Breakpoint
Page 9
“It was eight.”
Down below the cliff, sailboats were skimming over unbelievably blue water. Dallas, who’d grown up in the flat brown oil patch of Texas, figured being stationed in Hawaii wouldn’t exactly be hardship duty.
“My sister, Merry—”
“The pregnant designer,” he remembered. As if he’d ever be able to forget that knockout hot dress.
“The designer,” she agreed. “Merry was one of those who fit right in immediately, wherever we landed. When we lived in Florida, she lived in bright colors, tube tops, and shorts. Hawaii, of course, was all floral. In Washington State she went through an earth-mother stage and took to wearing flowing skirts, tunic tops, and earrings depicting whales, or totem poles, and other such North-western stuff.”
“Sounds like she had some chameleon skills.” And couldn’t Dallas identify with that?
“That’s absolutely it.” She shot him a quick, obviously surprised look.
Damn. With the mouthwatering smell of the French fries and coconut shrimp wafting into the car, and the even more appealing female sitting in the backseat beside him, Dallas had forgotten that inside the sweet-smelling package dwelled a computerlike brain that never forgot a thing. And those tropical lagoon eyes currently hidden by oversize dark framed glasses didn’t miss much, either.
“I moved around a bit,” he hedged.
“Was your father in the service?”
“No.” He felt his jaw tighten. Knew he was giving away what Zach Tremayne, who was the poker champ of the group, would describe as a tell. “He’s a geophysicist.”
“In west Texas.”
“Yeah. Midland, actually.”
“I guess that’s where you got your alleged nerdiness from.”
“I guess so.”
Having no idea who his birth father was, Dallas found it easier to buy into the nurture part of the nature-versus-nurture argument and decide his affinity for math and science came from his adopted parent. After all, the guy whose DNA he carried could be a serial killer. Or, from what he’d heard about his mother, more likely some biker-gang meth dealer.
“But there’s nothing nerdy about my dad. He put himself through Texas A&M on a football scholarship playing tight end.”
“That’s impressive. But you didn’t play at Cal Poly.”
Wow. She really had dug deep into his records during that court martial investigation. “Nah. I played a bit of JV ball in high school, but although I can hold my own on a basketball court, I never enjoyed getting tackled by guys who actually seemed to enjoy hitting people.”
“Okay, I’m going to have to agree with you on that,” she said. “My brothers played football, and I used to spend Friday nights in the bleachers, chewing my fingernails to the quick.”
“So you weren’t a cheerleader?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you could be anything you wanted to be, Juls.”
“Well, I didn’t want to be a cheerleader. Once again, that was Merry’s gig. What about your mother?”
Even as he noted her tendency for straight-track thinking that probably had worked real well in JAG, but would’ve been a disadvantage in an actual warfare situation, he smiled, as he always did whenever he thought of Angie O’Halloran.
“She’s an old-fashioned family doctor. Not that there’s anything old-fashioned about her. She’s actually a fire-cracker and a rabble-rouser, and, I mean this with all due respect, a babe.”
Damned if she didn’t smile at that. The first genuine smile he’d seen from her. As his heart kicked into overdrive, Dallas assured himself that a guy as fit as he was, and only a couple years past thirty, couldn’t possibly be having a heart attack.
“That’s nice.”
“That she’s a babe?”
“That you’d call her that.”
“She put herself through medical school modeling for Neiman Marcus,” he said. “Runway shows, mainly. Some catalog work. She’s probably the best-turned-out doctor Midland, Texas, has ever seen.” He glanced over at her. “She’d like you.”
“Actually, I believe you have me confused with my sister. The gorgeous former-beauty-queen fashion diva.”
“Mom likes smart women. You’re smart as a whip. Ergo, she’d like you.”
“Even if I did try to put your best friends behind bars?”
“You wouldn’t have done that.”
He’d been thinking about it a lot. And he realized what had really been bothering him about the entire interrogation. Even as she pressured him, he’d felt something else going on beneath the surface. Something that, because he’d been so intent on answering her questions in ways that were truthful, but still wouldn’t help put his battle buddies behind bars, he hadn’t been able to put a finger on until now.
“And you know this why?” Although her tone was the same she probably pulled out for cross-examinations, she did not, Dallas noticed, deny his statement.
“Your job—your mission—was to prosecuteTremayne, McKade, Chaffee, and Douchett. Which you did. But only because you knew it was a lost cause. Because you also knew if they DD’d out of the military, they probably would’ve ended up behind bars.
“And even when they got out, their lives would’ve been pretty much over, because dishonorable discharges follow you like a bad stink. Having grown up in the military, and having such a strong sense of justice, you never would have done anything that hurtful to men who’d spent years putting their lives on the line for their country.”
Which was why, Dallas had always thought, the Air Force brass had opted against putting him through the JAG wringer the Navy had subjected the SEALs to.
“When you’re in the military you follow orders,” she pointed out. “That’s as true for lawyers as it is for CCTs. And Osama bin Laden would be throwing snowballs in hell before I’d ever tank a case.”
“You think I don’t know that? But here’s the deal, Juls.... You wouldn’t have had to. You had a damn good rep. In fact, your service jacket might as well have had smiley faces and little gold stars pasted all over it—”
“You’ve seen my record?”
“Of course. You’ve undoubtedly at least skimmed through The Art of War at Annapolis.”
“It’s required reading. ”
“Absolutely. So, having studied the quintessential text on the topic, you may recall the quote about if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
She stared at him. “What did you do? Memorize the entire book?”
“It’s not that big a book. Besides, like I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “Once a fact gets in, it never gets out.”
“That’s pretty much it,” he said agreeably. “But the point I was making was that if you’d thought there was any chance your actions would result in a dishonorable ending, which it would have if those SEALs had been imprisoned, you would’ve refused to take the case.
“At which point your commander would’ve just tossed it off to some junior officer hack who wouldn’t have known how to properly prosecute it. Or to someone less scrupulous, someone who would be willing to throw the case to guarantee the same outcome.
“Although he wasn’t your enemy, you had to know your commander well enough to know how to present your evidence in a way to keep the situation from ever getting beyond your initial Article Thirty-two investigation process.
“And no”—he cut her off when she opened that luscious mouth to argue—“I’m not saying you tampered with your evidence. Or even slanted it. But presentation is everything. And the way you presented it, your commander would have had to have been Captain Queeg to take the case to trial.”
“Interesting that you’d say that,” she murmured. “For the record, it’s a decidedly minority
opinion.”
“Only among people who don’t know you.”
“And you do?”
“When you spend three days locked in a room with someone, unless you’re deaf, blind, and stupid, you get a handle on them,” he said. “Even people as good as you are at not giving away any clues.”
“Well.”
She seemed suddenly vastly interested in the view outside the side window. And, although it was a flat-out fantastic view, Dallas had the feeling she was mainly distancing herself while she mulled that over. Her control was such that he doubted she’d be all that thrilled with someone reading her as well as he had. Of course, he’d had a lot of time to think about her.
Too much time.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” she said finally. She was still looking out the window, giving him a view of the back of her glossy blond head.
“You don’t have to say anything. We’ve got a job to do, Julianne.” Although he still thought it was too formal for how he liked to think of her, Dallas used her full name to show her exactly how seriously he was taking this conversation.
“Like it or not, we’re going to be partners,” he said. “Suicide’s always a supersensitive situation. Especially in the military. More so these days with PTSD running rampant.
“But if the pilot’s death turns out to be murder, that’ll be a helluva lot worse. If it turns out to be terrorism related, then the shit’s really going to hit the fan. We need to go into this investigation battle being on the same team.”
“That’s pretty much understood. Given that we were assigned to work together.”
“Didn’t you ever have to work with someone you didn’t like? Or respect?”
“Of course.”
“And how was it?”
She’d turned back to him, and although he couldn’t see her eyes because of those damn sunglasses, he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Less than ideal,” she admitted.
“Well, then.” Because he could no longer be this close to her without touching her, he skimmed a friendly hand down her hair. “Since I both like and respect you, if you’d try to see fit to return the favor, we can helo out to that ship—boat—tomorrow, sail through the investigation, and close it in time to return back here for some celebratory R and R in paradise. When was the last time you took a vacation?”
“I can’t remember.” She pulled her head back, but did not scoot all the way across the seat. Which, Dallas figured, was progress.
“Me neither. Which means we’re due.”
“We have to close the case first.”
Again, he liked that she wasn’t tossing his R & R suggestion back into his face. He was getting to her. The way she had him. He’d just been a little quicker on the trigger when it came to admitting it.
“Absofuckinglutely,” he said.
14
The driver of the naval staff car following the two government agents wasn’t worried about being noticed. Oahu was crawling with staff cars from the naval base, MCBH, or Hickam AFB. What significance would one more have?
Although he’d had to switch plans after the flyboy and the former JAG LT didn’t stay in BOQ on Pearl as intended, years of military training had taught him that the plan always disintegrated on first contact with the enemy. And make no mistake about it, former Sergeant O’Halloran and JAG Lieutenant Decatur were definitely not friendlies.
But he’d come up with what he’d thought was a workable solution. Until, damn it all to hell, they’d stopped at the fucking E-5 bar and picked up dinner. Which meant they’d be eating in their rooms. Which, in turn, meant that the chances of getting his man into those rooms in the MCBH lodge had just been downgraded.
Still, he considered, as he continued past the base gate when their car turned in (no way was he going to follow them past the gate and end up on the daily log), as his overmuscled SEAL frogman brother-in-law was always saying, the only easy day was yesterday.
So they’d experienced a few setbacks.
Okay, maybe the entire mission looked as if it was on the verge of becoming an ultimate goat fuck.
The key was not to panic.
He’d think of something.
Because he’d worked too hard, and the stakes were too damn high, to allow a few snafus to screw things up.
Not wanting to risk some random cell phone picking up his conversation over the airways, he pulled into the parking lot of an Island Mini Mart to use the pay phone.
Because failing to plan was planning to fail.
And failure was no way, no how, an option.
15
The rooms, which were connected, were typical for transient military. There were a bed, chest, sofa, desk, and table with four chairs, along with a kitchenette along one wall, which wasn’t necessary, since they were only going to be spending the night, and after years of her having eaten in Navy messes, nuking a frozen dinner was pretty much the apex of Julianne’s culinary abilities. The framed pictures on the wall, which seemed to change from posting to posting, were, unsurprisingly, of island scenes.
“Your place or mine?” Dallas asked after she’d used the key to open the door.
“Excuse me?”
He lifted the bags. “Dinner. No point in eating alone, and we can discuss the case while we eat.”
“You were going to go Googling,” she reminded him. “Because there doesn’t seem to be much of a case to discuss at this point.”
“You never know what you can find if you do a little digging. Like the fact that the dead pilot’s husband just happens to be a Marine. Whom the shore patrol arrested last year for domestic assault.”
She stared at him. “That arrest is nowhere in the file.”
“Like I said, I got there before you did. I did some digging after the commander was called out of his office for a few minutes.”
“You went through his files?”
She should have been surprised. But, knowing what she did about Special Ops, she wasn’t. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t annoyed that he’d already gotten one step ahead of her.
“Of course I didn’t. That’d be against the law.”
“Like that would stop you.” But she was relieved he hadn’t. “If you’d gotten caught—”
“Concerned about me, Juls?”
“I’m concerned about solving this case. Which would be more difficult if I had to wait for THOR to assign me a new partner.”
“Well, you needn’t have worried. Because I didn’t touch his files. You’d be amazed what stuff you can find on the Internet with a smart phone.”
“You hacked into DoD records?”
He leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. “Well, I could have filed a mile-high stack of request forms seeking the info we needed. And just maybe, if everyone up the line cooperated, we might know something by, oh, say, the next millennium or so.”
“Look,” she said, struggling to bite back her exasperation, “I understand you’re not a lawyer. But surely even you’ve heard of the legal concept regarding fruit from the poison tree?”
“Sure. That any information obtained illegally is thrown out of court.”
“Yet that didn’t stop you?”
“No. Because while there are admittedly many less than pretty aspects of the Homeland Security and Patriot acts, one of the handy things is that they give THOR pretty much carte blanche when it comes to what it takes to get the job done. We’re the blackest black there is.”
He was right. She’d read the description of the agency when she’d signed. Which made her wonder . . .
“If you can get this so-called ‘stuff,’ why can’t anyone else?”
“Because no one else is as good as me.”
Other men might say something like that with a swagger. His tone was merely one of casual confidence. Even though she had the feeling he wasn’t exaggerating, Julianne worried that there might be someone else out there who could also hack into the system. One of the really bad guys.
“Like that Australian journalist whose life you saved? The one who made you a poster boy for American imperialism on every terrorist Web site and network on the planet?” The one who, she’d figured out, had been at least one of the reasons he’d left the Air Force.
“That would be one recent example.”
Apparently no longer willing to wait for an invitation, he strolled into her room as if he had every right to be there and put the bags from the bar, along with the Cokes and beers they’d bought at the Island Mini Mart, onto the table.
Deciding that it only made sense to discuss what he’d found while they ate, Julianne began unbagging their dinner.
At first she thought the sound of the ukulele must be her imagination, brought on by being back in the islands. But when she opened the drapes and looked out onto the wide expanse of grass and the lanai and communal barbecue behind the building, she realized the music was real.
“Cool.” He came over to stand next to her. “Looks like we’re getting ourselves a luau anyway.”
“It appears so.”
From the CONGRATULATIONS banner strung up between two palm trees, it appeared to be a private party.
“Wanna crash it?” he asked.
“Of course not.” She’d never crashed a party in her life. She also doubted that there was any party this man wouldn’t be welcome at.
“Ah, we’re back to rules.” His eyes were laughing at her again. “If it doesn’t come with a gilt-edged RSVP card, it’s not an invitation.”
“That’s not true.” For some ridiculous reason, the accusation stung. Telling herself it was only jet lag, she pulled out a chair, sat down at the table, and, ignoring him, popped the top on her can of Coke. “You make me sound rigid. Boring.”
“Darlin’, you have never bored me.” He unscrewed the top off his brown bottle of beer. “Frustrated me, maddened me so much at one point I was tempted to put my fist through the wall of that interrogation room we spent three days in, and definitely turned me on, but ‘boring’ just doesn’t fit anywhere in my description of you.”