Breakpoint Read online

  She was interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “Speak of the devil. It’s two naval officers,” she reported, after looking through the peephole. One was in his early twenties; the older one had thinning hair, and the top of his head was badly sunburned. As was his face.

  “Interesting timing.”

  With a few clicks of the keys, he logged off the Net and turned off the laptop. Closing the lid, he stood up, snagged a beer from the fridge, and popped the cap.

  By the time Julianne had opened the door, he was sprawled out on the couch, beer in hand, the TV turned to an Ultimate Fighting match.

  “Officers,” she greeted them. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’d like to talk to you, ma’am.” Lobster Face flipped out an ID. As did his partner.

  “You’re from NCIS?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you here on behalf of Commander Walsh?”

  “Well, that’s the thing we’re here to talk to you about, ma’am,” the officer said. He glanced around, as if looking for spies. “If you don’t mind if we come in?”

  It was not a question. More an order. They all knew that in the rock/paper/scissors terrorism-fighting hierarchy, THOR topped both NCIS and JAG.

  But not only did she not want to get involved in a pissing contest, if these were the men who’d been following them in that Navy staff car, Julianne wanted to find out why.

  Dallas pushed to his feet as the two men entered the room, and while he wasn’t standing in exactly at-ease stance, since he was dangling the beer bottle in his hand by his thigh rather than putting his hands loosely behind his back, his legs were apart, his heels parallel, toes slightly out, shoulders squared, chest and jaw up.

  Anyone who’d even seen a war movie could have immediately spotted him as military.

  “Lieutenants,” he greeted them mildly, with just a touch of confusion that suggested yet again that while he might claim not to be as good at covert missions as SEALs or D-boys, he definitely was no amateur. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

  “We’re here about Commander Walsh.”

  “That’s why you were following us?” Dallas asked.

  “You spotted us?” the younger man asked with a deep frown.

  “It wasn’t that difficult.” Dallas shrugged, then took a pull on the bottle, relaxing his stance. “It’s always good, if you’re tailing someone, to keep a couple cars between you and your target.”

  “Thanks for the tip.” The older officer’s dry tone suggested he didn’t really care whether or not they’d been spotted. “We know you met with the commander.”

  “Earlier this afternoon,” Julianne confirmed.

  She exchanged a look with Dallas that told her that once again they were thinking the same thing. The men hadn’t responded to his accusation.

  “May we inquire as to the content of that conversation?”

  They did not ask to sit down.

  Julianne, not caring for their demeanor, did not offer. She was also forced to wonder if her own investigatory attitude had been perceived as so “just the facts, ma’am” brusque. Maybe that was where she’d picked up the JAG Ice Bitch reference, despite the fact that, to her mind, she’d just been doing her job.

  “It was about a case we’ve been assigned to,” she said.

  “Assigned to by THOR.”

  “I’m afraid, unless you have orders, plus security clearance directly from the president and commander in chief, that happens to be classified,” Dallas said.

  The two men exchanged a glance. The back-and-forth motion of the older man’s jaw suggested he was grinding his teeth, and although she would’ve thought it impossible, his blotchy face turned even redder.

  “We have reason to believe that your case may have more than something to do with ours.” His jaw was so tightly clenched, Julianne would not have been surprised if pieces of molar started falling onto the carpeting.

  “And that case would be . . . ?” Julianne asked, suspecting from his attitude that NCIS’s nose was hugely out of joint for having been bypassed.

  “Commander Walsh is dead,” the younger officer, who still sported a few acne spots on that too-smooth jaw, informed them.

  It was not the response Julianne had expected. She resolutely did not look at Dallas, for fear of giving her feelings away, but in tune with him as she’d already become, she could feel a slight stiffening and knew that his surprise equaled her own.

  “If the commander’s death were from natural causes, you wouldn’t be here,” she stated the obvious.

  “A ruling hasn’t been officially determined yet,” Lobster Face said. “But it appears to have been suicide.”

  “And as far as we’ve been able to determine, you and O’Halloran,” the younger man tacked on, “were the last people to see him alive.”

  22

  Although they might have gotten off to a rocky start, he and Julianne worked well together. Although Dallas knew that Zach, who was obviously still pissed off about the court-martial, would undoubtedly find it impossible to believe, while their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different, and their military service certainly hadn’t been the same, he and Juls thought alike a great deal of the time.

  Which was why, without having to exchange so much as a telling glance, they answered the NCIS investigators’ questions the same way, sticking only to the fact that they’d been assigned to investigate a suicide aboard the USS O’Halloran.

  And that the commander had been helpful, offering them transient housing, which, because of travel logistics, including morning drive time to the MCBH, they’d turned him down, opting to stay at the Marine base instead.

  “The commander was kind enough to call the housing officer here, to arrange for these rooms,” Julianne said.

  “The thing I don’t get,” the older investigator, who was obviously in charge of this visit, said, “is why, if you’re only looking into that pilot’s suicide—”

  “Or alleged suicide,” his partner broke in.

  “Alleged suicide,” the other continued, after shooting the kid a quick, sharp warning look. “Why it got passed up the ladder to you guys?”

  “Beats me,” Dallas said.

  “You know how it is,” Juls said in what Dallas figured was the same reasonable delivery she’d use in a courtroom. “Trying to figure out the military brass’s mind-set can make you go nuts. Ours is not to reason why—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yours is but to do or die.” The kid didn’t bother to conceal his frustration.

  “Actually, Tennyson said, ‘do and die,’ ” Dallas corrected with that “I want to be your friend” smile that usually worked so well for him. “Hopefully, unlike the Crimean War, this investigation will prove to be a slam dunk.”

  The blank look on the younger man’s face suggested he’d never read “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Which had Dallas wondering what they were teaching in high school English classes these days.

  “Considering that four hundred and seventy-eight of the six hundred and seventy-three British soldiers who launched that full-frontal assault on the Russians died during that battle, we’d better hope it turns out better,” Juls said dryly.

  Damn.

  She knew the poem.Although his reputation with women might be exaggerated, the one thing Dallas had always done was to keep his professional military life separate from his personal one. But what he was feeling for Juls Decatur was more than mere attraction. More than sex.

  Though, he considered, as his fingers itched with the need to touch her smoothly set face, he sure as hell wasn’t one to knock sex.

  Even bad sex was, for the most part, better than none at all.

  And he had the very strong impression that sex with this particular JAG lieutenant would be off the charts.

  They dodged a few more questions. Although Dallas thought they did well enough, no one in the room was fooled. It wasn’t as if NCIS were populated by fools. Not only did they take their
role of standing between threats against America and its military forces seriously, their teams of special agents, investigators, forensic experts, security specialists, analysts, and support personnel were highly trained and smart as hell.

  They were, quite simply, the gold standard set around the world.

  These particular two were also pissed as they left the lodge.

  “They’re not happy campers,” Juls observed as they stood in the open doorway and watched the staff car drive away.

  “We’re probably not going to get invited to their Christmas party,” Dallas agreed.

  “Do you think we should’ve given them more information?”

  “We gave them the facts as we know them. Anything else would be merely conjecture.”

  “Good answer.” She nodded. “Especially since they may have been holding back intel about the dead commander.”

  “I’d say that’s a given,” Dallas said. “It’s also interesting that at least one of them may have been sent down here from the States. Maybe even the Pentagon.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “The sunburn. I’ll buy, from that red hair, that the guy’s naturally fair-skinned. But the fact that he looked like something that should be boiled up for a Maine beach seafood dinner suggests he’s not used to dealing with the strength of the Hawaiian sun. He also, from that paunch and the luggage he’s carrying beneath his eyes, looks as if he’s been around the block a few times. He sure wasn’t happy with the kid suggesting it might not be a suicide. So, it would appear folks at NCIS—or higher—have their own suspicions about the case.”

  “Damn.” She pressed her fingers against her temples. “I hate this. We’re all supposed to be on the same team.”

  “You and I don’t make the rules,” he reminded her. “Some higher-ups charged with keeping the country safe decided there was a need for THOR. Those same people decided to assign us to this case.”

  “So we lie to the best military investigators in the world?”

  “We didn’t lie.”

  “It was a lie of omission.”

  “Damn, you’re tough.” When her chin shot up, he laughed in spite of the seriousness of their situation. “Hey!” He held up his hands. “Don’t get pissed. Because as it happens, I really, really like that about you.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, she smiled. Just a little. Then those little furrows appeared in her brow again.

  “Even if that pilot’s suicide turns out to be a murder, it’s not going to turn out to be an isolated incident,” she echoed what he’d already considered. “We could well be talking a conspiracy.”

  “I’d bet the farm, if I had one, on that.”

  “So.” She blew out a breath. “I guess we need to get on it before we go wheels-up in the morning.”

  “Yet another thing we can agree on.”

  “I brought my laptop,” she said. “So we can both work on our own, then share what we’ve found. But there’s one thing.” He could tell this wasn’t going to be easy for her. “Despite withholding evidence from NCIS, I’ve always been a law-and-order type of person.” Her tone was dry, allowing him to share the irony of her recent behavior.

  “I’m shocked.”

  “So I’m probably going to need some help getting around various governmental firewalls.”

  He linked his fingers together and stretched them. “Darlin’, you are playing my song.”

  23

  Aboard the USS O’Halloran

  Things were spiraling out of control.

  Dealing with the slut pilot had been a given. She’d gotten exactly what she deserved when she’d put all of them—hell, the entire country, which, since the US of A was, despite those naysayers who’d like to think otherwise, the strongest, most powerful force on the planet—in danger.

  Anyone who posed a risk to the stability of the country had to be seen as an enemy.

  Getting rid of the LSO had also been for the greater good. After all, you couldn’t go into a war—and make no mistake about it, that was precisely what this was—without expecting enemy deaths.

  But with those government agents due to arrive on the boat tomorrow, things were definitely going from bad to worse. And since when the fuck did no-nuts civilians get to investigate the U.S. military, anyway?

  He didn’t care that Tech Sergeant Dallas O’Halloran and Lieutenant Julianne Decatur had both served. They’d willingly chosen to leave the military for whatever big bucks and perks they were getting, to use their secret KGB tactics on the very same people they’d once sworn to protect in the foxholes.

  Not that the Navy tended to build a lot of foxholes, but, dammit, it was the same idea.

  You weren’t fighting for yourself, but for the guys on either side of you.

  You protected your own.

  These two were turncoats, but, unfortunately, since they worked directly for the commander in chief, it wasn’t as if he could keep them off the ship.

  The deaths of both the pilot and the LSO could be easily explained as a personal matter between two consenting adults that had gotten out of hand.

  But the fucking asshole idiot chickenshit commander . . .

  A bloodred haze shimmered before his eyes. His hands fisted so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

  If he weren’t out here in the middle of the goddamn ocean, and if the bastard commander weren’t already dead, he’d kill him—slowly, painfully, tossing in a little waterboarding as payback—for having put them all at risk.

  No. The trick was to stay calm. Sort this out. No battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy, and this was turning out to be no different. But he could deal with it. As he’d dealt with so many other things.

  He took a deep breath. Loosened his fists and shook his hands out. Closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the haze had lightened. Another deep breath.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  Again.

  The haze slowly disintegrated, like morning fog burning off over the sea.

  Shit happened. It was, unfortunately, a fucking fact of life.

  He could handle this latest snafu.

  Granted, it was going to take some maneuvering. But he could control the situation, because he knew something that pansy commander hadn’t understood.

  Suicide was the coward’s way out.

  If things got hairy, and they well might, he was going to take a lesson from Admiral David Glasgow Farragut’s command when he attacked the final Confederate strong-hold in Mobile Bay—Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.

  The battle plan had worked for Farragut. The Union fleet had blasted the fort and captured the Confederate ironclad Tennessee in one of the most decisive naval victories of the Civil War.

  The important thing was not to be deterred by setbacks. To keep the goal of the mission at the front of his mind and refuse to waver.

  The reward was in reach.

  And, although failure had never been an option, if, by some unforeseen circumstances he did fail, one thing was certain: He damn well would not go down alone.

  24

  Fueled by determination and pots of high-octane coffee, they’d been at it for hours.

  “Well, Walsh’s record is definitely clean as a whistle,” she said. “Which makes sense, since the last time I looked, lieutenant commander bars didn’t come in boxes of Cracker Jacks.”

  “That’s decoder rings,” Dallas murmured. “He has been married three times.”

  “Which wouldn’t exactly be a plus in the officer ranks, where wives are expected to be along the lines of Caesar’s wife. But not something that would necessarily stop his rise up the ladder.”

  “True.” Dallas leaned his chair back on its hind legs and stared at the laptop screen as if it could provide answers.

  “And, if watching my mother juggle family and a career she never got paid for was any indication, being a Navy wife can’t be easy,” Julianne said. “Even if your husband’s in the officer ranks
.”

  “Makes sense. The first two wives were from outside the service. One was a college sweetheart. Number two was a former swimsuit model turned housewife. Number three appears to be the widow of a pilot who got shot down during the early days of the Afghanistan war, during Operation Anaconda.”

  “God. I can’t imagine that. My mother never talked about it, but I suspect military wives probably accept, somewhere deep in the back in their minds, the possibility of losing their husbands. But to lose two, and one to suicide, has got to suck.”

  Julianne blew out a breath and glanced down at her watch. “I wish we’d gotten the news about Walsh’s death earlier.”

  “It’s probably too late to pay a visit to the grieving widow.”

  “Definitely. And despite being an enormous coincidence, there’s no hard evidence that the two deaths are linked. Since Walsh is only peripheral to our mission, we can’t delay going out to the carrier. Even discounting the fact that the O’Halloran’s going to be arriving here in a couple days—”

  “We could just stick around and wait for it to get to us.”

  “Not a good idea, given that a lot of sailors and Marines—especially the pilots—will be leaving the boat once it docks at Pearl. If someone did kill that pilot, they could slip under the radar and get away before we had a chance to begin our investigation. Plus, there’s the matter of the Tiger Cruise.”

  “Tiger Cruise?”

  “It’s a naval tradition of letting the families of sailors experience the idea of life on board ship. This one’s sailing from Pearl to its home base in San Diego.”

  “Families like wives and kids?”

  “Kids over eight, I think. And fiancées, girlfriends, boy-friends. In my father’s time you had to be male, but while change may be slow in the Navy, that’s opened up.”

  Dallas considered the logistics of all those civilians coming aboard and decided they must be enormously complicated. “That would make for a lot of shifting quarters,” he said.

  “Absolutely. The carrier’s actually the easiest because it’s so large. I remember a friend telling me that when he went on a Tiger Cruise with his submariner dad, some of the regular crew ended up sleeping in the torpedo room.”