And, more important, the past two days with Juls had changed Dallas. She’d made him want more than mutually enjoyable sex.
She’d made him want more from a woman than an ego boost.
And she’d made him want more from himself than a smooth line and a slow hand.
“I’ve heard,” he suggested, “that patience is perceived to be a virtue.”
“I’ve heard the same thing.”
She untwined her arms, stepped back, and smoothed unseen wrinkles from the front of her shirt. She was the most naturally tidy person he’d ever met. Having seen the lockers that sailors had to store their possessions in, he figured she’d had that habit drilled into her by her admiral father.
Personally, while to him she looked good all the time, Dallas decided he liked her better when she was a little mussed, as she’d been when they’d gotten back to the BOQ yesterday evening. He vowed he was going to muss her up again. Soon.
“Do you believe that?” she asked. His heart spiked for a moment as she unzipped her skirt. Unfortunately, only to tuck the shirt, which had pulled a little loose, back into her waistband, but not before tucking it into a proper military fold. “About patience?”
“I did. When I was out on a mission. Can’t get rattled when you’re basically playing air traffic controller in the middle of a war zone. But where you’re concerned, darlin’, hell, no.”
Unable to resist, he kissed her again: a hot, quick kiss that only had him wanting more. A lot more.
When they came back up again, he felt himself grinning like a damn fool schoolboy who’d just copped his first feel.
Oh, yeah. He was definitely pixilated.
“But,” he decided reluctantly, “I suppose there might be something to be said for anticipation.”
Although, other than a powerful ache in his groin and his teeth worn to the gums from his gritting them for however many more hours it took to reach Pearl, Dallas wasn’t sure what.
“We don’t have time for distractions,” she warned.
Dallas tamped down the prick of irritation at being referred to as a distraction. “What about this?” He ran the back of his fingers up the delicate curve of her cheek, fascinated when soft color bloomed again beneath his touch. “Does this distract you?”
“Dammit, O’Halloran . . .” She batted his hand away.
“And this.” When she would have moved away, he caught both her hands in his, holding her as he nuzzled her neck. “Does this distract you?”
“You know it does.” She tugged her hands free. “Work,” she insisted. “We have at least one murder we know of to solve before we can play.”
At least she hadn’t backed away from playing when they reached Hawaii. Dallas suspected it wasn’t something she did that often. He enjoyed the idea of being the one to help her explore the concept.
“I need to call Merry,” she said. “She called me while you were out getting breakfast. Tom, her husband, was suddenly called away on a training mission, so I want to make sure she’s doing okay without him there.”
“It’s gotta be tough being pregnant and alone.” Another reason he hadn’t wanted to even consider getting hitched while he was in the Air Force. “While you do that, I’ll wander up to the Internet café and check out Ichabod’s e-mail.”
Her eyes widened at that.
“What?”
“You called him Ichabod.”
“Sure. Didn’t he remind you of that guy from the kids’ story about the Headless Horseman?”
“The minute he walked in.” She shook her head. “It’s just getting scary how often we think alike.”
“Actually, that’s one of the good things I’m getting a kick out of. Because if we’re this tuned in to each other out of bed, just think how good we’re going to be
in
it.”
“I haven’t said yes,” she reminded him.
“You haven’t said no, either,” he reminded her back, as, with a huge amount of reluctance, Dallas opened the hatch, unsurprised to find the ensign waiting outside.
44
“You sure you’ll be okay?” Julianne asked her sister for the umpteenth time.
“Of course,” Merry insisted. “Geez, Julianne, I’m pregnant. Not helpless.”
“I wasn’t implying you were. But I worry.”
“I know.” There was something that sounded suspiciously like a sniffle on the other end of the phone. “That’s your job as my big sister. But seriously, it’s not as if I didn’t know what I was getting into. After growing up in the military, if I hadn’t been prepared to accept my husband being away, I wouldn’t have gone out with Tom in the first place.”
“From what you told me, about lightning striking when you first met in the exchange, I’m not sure you had a choice.”
“Neither one of us did.” Julianne could hear the smile that had replaced the sniffles in her sister’s voice. “The minute our fingers touched reaching for that Kenny Chesney CD, we were both hooked. For life.”
“That’s nice.” Julianne meant it. “Just promise me that if you need anything, you’ll ask one of your Marine neighbors to get it for you.”
“I swear.” There was an indulgent huff from the other end of the phone line. “Did you and Tom get together to practice your lines? Because he said exactly the same thing.”
“No, we didn’t rehearse them. But we do both love you.”
“I know. And I love you, too. So, to change the subject from me, how are you and that Air Force CCT getting along?”
“Okay.” Julianne had told Merry about getting assigned to this case with O’Halloran when she’d called earlier. But she hadn’t shared what an assault he’d proven to her senses.
“Just okay?”
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” she said with studied casualness. “He’s smart.”
“He’d have to be. I was telling Tom about him and he said he’s worked with a CCT before. During Shock and Awe in Iraq. He said the guy was amazing.”
“Amazing” didn’t begin to cover it, Julianne thought, but did not say.
“Julianne? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I was just thinking about something.”
“About your case?”
“Yes.” Okay, so it was a lie. But there were sailors lined up to use the phone, and no way was she going to get into a public discussion about personal feelings she hadn’t even fully figured out herself yet. “Look, I’ve got to run. But you take care, okay?”
“Absolutely. You, too.” There was a kissing sound from the other end of the phone.
As she hung up, Julianne assured herself that it was only a natural concern for her very pregnant sister that had her nerves so tangled.
45
She found Dallas in the Internet café, which was crowded with sailors, all madly typing away at computer terminals.
“So.” She pulled up a metal chair and sat down beside him. “What have you managed to uncover?”
When he glanced around, as if looking for spies, Julianne decided she pretty much sucked at this undercover stuff.
“Nothing different from what we were told,” he said. “The husband in question wasn’t happy with his spouse’s life goals. She wasn’t happy with his less than tender way of dealing with those goals.”
“Such as smacking her around because she wasn’t living up to her role as a dutiful wife?”
“Exactly. Not that she was your typical abused spouse. As the roommate told us, she viewed him as an impediment. So they’d agreed to split up.”
“Both agreed?”
“Doesn’t seem to have been a problem. It’s not like they had any kids—that he knew about, anyway—or property to split up. And, although it wasn’t spelled out in detail, from the e-mails I read, I got the sense that he hadn’t exactly been all that faithful anyway.”
And didn’t that make two of them? Julianne thought.
Since they were in a public place, she decided to keep that thought to herself. Besides, given how often they were thinking the same thing, she suspected Dallas had already taken that into consideration.
“I also talked with the guy who’s sort of the pastor, or whatever you want to call it, to the Muslims on board,” he told her.
“How—”
“It was serendipity,” he said. “Or maybe we were being watched and the guy was waiting for the right moment to approach me.
“Anyway, I was just sitting here minding my own business when this LT came up and told me that, contrary to shipboard gossip, the Muslim community, while not all that thrilled with what Lieutenant Murphy decided to write on her bomb, had nothing to do with her death.
“He insisted they’re first and foremost Americans. And, while it may be a tad uncomfortable fighting against fellow Muslims in this particular war, there is no way any of them would ever kill one of their shipmates.”
“And you believed that?”
“I believed the guy who told me that. Whether he has absolute control over every Muslim on board is an entirely different story.”
“Damn. I’m beginning to think we’ve got thousands of suspects,” she said.
“Not that many. But a bunch.”
Julianne thought about everything they’d learned so far.
“She never would’ve made it,” she decided.
“Made what?”
“Captain of a carrier group.”
“Because she was female?”
“No. Though that was, admittedly, a roadblock. But, given that a woman’s recently become a four-star general in the army, it wasn’t impossible. No, Murphy couldn’t have reached the top because she had too many people who didn’t like her.
“I grew up in the military and watched my mother doing her spouse thing, hosting teas, paying visits to naval wives, playing her role on the home front while my father worked his way up the ladder. Both of them making friends and connections in high places.
“Believe me, the Pentagon is as political as any lobbyist group on K Street. More so than a lot. Given that we keep running into people Murphy pissed off, there’s no way she would’ve maneuvered her way into a top slot.”
“Good point. The Muslim LT also slipped me a note.”
“Oh, wow. Now I’m really beginning to feel like James Bond,” she said. “Tell me it was written in invisible ink and you’ve already swallowed it to keep it out of the enemy’s hands and you’ll make my day.”
“Cute,” Dallas said. “But it’s not that insignificant. Since it’s the second time this guy’s name’s been brought up.”
“And that guy in question would be?”
“A certain skipper.”
“The one who pulled off that amazing landing?”
“The very same.Who was also,” he reminded her,“one of the men our victim might have been sleeping with on her onward and upward quest toward command.”
46
Unfortunately, given the flight schedules, they were informed by the ensign that Captain Campbell was taking some much-needed rack time. And apparently no one dared interrupt him to suggest that he spend any of that time talking to two civilians from Homeland Security.
“We could always go down there,” Julianne suggested.
Dallas shook his head. “Let’s not start by pissing him off,” he said. “I may not know a lot about the Navy, especially carriers, but one thing I do know, having spent a lot of time with my life depending on them, is that pilots pretty much are a subculture of the military.
“Short of getting away with out-and-out murder, they’re cut a lot of slack by the rest of the military because of what they do. And how well they do it. Unless he decides to hijack a naval fighter jet, Campbell’s not going anywhere. There’s no real reason to mess with the flight skeds, so let’s let him get some sleep. Because, I don’t know about you, but if he’s called out for any reason and crashes into the drink or, worse yet, onto the deck and takes out a bunch of his shipmates because we cut into his rack time, well, that’d be real hard for me to move past.”
“Okay. So, let’s dig a little deeper into CDO Wright’s background,” Julianne suggested.
“You suspect him?”
“I’m not letting anyone off the hook until they’re proven innocent.”
“Given the population of this boat, that may take some time.”
“As you said, no one’s going anywhere until we put into Pearl. Including us.”
Which was, unfortunately, true.
Dallas didn’t know how sailors did it, doing the same thing day after day, week after week, month after month. He’d been on the carrier less than twenty-four hours and he was already starting to get itchy with what the Navy called channel fever.
“Want to go talk with some Muslims?” he asked. “Although I could tell he wasn’t real wild about the idea, the LT said they’d be willing to answer any questions, if that’s what it took to prove that they weren’t involved in domestic terrorism.”
She tilted her head as she considered that for a moment. “They may serve with female sailors, but let’s not push our luck,” she decided. “If they do have anything to share, they’re more likely to tell a man.
“Why don’t I just take over the computer, whose shipboard security you’ve obviously breached, while you go question them? Then we can clean up, put on our uniforms, and join the captain and the admiral for dinner.”
“You brought your whites?”
“Of course. Just in case. What, did you think I’d pack Merry’s dress?”
“Not really.” He sighed in remembrance of opportunity lost. “But hope springs eternal.”
47
Unfortunately, Julianne didn’t find anything suspicious about either the CDO or Murphy’s former religious mentor. Which reminded her that they still needed to talk with that pagan—the so-called witch Icabod had suggested the pilot might have been sleeping with.
“Nah,” Lieutenant Harley Ford assured her when she tracked the pilot down to ask about that. “I know pagans get a bad rap for screwing like bunnies, and there are some groups who take the fertility side of the belief system more seriously than others, but there is no way that the guy who does his best to herd all us cats into a somewhat cohesive community would risk bringing dis honor to the group. Which is already looked down on by enough folks. Especially military types. But if you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask him?”