“You want anything done involving radios or electronics, I’m your man. And although I did pick up some handy covert skills during my days as a CCT—the reason our motto is ‘First in is because we’re the ones who come into hostile territory to set things up for the SEALs and D-boys—I don’t have anywhere near your skills for interrogation. And I never play poker if I can help it, because I’m lousy at bluffing.”
His grin lit up the twilight settling over them. “What you see is pretty much what you get.”
And what she saw was pretty damned hot.
Which, Julianne reminded herself firmly, had nothing to do with their mission.
10
Lieutenant Commander John Walsh stood in the doorway of the barge and watched as the car drove away from the pier. Then he returned to his office, closed the door, picked up the phone, and punched in the numbers with more force than was necessary.
“They’re gone,” he said. “To MCBH.”
He rubbed his temple as the curses came flying at him like bullets from an assault rifle. “I offered them to put them up in Longwood, sir. But the woman insisted that she wanted to go to the base.”
As more curses hit home, he opened his center desk drawer.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I know they’re civilians, sir.”
He was a lieutenant commander, for chrissakes! No one talked to him that way. Of course, given that he was too deep into what was turning out to be a clusterfuck to get out now, it wasn’t exactly as if he’d go file a complaint and take the person on the other end of the phone to an admiral’s mast. Or call in JAG to press charges.
“But, civilian or not, THOR is suddenly the five-thousand-pound gorilla in the U.S. war on terrorism. No way was I going to go any farther out on this damn limb by bucking their authority.”
He took the M9 he’d carried since boot camp in San Diego out of the drawer.
“They’re flying out to the
O’Halloran
at zero-nine-hundred. I had a bug placed in the car, but right before the driver was supposed to leave for the airport, a damn fuse burned out, so he was forced to switch vehicles.
“And no,” he said, anticipating the next question, “I’m not going to try to debrief the driver when he returns, because he’s no damn ordinary enlisted. He’s an MA. Like a master of arms isn’t going to get suspicious as to why I’m inquiring into what his passengers talked about?”
Although he always kept the gun loaded, he checked the clip out of habit.
“We’ve already expanded the circle too far. Things fall apart,” he paraphrased Yeats. “If those two break the perimeter, the center cannot hold.”
The problem was, there were already so many fucking cracks, he couldn’t see any way it could hold. And all the signs were pointing to the fact that the guy in charge of what had once sounded like a fail-safe plan was on the brink of going fucking wacko.
As he hung up the phone, he thought of the potential for arrest.
The trial.
The humiliation.
Naturally, since his wife had been counting on being a Pentagon hostess—which would immediately land her on both Washington military and political party A-lists—his future also held an expensive and messy divorce.
He’d probably never see his children—who were far more attached to their mother, given his years of absence—again.
Worse yet was the thought that, after having served his country for over two decades with honor, he was looking at years of imprisonment.
He took a deep breath.
Squared his shoulders as he put the pistol between his teeth, pressing it up against the roof of his mouth.
With his long-held dreams of a cushy desk job in the Pentagon vanishing like morning fog over the Pacific, Lieutenant Commander John Paul Walsh pulled the trigger.
11
“Since it appears we’re going to have some hours to kill, what would you say about taking in a luau?” Dallas asked as they drove across the mountains to the Marine base.
“What?” She looked up from the file she’d been studying.
“Well, there’s nothing in there that’s going to be any help, and—”
“You’ve read it?”
“I arrived at Pearl earlier than you,” he reminded her. “So, yeah. I got a look through it. And it’s pretty much bare-bones. Hell, I could dig up more on the computer in ten minutes. And that’s before I delved more than two layers deeper than Google.”
“Then it’s my suggestion, as your partner, that you spend the evening doing exactly that.”
“I intended to. But we’ve still got to eat.”
“We’ll get takeout.”
Dallas glanced up at the rearview mirror and saw the MA shooting him a “good try, buddy, but no cigar” look.
“Except for that drop-dead gorgeous dress you were wearing at the del Coronado, civilian life hasn’t seemed to change you, Lieutenant. You’re still tough.”
Tough as nails. No, Dallas amended, tough enough to eat nails and spit out staples.
“I’m no longer a lieutenant,” she reminded him. “And you might want to keep in mind the fact that I’m not that comfortable with the change.” Closing the folder, she glanced out the window. “We can pick something up there,” she said, pointing at a club/restaurant.
The silence from the front seat was deafening. Even Dallas, who’d never claim to be the most empathetic guy on the planet, could sense the sailor’s discomfort.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“Um. I’m afraid that establishment is for E-5 and below, ma’am,” the driver said.
“You’re an equivalent rank to an E-5,” she reminded him. “And tonight, we’re your guests.”
Although she might no longer be in the military, her officer’s tone, which Dallas was all too familiar with from those three days in that small interrogation room, brooked no argument.
He shrugged again. Exchanged another look with the MA. It was obvious to both of them that there was no point in arguing with the lady.
The driver pulled into the parking lot. “Why don’t I just run in and get you a menu, ma’am?” he suggested.
“That’s not necessary.” She crushed any hope he’d had of getting in and out without any problems. “I’ve been sitting on planes and in cars for hours. I’d like a chance to stretch my legs, so we may as well go in.”
“Good try,” Dallas murmured to the military cop as they followed her toward the heavy wooden door.
“You’ve got yourself one tough assignment,” the MA murmured back, “partnering with that lady.”
“True,” Dallas agreed. “But the scenery sure as hell isn’t bad.”
Although the bar might be designated for enlisted, it wasn’t that different from the officers’ clubs Julianne had been in over the years.
The requisite neon beer signs flashed in the windows and above the mirror behind the bar, pool tables filled much of the space, and there were dartboards on the wall and a postage stamp-sized dance floor.
The waitstaff, in their blindingly bright Hawaiian shirts, looked as if they’d just come from serving on a buffet line at one of those luaus O’Halloran had suggested attending, while Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” belted from the jukebox.
The Marines, recognizable by their high-and-tight haircuts and macho, “don’t fuck with me” attitudes, went still as stones.
Julianne had once shared an apartment with another JAG attorney who’d sworn she could read auras. A skeptic to the core, Julianne had never bought into that idea. But she didn’t need any witchly talents to sense the latent hostility to outsiders radiating from them.
Although her clothing, along with her black pumps with only one-and-a-half-inch heels, could have served as a uniform, once again she felt nearly naked without a name tag or rank insignia that stated her place in the universe.
The reality, she was discovering, was that she’d never known a life outside the military, and although her loss was merely emotional, not physical, she had a vague understanding of what it must feel like to have lost a limb.
The way Army SOAR pilot Shane Garrett had.
Which brought her thoughts back to that emotionally difficult case where she’d first met O’Halloran.
Telling herself it was time to move on, that she had a job to do, Julianne squared her shoulders and walked through the cloud of blue smoke toward the bar. Apparently the customers hadn’t received the memo about Oahu’s no-smoking law. She also suspected there wasn’t a cop on the island who’d be willing to bust them. Or bureaucrat who’d dare try.
A Marine the size of a giant sequoia moved in front of her, effectively blocking her way as she made her way past the pool tables. “I believe you’re in the wrong place, ma’am.”
“Excuse me.” She tilted her head and looked a long, long way back up at him. “But I’m not sure you’re the one to be telling me that.”
He tensed. Bulked-up neck. Rock-hard shoulders. Tree-trunk arms.
“Evening.” Dallas somehow nudged her aside without so much as laying a finger on her. “The lady and I just stopped in as guests”—he jerked his thumb toward their driver—“of the master sergeant to pick up something to eat before we head over to the lodge at the MCBH.”
Gunmetal gray eyes narrowed. “If you’re Marines, I’m friggin’ Rambo.”
“Actually, I’m a former Air Force combat controller.” Dallas flashed what she’d come to realize was his trademark grin. The Texas drawl had deepened to an aw-shucks, good-ol’-boy twang. “Ms. Decatur is former Navy. JAG,” he said significantly. “Now we’re both still working for Uncle Sam, but in a civilian capacity.”
He paused just a beat to let that sink in. “I’m not exactly sure how things work in this new gig. I could show you my badge, if you’re really going to insist. But then I might just have to kill you.”
“You and whose army, flyboy?” the Marine challenged.
Dallas sighed. Plucked a pool cue from the wall rack and began casually moving it from one hand to the other.
Left.
Right.
Left.
“You really don’t want to do this, son.” His tone was reasoning. Patient. But laced with an edgy warning that all the other Marines who’d gathered around, obviously ready to rumble, couldn’t miss hearing.
Right.
“Because not only would you lose, you’d end up spending the rest of your liberty in whatever serves as a brig over at MCBH. Which,” he said, glancing over at the MA, who’d taken up his own cue stick, “wouldn’t be all that much fun and would end up costing Agent Decatur and me our supper.”
Left again.
His attitude remained casual, but his hand had fisted around the cue, causing the muscles in his arm to tense. Why hadn’t she ever noticed how big his biceps were? Probably because during those times she’d been interrogating him, he’d been wearing his Air Force dress jacket.
“And you’ve no idea how junkyard-dog mean we oil-patch Texas boys can get when we’ve got a heavy hungry on.”
Julianne wasn’t sure if the Marines were actually afraid the two men could come out on top in a bar brawl. Which, while she wouldn’t put anything past them, was still unlikely, given the odds. More likely it was the reminder that getting arrested by the shore patrol could put an end to whatever fun they’d had planned for the evening that had sequoia guy stepping aside, while the rest of the group parted as though O’Halloran were Moses and they were the waters of the Red Sea.
“Very well played,” she murmured, after he’d tossed the cue onto the table and they continued across the floor that was covered with sawdust and peanut shells. “But it seems, rather than risk a brawl, it would’ve been simpler for us to have just shown them our IDs. Which, I gather, pretty much give us the right to go anywhere we want.”
“That may be. And while you were explaining the intricacies of the Homeland Security Act, that guy’s buddies would’ve started bashing bar stools over the MA’s and my heads,” he said. “I’ve always figured there are two ways to accomplish something—the easy way and the hard way. Sometimes, granted, you don’t have a choice. But if you find yourself in a situation where they’ll both get you the same end results, to my mind, it’s best to go with easy.”
“Which doesn’t exactly explain why you became a CCT,” she said, “choosing to be ‘first in,’ rather than staying back at some stateside base or at the Pentagon, playing with your computer behind a nice, safe desk.”
“Good point,” he said, changing back into Mr. Agreeable, making Julianne wonder yet again which was the real Dallas O’Halloran. “Of course, the goal is to get first in and out again without getting involved with the bad guys. The better you are at your job, the less likely you are to get into serious trouble.”
“And you were good.”
“Darlin’, I was the flat-out best.”
The devastating dimples she suspected had caused women all over the world to drop their panties flashed again. The morph was complete: The Spec Ops guy who’d stood off a group of half-drunk Marines had disappeared, and in his place was this slow-talking, easygoing Texan babe magnet.
And the damnable thing was, although she never would have believed it possible, Julianne found herself admiring—and liking—them both.
12
Not only had whoever ran this place chosen to ignore the island’s smoking ban, it was obvious the cook had somehow been absent from culinary school the day the updated food pyramid had been taught.
Julianne was not at all surprised when O’Halloran ordered the jumbo coconut shrimp, the Big Kahuna fries, loaded with cheese and chili, and an order of wings. She
was
surprised when down at the bottom of the bar menu, in a type font so small she nearly needed a magnifying glass to read it, she found a veggie burger topped with roasted red peppers and mushrooms. Which she ordered with a house salad with fat-free honey mustard dressing.
“It figures,” Quinn said.
“What?” she asked as the bartender lined up a row of glasses, then filled them nearly to the top from cans of Red Bull.
“That you’d be a sprout eater.”