, okay, gal?” The boxer possessed nowhere near Riva’s mental acuity but Lucky’s ability to perceive his mood changes rivaled that of anyone—human or canine—he’d ever met. He allowed himself to wonder what Lucky would make of Ro.
Miles never had a problem focusing on a mission—it was a vital result of the rigorous ordnance disposal training he’d had. Lose focus, lose your fingers, a limb, your life.
But today he’d been distracted by Ro ever since he’d seen her standing in the middle of Deception Pass Bridge. He’d instantly known it was her—he could recognize her petite, well-toned body, not to mention her wisps of sexy curls, even under a knit cap, anywhere. Although she’d turned him down when he’d asked her out all those months ago, he didn’t harbor a grudge. It wasn’t as though he’d been looking for anything serious. He found her attractive and figured it was mutual, judging from the way she got her back up whenever he was around.
He laughed as Lucky gave him a sharp bark.
“Hey, girl.”
Lucky butted her head into his thigh, seeking another belly rub.
As he rubbed her chest he thought about the animal shelter where he volunteered on weekends. He needed to call and let them know he wouldn’t be in tomorrow morning as usual. He had a feeling his time at the no-kill shelter was going to be limited until this investigation was put to bed.
