Military Man

by Marie Ferrarella

  Dead men told no tales, right? The old pirate adage was as true now as it had been when pirate ships roamed the seven seas.

  He’d gotten a sensational rush executing the driver. Envisioning Ryan in front of him, he’d slit the man’s throat from ear to ear. The death rattle he heard had sent his adrenaline singing.

  McGruder had panicked, crying that no one was supposed to have been killed.

  Which was when he’d turned the knife the guard had hidden for him on the van and driven it into the man’s chest. Twice.

  McGruder had dropped like a lead weight right in front of him, his face frozen for all eternity in startled surprise.

  Or so he’d thought.

  McGruder should have been dead, just like that driver. So why wasn’t he?

  Jason clenched his cold hands in angry, impotent fists and held them tightly against himself, battling an overwhelming rage.

  When he’d ventured out of the cave where he was holed up to get provisions for himself, the first thing he’d taken note of was the discarded newspaper on the bench. The headline had been devoted to him. The article began by declaring his “daring escape” and the death of one of the transport guards.

  One of the transport guards.

  Which meant that the other was still alive. A second headline, smaller and over the last column on the right, told him that far from pushing up daisies, the man who had aided him had been taken to a nearby hospital and was presently in a coma.

  A coma, for God’s sakes!

  McGruder should have been dead.

  He was going to be dead. As soon as he could safely make the right arrangements. There was no way he trusted fate to tie up this loose end for him, even though according to what he could read quickly without arousing suspicion, the wounded man was not expected to pull through.

  The man had to have a charmed life just to have made it this far, Jason grumbled, massaging his arms to create the feeling of some kind of warmth.

  But when it came to charmed lives, there was no disputing that he was the champion. And he meant it to remain that way.

  He also meant to eliminate his primary target, the reason this entire charade of his being a rising young executive at Fortune TX, Ltd. had taken place. He’d already been beyond fed up with the part when his cover was blown. But he was still going to wipe all traces of Ryan Fortune, his family and their influence off the face of the earth even if it took him a lifetime.

  It would have made his grandfather proud.

  The thought heartened him. Farley and his stories were the only part of his childhood that he looked back upon with any sort of fondness.

  His plan all set in his mind, Jason began to riffle through the plastic shopping bag, taking out the provisions he’d brought back with him. It was way past time for breakfast and his stomach was growling, making him even more surly than he already was.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again today. It’s too soon, you know. There’s no answer yet,” Lucy tagged on after she’d gotten over her initial surprise at seeing that the two men she’d met this morning were back.

  This time she was alone in the autopsy area. The unexpected rush was over. The autopsies, all done, all dictated, were just waiting for transcription. She was busy cataloging tissue samples that had to go to the lab.

  Lucy had assumed that their visit to the hospital, which Daniels had overheard was the men’s next destination this morning, couldn’t have been very fruitful. After all, the other guard couldn’t tell them anything in his present state.

  But there had to be a hundred other clues they could be running down right about now, separately or together. Why were they back here again?

  “We didn’t come about the DNA results,” Collin told her, taking the lead when Emmett said nothing. He’d always considered himself rather closemouthed. Compared to Emmett, he was a regular chatterbox. “We came to ask you to take another sample to run.”

  Lucy looked from Collin to Emmett, confused. “Why? There was nothing wrong with the first one.”

  “No, not from him,” Collin told her. “From someone else.”

  She put down the pen she was writing with. “Who?”

  “The other guard.”

  She stared at Collin. “The one who’s still in a coma?”

  Collin nodded solemnly, looking around the room. It made him think of the inside of a stainless-steel refrigerator. “That’s the one.”

  “I’m not that up on my law, but isn’t that illegal?”

  “You let us worry about the legal points.” Emmett’s voice was sharp, curt, cutting off any further comment on her part.

  But the way he said it only served to arouse her suspicions. Up until now she’d only been kidding. However something just didn’t feel right. And when it didn’t feel right, it usually meant that it wasn’t. She’d learned to trust her instincts a long time ago. They were rarely wrong.

  Lucy paused for a long moment, looking from one man to the other, trying to gauge their motivation and whether or not she should make a run for it. If they were dangerous for some reason, she didn’t want to be alone with them.

  But Collin didn’t look dangerous, she thought. Just somber. She could handle somber; dangerous was something else again. Summoning bravado, she looked directly at him. “Those credentials you showed me were real, right?”

  “You can call and check with the Bureau and the Agency,” Collin told her. “We are who we say we are.”

  Lucy hesitated. She was somewhat familiar with lies that passed for the truth. She’d used them herself during her teen years. Living for several years with her grandmother, she was unaccustomed to having any real authority over her. She would come and go as she pleased. When it came her mother’s or her father’s turn to house her, she’d get around their questions and their rules by learning how to phrase her responses so that it sounded as if she was in agreement or planned to live up to whatever it was that they expected of her. Spin, she’d discovered, meant everything.

  Right now she had a feeling she was being spun herself.

  She looked pointedly at Collin. “And will they also tell me that those two people who you are supposed to be are currently supposed be here, investigating this prison escape?”

  Collin smiled to himself. She was sharp. He’d always liked a sharp mind. To him it was as sexy as a long pair of legs, which she also seemed to possess despite her overall petite stature. The straight, dark skirt she wore along with her lab coat was short enough to make her legs look endless.

  It was also enough to stir him even though he didn’t want to be.

  “It’s not for you to question us,” Emmett informed her curtly.

  Collin caught his cousin’s eye and shook his head slowly. Intimidation might have been the right way to go at the hospital with the wet-behind-the-ears police officer, but that wasn’t the case here. Not with Lucy Gatling. From what he could ascertain, the woman was too sharp, too savvy, too inclined to ask the right questions of the wrong people and thereby arouse suspicion.

  They needed her on their side, Collin decided. And she had to move there of her own volition, not through any coercion on their part.

  Far more acquainted with force than gentility, Collin still managed to gently take her by the arm and usher the med student over to the side. Away from Emmett.

  He lowered his voice and spoke confidentially, hoping that might arouse a feeling of camaraderie within her. “Look, we need your help.”

  She was right. Something was wrong here. “I can’t just—”

  Collin cut her off before she could complete her protest. He needed to appeal to the feminine side of her before the iron curtain came down. He had a feeling that she could wield her logical side with aplomb, and though they needed her expertise, it was her empathy that would best help them.

  “Emmett really is with the FBI and I’m really with Special Ops,” he told her. “And,” he added, “Emmett really is Jason Jamison’s younger brother.” His eyes held hers, silen
tly making his appeal. “This is an in-family thing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the details of the case—”

  With anyone else, Lucy would have taken the words as patronizing. But the look in his eyes told her that he was asking a genuine question. And speaking to her as if she were his equal. “I’ve read a couple of newspaper articles,” she replied.

  He nodded. “Then you know that Jason is probably insane. Emmett and I want to track him down and find him before he hurts anyone else.”

  “Isn’t that what everyone on the case is trying to do?”

  “Yeah, but he’s not everyone’s brother,” he pointed out. Which made this all personal. “And we want to take him in alive if possible.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “Exactly how are you involved in this?”

  “I’m Jason’s cousin. More important than that, I’m Emmett’s cousin.” His tone was frank, honest. Instincts told him that she would respect nothing less. Respond to nothing less. “My name is Lt. Collin Jamison.” He nodded toward Emmett. “He asked for my help.”

  In all her dealings with the military, she’d never met a ranger before. Members of that group were regarded as elite. A little above human. He looked very human to her. “And you really are with Special Ops?”

  He grinned at her, making her stomach unexpectedly flip over like a pancake on a frying pan. “After this is over, we can go camping and I’ll show you my survival skills.”

  She laughed and shook her head. The man had a charm about him, there was no denying that. Added to his chiseled features and his almost-heart-stopping physique with its hard muscles and rigid structure and it was a combination that was difficult to resist. She had more than a sneaking suspicion that Collin Jamison got his way not just through skill, but because of his looks.

  Lucy glanced over her shoulder at the other man. Emmett’s impatience was all but wafting over to her like heat emanating from a concrete wall in the dead of summer. From here on in, she had a gut feeling she was going to be going against the rules. It gave her pause. She had a lot to lose.

  But then, she had always been a risk taker. Her mother’s death had taught her only one thing. That life was tenuous. You might as well live it to the fullest if you could.

  “All right,” she said to Collin, “what is it that you want from me?”

  From out of the depths of his soul, long-buried emotions that he had begun to think he’d only imagined or dreamed whispered responses to her question that luckily did not reach his lips. She aroused him. Partially because she reminded him of Paula, partially because she did Paula one better. She had a verve, a wit to her that Paula hadn’t.

  He could see himself holding Lucy in his arms. Could almost taste the texture of her lips against his. Could feel his body responding to the fantasy that was spinning itself in his head.

  It took effort to mentally pour cold water on it. But he managed. Just barely.

  “The other guard’s still unconscious in the hospital,” he told her. “There are scratches on the inside of his right forearm. You found skin and blood under the dead man’s nails. We’d like you to take a sample of the guard’s DNA and compare it to what you have.”

  Her brow furrowed as she tried to fill in the empty spaces. “So now you think that one guard fought with the other?”

  He inclined his head. “Something like that.”

  She didn’t quite follow the logic of this. “What good will knowing that do you?” Before Collin answered, she hurried to add, “I’m not trying to be obstinate, I’m serious. I want to know. I’m going into forensic medicine as my career and I want all the insight I can get.”

  He blew out a breath. He knew that Emmett thought they were wasting time here, but he felt she had a right to an answer. He wished he had one.

  “To be honest, I don’t know yet. It’ll show us that the two prison guards fought. Which could mean that they just didn’t get along, or, most likely, that at least one of them was being bribed by Jason to help him escape.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” he allowed. “Jason couldn’t have just pulled this off on his own. He had to have some kind of help.” He let her in on a miscellaneous piece of information he’d picked up on the way over. “No one reported any clothes missing within fifteen miles of where they found the van. I doubt if Jason’s running around in a bright orange jumpsuit, since that makes him a hell of a hard thing to ignore.

  “And if he didn’t steal any clothes, then someone brought some onto the van and hid them for him. Which means he had an accomplice. And more than likely, his accomplice was one of the guards. Or both.” And then he shrugged. “It’s the best we can come up with until the guard wakes up.”

  “If the guard wakes up,” Emmett interjected from the sidelines.

  “Always the optimist,” Collin murmured, but he said it with affection.

  Growing up, their lives had been as different as butterflies were from earthworms. There’d been a great deal of turmoil in Emmett’s life when he was growing up. Unlike either Emmett’s or Jason’s, his own childhood had been tranquil and happy. He’d had a healthy relationship with his own father, August, a psychologist who worked for the CIA.

  He’d admired his father so much that when it came to choosing the path he wanted to take for the rest of his life, he’d majored in psychology and had gone to West Point to be a soldier like his father had been. The CIA Special Ops program had seemed like the natural step for him after graduation.

  Still speaking to Lucy, Collin inclined his head toward his cousin. “What he said.” And then he looked at her with eyes that seemed to see into her very soul. “Will you help us?”

  Lucy blew out a breath, then lifted the hair off her neck, the way she did whenever she was debating something that left her feeling uncertain.

  This would mean stepping outside the lines, something that was bound to get her in trouble if she was discovered. She wasn’t anywhere in her career where she could risk censure or the displeasure of the powers that be. Still, she could empathize with the two men. Knew how frustrating it could be to be told to stand on the sidelines when a member of your own family was involved. To this day, she still had no clue how her mother had died or why.

  The nebulous “in the line of duty” covered a great deal and explained absolutely nothing. But whenever she asked for details, she received no answers.

  “Okay,” she finally said, throwing her lot in with Military Man and his solemn cousin. “I have to take care of some tissue samples first, but after that I’m supposed to go to lunch. I guess I could try hospital cafeteria food for a change of pace.”

  She was rewarded with a grin from Collin. Like a shot, it went straight to her knees, weakening them as if they’d been physically hit.

  With his killer smile and charm, he was going to be one to watch out for, she suddenly thought. She’d be better off having dealings with his cousin. Although good-looking, the man scowled enough to take the place of a rain cloud at a moment’s notice.

  At least that gave her a fighting chance. She had an uneasy feeling that being around Lt. Collin Jamison left her with no chance at all. Even though she’d only met him, she’d a feeling that he could pose a threat to life as she knew it. And turn it on its ear with very little effort at all.

  Six

  The same officer was sitting in front of the transport guard’s room when Collin returned to the hospital with Lucy. It didn’t take a body-language expert to see that the young policeman was even more bored now than he had been this morning.

  He had all the signs of someone starved for action, Collin thought. The officer came to life the moment he saw the two of them walking toward him, immediately jumping to his feet. The chair he’d been tilting on started to fall over but he grabbed it and set it straight before it could hit the floor.

  Collin smiled at the guard as if they were old friends. That confused the hell out of him, Collin thought, judging by the man’s expression.

  �
��I’m going to have to impose on you one more time, Officer Harris.”

  The slight pause between the statement and the policeman’s surname was hardly perceptible as he read the man’s badge. But Lucy had heard it and she glanced at the man at her side with interest. He read people rather than just stomped right into the middle of things the way so many of her parents’ friends had. She supposed it was all in keeping with the image of “the new soldier” the military was trying to push, she thought, doing her best to suppress a smile. She wondered how her father would have reacted to him once the initial approval of a man in uniform had faded a little.

  The police officer looked a little leery. He glanced up and down the hall, but no one else was coming their way. Lucy couldn’t decide whether that fact relieved him or made him nervous.

  “With all due respect, sir,” he said to Collin after a moment’s hesitation, “this isn’t supposed to be Grand Central Station.”

  In Collin’s experience, usually only New York natives referred to busy areas that way. He’d thought he’d detected a hint of an accent. He smiled, ignoring the intent of the statement and diverting the conversation to a path of his choosing. “From New York?”

  The officer looked surprised at having been found out. He cleared his throat uncertainly. “A long time ago.” The next words were uttered with a thick Texas twang that he purposely laid on with broad strokes. “Came here with my folks when I was ten.”

  Collin nodded, absorbing the personal information with a degree of satisfaction. Things were always easier when the people he was dealing with took on names and backgrounds, when they unwittingly shared a little of themselves, however minor. Doing so brought them all up to a completely different plateau. A plateau where secrets were less dear and things that he needed to know were more accessible.

  Harris cleared his throat again. “You’re the first one to guess that I’m from New York.” It seemed important for him to let them know that.