“It’s probably too late to pay a visit to the grieving widow.”
“Definitely. And despite being an enormous coincidence, there’s no hard evidence that the two deaths are linked. Since Walsh is only peripheral to our mission, we can’t delay going out to the carrier. Even discounting the fact that the
O’Halloran
’s going to be arriving here in a couple days—”
“We could just stick around and wait for it to get to us.”
“Not a good idea, given that a lot of sailors and Marines—especially the pilots—will be leaving the boat once it docks at Pearl. If someone did kill that pilot, they could slip under the radar and get away before we had a chance to begin our investigation. Plus, there’s the matter of the Tiger Cruise.”
“Tiger Cruise?”
“It’s a naval tradition of letting the families of sailors experience the idea of life on board ship. This one’s sailing from Pearl to its home base in San Diego.”
“Families like wives and kids?”
“Kids over eight, I think. And fiancées, girlfriends, boy-friends. In my father’s time you had to be male, but while change may be slow in the Navy, that’s opened up.”
Dallas considered the logistics of all those civilians coming aboard and decided they must be enormously complicated. “That would make for a lot of shifting quarters,” he said.
“Absolutely. The carrier’s actually the easiest because it’s so large. I remember a friend telling me that when he went on a Tiger Cruise with his submariner dad, some of the regular crew ended up sleeping in the torpedo room.”
“Sounds like a jolly time was had by all.”
“I’ve never been claustrophobic, but having toured a couple subs, I think I’d rather be set on fire than spend even a few days on one. Let alone an entire cruise,” she said. “Especially the way they share hot racks.”
“I’m guessing that isn’t the kind of ‘hot’ that springs to mind when one thinks of sharing a rack.”
“Even if they allowed women on subs, which they don’t, a lack of privacy would pretty much make that impossible. Hot-racking is two submariners sharing a rack by shifts. And getting back to our case, we really need to get out to the
O’Halloran
before it makes Pearl, given that any evidence concerning that pilot’s death could be disappearing as we speak.”
“Are you thinking murder?”
Just as he’d let the SEALs he’d worked with during that mission in the Kush call the shots, he was willing to acknowledge that Juls knew more about investigating a crime than he ever would.
“I learned early on never to prejudge a case,” she said. “Because no matter how cut-and-dried facts seem to appear, there’s always room for surprises. Which means that at the moment I’m staying open-minded.”
“Well, add this into whatever equation you’ve got going in that open mind,” he said. “Seems the LSO, guy named Lane Manning, has been written up for sexist behavior.”
“Harassment?”
“Not of the grab-and-grope sexual kind.” He skimmed through the PDF file. “More along the lines of letting folks know that he doesn’t believe women belong in cockpits.”
“Being a chauvinist doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer. Though the commander did mention a brief confrontation.”
“Brushed over it,” Dallas remembered. “Very briefly. Before moving on to telling us about those shipboard Muslims.”
“Who also get added to the list. But, despite that domestic assault charge, which is damning, her husband’s pretty much off the hook.”
“Why?”
She scrolled down her own screen. After an initial reluctance to go hacking into government records, she’d proven a whiz. “Because the guy’s currently stationed in Iraq.”
“We’ve already agreed that murder for hire isn’t unheard-of,” Dallas pointed out. “He could’ve had a friend do it.”
“That would have to be one very close friend, given that premeditated felony murder is one of the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s fifteen offenses that can earn a military death sentence. And even without that, while a murderer was once eligible for parole in ten years, some 1997 legislation added an amendment allowing for life imprisonment without parole.”
Dallas had always been a leg man. But he was discovering that brains were damn sexy, as well. The woman he’d gone out with before taking the pop-star bodyguard gig, had been a Carolina Panthers cheerleader with big hair and bought-for boobs who’d undoubtedly thought pi was a dessert that came with ice cream on top.
“That’s a hell of a risk,” he agreed. “Especially to take for someone else.”
“Unless we’re talking quid pro quo.”
“Like
Strangers on a Train
.”
“Exactly.” She shot him a hard look in response to his raised brow. “Hey, I’m not all about work. I’ve been known to watch a movie. On occasion.”
“I never said a thing.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“Actually, I was thinking how hot you are when you’re talking like a lawyer.”
“I
am
a lawyer.”
Brow furrowed, she returned to looking at her monitor, but not before allowing Dallas to catch a glimpse of the color rising attractively in her cheeks. He figured there probably weren’t many things capable of making the former JAG lieutenant blush. He liked being one of them.
“The lucky thing—for us, not that pilot—is that there’s no such thing as a perfect crime,” Julianne said. “If she
was
killed, someone other than the killer knows something. Maybe something seemingly unimportant. Something random. Something that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with what happened.”
“So it’s our job to find out what that something is. And connect the dots.”
“Exactly.” She leaned back in her chair and took a long drink from the mug of what had to be stone-cold coffee. “I’m still not liking it being a murder for hire or an ‘I’ll kill your pesky wife if you’ll kill mine’ murder, because there aren’t that many Marines aboard a carrier. The odds of a guy in Iraq even knowing a jarhead on the
O’Halloran
are slim to none.”
“Slim isn’t none.”
“True. Which, if we don’t come up with clear answers, might actually mean a trip to the sandbox to talk to the husband in person.”
“Wouldn’t that be fun?” Dallas drawled. “Of course, we could also test how much power this gig gives us by having the military send him back to the States to us.”
“That’s definitely more appealing.”
Putting down her coffee cup, she stretched, which did interesting things to her breasts. Just because he was becoming more and more attracted to her brains didn’t mean that Dallas had gone blind.
Or dead below the waist.
No, he thought as his dick stirred. Definitely not dead.
“We’ve probably gotten enough background to hit the ground running,” he suggested.
“Deck,” she corrected absently.
Her words were a little slurred, which was an indication that she was nearing exhaustion. Not surprising, factoring in her long flight from the mainland. And what had to have been her less than pleasant surprise at discovering whom, exactly, she’d been partnered up with.
“Hit the
deck
running,” he amended. “My point was, what would you say to going to bed?”
Well, that got her attention. Her eyes, which had been drifting shut, opened and shot toward his.
“Not
that
way. I meant, like, to sleep.”
“Sleep.”
She said it with the same anticipatory pleasure another woman might use when describing sex. Or, more likely, chocolate. Or, Dallas considered, as a fantasy of painting every inch of the LT’s body with Hershey’s syrup, then slowly licking it off danced in his mind, sex
and
chocolate.
“I could definitely go for that.” She wrinkled her nose. “After a shower to scrub off the travel scum and get the cigarette smoke from that bar out of my hair.”
“Good idea. You go first and I’ll take care of turndown duties.”
She stiffened. Neck, arms, back.
“Last I looked, you have your own room.”
“And how will that look to anyone who might be watching us? Since we’ve already set up the lovey-dovey situation.”
“Good point.” And one he could tell she wasn’t all that eager to endorse.
“I’m not leaving you alone.” He crossed his arms to underscore his point. “While you might be trained to use a gun, like you said, that doesn’t mean that you could.”
“I could if I had to.” She opened her suitcase and took out an oversize gray USN T-shirt printed with “the sea is ours” motto and what looked to be a pair of men’s boxers.
“You could take another life?” Dallas asked skepti cally. “Without hesitation?”
Her slight pause gave her away.
“Look.” Knowing it wouldn’t win him any points, he refrained, just barely, from sighing. “If you’re worried about me trying to jump your bones, I can sleep on the floor. But I’m not leaving.”
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor. It’s a big bed, with plenty of room for two. We’re both adults capable of controlling our impulses, and so long as you stay on your side and I stay on mine, we’ll be fine. And, although I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself—”
“Which is probably what that dead pilot thought. Before someone may have killed her.”
“It could still be suicide.” She took a nylon cosmetic case from her bag.
“Sure. And I could be Captain America in disguise. But I’m not.”
She’d been on her way into the bathroom, but paused to turn toward him. “I just realized something we have in common.”
“And what would that be?”
“Trust doesn’t come easily for either one of us.”
“I trust you.”
She thought about that for a brief, silent moment.
Then said, “Me, too. You, that is.”
And with that, she left the room.
He was making progress, Dallas decided as he stripped the cover off the bed and took his Dopp kit out of his duffel bag. Although he usually slept naked, he reluctantly decided that, under the circumstances, skivvies might be in order.
He wasn’t sure where they were headed. But they’d come one hell of a long way since those days together in that JAG interrogation room.
Although he felt regret for the loss of any life, a very strong part of Dallas couldn’t deny that he was grateful for whatever fate had thrown him and the very tasty LT together again.
25
Heaven.
After the excruciatingly long day she’d been through, the shower felt fabulous. Beyond fabulous. It was sheer nirvana. As the hot water streamed over her body, Julianne washed the conditioner from her freshly shampooed hair and decided the only thing that could possibly improve the experience would be if the hands smoothing the liquid soap over her wet, slick skin were Dallas O’Halloran’s, rather than her own.
“No.” That was dangerous thinking. “You’re not going there.”
They had a case to solve. She couldn’t afford to lose concentration by dwelling on sexual thoughts about her partner. And worse yet, wondering what type of thoughts he might be having about her.
He’d said she was hot.
Did he mean that?
Or was it just a proven line? She figured a lot of women might fall for such a declaration, especially when stated in such a deep, baritone drawl. Then again, the Air Force CCT didn’t need lines. Not with those heavily lidded bedroom eyes that invited you to drown in their melted chocolate depths.
And his lips.
She sighed—like a foolish schoolgirl!—as she remembered the taste and texture of those masculine lips, which were not the least bit hard and tight, but full and firm, while somehow managing to be soft at the same time.
Later, she would try to convince herself that it was only exhaustion that had her going back to imagining that it was his practiced hands, not hers, smoothing the liquid soap over her body. And his wicked lips following that sensual path.
When her sensual fantasy started slipping from R-rated to XXX, Julianne pulled her mutinous mind back from the brink.
Although she knew many military couples, Julianne had never allowed herself to get involved with men she worked with. Granted, it wasn’t always easy, because, while she might have been a Navy lawyer, she was also a woman. A woman as susceptible as any other to those white dress uniforms.
Except for a period in her teens, when she’d had a huge crush on an earring-wearing, motorcycle-riding high school bad boy—who’d never noticed she existed, which she later realized was probably a good thing—she’d always been drawn to military men.
And it wasn’t just that there was something sexy about a male in uniform. Though there was. What attracted her was something that seemed to be in short supply these days—honor.
As she dried off with a towel that could definitely use some fabric softener, which did nothing to soothe her aroused flesh, Julianne also considered that most of the military men she’d met over the years—except for the occasional miscreants who had slipped through the recruiting system whom she’d end up prosecuting—possessed an unwavering code of beliefs that had them willing to put themselves in harm’s way to protect, defend, and fight for what was right.
She appreciated their absolute self-discipline, their decisiveness, and their integrity as tough as their bodies.
There was also something more than a little appealing about a man who could commit to something outside himself, she decided as she took another towel and began squeezing the water from her hair. Although there were always exceptions—like the dead pilot’s husband—her parents’ strong marriage suggested that a man who could commit to something outside himself could also commit to a mate.
Not that she was looking for one.
And a good thing, too, since, with her hair hanging over her shoulder like wet rope, and her red-rimmed eyes practically bleeding caffeine, she doubted that the man on the other side of the door, the man she’d be sharing a bed with, would need any of that famous military self-discipline to keep his hands off her.