Military Man

by Marie Ferrarella

  Seven

  The moment Collin and Lucy walked into the small sandwich shop, they were hit with a solid wall of humanity, all intent on eventually snaking their way past a short counter where five workers, all below the age of twenty-two, were furiously filling orders, their plastic-gloved hands flying almost as fast as the speed of sound.

  Despite the crew’s speed, it took fifteen minutes before they got their turn to order. After telling the young male with the shaven head what she wanted, Lucy looked at her watch.

  Damn, it was later than she thought. No time to sit, even if they could find a place to accommodate them both. “I’m going to have to get this to go.”

  Collin glanced at the kid behind the counter. Watching his hands, Collin couldn’t help wondering how long it would take him to safely disassemble an automatic weapon.

  Just the military in him, he supposed. He viewed most of life in khaki colors.

  Catching the server’s eye, he nodded toward Lucy. “You heard the lady.”

  Without missing a beat, the server reached for a sheet of waxed paper and neatly wrapped it around the sandwich. It was a mini-work of art.

  “One ham and Swiss on sourdough with pickles, tomato, lettuce and green pepper plus diet soda to go.” He had it bagged and on top of the counter in less time than it took to say it. Quoting a price, the server accepted the ten that Collin passed him.

  As if it suddenly dawned on Lucy that there was only one sandwich going anywhere, she said. “You’re not eating.”

  Collecting the change the server handed him, Collin tossed it into the almost-empty jar marked “Tips.” Nobody realized how little these kids made, he thought. The change made a tinkling sound as it hit the side of the glass.

  He took the bag and presented it to Lucy as he turned from the counter. “Not hungry.”

  “Haven’t you heard, Lieutenant? An army travels on its stomach.” They snaked their way out of the small shop, forging a path against the tide of incoming customers.

  Normally he welcomed distance and anonymity, but the formality created by having her address him by his title bothered him. He wasn’t sure exactly why and that bothered him, as well.

  “I’m not in uniform. You don’t have to call me Lieutenant.”

  She made her way to the corner before looking back at him and asking in a voice he found incredibly sultry, “What would you like me to call you?”

  Something tightened in his gut, threatening to cut off his air. “Collin will be fine.”

  Lucy looked at him for a long moment as they stood there, waiting for the light to turn green. She had no idea what possessed her to say, “I’m sure Collin will be,” only that it seemed right at the time.

  Not only had his gut tightened some more, but now the sensation was working its way up his chest to his throat. He could have sworn something was stirring inside of him again. The way it did every time she raised those eyes of hers up to his.

  The light turned green and she started to place one foot off the curb when he caught her by the arm and brought her attention back to him.

  The cool air around them solidified. The people intent on getting on with their lives and doing it all in under an hour, melted into the background. Into just so much distant noise, along with the cars.

  Under oath, Collin might have said he was momentarily possessed. Possessed by curiosity, possessed by a nostalgia that came flooding in from the past, a past that hadn’t included her and yet did by virtue of a vague association, because she looked so much like Paula. Possessed by a hunger that he hadn’t known for a very long time and because it had been so long ago, it was as if it had been someone else’s hunger. Not his.

  Until now.

  Cupping her cheek, Collin brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her.

  He surprised himself more than her, because something inside of her had been waiting for this.

  Expecting this.

  From the first second she’d seen him walk into the M.E.’s office, something had gone off in her head, a warning cry like the one uttered by that impossibly ridiculous robot in that equally impossibly ridiculous program that had been belovedly campy even in the year of its origin. Danger, Lucy Gatling. Danger.

  The show popped up with a fair amount of regularity on cable and satellite stations that needed to fill their airwaves with programs they referred to as “classic.” What she was feeling right at this moment, beyond overwhelmingly hot, could definitely be labeled as classic.

  The sensation pulsating through her as he held her to him, deepening an already bottomless kiss, was as old as the ancient hills, as new and fresh as tomorrow.

  Her heart pounded wildly while she leaned her body into his, and she forgot where she was, who she was. She forgot absolutely everything but the taste of his mouth and the excitement popping up in her veins like so many firecrackers going off at random.

  “Hey, get a room!” someone in the distance heckled.

  The words penetrated Collin, dragging with them common sense, reason and reality. It was a sobering sensation. He pulled back and stopped kissing her.

  The moment he did, Lucy sucked in a long, deep breath, her eyes unwavering on his. It took a second for her to remember that English, not gibberish, was her first language.

  “Yes,” she murmured more to herself than to him, recalling the last thing she’d said to him before the world had gone completely out of focus. “Collin is certainly fine.”

  And then, as if realizing what she’d just said, she cleared her throat. The light was turning green again and Lucy stepped off the curb in a second attempt to reach his vehicle, not altogether sure if her legs were functioning properly. God knew she didn’t feel as if she was functioning properly.

  Reaching the car, she made it to the passenger side. But before getting in, she looked at him. She had to know. “Was that some kind of a test?”

  She wasn’t the only one trying to get her bearings. That had been completely out of character for Collin. Maybe if he’d been that way with Paula, he thought, she might still be with him. But Paula had never threatened his insides with utter meltdown the way this woman did.

  Reminding himself that he was a Ranger and supposedly unflappable, he did his best to live up to that as he looked at her quizzically.

  He hadn’t the slightest idea what she was talking about. “What?”

  “What just happened now, between us,” she said, pointing to him and then herself. “Was that a test?”

  He still didn’t have a clue. “A test?” he echoed.

  “Yes. Were you trying to see what I’d do next—kiss back,” she responded without so much as a pause, “or if I could be rattled? I can, but not so most people would notice. Or—”

  He held his hand up to stop her. No thought process at all had accompanied his kissing her. If he had to sum it up in a word, other than possessed, he would have used desire, because that had throbbed through him as urgently as a rising tide pounding against the shore.

  “Maybe,” he suggested, “I was just trying to earn a little peace and quiet.”

  Those would have been the last words she would have used to describe what was going on inside of her at this very moment.

  Opening the car door as Collin unlocked the vehicle, she slanted a glance at him. “Backfired on you, didn’t it, Lieutenant?”

  He saw no reason for pretense—up to a point. “Certainly did.”

  Lucy smiled warmly at him as they got into the car. “I guess that’s what’s known as a sneak attack.”

  No, he thought, that was better described as a blitzkrieg. “Sneak attacks are a lot more subtle than that.”

  Her smile widened, taking in her eyes as he watched in fascination. “I’ll remember to be on my guard.”

  Collin glanced at his watch. He was running late himself. But then, he hadn’t factored in time for the dalliance. “And for now, I’d better be on my mark,” he told her. She gave him a curious look. “My cousin’s meeting us at the M.E.’s
.”

  That made, what? Three times in one day? “You know, you boys are going to have to get a new hangout. The chief medical examiner doesn’t like people just dropping in, unannounced. Not unless they have their clothes off and are lying on a gurney.” Collin grinned at her and she could feel the beginning of another blush. She would have sworn she was past all that, and yet here he was, doing it to her twice in a single day. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do.” Buckling up, he was about to start the car and glanced to see if she’d put her seat belt in place. “Where’s your sandwich?”

  Stunned, Lucy looked down at her lap as if expecting it to magically appear there.

  And then she remembered. “You made me drop it.” Craning her neck, she tried to scan the area around the traffic light. But there were too many people in the way for her to see if the bag was still there on the ground.

  Most likely not. With a sigh, she sat back.

  She heard him laugh under his breath. “Never had that effect on a woman before.”

  Her stomach growled and she tried to ignore it. Lucy had no idea whether or not he was pulling her leg. She had a feeling that Lieutenant Collin Jamison made women drop more than just their sandwiches when he put his mind to it.

  Lucy chewed on her bottom lip, staring at the report spread out in front of her on the small steel-topped desk that had been assigned to her for the duration of her stay at the M.E.’s office. The notes had yet to be entered into a database and were written in what could only be charitably likened to a hog’s hooves dipped in black ink and allowed to run amock.

  But illegible or not, she’d pored over it and was finally rewarded for her efforts.

  She had something.

  Not a big something and certainly not the DNA confirmation that Collin was looking for, but she had a brand-new piece to add to the puzzle that was Jason Jamison’s case. Flipping through the man’s file, she’d stumbled across an incident report filed by the guard on duty while Jason was in prison. It seemed that Collin’s cousin’d had a “difference of opinion” with another one of the inmates. The latter had wound up in the infirmary with his face almost bashed in. Jason had one hell of a temper.

  She read further, looking at the guard’s signature. Her eyes widened.

  Her first impulse was to find Harley and tell him. As the M.E. assigned to instruct her, he needed to be informed about this. But then she hesitated. She’d told Collin that she’d let him know if she found anything unusual.

  This certainly came under that heading.

  She chewed a little more on her lip, then made her decision. Closing the file, she placed it beneath several others, then walked out of the sterile room and into the hall.

  Lucy dug through the oversize pockets of her lab coat, looking for the cell phone number Collin had given her. Finding it, she put some distance between herself and the autopsy room, then took out a red, white and blue cell phone her father had given her the last time they’d gotten together. It operated under her old number, but he thought that the colors would remind her of her family.

  As if she needed some kind of gimmick to keep them foremost in her mind, she thought.

  Looking at the card, Lucy quickly pressed the matching buttons on the keypad and waited until the call registered on the other end.

  It only rang once before she heard someone say, “Hello?”

  The deep male voice against her ear sent ripples clear down to her stomach. Evoking visions of yesterday. Reminding her that she’d spent a rather restless night, tossing and turning as she tried not to think about what had happened on the street corner.

  Lucy unconsciously squared her shoulders before she spoke. As if a military stance would somehow protect her. “Lieutenant?”

  “Doctor,” Collin responded formally, employing a teasing tone.

  With absolutely no effort at all, she could have easily allowed her thoughts to drift back to yesterday afternoon. But that had already taken up most of her night. If she allowed that same teeth-jarring moment to get a toehold in her day, she knew she would be rendered useless. That had pretty much been her entire evening as it dribbled into morning.

  She was in serious need of a brain transplant, she told herself.

  “I think I just might have found another piece of the puzzle for you.”

  There was silence on the other end. She was beginning to know the lieutenant a little. He was trying not to get his hopes up. What would Collin have been like, hopeful? She decided that she wanted to be the one to bring hope to him, for the sheer pleasure of witnessing his reaction.

  “What is it?”

  Lucy could almost see Collin straightening his shoulders, which were already ramrod-straight.

  “The day before Jason was to be transferred to the maximum security prison, he got into a fight with another inmate.” She kept her voice low, afraid of being overheard. “Beat him up pretty badly before it was stopped. The guy had to have a total of forty stitches in three different places.”

  She heard Collin snort. “The guy packs quite a wallop.”

  Lucy paused for effect, then delivered the crowning touch. “There’s more.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “One of the guards on duty during this initial altercation, the one who actually signed the report, was the transport guard who’s currently fighting for his life at the hospital.”

  “Interesting.”

  She could see him stroking his chin thoughtfully, pulling together scenarios in his head. “It’s more than interesting. That means that there’s a connection between them. It’s possible that the guard might have even hid the knife for Jason.”

  He could feel her excitement vibrating through the cell phone. He had to admit that it fueled his own. In a number of ways. “Yeah, like on the van. He could have been the inside man.”

  But if that were true, then she’d hit a stumbling block. “Then why stab him, too?”

  She was assigning her own sensibilities to Jason, Collin thought. Her own moral code. He knew better than to do that. The heart that beat within Jason’s chest was nothing more than pure lead.

  “Jason never liked leaving behind any loose ends. He was always very meticulous as a kid. The guard represents a loose end. Maybe,” he theorized, trying to rein in his own growing excitement over this newest piece of evidence, “he even knows or overheard where Jason planned on going once he escaped from prison.”

  “According to what you told me, that’s not going to be immediately. Not if he’s got some kind of a vendetta against Ryan Fortune. If he does, then he’s got to be around here somewhere, waiting for his chance to get at Mr. Fortune.” She heard him laugh on the other end. The sound was warm, enticing. She had to struggle not to let herself be pulled in by it. “What’s so funny?”

  “You know, if I was the kind of man who could be spooked, I think that I’d be pretty spooked right about now.”

  She didn’t follow him. “Why?”

  “Because we think alike. I didn’t think anyone thought the way I did.” Least of all, a woman.

  The only one who had come close to it had been Paula and even she had only gone so far. As time progressed, because of his work, he had to admit that they had gotten farther and farther apart. What he missed, he realized, was the idea of Paula. The idea of comfort and status quo without effort.

  But effort was what this woman seemed to be all about. And he rather liked it.

  “Right back at you,” she quipped. She’d been rather surprised herself on how they’d arrived at the same conclusion regarding the information she’d uncovered.

  “Anything else?” he prodded when she said nothing further.

  “What, that isn’t enough for you?” Just what did the man want? A call from her saying that Jason was presently hiding out in her house?

  “More than enough,” he assured her. “You’ve just earned yourself one lavish dinner.”

  She cleared her throat, as if making a bid for his attention. “I’m s
till waiting for the lunch you zapped me out of.”

  “That wasn’t my fault.”

  That wasn’t the way she saw it. “As far as I remember, I don’t recall anyone else’s lips being on mine at the time.”

  He laughed, but the next question out of his mouth was a serious one. “Have you told anyone else about the connection you found?”

  Guilt shimmied up and down her spine as she thought of Harley. She didn’t want to get the physician into trouble with the chief medical examiner by failing to tell him about the report. And yet, her loyalties did lie with Collin. At least for the moment.

  “Not yet.”

  “Good. Hold off for a little while,” he requested. “First let me get in contact with Emmett and tell him about this.”

  “Don’t wait too long to get back to me.” She realized how that must have sounded to him. “I mean, I’ll need to write this up eventually. They’re having me do a little background work—for practice, I suppose.”

  “Well, you’ve gone from practice to perfect,” he told her. “I’ll get back to you,” he repeated.

  The line went dead in her hand before she could say anything in response.

  Perfect.

  That was the word he’d used. Perfect.

  It shimmered in her mind like some sort of rare enticement. For a basically simple man, the lieutenant knew how to use his words to their best advantage. And his.

  With a sigh, Lucy folded her phone and slipped it back into her pocket. When she turned to head back to the lab, she saw that Harley was standing only a few feet away, watching her, a reproving expression on his face.

  Refusing to allow guilt to get the better of her, Lucy offered him the sunniest smile she had at her disposal as she walked past him and went back into the morgue. The room seemed like a haven to her now.

  She realized that she was becoming accustomed to the eeriness there and began to wonder if that was such a good thing.

  She waited for Harley to enter and begin asking vague, unfocused questions to get to his point, but the door leading into the room remained closed. After a few moments she decided he wasn’t coming.