Breakpoint (25 page)

“In a heartbeat. But how many people would know how to do that?”

“Anyone who works with computers and has access to the control center, wherever the hell that is. Or the doc.”

“What?” He watched her process that. “Because his SWO points to the fact that he knows everything about this boat.”

“Exactly.”

A flicker of honest admiration warmed her eyes. “You know, O’Halloran,” she said, “You’re pretty good.”

“About time you figured that out.” Because he had a goofy, almost overwhelming urge to take her slender lady hand and lift it to his lips, Dallas stuck his hands deep into the front pockets of his khaki pants and gave her his best slow, dimple-flashing “I want to do you” smile.

“But if you think that’s something, just wait until you discover how good I can be when I’m being really, really bad.”

The stolen flirtatious moment was over as quickly as it had begun. She shook her head and continued walking away. But not before he heard her attempt to smother a laugh.

Lieutenant Harley Ford was just arriving back at her quarters when Julianne and Dallas showed up. Her short, spiky black hair was wet, which, since it wasn’t raining, and judging from the workout gear she was wearing, Julianne guessed was from a shower.

She gave them an up-and-down look. “I was wondering when NCIS or JAG would show up,” she said. “But you’re not in uniform.”

“We’re technically civilian, working for an investigatory arm of Homeland Security.” Julianne flashed her ID. Dallas followed suit. “But I was in JAG.”

“Figures.” She unlocked the hatch and walked into the room. “My ex-husband was a lawyer. I can usually spot them.”

They hadn’t exactly been offered a gilt-edged invitation. But she hadn’t shut the metal hatch in their faces, either.

“Military?” Julianne asked as she and Dallas followed the pilot into the quarters, which, while cramped, were more spacious than those most sailors received. Even aviators. “Your ex,” she clarified when the aviator shot her a look. “Was he military?”

“Nah. He did something on Wall Street. Probably churning old ladies’ nest eggs. Honesty was never exactly his strong suit. Which, natch, I only found out after we got hitched.”

She pulled the damp T-shirt over her head, revealing a gray cotton sports bra and a body as ripped as any Marine Julianne had ever seen. “I always thought that if he hadn’t been born into money, he could’ve ended up a shyster ambulance chaser advertising for phony accident-injury suits. Or even on the other side of the bars.”

“Sounds as if you’re well rid of him,” Dallas said.

She turned, a khaki shirt from her locker in her hand, and gave him another, longer look from the top of his shaggy hair down to his feet, then back up again. It was slow and decidedly sexual. Now
there
was the invitation they hadn’t received earlier.

“Roger that,” she said. She shrugged into the shirt. “So, I guess you’re here to find out all Mav’s secrets.”

“Did she have that many secrets?” Julianne asked.

Hazel eyes glinted with what appeared to be scorn. “You know what they say about secrets. Once two people know, it’s no longer a secret. We were roommates. Not BFFs. The only thing we had in common was that we’re the only two females in the squadron. She kept her life private. I did the same.”

“But you did know about her altercation with the LSO,” Dallas said.

“Find me one person on this tin can who doesn’t know about that and I’ll buy you a steak dinner and all the beer you can drink.”

“Do you think they could have been having an affair?”

“Could have. She was ambitious enough. Unlike me. Hell, I only joined up to have the government pay to teach me to fly so I can move on to commercial jets when I get out of the Navy. Europe, Japan, Australia. Especially Australia.

“I hear the guys are still real he-men down under. Unlike so many of those pansy metrosexuals America’s begun turning out by the thousands. Present company excluded,” she tacked on, perfect white teeth flashing in another unmistakable invitation.

“Ambition and risking getting caught having a shipboard affair seem to be at cross-purposes,” Julianne said.

“You’d think so. Wouldn’t you?”

Before buttoning the shirt, she pulled the workout pants down legs as muscular as the rest of her body. Beneath them she was wearing a pair of bikini panties that matched her bra. Thinking back on those youthful bed checks her father subjected her to, Julianne figured that if the LT lay down on her back, there’d be no problem bouncing a quarter off those rock-hard abs.

“Mav was driven. Everyone knew she had plans for becoming the first female carrier group captain.” She pulled on a pair of khaki pants. Julianne refused to look and see if Dallas seemed at all disappointed at the spectacular body being covered up again. “I suppose she might’ve slept with some guy if she thought it would get her up the ladder faster.”

“And the LSO could have been one of those guys?”

She shrugged. “He’s the one who writes up the reports. You do the math.” She paused. Shrugged again.

“What?” Julianne asked.

“Look, I’ll admit I wasn’t wild about her. She had a temper off the charts, she’d probably have taxied her F- 18 over her grandma Murphy if she thought it’d advance her career, and she was a racist to boot, which, while I’ll admit to not being the most politically correct person on the planet, didn’t sit at all well with me. But she was one hell of a good pilot. And it’s not good karma to speak ill of the dead.”

“If someone killed Lieutenant Murphy, he or she needs to pay,” Dallas said. “Besides, what if her death wasn’t random? What if someone on this ship is targeting other sailors? Maybe aviators. Maybe women. If that’s the case, you could find yourself smack in the middle of the bull’s-eye as the killer’s next target.”

“Well.” The LT blew out a breath. “I hadn’t considered it that way.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not exactly as much fun as you look.”

“Sorry,” Dallas said.

“Yeah, me, too. Okay, there were rumors the commander of our flight squad was doing a lot more than mentoring her. I always figured, even if they were doing the nasty, it didn’t have anything to do with me.”

“These are pretty close quarters,” Julianne pointed out, looking around the small room.

“Larger than most. Like I said, we’re the only two female aviators. That was worth a few perks.”

“And now you have the place to yourself.”

She actually laughed at that. “Don’t tell me you think I killed Mav because I wanted her locker?”

“That might be a tad excessive,” Dallas agreed. He’d pulled out his drawl. “You don’t think it was suicide?”

“Mav was all about Mav. No way would she have killed herself. So, yeah. I figured she pissed off so many people, it was only time someone snapped.”

“Did you know she was pregnant?” Julianne asked.

“Yeah. A few months ago, she began popping Tums like they were candy, and she had a major jones for chocolate. And she spent a lot of mornings in the head worshiping the porcelain goddess. Then, one morning when she asked me to take her flight time for her, she admitted she was preggers.”

“Would you happen to know who the father is?”

“Nope. Like I said, we weren’t real close. I didn’t ask. And she didn’t tell.”

She paused again.

Both Dallas and Julianne waited.

Again.

“There are a couple guys you might want to check out.”

“Okay.” Julianne took a notebook from her shirt pocket.

“Her former preacher. He’s one of those hellfire-and-brimstone types. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if, when he’s back on land, he doesn’t do the snake-handling bit. They seemed real close until her brother got blown to smithereens in the sandbox when his Hummer got taken out by an IED.

“After that, she’d sort of swing back and forth between wanting to kill them all and being depressed about why bad things had to happen to good people. I took it she really loved that kid.”

“So she was depressed.”

“From time to time. But you gotta figure that, what with her brother’s ticket getting punched in Iraq and her hormones running amuck. Anyway, although I try to stay out of other people’s personal lives—I so don’t do drama—I did suggest she might try out a different belief system, since her own didn’t seem to be working real well for her. Which is why I invited her to a couple moots.”

“What’s a moot?” Dallas asked.

“It’s a meeting of pagans. Our community holds one once a month.”

“So you’re Wiccan?” Julianne asked.

“Anything wrong with that?” the pilot challenged on the first flare of heat she’d demonstrated.:,In fact, alone

“Not at all,” Julianne stated mildly. “In fact, along with once having a pagan roommate, I wrote an amicus curiae—friend of the court—regarding
Circle Sanctuary v. Nicholson
supporting the argument that denying Wiccan servicemen and women their own symbol violates the Constitution. At the time, I believe there were eighteen hundred active Wiccans in the military.”

“ ‘Active being the definitive word,” the other woman said. “There are lots more who don’t want to be identified for fear of reprisals. And it’s cool that we’re finally allowed to have the pentagram on graves in military cemeteries, but we’re still not recognized as a religion in order to have our own chaplains.”

“Change takes time,” Dallas offered. “Especially in the military.”

This time the look she shot him was not the least bit sexy. “Spoken exactly like a white male who automatically gets handed all the rights the country has to offer merely because he was born with a penis.”

“I’m not saying it’s fair,” Dallas said. “Just that it takes time. So, going back to Agent Decatur’s question, you’re Wiccan?”

“No. I’m pagan. Some pagans are Wiccans, but all Wiccans are pagan.”

“So they’re a subset.”

“Exactly. Paganism is, in fact, the world’s largest religion, if you combine all the different branches. I doubt if she would’ve come out of the broom closet, but she seemed to find some comfort in the openness of beliefs. And the ability to find your own way to express your belief.

“Pagans pray by chanting, doing a ritual, even hugging a tree or picking up litter on a beach. Growing up in a military family, and planning a military career, I suspect it was the one time she allowed herself to break the rules.”

“Not the first time, given the rule against fraternizing aboard ship,” Julianne pointed out. “Though we’re still going to look into her possibly hooking up with her husband.”

“Never happened.”

“You sure of that?”

“Positive. She was planning to divorce him as soon as she got back to the States. That was number two on her to-do list. Right after getting an abortion.”

“She’d made that decision?”

“A guy with kids can whiz through the ranks if he’s got a little woman back home holding down the fort and working to advance his career. A single mom isn’t about to win a carrier captain’s slot. Not in this Navy.”

“Even if she planned to divorce him, they had to have some feelings for each other at one time,” Dallas pointed out. “She wouldn’t be the first woman to continue to have sex with an ex—or soon-to-be ex—husband.”

“Good point. My ex is a weasel. But he’s still hot in bed. The thing is, Mav’s husband has been deployed in the sandbox the entire time she was on the ship. Like I said, we didn’t talk much about personal stuff, but I got the impression she just wanted to be rid of him. Probably because his tendency to get into trouble would’ve been another roadblock on her yellow brick road to command.”

Deciding that made sense, Julianne tried a different tack. “Did her minister know she was pregnant?”

“No way. He’s one of those guys who blathers on about how true believers should be out killing doctors who perform abortions. The old ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ thing. Besides, he isn’t really a minister. Just some guy who leads the meetings.”

“He must not have been exactly thrilled about her leaving his group.”

“That’s putting it mildly. To hear Mav tell it, he blew his stack. Told her she was going to burn in hell unless she repented and returned to the true church.” She shook her head. “He’s one of those idiots who confuse paganism with satanism.”

“So they argued about it?”

“Sure. Like I said, she had a temper. When he accused her of dabbling in the dark side of the occult, she reamed him a new one.” She took a green flight suit out of the locker. “Then, of course, if you’re looking at potential killers, I guess you’ve got to check out the Muslims.”

Julianne wondered if this could be the writer of the anonymous note that had resulted in Dallas and her being here. “She tried on that religion, too?”

The pilot laughed at that. “She would’ve been more likely to try to bring up the devil than spend ten minutes with those guys. No, I’m talking about what she wrote on her ordnance the last run she made.”

Julianne knew it wasn’t uncommon for pilots to send personal, often rude messages with their bombs. The idea wasn’t pretty. But, then again, neither was war.

“What did she write?”

“ ‘Take that, you fucking ragheads. Courtesy of Uncle Sam.’ ”

“And you think that might have angered Muslim members aboard ship enough to want to kill her?”

“She wanted to kill bad guys in Iraq because they killed her brother. By dropping those bombs, she killed their Muslim brothers. Maybe not actual blood relatives, but then again, most of the Americans who wanted retribution for 9/11 didn’t have relatives in the Trade Towers, the Pentagon, or on that flight that crashed in Pennsylvania.”

It was a good point. And added to their growing suspect list.

“Look, I’ve told you all I know.” She stepped into the green flight suit. “Although the LSO has probably already been served up as shark brunch, meaning we’re just wasting flight time and fuel, I’ve got to get out to the flight line. So, if you’re done questioning me—”