Her Last Whisper (35 page)

Charlie did, pretty much word for word, and told him, too, about how the gurgle made her suspect that those might be the woman’s dying words. She also cautioned him that she couldn’t be sure, that the voice could be anything and might not even be real.

“You think it’s real, and I do, too.” He glanced up and shut up as Lena and Buzz reached the table. Lena’s expression was so stony, and Buzz’s was so exasperated, concluding that they’d argued their way through the buffet line was a no-brainer.

“Crane thinks we should go straight back to the hotel after this and go to bed.” Lena plopped her plate on the table and flung herself down in her chair. “He says I’m obviously fried.”

“I did not say—” Buzz started to sit down in the chair Michael occupied, jumped, frowned, looked at it askance, and moved to another one. The slight smirk on Michael’s face was the giveaway, although Charlie had no idea what he’d done.

“Enough,” Tony said, biting into a chicken wing with apparent relish. “Kaminsky, fill me in on where we are with our hit list. Any names popping out at you?”

Lena told him about the unfortunate overabundance, and they spent the rest of the meal talking about the case. As they were finishing, Charlie excused herself to go to the restroom. Michael strolled along beside her. He’d been so quiet for so long that she gave him a sharp look and asked tartly, “What is this, your strong, silent side?” the moment she felt that she was out of earshot of the table.

His answering smile was tigerish. “Didn’t want to interfere with your lovefest with Dudley.”

That was bullshit and she knew it. She was just about to call him on it when her gaze happened to fall on one of the spotlighted display areas that she was passing. Or, more specifically, on the wall-mounted, framed photos in the spotlighted display area. The center one, a poster-sized image of a young man in a military uniform, meant nothing to her. It was the image beside it, an eleven-by-fourteen framed photo of four young men in uniform standing together in a desert setting, that stopped her in her tracks.

One of the men was Michael.

There was absolutely no doubt in her mind. “That’s you,” Charlie said unnecessarily. The guy in the picture was a lot younger, probably somewhere around his mid-twenties, and his tawny hair was cut military short, but there was no mistaking the square jaw or the chiseled cheekbones, the straight nose, the beautifully carved mouth. The eyes of the man in the picture were narrowed against the sun, but were still unmistakably a dazzling sky blue. He was taller than his companions and broader of shoulder, and the unbuttoned shirt he wore with well-worn fatigues revealed his wide, smooth chest and muscled abs. He was bronzed and laughing and gorgeous.

In other words, he was Michael.

He didn’t say a word. Looking at the display more closely, she discovered that one of the guys in the picture with him was the man in the poster-sized photo in the center of the display. Framed eight by tens were lined up on either side of it, and her eyes widened as she realized that several of the photos—one taken right here in this bar, showing both men with their arms around nearly naked cowgirls—featured the guy in the poster and Michael.

Then she glanced up at the top of the display and read the caption: A Fallen Hero.

Her breath caught. She looked at Michael.

His eyes were fastened on the poster at the center of the display. His face could have been carved from stone.

“He was a friend of yours.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” he said, and turned and walked away.

She hesitated, then grabbed her phone from her purse, snapped off a couple of pictures of the display for future reference, and hurried after him.

“Fifty feet,” she hissed at him when she caught up, reminding him of the length of the cosmic leash that tethered him to her.

“Fuck it.” He’d stopped walking when he reached the bar and was leaning against it, looking longingly at the whiskey being tossed back by the man next to him.

“Talk to me,” Charlie said, sliding in on his other side. The lighting was so dim, and there was so much noise and activity going on around them, including bobbing boobs as a pair of red cowboy boots kicked up their heels not six feet away, that nobody was going to notice her having a one-way conversation with air. And from the granite set of his jaw and the hard glint in his eyes, air needed to talk.

“I ain’t up for the shrink shit right now, babe.”

“You’ve been in this bar before.” There was no denying it. She’d seen the picture, and he knew it.

“Yeah. So?”

“You might have mentioned it.”

She thought he wasn’t going to answer at all, but finally he said, “So I’m mentioning it. A long time ago I visited a Vegas bar with a friend. Woo-hoo.”

“
That’s
why you were so dead set against coming to Las Vegas. You have memories here.”

He looked at her then and said, “Leave it alone, Charlie.”

His eyes were as cold and remote as the moon.

“Michael—”

Before she could say anything more, McGowan loomed in front of her. “Can I get you a drink, young lady?” The owner accompanied the question with a genial smile.

Charlie didn’t want one, but on the other hand she couldn’t just take up real estate at his bar. “I’ll have a beer. Whatever you have on tap.”

Michael rolled his eyes. He had a point. She wasn’t going to drink it. What she was going to do was use it as a placeholder while she talked to Michael.

Who had other ideas.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, pushing back from the bar. But McGowan returned with her beer right at that moment, and as Charlie fumbled in her purse for the money to pay him he said to her, “You’re one of those FBI people, right?”

Charlie didn’t feel like explaining her exact role with the group, so she simply nodded.

“Thought so.” He scooped up her money and dropped it into a pocket in his apron, then nodded at the spotlighted wall she’d just left. “I saw you taking pictures of my son.”

“I said, let’s go,” Michael growled in her ear, but Charlie wasn’t about to leave at that point.

“Your son?” Her eyes were riveted on McGowan. He wasn’t—couldn’t have been—talking about Michael.

“Sean.” The old man’s eyes were suddenly bright with pride. “Big picture, middle of the wall over there. First Sergeant Sean McGowan, Marine Force Recon. Killed in action.”

At his obvious pain Charlie felt a surge of sympathy. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said sincerely.

“You were taking a picture. Did you know him?”

“No.” Charlie shook her head. “I wish I had.” As she spoke she pulled her phone out of her purse and pressed a button. Her copy of the photo of the four young marines filled the small screen, and she pointed at the picture of Michael. “I actually—knew—this guy.”

Michael grated, “Damn it, Charlie. Don’t do this.”

But McGowan was already looking at the picture. “That was the unit. Sean, Captain Ollie Bridgewater, Sergeant First Class Hoop Ferrara, Staff Sergeant Michael Garland.” McGowan tapped Michael’s picture with a forefinger. “Came here with Sean a couple of times. Kind of a hell-raiser, but my boy always said he was for sure
one you wanted on your side in a fight.” His voice deepened. “Refused to leave him behind when Sean was mortally wounded. Stayed with him, then carried his body out. I owed him for that. No matter what he did after, I owed him for that.”

“What he did after?” Charlie felt her chest tighten. Behind her, she could feel Michael radiating tension.

“Those women. The murder thing. I couldn’t believe what they said he’d done. Far as Sean was concerned, Garland was a stand-up guy. ’Course, combat changes a man, and the things they had to do over there were pretty hard-core. Lots of wet work, you know.”

The harsh voice behind her growled, “Fifty feet or no fucking fifty feet, I’m walking. Stay if you want.”

She sensed rather than saw him moving away. In his present mood, she placed no reliance on his sticking to the fifty-foot limit. “I have to go. It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. McGowan,” she said as she glanced around to find Michael striding straight for the exit.
Yikes
. She concluded swiftly, “I’d like to hear more about Sean. I’ll get back in touch, if you don’t mind.”

“Anytime,” McGowan said.

Then she hurried after Michael. A quick glance toward their table showed her that Tony and Buzz were on their feet, and Lena was nowhere in sight. Probably gone to the ladies’ room in search of her, Charlie guessed. She tapped out a quick text—
I’m outside getting some air
—to Tony as Michael pushed through the double doors and disappeared from view.

Forget hurrying. She ran. If he got too far away …

“Damn it,” she exploded as she burst through the exit and found him leaning against a post supporting the overhang, staring out at the night. Relief washed over her; anger followed close on its heels. A quick glance around told her that, while a few people were threading their way through the cars in the parking lot toward the entrance, the porch itself was deserted. She stalked toward him. “Would you stop behaving like a
child
?”

He threw a sideways glance at her. Those blue eyes were glacial.

“Stay the hell out of my past.”

Exasperation caused her to fold her arms over her chest. “Guess what, Mr. International Man of Mystery: I have access to your files.
I can find out anything I want to know about your past just by reading them.”

Those eyes raked her. “Great. Go for it. Knock yourself out.”

Clearly whatever he didn’t want her to know wasn’t in his files. At least, not in the ones she had access to. His military files were less than complete: they consisted of scarcely more than dates of service and his medical records. Everything else had either been redacted or withheld.

“So you were in Force Recon.” She’d known that he’d been a staff sergeant—that much was in the files—but not that he’d been in Force Recon. She found herself looking at his profile. The set of it wasn’t promising.

He gave a slight shrug. “Not a secret.”

“Mr. McGowan said you did wet work.” She watched him carefully as she spoke.
Combat changes a man
. Combined with the DNA results, that thought was worrisome.

His jaw tightened. “That means I killed people, babe. Knifed them. Shot them. Broke their necks. Up close and personal. Feel better knowing that?”

Ah
. Paradoxically, his being so in-your-face about it calmed her fears considerably. She didn’t think that by learning he’d killed in the context of war she’d just been handed any kind of new evidence that he was, indeed, a serial killer. What she did think was that she was getting close to something dark and ugly that he’d been harboring deep in his soul.

“Guilt can be a corrosive emotion, you know,” she told him quietly. “Maybe it’s time you let go of some of that.”

“You just can’t stop with the shrink shit, can you?” Michael slanted a hard look at her. “Guess what, Doc? I don’t feel any damned guilt.”

Charlie’s lips compressed. Before she could reply, the sound of the door opening behind her caused her to glance back. A uniformed soldier with his arm around a girl in a mini-skirt came out, followed by Tony, Buzz, and Lena.

“I thought you went to the restroom,” Lena greeted her, while Tony met her eyes with a silent question of his own.

“I’m still trying to shake that headache,” she answered both of
them, while at the same time making a concerted effort not to let her eyes follow Michael, who was already walking down the stairs to the parking lot. “The fresh air helped.”

Apparently sometime after she’d left the table, the others had agreed to call it a night. As it was after eleven p.m. by that time, Charlie thought it was a good decision. She was so tired she was having trouble concentrating, and she knew the others had to be equally exhausted. Even Lena seemed resigned to their need for sleep.

“Did
you
see anything in that bar that might pertain to the case?” Tony asked Charlie as they drove back to the hotel. “Ms. Green was so accurate that I’m afraid we might have missed something.”

Charlie had a sudden, electric realization: just like Tam had seen the blond woman for Tony and the illicit romance for Lena and Buzz, she’d seen that bar because it had significance for Michael.

“I didn’t see anything,” she said, flicking a glance into the backseat. Michael’s grim silence was unsettling. He met her eyes expressionlessly, but she was left in no doubt that he’d known exactly what Tam was referring to from the moment she’d said the words red, white, and blue. That bar, and the McGowans, and Las Vegas were all part of his history that he was actively trying to avoid.

“You can’t expect her to be totally accurate.” Lena slumped tiredly against the passenger door. On some level she and Buzz both seemed able to sense Michael’s presence: they were always giving him all the space they could. “I’m impressed that she got as much right as she did.”

“At least the food was good,” Buzz put in.

Lena responded with, “All you think about is your stomach.” Then, fiercely, “Giselle’s out there. Don’t you even care?”

Buzz practically spluttered, “Of course I care. You know I care. We’re all working our butts off to find her. Lena—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Guys. Don’t make me give you a time-out.” Tony said it lightly, but there was a warning in there, too. He pulled into the hotel, and nobody said much of anything until they had reached the hallway outside their rooms.

“Seven a.m. call,” Tony reminded them.

Sliding her key card through the lock, Lena nodded.

“And get some sleep.” Tony gave her a stern look as the door opened and she stepped inside her room.

Lena sneered at him and closed the door.

Tony sighed.

“Night, all.” With a quick glance that encompassed both Charlie and Tony, Buzz, too, went into his room. Charlie’s lips tightened. She knew that was Buzz being tactful, in case Tony was going into her room with her.

“Don’t stay out too late.” With that mocking aside, Michael surprised her by walking through the door into her (their) room while she was still out in the hall with Tony.