Meant for Her

by Amy Gamet

  Opening her eyes, Julie was surprised to realize that there were no tears on her face, as if the well of grief had simply gone dry from her great gulps at its waters in the last two days. She touched her cheeks with her hands and marveled at their normal texture, dry and soft.

  The reality that life continues despite tragedy was both an odd comfort and a bad joke that rubbed at her and made her chafe on a spot that was already raw.

  Julie had stumbled into bed last night after talking to Gwen until the wee hours of the morning. Now she looked around the familiar room and saw it had been transformed. The antique furniture that had been painted a bold coral when Julie lived here now matched the pale yellow of the fluffy towel on her head. Bed linens of turquoise and bright yellow toile seemed to hum in their bold contrast to the muted blue of the walls. A bulky duvet was wrapped in a lemony fabric that felt like the softest bunny, and the pineapples atop the four posts of the bed had been gloriously decorated in hammered gold and blue glass.

  Walking to the bed, she again sank into its inviting depths. She pulled the duvet over her robed body and closed her eyes, wishing for the sleep that she suspected would not come.

  She willed her mind to think of something else. An image of the sexy Navy officer filled her head. Hank Jared. Even his name was sexy. She remembered what he smelled like—pungent soap and something exquisitely male. Her knees almost buckled when her eyes had first locked with his.

  A knock at the door disrupted her reverie. “Come in.”

  Gwen handed her the phone. “It’s Becky.”

  “Hey, what’s up?” said Julie.

  “I’m at your place. I came to feed Sammy like you asked, and Jules, someone’s been here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, someone broke into your condo. It’s pretty bad. Your dresser drawers have all been dumped out onto the floor, and the kitchen cabinets are open and everything’s messed up.”

  “Someone broke into my condo?” She sat upright in bed. A cat meowed on the other end of the phone. “Is Sammy okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine. He was locked in a closet and none too happy about it. He’s okay now.”

  “Did they steal anything?” In her mind, Julie ran through a list of her valuables, most of them electronics, and most of them with her on this trip.

  “I don’t see your laptop or your iPod.”

  “They’re with me. Becky, do you think Greg…” Julie let her voice trail off, not wanting to say the words out loud.

  “I know, he was my first thought, too. Was he upset when you dumped him?”

  “He never called me back. I just figured he got the message and wanted to avoid the whole conversation.”

  “It looks like he was upset.”

  “Yeah. Looks like.” Julie realized Gwen was watching her, her eyes questioning. “Someone broke into my condo and trashed the place.” She choked on an unexpected sob as she said the words, covering her mouth with her hand.

  Gwen sat and touched her shoulder. “That officer said you might be in danger.”

  “It’s just some loser boyfriend I dumped last week, Gwen. Either that, or some neighborhood kids up to no good...”

  “I don’t think so, Julie.” Julie looked into Gwen’s eyes, and what she saw there sent a chill down her spine. Gwen had a sixth sense about some things, and Julie had learned long ago to listen when her aunt spoke with this quiet authority.

  “Uh, oh,” said Becky into Julie’s ear.

  “I feel a darkness. I don’t want to scare you, but there’s evil here.” She held Julie’s eyes as tightly as she held her hand, wishing to impart strength to her niece at this time. “Did the ex-boyfriend have a darkness about him?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Julie.

  “Well, I would,” chimed Becky. “Tell Gwen that I would, Jules. Tell her.”

  “He gave Becky the creeps.”

  “So maybe it is the boyfriend, then. Or it might have something to do with your father’s murder.”

  That possibility was feeling very real to Julie.

  “Perhaps it’s time to call the Navy officer who came to see you in Boston. It will give you a chance to get a look at that encrypted message from the safe deposit box, too,” said Gwen.

  “I don’t want to see the message.”

  Gwen turned exasperated eyes to her niece. “Your father finally wrote you a letter after all these years, and you’re not even going to read it?”

  ~~~

  Jingle Bell Rock played on the car radio, but Hank wasn’t listening. A knot had settled in the valley between his shoulder blades, and he tried to stretch his arm across the steering wheel to release the tension. The lines on the pavement slid by in hypnotic straights and curves as his mind tried to make sense of the last several days.

  Johnson had hit it out of the park before Hank even realized something was wrong. Given what I know about this scene, I wouldn’t even know who to call, but the U.S. Navy is here, and I’m trying to figure out why.

  Hank didn’t like playing catch-up. Someone knew the body in the motel room was Commander McDowell before he was called to the scene like a puppet. Admiral Barstow had been the one to send Hank there, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was the one pulling the strings.

  Hank dialed his commanding officer.

  Formidable and unconcerned with niceties, the admiral exerted his influence skillfully over those under his command. Hank was one of the few who remained unaffected by the other man’s demeanor, and suspected he had earned the admiral’s begrudging respect.

  “What do you have for me?” said Barstow.

  “The motel fire was deliberately set to cover up a murder, sir,” said Hank.

  “Whose murder?”

  “It seems the body is that of Commander John McDowell.”

  The line was silent, and Hank resisted the urge to speak to fill the void. If his suspicions were correct, the admiral was already well aware of who had died in that fire.

  “What makes you believe the body is McDowell?”

  Hank told him about the ring, the safe deposit box, Julie Trueblood and the cipher. “Dental x-rays were sent in for positive identification.”

  “A lot of good that will do.”

  “Sir?”

  “All of McDowell’s service records are gone, from his basic personnel file to the data from his last assignment,” said the admiral. “Including his dental records.”

  Hank was stunned. It was no small feat to make someone’s entire military existence disappear. “What happened to them?”

  “They were deleted from our computer system, either by someone in the Navy with the clearance to do so, or by someone who hacked into that computer system.”

  “People can actually hack into the Navy’s computers?”

  “Computer gurus with exceptional code breaking knowledge and expertise,” said the admiral. He pronounced guru like it had quotation marks around it. “Someone like McDowell’s daughter.”

  “Is she that good?”

  “McDowell was one of the best cryptologists the Navy has ever seen, but the daughter was rumored to be some kind of prodigy. McDowell bragged she was better than he would ever be. Then she grew up and got herself a degree in mathematics and computer science.”

  “That’s why the Navy kept interrogating her when her father disappeared. If she sympathized with him, she was a threat to national security just like he was.”

  “Yes. And it’s why the Navy has kept tabs on her all these years, no matter what she wants to call herself.”

  Hank didn’t allow himself to consider his next words. “You knew it was McDowell in that motel.”

  “We got an anonymous tip.”

  “An anonymous tip,” Hank repeated. The sheer convenience of such a tip made it suspect.

  “A voicemail left on my line. It said we’d find McDowell and his last secret.”

  “The message from the safe deposit box.”

  “Yes. Send me a
copy of it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you get Julie Trueblood to decipher it, Jared. If anyone can, it’s her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” As Hank hung up the phone, he steered his SUV onto the exit ramp. According to his GPS, he was less than half an hour from Gwen Trueblood’s house in Vermont. He had been about to head to the airport for his flight back to Jacksonville when Julie phoned and told him about the break-in. He had offered to come out, and she had quickly accepted.

  It wasn’t like Hank to keep things from his commanding officer.

  “Sometimes, you’ve got to trust your gut,” he said to himself.

  Chapter 3

  As Hank stepped up to the front door of the unlit house, he had an uncomfortable feeling, like he had shown up for a party on the wrong day. He found it hard to believe no one was home after a personal invitation and a five hour drive.

  Hank heard nothing when he rang the bell, so he knocked loudly on the door for good measure. He was rewarded with the barking of dogs who quickly came to the other side of the door.

  Turning around, Hank surveyed his surroundings by the day’s last light as he waited. The white farm house had a wide front porch with turned railings and a painted wood floor. A two-story barn loomed to the side of the garage, and distant snow-covered fields were studded with split-rail fences.

  The land reminded him of his mother’s property, and Hank was acutely aware that he was just a few hours’ drive from his family’s home in the Adirondacks. He imagined his mom and siblings sitting around the big dining table with glasses of wine, and promised himself he would do everything in his power to make the ceremony tomorrow.

  Everything except walk away from a case.

  The door opened behind him and Hank turned to see the face he hadn’t even realized he’d been missing. It was there in the hitch of his breath as he looked at her.

  “Thanks for coming, Mr. Jared.”

  Her blonde hair was tied up and away from her face, her eyes calm and clearly grateful.

  “Of course.”

  Was this the face of a traitor?

  If Julie Trueblood had hacked into the Navy computers to protect her father, she no doubt believed that what she had done was right. As she held the door wide for him to enter, he realized that the moment might come when he would need to arrest her. Hank crossed the threshold and hoped he wouldn’t have to do that.

  “The power’s been out since this morning,” she said. “There’s a generator in the barn, but we haven’t been able to get it working.”

  “Maybe I can fix it.”

  “I’ll pretend I wasn’t hoping you would say that.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can seem like a tough, independent woman who doesn’t need a man to do anything mechanical.”

  “And fry it up in a pan?”

  “Exactly.” She had a beautiful smile, he noted, just as it fell. “Of course, I’m already hamming up the damsel in distress routine pretty well.”

  “I’m glad you called. Someone breaking into your home is unsettling for anyone. Given the circumstances, you were right to call me.”

  She accepted his words with a nod. “Come on in,” she said, stepping aside and motioning for Hank to follow her down the dim hallway. “Watch yourself, it got dark all of a sudden.” She trailed her hand along the wall to navigate in the dim light as she called out, “I think it’s about time to pull out the candles, Gwen.”

  They stepped into the kitchen, where a tall woman with flowing blonde curls was busy unpacking boxes of candles and candle holders. “One step ahead of you,” she said. She smiled warmly at Hank, and he knew they must often be mistaken for sisters.

  “Gwen Trueblood, this is Hank Jared,” said Julie.

  Hank extended his hand. “That’s a lot of firepower, Ms. Trueblood.”

  “Call me Gwen,” she said, lighting candles as she spoke. “I heard you may be able to fix our generator.”

  “I can give it a try.”

  “Wonderful,” she said, taking a flashlight off the counter and handing it to Hank. “Any tools you might need are out in the barn with the generator. Julie, will you show him where it is?”

  “Sure thing.” Julie grabbed a down jacket off the back of a kitchen chair and pulled on tall winter boots before leading the way out the back door. When they were alone, she turned and waited for Hank to walk beside her.

  “Mr. Jared, I owe you an apology.”

  He could smell her scent, clean and light, floating on the crisp winter air as he stepped closer. In a different time and place…

  “It’s Hank,” he said. “An apology for what?”

  “For losing it when you were in my office,” she said, her embarrassment plain. “For throwing you out on your ear when you tried to be compassionate.”

  At her words, Hank remembered the way she had fit in his arms, warm and solid. He knew that he wanted her back there again, and the knowledge made him uneasy. “It must have been quite a shock,” he said with sincere sympathy.

  Julie frowned. “You know, then.”

  He nodded. “I did have to work for it, if it makes you feel any better.”

  She turned back toward the barn and began walking slowly through the snow as she spoke. “I hadn’t seen my father in ten years.”

  Hank knew the admiral wouldn’t believe her. “That must have been hard for you.”

  “I understood it. My father came to see me the day he disappeared.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I read the official report. It says the last time you saw him was the night before the disappearance.”

  “I lied. I got home from school and he was waiting for me at the kitchen table.”

  The sound of their footsteps through the snow and a blowing wind were the only noises between them. They crossed the last of the field between the house and the barn. Julie lifted the cold metal latch and opened the door, lighting her flashlight for the darkness within.

  She led the way as Hank followed closely behind her. At the far end of the barn, she opened a small door and revealed an organized workshop. A red generator had been pulled into the middle of the floor.

  “Here it is.”

  Hank crouched down in front of the machine and extended his hand for the flashlight. She gave it to him and watched as he oriented himself to the older generator.

  “The fuel lines are intact. Electrical looks good so far.”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t get a response from the starter.”

  She did say she had already tried to fix it. He would do well not to underestimate this one. He moved on to examine the starter. “What did you and your dad talk about that day?” he asked.

  Julie leaned back against the wall. “He told me what was coming,” she said quietly. “The accusations. The charges of treason.” Julie took a trembling breath. “He told me he was leaving.”

  The picture of Julie surrounded by reporters flashed in his mind and Hank felt a surge of adrenaline, as if her father were here and he could beat some sense into the man who was willing to abandon his daughter to save his own skin. Didn’t he know what that would do to her?

  “He told me who set him up.”

  Hank looked at her in surprise. Nowhere in the file was there mention of any kind of conspiracy.

  A part of him clutched at the idea, wishing there was a way for this woman to be clean of her father’s sins, but the experienced investigator knew better. McDowell was a father who didn’t want his daughter to believe he’d done something terrible.

  “His commanding officer gave him messages to decode, just like always. He told him they were from Uzkapostan, but in reality they were coded messages from our own Navy. The content of the messages were things like coordinates and location names, dates, that sort of thing. Nothing that let my father know they were really our own intel.”

  Julie stared into the distance. “Until the Dermody went down. My father realized that the coordinates of the ship when it was sunk were
identical to the coordinates he had decoded the day before.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He escaped.” Her features were oddly blank as she continued. “He went to the bank and emptied his accounts, then he came home to talk to me. He told me he would call Barstow and confront him once he was safe…”

  “Barstow?”

  “Yes, Captain Thomas Barstow. Do you know him? He was my father’s commanding officer.”

  If Hank had been standing, he might have fallen over. He heard himself answer in a monotone voice that sounded like a stranger’s. “He’s an admiral now.”

  “An admiral?” Her hands were clenched at her sides. “That man should be the one laying in the morgue right now. Not my father. Barstow is the traitor.”

  Hank watched her fury, saw her chest rise and fall. Hank was a man who trusted his own gut, and his instincts were telling him that Julie Trueblood was telling him the God’s honest truth.

  “Why did he run?” he asked. “Why not defend himself?”

  “My father was born in Uzkapostan. He still has family there.”

  People had been convicted of espionage on less.

  If Julie was correct and the admiral was responsible, it would have been damn near impossible to prove it. Hank turned back to the generator. He needed to think.

  “Do you believe me?” she asked.

  Hank’s hands stilled, but he didn’t answer, unsure of what to say. He would have been a lot more comfortable if she hadn’t asked the question. His hand fiddled with the starter, and he saw her turn and walk out of the workshop from the corner of his eye. He looked up, staring after her and rubbing his lip with the back of his hand.

  Then he was there, grabbing her hand and turning her around to face him, his body too close to hers. He had only meant to stop her. “I believe you,” he said.

  He could see the desire in her eyes, feel it in the air between them as her scent met his nostrils and he fought for control. He forced his hands to unclench, and released her.