Breakpoint (39 page)

But only for a second.

Then, as she shared what the doctor had claimed, she went into full-steam-ahead mode, speed-dialing her sister’s number.

“It dumped me into voice mail.”

“Maybe she’s on the phone.”

“Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced. Oddly, although he wasn’t a big believer in woo-woo thinking, Dallas hadn’t fully believed that when he’d suggested it.

“Wait a couple minutes and try again.”

The clock he’d always had in his head told her that she’d waited exactly two minutes.

“Still voice mail,” she said.

Another three minutes, four seconds.

“Dammit!” She, who, from what he’d been able to see, lost her cool only in bed, looked about ready to throw the phone across the room.

“Try her landline.”

“She doesn’t have one. Military families aren’t exactly rolling in dough, so she and Tom only have cell phones to save money.”

“Maybe she’s turned hers off.” He’d urged her down onto a rattan chair with a red-and-yellow sunburst upholstery when she’d first gotten dizzy. Now, standing beside her, he smoothed his hands over her shoulders in an attempt to ease out the knots of stress.

“I doubt that. Since she promised Tom—that’s her Marine husband, who just happens to conveniently be away on maneuvers—that she’d leave it on.”

“Maybe the battery ran down.”

“Maybe. But whenever she’s home, she plugs it into the charger. Because Tom worries.”

Again she sounded highly skeptical. Again he didn’t blame her.

“What kind of phone does she have?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It’s pink.”

“The phone? Or the skin?”

She shook her head. “I’ve no idea. Why?”

“Because, just in case something’s happened to her, we might be able to use GPS tracking to find her.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“It’s not exactly your realm of expertise.”

“But it’s yours.”

“Absolutely. Not all wireless network carriers provide updated location tracking, but most of the big ones have agreements with LBSs—location-based services—which are able to tell you the approximate last-known location of the person you’re tracking. But a lot depends on the type of phone Merry’s using. And the capabilities of her service provider. And whether she’s turned the tracking on.”

“I can’t see her thinking of doing that,” Julianne said. “But I wouldn’t put it past Tom. Not because he’s one of those possessive stalker husbands—”

“But because she’s pregnant. And, like you said, he cares about her.”

“He believes she hung the moon.”

“If she’s anything at all like her big sister, I can totally buy that.”

She almost smiled at that. Not quite, but close enough that he knew he’d made her feel, even for a second, a little bit better.

“But if her phone’s turned off, won’t the GPS be, too?”

“Not if it’s set up for passive tracking. That still works when the phone’s off. It’s a popular tool among government spook types.” He held out his hand. “Give me the phone. Let me talk to her service provider.”

After stating his credentials, telling the security rep what he wanted, and giving the name of a government contact person in Washington, he waited another fifteen minutes for the phone company to call him back.

Minutes Julianne spent pacing a path into the teak flooring that had been polished to a mirror shine.

She jumped when the theme song from
JAG
—what else, Dallas thought with a burst of fondness he’d never expected to feel for anyone—began playing.

The conversation was brief and to the point.

“Any reason she’d be at some place called Big Bear?” he asked with forced casualness. It sounded too rural. Somewhere a woman eight months pregnant with twins wouldn’t willingly go.

“No.” Although he wouldn’t have thought it possible, her face turned even whiter. “That’s a lake up in the mountains, which is, allowing for traffic, about two hours from Oceanside. She’s always loved it. But she’s hugely protective of her babies. She’d never risk going into labor that far from home.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and as close to being terrified as he ever hoped to see them.

“Oh, God. She’s in trouble.”

“I’ll call the local authorities,” he said. “Have them check on her.”

He did not try to reassure her. Because she was right: It didn’t look good.

This time the conversation was nearly as short as the one with the phone lady. The sheriff was sympathetic. But without any reason to believe Merry Draper was in danger, he couldn’t take any deputies off their more important duties to go look for her.

“What could be more important than a missing pregnant woman?” Julianne asked.

“They’re all on fire duty.” He hated being the one to tell her. “Apparently, while we’ve been isolated aboard the boat, the Santa Anas have begun blowing. At the moment, they’ve got a thousand acres burning.”

“The doctor said he dreamed about smoke. And fire.”

“Yeah. Now, he might have seen the fires on the news. But there may also be something to that psychic stuff.”

“He wouldn’t have seen that Merry calls her babies tadpoles on any newscast,” she insisted. “But it doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone kidnap my sister?”

“It could be unrelated. And maybe she’s not kidnapped. Maybe someone just stole her phone.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” She dragged her hands through her hair. Then she scrolled down through her phone numbers. “I made her give me her neighbor’s number,” she said. “I also made sure he and his wife had mine. Just in case.”

Again, this call proved no help.

“The husband’s on maneuvers with Tom. But his wife just checked. Merry’s car’s in the parking space. But she’s not there.” Her eyes were wide and Dallas hoped he’d never again see them that terrified.” She also found a bag of Mexican food lying on the sidewalk. On the way to the door.”

Which meant there was a good chance her sister actually was up at Big Bear.

Fortunately, Juls was one tough cookie. Dallas figured she could handle the unvarnished truth.

“Like I said, there are a lot of fires in the area. The sheriff told me Big Bear Lake is in danger of being surrounded.”

This time Julianne did not pale. Instead, she stood up, squared her shoulders, marched back into the bedroom, and returned with the suitcase she’d brought from the ship.

“Let’s get going,” she said.

“I’m already on it.” A moment later, he snapped the phone shut. “There’s a military jet waiting for us on the runway at Pearl.”

Worry and, worse yet, fear, which she was definitely not accustomed to feeling, permeated every atom in Julianne’s body. Making things worse was that even with the tailwinds, which the Navy pilot had told them they would be getting, it was still a four-and-a-half-hour flight to San Diego.

And another two hours to Big Bear. Probably longer if the authorities had begun blocking off roads, which she remembered them doing another time she’d lived in San Diego during fire season.

“What if we can’t get through?”

Dallas took hold of her ice-cold hand. Squeezed. “We will.”

And oddly, because it was him telling her that, Julianne believed him.

“You’re supposed to be the mad scientific genius,” she complained. “Why haven’t you invented a beam-me-up machine?”

“Sorry. I was a little preoccupied the past thirteen years fighting bad guys around the world. But I promise to move it up on my to-do list. Right after rescuing your sister from whatever mess she’s in. And making sure Lieutenants Murphy and Manning receive the justice that’s due them.”

“I hate leaving Ramsey behind, strutting around the bridge of the
O’Halloran
like the king of the world on that Tiger Cruise.”

“It’s not like he’s a flight risk. He’s not getting off until they reach San Diego. By then we’ll have Merry back in the arms of her loving Marine and we can nab him when he gets off the boat. Besides, the more I think about it, my money’s more on the CDO committing the murders than the captain,” Dallas said.

“Why?”

“Because, getting back to where we were at the beginning, if Ramsey is the father, there was no point in his risking killing Mav. Because she didn’t intend to have the baby. Once she had the abortion, even if her roommate did blab, which she didn’t seem the type to do, they both could’ve denied it.”

“Because both were ambitious.” Julianne followed his line of thought. “Each of them had too much to risk facing an adultery court-martial.”

“Exactly.”

“They also would’ve known that about each other. Even if it was mostly hookup sex, from what we’ve heard, she would’ve been more than willing to use his influence on her own climb up the ladder. So they probably shared some pillow talk about goals after the cruise. Which means he would’ve known she wasn’t any threat to his career plans.”

“So why risk murder?” Dallas asked.

“Perhaps the captain was afraid she’d change her mind, once the time actually came for the abortion, and he was going to get stuck with her.”

“She doesn’t sound the type.”

“No. Like the roommate said, I think Mav was all about Mav. But why kidnap Merry?”

“You’ve got me,” he admitted. “But if things have gotten out of control, which the murder of the LSO suggests they have, then it’s possible someone got the not-so-great idea to try to use her as a bargaining chip.”

“Thinking we’d agree to drop the investigation in exchange for her freedom?”

“Would you do that?”

“Only long enough to get her away safely. Then I’d want to kill them. Slowly. Painfully.”

She wouldn’t really do that, Julianne assured herself.

Would she?

She also realized that whoever had Merry would have already considered that. Which meant they were being led into a trap.

“So, tell me how the Uniform Code of Military Justice works,” Dallas was saying as she was considering the very real probability that even if she and Dallas were to agree to drop the investigation and sign off on a suicide, they’d probably be killed as well. Because it’d be too dangerous to leave them alive, able to screw up the master plan. Or even show up with a blackmail scheme down the road.

Like either of them would be willing to do that.

“Why?” she asked.

“I’m trying to sort out the logistics. Would it be possible to assign Ramsey and Wright to quarters once the ship docks? Just in case whichever one of them did the killings doesn’t go wacko on us and decide to run?”

Julianne was deep into an explanation of the specifics of arrest in quarters, Navy NPJ regulations, and other aspects of the UCMJ, when something occurred to her.

“I just realized what you’re doing.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve got me talking to try to keep my mind off Merry.”

Dallas didn’t deny it. “Is it working?” His eyes were warm and caring, making her feel, even as her blood continued to run cold, that she’d just been wrapped in a very soothing cashmere blanket.

“A bit.”

“How about this?” he suggested.

Before she could read his intention, his head swooped down and he took her lips.

Merry had never felt so torn. It wasn’t that she was afraid, which she was. Especially since the TV the men had turned on when the first smoke started appearing was making it look as if the entire San Diego region was about to go up into flames.

Since she couldn’t hold an entire wildfire back with a garden hose, even if her captors let her go outside, she had to concentrate on what she could control.

Fortunately, after her third trip to the bathroom, apparently deciding that a pregnant woman the size of an elephant was no great threat, the men hadn’t bothered to tie her back up.

Could she escape? Maybe. There were certainly enough guns in the place that, if they stayed distracted enough with their TV watching and constant telephone calls, she might be able to snatch one.

She’d watched Tom breaking down his M16 rifle countless times. Enough that she thought that if she could get her hands on the one leaning up against the door, she might be able to use the element of surprise and blow them both away before they knew what had hit them.

Although she’d grown up in a military family, and both her brothers and sister had followed in their father’s boot steps, Merry had honestly never believed she could take a human life under any circumstances.

That was before she’d gotten pregnant.

But, even if she did kill them, the fires were complicating things. Most people thought California didn’t have weather. But having experienced fires, floods, and earthquakes, and the nerve-rackingly unbearable Santa Anas, Merry knew better.

Even if she did escape the house, she could end up in worse shape. Even if there weren’t more guards outside, she’d be jumping out of the proverbial frying pan into the all-too-real fire.

She picked up the other side of the argument: Surely if the fire got really close, the sheriff would call for a mandatory evacuation. Then, the way she thought it worked, deputies would come door-to-door and she could somehow let them know what was happening and they’d arrest her captors.

Or, if they didn’t get an official order, but the evacuation was called, the news stations would report it. There’d be the inevitable long lines of cars. And firefighters. Surely if she could get out of here, she’d be able to get help from someone.

So, hoping that someone might have seen her taken away, and that the GPS Tom had insisted she get with her new phone—which her captors had taken with her purse—was turned on, Merry decided that the thing to do was to stay alert.

But calm.

Which was difficult with the winds rattling the two-story-high glass windows and the smoke beginning to seep beneath the door.