Navy Justice (Whidbey Island, Book 5)

by Geri Krotow

  Brad stood in the middle of the kitchen, his hands bloodied. His face was scraped and his clothing had dirt and sand on it. A briar stem clung to one arm of his torn black jacket, and his dark cargo pants were nothing like his Navy fatigue uniform. These pants fit him more tightly; they had to have a lot of stretch to let him move as well as he did. She could all too easily imagine the steely muscles beneath.

  “Wait. How did you get here? Were you in my backyard?”

  “Something like that, yeah.” He absently picked off some of the brambles.

  “I never saw you. Are you hurt?”

  “No. I’m fine. I’m on a tight timeline here, Joy. I don’t suppose you still have base access?”

  “No, I mean yes—for two more days before my ID expires. I’ve been on terminal leave for the past two months. I got out, Brad.”

  “I know. We’re Facebook friends, remember?”

  How could she forget? Whenever she wanted to torment herself with the whys and why nots of her love life, she looked at his profile, which he’d made under a fake name. He’d messaged her when he requested she friend him on Facebook to make sure she knew it was him. He’d only ever posted one photo—of a sunset over the view of the Atlantic from Dam Neck, Virginia. She’d imagined them there, together, in different circumstances hundreds of times since they’d wrapped up Farid’s case.

  Since she’d helped Brad stay out of trouble.

  “What good will having my military ID do? Aren’t you still in the reserves? What about your ID?”

  “I don’t have it. Truth is, I haven’t got any ID on me.”

  Interesting.

  “Any reason why?”

  His green eyes revealed very little, but his slumped shoulders put the fear of God into her.

  “Brad, what happened? Please tell me you weren’t involved in the explosion.”

  His head snapped up.

  “You know about it?”

  She pushed away from the counter and crossed her arms. “I saw it. From my sunroom.”

  “Did you see the aircraft?”

  “I saw two F-18 Growlers, followed by a P-3 and a P-8. They flew west for a minute or two before I saw the fireball. I was worried it was one of the planes at first.”

  “Did you see anything else that seemed suspicious?”

  “No more from me, Brad. You said you needed help. If you want my help, you have to cut me in.”

  He rubbed his hands across the back of his head and neck, much as she’d seen countless military men do after they removed their uniform covers. It was a habitual reaction for him, a sign of his stress, perhaps. His dark hair was longer than he’d worn it as a sailor, longer than Navy regulation by far. The lustrous curls at the nape of his neck made her grip her upper arms to keep from reaching across and touching him.

  He was her idea of beautiful, if the adjective could be applied to a man.

  “I’m FBI now. I’ve been working undercover trying to break up a cell.”

  FBI. That was the “government job” he had. On Facebook he never got specific.

  So he’d been out of the active-duty Navy this entire time. She’d thought his murky job description was because of his SEAL designation.

  You could have gotten together.

  No. She’d dismissed her attraction to Brad. Or rather, locked it away. Months ago.

  Hadn’t she?

  He shook his head. “Damn, it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”

  His profile was achingly familiar. Yet instead of the hardened strength she remembered, he gave off an air of uncertainty. Brad, vulnerable?

  “How about some coffee?” She asked for him as much as for herself. She needed an immediate task to keep her thoughts where they belonged. If she was going to help Brad she needed to listen to his story instead of thinking about how sexy he looked standing in her kitchen.

  * * *

  “YOU’VE GOT UNTIL the police officer shows up. You can shower after I leave for work, wash and dry your clothes, make whatever food you need.” She handed him her largest mug, the one with the Navy JAG crest on it.

  He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement.

  This was the man she’d come to understand first briefly in Cuba, and then Norfolk. He missed nothing; no detail was too minute to him.

  “The cops?”

  “I reported the explosion. They asked me to wait here until someone can take my report.”

  “So I’m not safe here.”

  “You’re safe for now. Tell me what you know, Iverson.”

  “I’m working an undercover op. Let’s just call it against the bad guys for now. My job is to infiltrate them and monitor any suspicious activity. I assumed I was bringing in the suspects today. Things didn’t go according to my assumptions.”

  He took a long pull of his coffee. The dirt under his fingernails made her wonder if he’d had to climb up from West Beach to get here.

  Was that possible? The cliff was a straight drop.

  Brad was a trained SEAL and now an undercover agent for the FBI. Scaling a cliff was all in a day’s work for him.

  “You climbed up the cliff, didn’t you?”

  He ignored her and continued his explanation. “This morning I was supposed to monitor the Sound from West Beach, as instructed by the suspects. I think, and so does my team at the Bureau, that they may want to hit the Naval Air Station since they’ve been surveilling the area for a month. Last night one of the suspects called and told me I should watch the horizon from West Beach very closely this morning.”

  “And?”

  “I had my team figure out what was on the docket for the squadrons on NAS Whidbey for the next several days. This morning is the start of a major West Coast Fleet exercise. When I put it together with what the suspects were feeding me, I took the initiative and decided to be out on the water instead of on the beach.”

  Dread seemed to wrap itself around her.

  “With the Navy? On a Navy ship?”

  She knew the answer before he said it. “No. I was in a small inflatable powerboat. That’s all I’m going to tell you about it.”

  “What did you see, Brad?”

  He quietly tapped the side of his mug. “One of the suspects I’m familiar with was out there in a fishing boat. I stayed as far away from him as I could, as long as I could, but then I saw what looked like a SAM in his arms.”

  “A surface-to-air missile?” She knew enough to realize there was always the possibility of terrorists smuggling in war weapons. The reports she’d read over the years had discussed shipments being stopped by US Customs at the border or sooner.

  “Yes. I had a feeling something wasn’t right about the way they’d told me to watch from the shoreline. After putting it together with the Fleet exercise—it all pointed to trouble of the biggest kind.”

  She had a feeling that the “something not right” was directly related to the explosion.

  “Go on.”

  “I took him, and the weapon, out.”

  “Who’s him, and what exactly do you mean by I took him out?”

  His shifted his eyes, his expression no longer readable.

  “I had to stop him from firing the SAM, Joy.”

  The gravity of the situation, his situation, hit her like a Puget Sound gale in November. “You killed a man out there today?”

  “I disabled his weapon. The resulting explosion did the rest.”

  “Okay. So now all you have to do is call in to FBI headquarters, to your team, and report what happened.” Honestly, did he have to play the dramatic SEAL part? Weren’t those days supposed to be over?

  “I can’t. I blew my cover by blowing their mission. No pun intended.”

  “Do you think they—the terrorists, whoever they are—know you’re the one who stopped the SAM?”

  As she asked, she couldn’t believe that Brad’s cover would be compromised by anything he did or didn’t do. He was a professional who’d completed umpteen missions in the most hellish places on e
arth. He knew how to keep his cover.

  “I have to assume they do, or at the very least they’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  She believed him.

  “Let me clarify. They may suspect I’m not legit when I don’t meet up with them again. They have no way of knowing which LEA I belong to. I’ve been playing the part of the disillusioned émigré who wanted to help quell the American Imperialists. These are all domestic terrorists. None of them speak Pashto or Dari—I threw in a few words here and there to test them. They’re all homegrown wannabes. My team was alerted that they were trying to leave the country to join a terrorist group overseas.”

  “But they decided to get some credibility by doing one of those sleeper-type actions?”

  “Yes. This is more than a sleeper cell, though. They have contacts with the bad guys overseas. That’s certain now that I identified the SAM. I just don’t know who that contact is yet.”

  Brad’s wide range of skills, including his ability with more than one foreign language, was a big part of what had made him such a valuable asset to the Navy SEALs. All SEALs had intensive training in weapons identification and employment. If he said he saw a SAM about to be launched, it was true.

  And the explosion left no doubt.

  “The thing is, I think they’re also targeting an individual here on Whidbey. They’ll lie low if they have to, until the LEA presence lessens, but they’re going to go after him sooner or later.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair. “Terrorists who are so bold they’ll try to shoot down a US Navy aircraft just offshore, in US territory, don’t care about the LEA all over the place, Brad. They won’t wait.”

  His appreciation of her accurate observation gleamed in his eyes. The instant warmth that flushed her cheeks was impossible to control.

  “Exactly.”

  * * *

  THE DOORBELL RANG, and Brad saw her shoulders tense, her mouth tighten in a grim line.

  “That’s the OHPD or sheriff’s deputy. Coming over in the respectable way.” She tried to keep it light by poking fun at his entrance via her side door earlier, but her anxiety was palpable.

  You’ve done this to her.

  “OHPD?”

  “Oak Harbor Police Department. Keep up, Mr. FBI.”

  “Are you going to tell them I’m here?”

  “Why can’t I? You’re FBI. Don’t all LEA talk to each other?”

  “You know damn well they don’t. I’m undercover, Joy. I can’t be seen.”

  He knew he was asking her to trust him with little reason. He’d made no attempt to contact her since he’d been free to do so. Only now, when he was in serious trouble, had he sought her out.

  “You don’t have to do this, Joy. Say the word and I’ll go out the back and disappear. Just give me thirty seconds lead time.”

  “No, don’t go. I’m not going to say anything to them other than what I reported on the phone. There’s no need, not legally.”

  He saw the inner war play out in her expression. She had a beautiful face, capable of distracting the most hardened criminal. Sometimes her face revealed what she was thinking, what she was feeling. But she was capable of hiding her emotions, too. Her poker face had let her get what they needed to set Farid free from the hell he’d been condemned to. He felt a rush of warmth.

  “You trust me,” he said quietly.

  “That’s a discussion for later. Go into my bedroom and stay there until I come and get you.”

  * * *

  “I WAS STANDING right here, looking out through my binoculars. That’s when I noticed the explosion. The vibration hit a few seconds later.”

  “Roger.”

  The Oak Harbor police officer wrote more notes, her face noncommittal.

  “Have you gotten a lot of witness accounts this morning?”

  Officer Katie Dade looked up and shook her head.

  “Not as many as you’d think. Most of your neighbors were either in the shower or already at work, and the others heard just the explosion. You’re the only one who saw it from here. But we had other witnesses who were walking their dogs farther down the beach.”

  By farther down Officer Dade meant the stretch of coastline miles from Joy’s house, closer to the Naval Air Station.

  “I thought they’d send a sheriff’s deputy.”

  “Normally, yes. Your home’s in the county’s jurisdiction. They’re swamped at the moment, so they sent me. Mind if I look through your binoculars?”

  “No, go right ahead.”

  As Officer Dade focused the binoculars, Joy prayed they were almost done with the interview. She’d never hidden a potential fugitive before and didn’t like being on the wrong side of the law, regardless of the situation or her motives. Regardless of the fact that she trusted Brad.

  Motives.

  Were they centered on a belief that Brad was telling her the truth, or did he still hold some kind of crazy sway over her? Or both? It would help if she knew that all her fantasies about him weren’t unrequited—that he at least shared her physical attraction.

  Not that it made a difference now.

  “These are pretty good. You get them in the Navy?” Officer Dade motioned at her with the binoculars.

  “No. They were a gift from my parents. I got used to good binoculars when I was aboard an aircraft carrier.”

  “So you drove an aircraft carrier?”

  “No, not really.” JAGs didn’t stand bridge watches, although she’d observed some of the tactical operations. Not typical for a JAG, but she’d wanted to spread her professional wings a bit.

  Why was she telling a strange police officer about her Navy career? Officer Dade was nice and all, and obviously a polished professional. Still, she hadn’t asked for the information.

  Brad had been back in her life for less than an hour and not only was she hoping that he reciprocated her ridiculous crush, which had gone on for far too long, she was also forgetting all her legal training.

  Don’t say more than you need to. Ever.

  “You got a pretty clear look from here. Too bad these things aren’t also a camera.” Officer Dade rested the binoculars against her uniform.

  “Yeah, too bad.”

  Please leave.

  “That’s all you remember? You’re sure you’ve told me everything, Ms. Alexander?”

  “Yes, that’s it. I’m sorry it’s not more, and that I bothered the authorities with this when you already have witnesses. I know it’s going to be a long day for you.”

  “It’s fine. I mean, no one got hurt, right?”

  “Did anyone? Get hurt?” Playing stupid was pushing it, but Brad needed to know what they’d found out so far.

  “No, not that we’re aware of. It doesn’t make sense that there was an empty fishing boat out there, though. Especially one that caused such a huge explosion.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Her tension kicked into high gear. She was a JAG, not a SEAL, and she didn’t relish one second of her involvement in Brad’s undercover op.

  Officer Dade sighed and handed the binoculars back to her.

  “Thanks for your cooperation, Ms. Alexander. If you remember anything else, give us a call.”

  “Will do.”

  Joy walked the young woman to the front door and wanted to shout with relief once the door closed and she heard the police car drive off.

  That had been too close—as well as too easy.

  What did it say about her that she’d lied so effortlessly? And to a police officer, yet.

  * * *

  “YOU DID GREAT, JOY.” He leaned against the counter, his bulk making the kitchen seem tiny.

  “Great? Lying to an officer, trying to manipulate her into telling me classified information about the investigation?” She poured coffee into his mug and took out the small bag of chamomile that was steeping in hers.

  “Trust me.”

  That was the problem. She did trust Brad. It was herself she was having trouble with.

 
“What do you need from me, Brad?”

  His stare unnerved her but she’d be damned if she’d let him see it. She met his eyes and waited for him to blink. He didn’t. Instead, he glanced away and spoke as if transcribing an operational report or a court order.

  “For right now, I need to stay put. I need time for things to settle. And I need to figure out why they’re after a certain high-ranking military official who lives here.”

  “You know who they’re after?” As she asked, she suddenly knew who Brad was about to name.

  “Is it General Grimes?”

  “General Grimes.”

  They said his name in unison.

  General Grimes had been the Marine Corps Flag Officer in charge of the overall mission that Brad’s SEAL team had completed nearly five years ago. The same mission that had depended on Farid’s help. The same operation that had precipitated Farid’s arrest and incarceration.

  Brad put his mug down on the counter. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t, but it makes sense. He’s the highest-ranking military person I know of on the island. He retired here.” They’d both relied on General Grimes’s testimony to free Farid.

  “How do you know he’s here?”

  She shrugged. “I ran into him at the commissary about two months ago. Or rather, I saw a man who looked just like him but he was in civilian clothes. I wasn’t about to go up to him and remind him that I was the one who’d forced him to testify—I pissed him off enough the first time around. I read in Navy Times that he’d retired to much pomp and circumstance. Go figure, he ended up here, far away from the spotlight he’d still be under if he’d stayed in DC.”

  Brad must have heard the rancor in her reply. “He might have not appreciated you, Joy, but he respected you. He had to. You got the testimony you needed out of him, and Farid was released.”

  “Farid’s free because he wasn’t guilty of anything. Even Grimes couldn’t scrape up a bad word about him without looking like an ass—or lying.” The memory of running into Grimes in the commissary flashed before her. “It was weird seeing the big, bad Marine Corps General put cans of baked beans in his shopping cart like a regular mortal.”

  Brad snorted. “We all put our pants on the same way, Joy.”

  A smile nudged her lips in spite of the serious issue.