by Geri Krotow
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. All of you boat-schoolers are the same. You had it pounded into your heads that only lifers are ‘real’ officers. But there’s a war on, Ro. Do you think any of the reservists who’ve taken bullets for us are less-than? Do you think any less of your classmates who’ve gotten out?”
She was silent as they picked their way down the narrowest stretch of the twisting path.
They reached level ground and she looked up at him.
“I’ve never thought about it. I suppose I did have some of that black-and-white thinking, in the beginning. But I don’t feel that way anymore.”
Sure you don’t.
He kept it to himself. She’d made it clear; she was transferring and their relationship wasn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WITH THE INVESTIGATION at a standstill since Lydia Reis’s arrest, Miles took advantage of the extra time to court Ro. She tried to convince him that they were going to stay “casual” but he ignored her. Let her convince herself—he knew that what they had was once-in-a-lifetime.
Three weeks after their trip to Victoria, Miles managed to convince her to join him for a day that he promised her would be fun and all-outdoors. It still kicked him in the gut that she hadn’t admitted they needed to take their relationship to the next level. He’d never been a quitter. If he hadn’t learned anything else from his mishap downrange, he’d learned to appreciate what he did have, even if just for today.
And just for today, he had Roanna with him for what he hoped would be the outing of their lives. She’d been ready when he’d picked her up late in the afternoon. It was mid-June and the sun wouldn’t set until after 10:00 p.m. or so. They had a gloriously bright, breezy day.
Perfect for his mission.
* * *
RO KNEW SHE was playing with fire, setting herself up for more pain once she inevitably transferred from Whidbey.
From Miles.
He’d seemed so earnest when he’d asked her out today that she couldn’t see any reason to turn him down. They’d gotten together once or twice since the trip to Victoria. The last date had led to making love all night, this time at his place. Still, she’d done her best to convince herself that she’d be able to walk away.
She had to. After being pulled apart emotionally she’d accepted that she wouldn’t feel right about quitting her navy career and taking up the life of an artist without a more solid plan. Her ability to plan for all outcomes was perhaps the only thing she could still rely on.
“So, are we going on a hike?” She had to admit—it felt awfully natural to be sitting in his truck again.
“We’re not hiking. I’ve got something else in mind.” Miles wore the smug expression she’d only seen on him when he made her climax in record time. This was going to be interesting.
“Okay. So, where to?”
“Trust me.” How often had he said that to her in the past month?
He pulled into what appeared to be a private driveway. The road snaked through low-hanging branches and Ro caught glimpses of moss and lichen that covered the visible rocks and ground in a layer of carpet that rivaled any wall-to-wall she’d ever seen.
“This is the secret part of the Pacific Northwest that I love.” She turned to Miles and smiled. “It’s like a private fairy land.”
He laughed. “Maybe it is.”
The shelter of the firs and pines gave way to an open meadow that reached out to the ocean.
“Is this a private beach?” She prided herself on her familiarity with the island and its beaches. They were close to Deception Pass, she knew, but she’d never been to this particular stretch of the island.
“Hold on to your hat, Ro.”
As they got closer to the water Ro made out a solid dock and a good-size motorboat. Miles maneuvered the truck into a spot between an SUV and a BMW.
He turned off the engine.
“Ready?” His eyes sparkled but not from the reflection of the water. It was the way he looked whenever he was happy.
“Sure.”
She had unexplained butterflies in her stomach and she wanted to giggle—always a sign that she was on edge. Her premonitions never steered her wrong. What on earth was Miles up to?
* * *
MILES HAD TO BITE his cheek to keep from grinning. Ro wasn’t an easy woman to impress, much less surprise. Krissy, Dick and Delores had been all too eager to help him get Ro to go with him the day they went to Victoria. Today was harder; he didn’t have them there to convince her. He’d played on her sympathies, telling her how much he missed having a dog and how he found himself with more free time than usual. Even he wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to come along; he was simply glad that she had.
“Let me grab something out of the back.” He didn’t want her to catch on to his entire plan, not yet. He pulled out what he hoped looked like an oversize backpack, just a place to stash a couple of sandwiches and drinks for a little picnic.
Instead, he’d painstakingly packed a chilled bottle of champagne and several different gourmet finger foods he’d found recipes for online. He wasn’t a bad cook but after taking nearly half the morning to prep, cut, dice, slice and construct fancy snacks, he felt as if he could win one of those cooking show contests on cable television.
Ro didn’t say anything when she saw the backpack. Her eyebrows rose in query.
“Is what I’m wearing okay?” She gestured at her fleece-lined windbreaker and jeans.
“Perfect.” He’d rolled up a space-age blanket in the backpack, too.
They walked up to a small shack that had a Closed and Be Back at Five sign hanging from a rusty chain. Miles glanced at his watch.
“They should be back in the next ten minutes or so. We’ll enjoy the view until they get here.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” She had that line between her eyebrows again. He knew he couldn’t push her too far or his hope for a joyous day would be marred by her confusion. A laugh escaped him as the thought formed in his mind.
“What’s so funny, Miles?” Now she had that tic under her left eye, the one that had reappeared after her black eye had completely healed.
“Nothing, nothing at all. We’re waiting for the man who owns this place to come back with a group of tourists.”
“On a boat, I take it?”
“Yes. Then we’re going to get on the boat.”
She peered at the shack. A weathered sign bore the words Deception Pass Tours—Three Seasons.
“Deception Pass?”
“Yes. I know you run over the bridge during your workouts, and that you hike down to the beach to collect sea glass. So I thought you might enjoy seeing the pass from the water.”
She smiled and he lost his breath.
He’d lost his heart the moment he climbed out of the tree with Henry the Eighth and handed him to her waiting mother’s arms. He’d never looked at Delores. He’d only had eyes for her.
“This is going to be a fun day.” She bounced in girlish delight and he would have pulled her to him for a decisive kiss but the sound of a motorboat stopped him.
He turned toward the water and saw Chuck bringing his last group of tourists into the pier. With the ease that came from years of practice, Chuck was out of the boat and had secured the lines to the cleats. He turned back to help the half dozen passengers out of the craft and onto dry land.
“Miles, isn’t that the commodore?” Ro’s voice was soft and urgent next to his.
His gut turned over when he recognized Sanders.
“Yes.”
The memory of Sanders in Victoria when they were there flashed in his mind.
He should’ve known he couldn’t do anything on this island without someone they worked with finding out. Not that it mattered; Sand
ers had already put two and two together.
He knew Miles and Ro were an item, he just didn’t know how much of an item. Miles didn’t plan to tell Sanders anything about his private life, and even less about Ro. His gut told him the less Sanders knew about their relationship, the better. He didn’t trust the guy.
They’d both stayed away from talking about the Perez case, and the commodore’s probable involvement in fraud, since that trip to Victoria. He’d only seen the commodore at the AOMs.
“Hey, Miles. Ro.” The commodore nodded at them, and Miles gave a brief nod back.
The commodore’s daughter stood next to her father. Her expression had the pasted-on smile that Miles was all too familiar with. So many of the navy brats were schooled from a young age to behave a certain way around anyone who worked with their parent, especially when that parent was of such a high rank. Miles felt sorry for the girl. With Sanders so career-bent and his wife, Karen, a mess, he hoped their daughter had another adult she could count on.
Miles didn’t like the way the commodore looked at him and Ro, as if he knew they were on some kind of intimate outing.
As if he knew Miles’s secret.
“Is Chuck taking another group out today?” Sanders started in on small talk, which Miles loathed, and he knew Ro didn’t want to prolong her contact with the commodore, either.
“No, they’re taking themselves out.” Chuck, the boat owner and operator, ambled up from the dock. “Miles here is a good sailor. I had him take me out last week to make sure he could handle the currents in the pass.”
“It’s not so tough with a motorboat.” Miles needed this conversation to end quickly.
“You trust this guy with your life?” Sanders directed the question at Ro.
“Of course I do. But I don’t expect this jaunt to become a life-or-death scenario.” She laughed and Miles wanted to kiss her. She could charm the pants off a jet pilot pulling five Gs.
“Jaunt?” Sanders angled his head at Miles.
Miles said nothing.
“Yes, I collect sea glass and I often find some on the beaches in the pass. With the boat, Miles can point out some of the beaches I’ve missed, especially on the Fidalgo Island side.”
Ro put her hand through Miles’s arm. “Ready?”
He tore his gaze from Sanders and looked at her upturned face. The hell with it. He gave her a big kiss and smiled at her.
“Sure, sweetie.”
Sanders coughed.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to your adventure. See you in the office on Monday.” Sanders walked off with his daughter, and Miles released his breath. He pulled Ro into the safety of his arms.
“You are amazing, Ro.”
“No problem. Besides, what’s the big deal if he thinks we’re on a date?”
“He might think we’re blowing off work to play.”
She sent him a brilliant smile. “Aren’t we?”
“Perhaps.” He kept his own smile small. He didn’t want her to figure too much out before they got to the pass.
It wasn’t every day you asked a woman who barely admitted you were dating to marry you.
* * *
“YOU’VE BEEN QUIET.” Ro sat next to him in the motorboat as he steered them around the point and into the depths of the pass. The water went from strong ocean surges to calm, but the currents underneath the glassy surface converged into whitecaps at the deepest part of the pass, under the bridge.
“Hmm.” He reluctantly took his arm from around her shoulders and pointed out some huge eagles’ nests. “Look, there’s the couple that built the one over there.”
The sight of two bald eagles perched in the green fir trees distracted Ro, which gave him a few heartbeats to think.
What was it about Sanders that had his hackles up?
He replayed the conversation in his mind.
“Is Chuck taking another group out today?”
Ro turned to him. “Miles, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Sanders knew damn well that Chuck didn’t have a tour later today. The sign on the shack posts it clearly—two tours on Saturdays, the last one at five.”
“So?”
He couldn’t allow the motor to idle as they had to get away from the ocean swells and into the relative calm of Deception Pass.
“So, what if Sanders did kill Perez? And what if Reis was telling the truth—that the aircraft status sheets were forged by Perez, who was paid by Sanders?”
“Patsy Jordan had the statistics on the airframe maintenance we’d asked for—plus the expenditure accounts from the past several months, remember?”
“Go on.”
“It’s clear from both that while the wing and its squadrons had near-perfect safety and maintenance records, the costs for repair and spare parts was off the charts.”
“And the commodore signed off on it all.”
“Yes.” Ro chewed on her lip. “I wanted to come tell you what I did with the information, but I felt that if one of us was going to fall on our sword, it should be me. It’s about damn time I stopped following all the rules, all the orders I’ve been given, when I know the right thing to do is report Sanders.”
“You turned the paperwork in to the hotline?” He referred to the toll-free fraud, waste and abuse line that any service member could call to report suspected wrongdoing. Without repercussion, technically.
“Initially, yes, I was going to do that. But then I realized that if Sanders is lying, how do I know he doesn’t have other people in his pocket up the chain of command, even on the GSO side?” She crossed her arms over her life vest. “I took the papers to Ramsey. He seemed surprised, but was very grateful that I did. He also mentioned that Reis was free and clear of any charges. I sensed that he wanted to say more, but then he didn’t.”
“Ro, come here.” He had to keep his hands on the wheel.
She moved closer to him.
“Let me kiss you.”
It wasn’t as long as he wanted it to be but he did his best to assure her that there was more where this came from.
When she pulled back, her eyes had that dreaminess that made him wish he could drop anchor and kiss her again. More than kiss her again.
“Ro, you’re incredible. I’m so proud of you. If Ramsey’s as sharp as we think, he’s already figured out what I know—Sanders did kill Perez.”
She shook her head. “There’s no proof—no one saw Sanders or anyone else shove Perez off that cliff. And without Perez here we’ll never know if the commodore gave him the money or not. It was a lot of money, but in the grander scheme of things, not that much. But at least we’ll get him on fraud. Hopefully he’ll get kicked out.”
“Ro, you’re the one who was so upset we weren’t finding the killer. I’m telling you, I think we have. It’s Sanders.”
“Okay, I don’t disagree with you. But again, what are we going to do without any proof?”
“It’s not what we’re going to do or not do. It’s what Sanders is going to do. He knows we know about the airframe records. He may also know we spoke to Reis, or at least that we knew about her relationship with Perez. It’s common sense that people would come and talk to us once they learned we were doing the unofficial investigation.”
Miles shook his head as he maneuvered the boat into the center of the pass, where the currents were most turbulent but the view most spectacular.
“If the police didn’t buy her stories, it’s because she didn’t tell them, Ro. Remember, she loved Perez. For better or worse. She didn’t want his name sullied in front of his family. Even after she’d realized he was a pig.”
“So she was willing to take the heat by admitting she’d had an inappropriate relationship with him—” Ro kept their story rolling “—but never spoke about t
he affair in Spain. She didn’t need to. They’d never find out.”
“Right, which brings me back to Sanders.”
“Okay.”
“He thinks, knows, that we’re the only two people alive who may have been able to piece everything together. If you’re a killer, if you’re the type who’s willing to put others at risk for the sake of your career, what would you do to us?”
Ro gulped. “But he...he was friendly on the dock.”
They were well into the pass. The bridge loomed up ahead.
“Of course he was. But he wasn’t surprised to see us, was he?”
“No, not from his reaction.”
“Just like in Victoria. Ro, I think he’s been following us.” It all made sense now—the several times they’d “run into” Sanders over the past few weeks.
“So what if he has? He’s not with us now.”
“No, but he could have watched me come out here last week, and then casually asked Chuck what I was doing. Chuck didn’t know he knew me, or care.”
Ro’s expression was pale and her lips tight.
“Oh, God, Miles, you’re scaring me.” She took in the jagged scenery. “You said he’d been in your house that night he and Karen showed up at my place. Do you think he found anything out then?” Tall cliffs shot out of the water’s edge and rose over two hundred feet. “Do you think he’s watching us now? Waiting with a weapon?”
Miles nodded. “That’s how he figured out he could find us in Victoria. I had my internet open to the ferry schedule for the day we went.” He wanted to kick himself for being so slow on the draw, but there wasn’t time for that. “He could have a weapon, who knows?”
Miles turned the boat around.
“I’m not going to wait to find out.” His gut told him the same thing his mind did.
They were in trouble.
Ro’s cell phone rang in her front jeans pocket. She pulled it out with a shaky hand.
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. It says ‘Private Caller.’” She answered. “Hello?”
Miles watched as Ro’s face grew even paler. Her eyes widened and she had her mouth open in a silent cry for help. Without a sound, she cut off the connection.
