The Switch (16 page)

"If you don't mind,"
Jem said rudely. "This has taken far too
long already." He crowded up behind her as though trying to herd all of them through the door.

Birchman and Chief wove their way through the warren of desks in the central room toward the
corridor and the elevator; she and Jem followed. Just as Birchman depressed the button, the same
p
lainclothes policeman who had approached Chief before sidled up to him again, proffering a writing tablet and nervously asking for his autograph.

The elevator arrived. "I'll be a minute here," Chief said, quickly shaking hands with the attorney. He told him he would call him at his office later. Birchman stepped into the elevator.

Jem nudged her toward the elevator doors.

Making a spontaneous decision, she said, "You go on ahead, Jem. I need the ladies' room first."

"Well, okay," he said as he awkwardly tried to keep the automatic doors from closing and squashing him between them. "I'll be over later."

The elevator doors closed, but she made no move toward the rest rooms.

Chief glanced up and regarded her curiously. He finished signing the tablet for the policeman's son. "Thanks, Chief," the man said, saluting.

"You're welcome. Good luck to your son, to Todd." He shook
hands with the cop, who then marched off bearing his prize. Chief depressed the elevator button. "Going down?" "Please. I fibbed about needing the ladies' room." "I see," he said, although clearly he didn't.

They waited, each staring at the seam between the elevator doors. The silence stretched out long enough to grow noticeable and awkward. When the elevator car arrived, she was glad to see that no one else was aboard. He motioned her in and then followed. As they began their descent, she turned to him. "I apologize for Jem."

"It's not your fault."

"I'm embarrassed for him. He behaved like an ass."

"You won't get an argument from me." He grinned faintly, but she didn't return it.

"I also wanted to speak to you privately."

He made a quarter turn toward her. "All right."

"To tell you what a gutless coward you are."

He yanked his head back reflexively. "Excuse me?" "You're a coward, Colonel Hart."

"I got it the first time," he said tightly. "Mind telling me why you think so?"

"Not at all." The doors opened onto the first floor, but she remained where she was. "Jem was wrong to attack you, but he was right about one thing. You're a liar." Before he could counter, she plunged on. "You were too much of a coward to truthfully answer Lawson's question."

"Which question?"

"The one about sleeping with Gillian. You see, I know you did."

CHAPTER 12

Chief slammed into his suite at The Mansion, tossed his jacket into a chair, and headed straight for the bar. He was tempted to have a bourbon but settled on a soft drink instead. He carried it with him to the sofa, where he threw himself down among the cushions and emptied half the can before taking a breath.

Not too deep a breath, however. On a deep breath he might smell Gillian's perfume on the sofa cushions and that would be too painful a reminder.

A harsh, choking sound erupted from him before he could contain it. He sat up and placed the soft drink can on the coffee table, then propped his elbows on his knees and plowed all ten fingers through his hair and held his head. Despair settled on him like a coat of chain mail. He closed his eyes tightly and exhaled slowly.

Christ. How could this have happened to him? Why? What god had he failed to appease?

He wouldn't cry. Astronauts don't cry. People don't cry over the death of someone they knew only for a few hours.

But even though he didn't cry, his throat was tight and, when he opened his eyes, his eyelashes were suspiciously damp.

He retrieved his cold drink can and sipped from it as he reflected on Melina's parting words. He'd tried damned hard to stay angry. She had thrown down her gauntlet, then hightailed it from the elevator, all but carrying a banner of righteous indignation, leaving him with his dick in the dirt, so to speak, and when he'd tried to go after her and challenge her, he'd been waylaid by a man waiting in line to pay his traffic ticket at one of the teller windows the police department kindly provided. By the time he'd shaken hands to acknowledge the man's boisterous greeting, Melina had disappeared.

On the drive back to the hotel, he'd tried to fan the anger she'd sparked. She'd called him a liar and a coward. He'd been ready to throttle Hennings for doing the same. He had every right to be good and pissed. But he'd been unable to stay mad because his conscience wouldn't let him. He knew he was wrong.

Anger was a safe emotion. A burst of temper was familiar. He knew how to handle and control it. But this—whatever this was—he didn't know how to handle at all. If he couldn't even identify the emotion that was tearing him up inside, how was he supposed to get a grip on it?

A beautiful woman had been brutally slain. Tragic, certainly. But his involvement with Gillian had been so fleeting, he wasn't sure it merited this gnawing desolation.

Nevertheless, he couldn't simply dust his hands off and forget it. Lawson's lecture about duty and decency wasn't keeping him here. He had an ironclad sense of responsibility, but not necessarily to the Dallas Police Department. The detective's point about staying for Melina's sake was well taken, but even that wasn't enough to stop him from tossing his belongings into his duffel bag and heading back to Houston.

No, there was something else compelling him to stay and see this thing through. Something elusive. Something he hadn't yet figured out.

Finishing his drink, he returned the can to the coffee table, then lay back against the cushions. Consciously setting emotions aside, which tended to clutter any issue, he decided to approach the problem pragmatically, just as he would tackle a problem on the shuttle. He would deal with each element of this conundrum separately. The process of elimination would eventually lead to the source of the trouble, ergo the solution.

Taking it from the top, his anger was, to an extent, justified. He wasn't happy about being involved in a murder investigation for obvious reasons, but also for one reason that wasn't so obvious—it fulfilled a predetermination he had hoped to avoid.

All his life he'd been waiting for something awful like this to happen. He was a member of a minority, and, as all minority youths learn early on, he'd had to work longer, strive harder, be tougher. He had more to prove. He was watched more closely, the implication being that at some point he would probably screw up. So, he'd grown up anticipating and fearing his Fall From Grace—in capital letters. At least now that the Fall had happened, he didn't have to dread it any longer.

Furthermore, Birchman's private remarks to him were right on target. NASA wouldn't look kindly on one of its high-profile boys, who'd had an impeccable record up till now, suddenly being questioned by police about the ruthless murder of a young woman with whom he had spent the last few hours leading up to the murder. No matter the nature of that police questioning, involvement of any kind was bad PR. Very bad.

But dammit, this wasn't his fault. What had he done wrong? He wasn't responsible for how some twisted head case reacted to seeing him with Gillian Lloyd.

"
Did you sleep together?
"

Yes. They had. They'd fucked, okay?

How had Melina known that he was lying? Had he looked guilty when he answered Lawson's blunt question with an equally blunt denial? Had she picked up his lie through twin telepathy? Or had Gillian told her?

Or maybe... maybe Melina was only guessing and happened to hit it right. Perhaps Gillian had switched places with Melina specifically for the purpose of gaining bragging rights. For all he knew, she had collected men like some women collected coupons. She'd wanted to check "astronaut" off her To Do list.

No. No. His own thoughts sickened him. There were women who racked up sex points, just like some men did. He'd been a trophy to women like that. But Gillian wasn't one of them. He knew better than to even think such thoughts about her.

The truth of it was that the desire between them had been mutual, and it hadn't started when they finished their tacos and had a bourbon buzz going. It had begun the instant they laid eyes on each other. From that first handshake, that first smile, the entire evening had been protracted forep
lay that had culminated in them—

Dammit, he was
not
going to think about it. He would not. He refused.

To distract himself, he reached for his cell phone. He called his voice mail at work and at his home phone, then spent the next fifteen minutes returning only the calls that were absolutely necessary.

When asked when he was coming back, he made up some lame excuse for his delayed return to Houston. They'd learn soon enough the real reason. It was only a matter of time before his name appeared in print in connection with a woman's murder in Dallas. Wouldn't the media have a heyday with that? Receiving an award from the SMU alumni association one day, being questioned by police about a homicide the next. And in between...

Hell. If all his thoughts were eventually going to come back to last night, he'd just as well go ahead and think about it. He'd been avoiding it all day, from the moment he woke up and realized that she'd left, until now. He hadn't allowed himself to think about it.

Screw her
, he'd thought as he grouchily rolled out of bed. He
had things to do, places to go, people to see. They'd had some laughs, some good sex. He was sore that she hadn't stayed through the night, but he would survive.

But after all that male posturing, he'd wound up calling her twice before his breakfast meeting and was irked when he got her voice mail. Then at the conclusion of breakfast Lawson had shown up, precluding thought about anything except the crisis at hand.

Now that he had the time to review it, why not? Maybe that would get it out of his system. Perhaps it would even produce another clue, some significant detail, previously forgotten, that would advance Lawson's investigation.

So your motives for thinking about it are noble
? he asked himself sardonically. Bullshit. He wanted to think about it because he wanted to think about it. Period.

Leaning back against the cushions, he closed his eyes, and it was as though she were again standing in front of him where he sat on the floor beside the coffee table.

"What seems right?" he had asked, hoping that she shared his idea of the right thing for them to do at that given moment.

Somehow managing to look both seductive and ladylike, she had reached behind her neck and unfastened the hook at the top of her zipper, then gradually pulled it down. She lowered one shoulder of her dress, then the other, before letting it drop to her waist, sliding it down over her hips, and stepping out of it.

In his fantasy, he heard himself whispering hoarsely, "Damn."

"Should I take that as a yea vote?"

His answer was to place his hands at her waist and pull her toward him. He kissed her just above her bikini line, gentle sucking her skin against his teeth and tongue. As she gradually lowered herself to her knees, his mouth worked its way up her body. When her black strapless bra impeded his progress, he reached behind her and unhooked it, and then her nipple was inside his mouth, and her hands were in his hair.

His memory was cloudy as to how they got from there to the sofa. He just remembered wallowing entwined among the cushions, his hands trying to touch as much of her as possible in the shortest amount of time, and catching her breasts between his lips each time they got near his mouth, and her whispering against his throat, "One of us has on too many clothes," while her hands reached for the studs on his tuxedo shirt.

She pushed him back onto the cushions and knelt on the floor between his knees. Painstakingly she removed the studs. She chastised him and laughingly pushed his hands aside whenever impatience drove him to try and assist. But when his restless hands occupied themselves by cupping her breasts and stroking her nipples with his thumbs, her eyes grew dark and languid.

Finally all the studs were removed. She spread open his shirt and leaned forward to kiss his chest. The touch of her lips was as light as her breath on his skin. Occasionally he felt the damp brush of her tongue and the delicate scrape of her teeth as she worked her way down to his navel.

He held his breath now, as he had last night when she removed his cummerbund and unzipped his trousers. She slipped her hand inside his shorts. A mischievous smile had played behind her voice when she murmured, "No wonder they call you Chief."

Then he had exhaled on a low moan and had entangled his fingers in her silky hair, while her even silkier mouth had taken him, and he had virtually dissolved.

The telephone rang, jarring him out of the erotic daydream.

He covered his face briefly with his hands, then, cursing, reached for his cell phone. But even after engaging it, the ringing continued. It wasn't until then that he realized it was the room phone that was ringing. He stretched across the sofa to pick up the extension on the end table.

"What?"

"Colonel Hart?"

"Who's this?"

"Dexter Longtree."

"What do you want?"

He was being rude, but he was past caring. He'd said everything he had to say to the old chief this morning. He'd squelched any hope of their ever having a working relationship. At least he thought he had made that clear. Since then, much had happened. None of it good, all of it tragic. If he was in a bad humor, that was just too damn bad.

"Is everything all right?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"The last time I saw you, you were having trouble with the police."

"Not trouble, just—"

"If you will recall, I had predicted you might soon find yourself in need of my help."

Chief made a scoffing sound. "What, Longtree, you had a vision or something? Are you a medicine man?"

After a slight pause, the old chief asked, "Are you so scornful of spirituality, Colonel Hart?"

"What I'm scornful of is people who can't take no for an answer and who don't mind their own damn business."

"But you are my business," he stated without a qualm. "You and everything you do and everything that happens to you are of tremendous interest and importance to me."

Chief was growing increasingly irritated. "Then that's your problem. I told you yesterday and again this morning that I want no part of your group, that my interests and those of the NAA are incompatible."

"That we need you more than you need us."

"So you were listening."

"I was listening, Colonel Hart. And you made yourself very clear." He paused for so long that Chief was about to excuse himself and hang up when Longtree added, "I was hoping that perhaps you had changed your mind since this morning. That perhaps unhappy circumstances had urged you to change it."

A sudden chill rippled up Chief's spine. It occurred to him that his life had started its downward spiral into the toilet after his meeting yesterday with Longtree and Abbott. "Listen to me, you son of a bitch, if you—"

"Obviously you're still of the same mind. I'll give you a while longer to think matters over. Do so carefully. Goodbye, Colonel Hart."

"Wait a minute," Chief shouted into the receiver, but Longtree had hung up.

Chief slammed down the telephone and began prowling the room, trying to reason it through. Could there possibly be a link between Longtree and his sidekick Abbott, and what had happened to Gillian? Could they have sacrificed an innocent woman in order to create a scandal from which they would "rescue" him? That would certainly place him in their debt, wouldn't it?

He swore with a capacity that had taken years to develop.