Читать книгу Navy Orders - Geri Krotow - Страница 13

CHAPTER FOUR

RO ENTERED HER small foyer with a deep sigh of gratitude. It had been a long day and wasn’t over yet. From the AOM to the meeting with the commodore and then the awful scene at the beach, she felt like she’d been at sea—as though one day was really a week long. Time seemed immeasurable.

She only had an hour, tops, before she had to meet with Miles again. Her years at the academy had taught her the value of power naps as well as power breaks. She’d have to make the next fifty-eight minutes feel like a weekend.

Her home wrapped its arms around her and her shoulders let go of the weight they’d carried since Miles had tackled her this morning. She didn’t have many people over, and that was by design. This was her oasis from all things navy-related. When she’d returned stateside after her last wartime deployment she’d decided it was the right time to purchase a house, no matter where she ended up via her navy orders. The fact that Dick had dumped her, and she’d accepted that she was truly alone, only hastened her quest to find her own home.

Oak Harbor, Washington, was a long way from Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she’d rented a condo while assigned to the aircraft carrier. The wilds of the Pacific Northwest contrasted sharply with the crowded suburban sprawl she’d grown up with in New Jersey.

She was thousands of miles from her family and childhood friends.

It was exactly what she needed and still wanted. Each month when she paid her mortgage, she was above all else grateful that she was a homeowner, free and clear of anyone else’s emotional tentacles.

She dropped her fitness and lunch bags onto the bench she’d reupholstered last Saturday. Had that only been a few days ago? Less than a week?

Her whole life had changed this morning.

She’d thrown Dick’s ring away. Let go of the shame, self-pity and sorrow she’d worn like out-of-date costume jewelry.

Finally.

Guilt tugged at her conscience as she untied her oxfords and slipped out of her uniform skirt. The investigation needed to be first and foremost on her mind.

Except it was the image of Miles, as he drove his big blue pickup truck, that flashed across her mind. The way his hand caressed hers for that brief moment on the West Beach cliff. The promise of heat in his eyes.

Why did all her emotions have to rise up at once? It was as if she’d cursed herself the minute she’d gone to throw that ring away. Miles had shown up and, ever since, she hadn’t been able to control her attraction to him the way she had for the past year.

Even the gruesome death of a good sailor wasn’t enough to take her mind off Miles and what it might be like to actually get to know him.

“Stop it.” She whispered the request to herself as a form of prayer.

While she and Miles were at the scene of Petty Officer Perez’s death, his body had been moved to the morgue. They spoke to the coroner and asked about a timeline for his investigation and the need for an autopsy. The coroner had been cryptic but respectful as he’d relayed that he would be required to do an autopsy even though the preliminary investigation pointed to suicide, just as the commodore had said. The coroner had made it clear that his business didn’t involve the U.S. Navy.

Still, Miles told her he was hopeful they’d get into the autopsy, which would probably be performed tomorrow or Sunday. Time was of the essence.

Miles suggested they take a break for dinner and regroup in a couple of hours. They needed to keep the commodore appeased, yet the reality was that between NCIS and the local LEAs, there wasn’t much wiggle room for two non-JAG naval officers to glean extra information. They’d have to track down every possible lead they could within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, before sources shut down.

As soon as she had pulled on her jeans and cream-colored nubby wool sweater, she went into her kitchen and got a bottle of sparkling water from the refrigerator. She slid her feet into plastic gardening clogs and walked out onto her patio.

The cottage-size home afforded her a wonderfully wild garden area out back, nourished by the moisture and rain-forest climate of Puget Sound. Her patio was the only level spot in her entire backyard. The ground sloped up to her neighbors’ wooden fences—fences she never saw except when she did her annual cleanup of brambles and fallen branches.

Ferns, junipers and other low-climbing evergreen growth blanketed the yard, offset by random patches and containers of flowering plants. Roses thrived in the upper left corner of her garden, while the half dozen whiskey barrels she’d planted with fuchsia and seasonal bulbs gave the green carpet pops of vibrant color.

She took a swig of her water and smiled when the bubbles tickled her nose. Even if she only had five minutes of free time in a day, she spent it here.

With her knitting needles, of course.

Her fingers itched to go back in the house and get the chemo cap she was working on but she wasn’t convinced she had enough time. She looked at her sport watch. Miles had said they’d “connect” after dinner; she assumed he’d call her on her cell within the next half hour or so. She made a mental note to go out to Whidbey Fibers, her favorite yarn haunt on the island, as soon as her work schedule cleared up. Which, judging from today’s events, wasn’t going to be until the commodore felt the entire investigation was over. She’d completed a few of the knit hats she was donating to the yarn shop’s charity drive. The owner collected hand-knit or crocheted hats for chemotherapy patients who’d lost their hair. Ro heard they donated the caps to head trauma patients, too, down at Madagen Army Hospital in Fort Lewis.

If nothing else, focusing on someone, something, other than herself gave her a sense of belonging in the community. Plus it kept her close at heart to her deceased Aunt Millie, her mother’s sister, who had died much too young from cancer. She still missed her, fifteen years after her passing.

Knitting also took her mind off her job.

Impossible at the moment.

It bothered her that the commodore had basically assigned her and Miles to be his lackeys. His orders to them weren’t by any means illegal or unheard of; commanders used their staff subordinates to be their proverbial eyes and ears all the time. It was an effective way to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. But this could turn into a freaking murder investigation and, for the life of her, Ro didn’t see any reason the commodore needed to put both her and Miles, two of his busiest staff officers, on the case.

Of course, he was probably worried about political fallout.

Being politically correct had become ingrained in the navy and other armed forces in the fourteen years since Ro had graduated from the naval academy. Every commander, no matter how morally upstanding he or she was, needed to be very careful when it came to personnel matters. One mistake, one instance of even the appearance of a mistake, could and did end otherwise stellar careers.

Of course, she’d witnessed commanders who should have been fired and never were. And she was justifiably proud of her service to her country and the navy. The great majority of her bosses had been of the highest integrity and served their nation well.

There had been a few jerks, too. Some got their due.

She couldn’t say the commodore here was a bad leader and certainly not a bad person. She just didn’t respect him with the intensity she had other leaders. Maybe if she’d worked with him earlier in her career, she’d have witnessed a more enthusiastic leader when it pertained to the operational side of their missions. She knew him now, when he was gunning for flag rank, and she found it difficult to see past her impression of him as a bit self-absorbed and career-motivated. Again, nothing surprising given his rank and résumé.

The commodore wanted her and Miles to cover his ass, period. So the wing wouldn’t be sullied by unfair comments in the press, sure. But she couldn’t help assuming that the commodore wanted to ensure that he made the next rank.

Wasn’t that what they were all aiming for, no matter where they were in their careers?

Wasn’t she?

* * *

“GOOD GIRL, LUCKY.” Miles scratched the boxer-mix behind her cropped ears. She rolled onto her back and bared her belly for a proper rub.

“It’s okay. Sorry I was gone so long today, gal.”

Lucky was staying with Miles while her owner, another staff officer, was deployed to Afghanistan. Brad had never stated it aloud but Miles knew that leaving Lucky with him had been more of a favor to Miles than anything else.

Miles’s explosive ordnance partner when he’d been in combat had been Riva, a Belgian Malinois. Riva had lost her life saving Miles’s when a land mine detonated in an area they were sweeping. She’d received a hero’s burial with honors, as she’d so valiantly and selflessly earned.

Her death had nearly crippled him emotionally. He’d known the odds were against both of them when he went into that godforsaken field but it didn’t make losing her any less painful. His counselor and doctors told him his extended grief for Riva was how his mind kept him from focusing on the loss of his leg and his operational career. On a mental level, he knew that. In his heart, however, there’d always be a special place for Riva.

He figured he’d get his own dog in time. He wasn’t ready yet. It wouldn’t be fair to compare a new pup to Riva.

“Woof!” Lucky gave him the sign that she needed more than a belly rub.

“Okay, let’s go for a little walk. You can’t come with me tonight, okay, gal?” The boxer possessed nowhere near Riva’s mental acuity but Lucky’s ability to perceive his mood changes rivaled that of anyone—human or canine—he’d ever met. He allowed himself to wonder what Lucky would make of Ro.

Miles never had a problem focusing on a mission—it was a vital result of the rigorous ordnance disposal training he’d had. Lose focus, lose your fingers, a limb, your life.

But today he’d been distracted by Ro ever since he’d seen her standing in the middle of Deception Pass Bridge. He’d instantly known it was her—he could recognize her petite, well-toned body, not to mention her wisps of sexy curls, even under a knit cap, anywhere. Although she’d turned him down when he’d asked her out all those months ago, he didn’t harbor a grudge. It wasn’t as though he’d been looking for anything serious. He found her attractive and figured it was mutual, judging from the way she got her back up whenever he was around.

He laughed as Lucky gave him a sharp bark.

“Hey, girl.”

Lucky butted her head into his thigh, seeking another belly rub.

As he rubbed her chest he thought about the animal shelter where he volunteered on weekends. He needed to call and let them know he wouldn’t be in tomorrow morning as usual. He had a feeling his time at the no-kill shelter was going to be limited until this investigation was put to bed.

* * *

THE CHILLY SPRING evening proved too much for Ro’s cotton sweater. She closed the sliding glass door behind her, cheered by the bright colors of her family room while she waited for the warmth of the house to chase away her goose bumps.

She didn’t remember when she’d started, but sometime during her carrier tour she’d begun knitting decorative accessories out of the brightest hues she could find. She’d collected skeins of lush yarns in fibers she relished and brought a box of them on her deployment. Her downtime on the ship was basically nil, but every now and then she’d find a moment to pull out the yarn and start a pillow cover. The bright colors perked up the drab navy-gray and olive hues of her carrier stateroom, and gave her mind a brief escape from the pace of wartime carrier operations.

Once she’d returned stateside, the pillowcases turned into afghans, and then she found herself working on the wall hanging that hung over her bed. Her knitting wasn’t anything she shared with others—she knew there was a group of knitters and crocheters that met every week in downtown Oak Harbor because she saw the flyers whenever she shopped for wool. But what if one of those women was the spouse of someone she worked with? What if it was another active duty person she saw every day? She valued her privacy and didn’t want to share her hobby with anyone else.

The guys at work would have the ultimate weapon to tease her with if they knew she knitted. This super girly side of her belied the warrior image she wanted to project at work. Regardless of how good-natured her colleagues were, she didn’t need them prying into the one thing that gave her peace of mind no matter what was going on around her.

She looked at her watch again. Still forty-five minutes until she had to check back in with Miles. Unless he called sooner, it was certainly enough time to get in a few rows on the chemo cap she’d started last night.

Last night.

It seemed a lifetime ago. Before she’d finally pitched the diamond. When Petty Officer Perez had still been drawing breath.

The repetitive motion of her fingers began to work their magic. Fifteen minutes was all she needed....

Her doorbell sounded through her reverie.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” She quickly finished her row and shoved the project back into the cloth drawstring bag she used to stash her works in progress. It was bright neon green and had an equally neon pink sheep printed on the side.

If Miles had found out from the wing roster where she lived and had come here early—instead of letting her meet him—he was going to be sorry. But then it occurred to her that something critical might have happened regarding the investigation.

She opened the front door.

“Miles, I—”

The words lodged in her throat.

“I’m leaving Richard. Who’s Miles?”