Читать книгу Navy Justice - Geri Krotow - Страница 13

CHAPTER FIVE

BRAD HAD DREAMED of kissing Joy since the minute he’d realized they could have more than a lawyer-client relationship. They’d needed each other in Norfolk. He’d needed her to help him free Farid. She’d needed him to help get her client released from an unjust incarceration.

“We’re both out of the Navy now, Joy. No more ‘ma’am’ and ‘Chief.’ It’s just you and me, plain Brad and Joy.”

Back in Norfolk he’d counted on her to do her job and to make sure he didn’t implicate himself in any wrongdoing by defending a man who’d associated with known terrorists, albeit for the right reasons.

She’d been an officer, he an enlisted man. A relationship was off-limits even if the case hadn’t been an obstacle between them. And he’d had to end his engagement to Marci; he wouldn’t have gotten involved with any other woman until he took care of that.

But she’d tempted him. Joy’s strength of character, her intelligence and her beauty—Joy—called to him each and every damned day they’d worked together. At first he’d blamed it on months of not getting laid. Then he told himself it was because she was the only woman he was with on a consistent basis. At the end of a particularly grueling day, he’d almost leaned against a concrete wall and pulled her toward him for a kiss. He’d blamed it on not having access to regular workouts, but he knew, deep down, that wasn’t the reason.

He’d fought his attraction to Joy for too long.

And now she stood here in front of him, her dark eyes reflecting her desire. He couldn’t take his gaze from her crimson lips, lips that emphasized the translucent ivory of her skin.

He kissed her.

He had to keep this gentle. Easy, simple. A kiss, no more. Curiosity playing out between former colleagues who shared an extraordinary chemistry.

Joy moaned, and his good intentions went to hell.

He pressed her against the counter with his hips and had his tongue in her mouth before he could give himself a chance to second-guess any of it. She reacted in the most womanly fashion as she pushed back into him. Soft, smooth, hot.

They fit together so damned well. It was more than he’d imagined. It was more than lust. It was an attraction born of mutual respect and understanding of the other person and what they both stood for.

The temptation to take that kiss to the conclusion he’d fantasized countless times was just about overwhelming.

A hissing sound invaded the cloud of lust surrounding him, and he felt Joy’s hands on his chest but he kept kissing her. The side of her neck was softer than any silk.

“Brad.” She choked out his name, her voice rising in pitch.

“Kiss me, Joy,” he muttered. “Just kiss me.”

There was that hiss again.

“Brad.” A firmer shove.

“What?”

“The noodles. They’re boiling over.”

He let her go and she turned, still in his arms, and shut off the flame under the overflowing pot. The starchy smell of burned pasta filled the kitchen, and he fought coming back to the reality of where they were, what was ahead of them.

Because all he wanted to do was keep kissing Joy.

* * *

JOY PUSHED HER hair out of her face with shaky hands, but she knew her knees were even shakier. When Brad’s tongue had licked her lips, it was as though the ground she stood on had been shaken by one of those earthquakes that occasionally hit the West Coast.

All from one kiss. A kiss that was far more potent than any in her dreams.

She grabbed the sides of the pasta pot and squealed.

“Ouch!”

“Pot holders would be good.”

Just like that, Brad was back to being the stalwart guy. He could act unperturbed but he’d felt what had passed between them as much as she had. She’d felt his heartbeat increase and felt the unmistakable erection under those too-sexy cargo pants.

“This is going to be mush.” She poured the over-done noodles in the colander and placed the pot back on the stove to cool.

“It’ll be great.” He sounded...relaxed. As if he felt as comfortable being here as she did having him. As if no time had passed...

“You’ve been out of the active duty Navy for almost a year,” she said. “Did it ever occur to you to call me?”

“Yes.”

Don’t ask the question if you’re not ready for the answer.

For once she listened to her mother’s wisdom.

* * *

SO HE DIDN’T want to discuss why he’d never called, never did more than “friend” her on Facebook.

She was an adult, no stranger to relationships that had no future. Take Jonas. They should’ve been able to maintain a casual, Navy friends-with-benefits relationship. A lot of her female colleagues enjoyed the opportunity to date without expectations.

She hadn’t lied to Serena. She and Jonas had never gotten past a few dates, very casual ones, at that—a meetup at the gym for a workout or at a local coffee spot. No romance involved. Her heart hadn’t been in it. Neither had Jonas’s, apparently, as he’d come back from the last of several career deployments to get engaged to Serena. Another work colleague, Dennis, was her perfect match on paper. He was a JAG, too, a lawyer who understood the demands of the job. But again, she’d never felt as much as a tiny sizzle with him.

Brad was different. Her attraction to him was something she’d never experienced before—not this elemental, damn the torpedoes, full-speed-ahead kind of desire. The frightening part for her was that it had started when they worked together, when a relationship was against Navy regs.

He’d never given any indication that he wanted anything from her but her legal expertise.

Except for that searing kiss five minutes ago.

So why did she feel this niggling sense of rejection?

As she sprinkled the remaining Gruyere and cheddar on top of the noodles, meat and sauce in the greased baking dish, she glanced at Brad.

Zip. Nada. His expression was back to the one she’d lived with for six months, working alongside him. Professional, detached, uncompromising.

“It strikes me as odd that an FBI agent has no one in his organization he can trust when his back’s against the wall. Don’t you have a partner?” she asked.

“My partner’s on family leave. His wife just had twins, and he’s taking several weeks off. I’ll be provided with a temporary partner once I get back to my regular routine. Right now my boss and the higher-ups wanted someone with war experience in this part of the Pacific Northwest. We’ve had reports for months that suggest a homegrown terrorist group’s been targeting either NAS Whidbey or Port Everett, or both. With my background I was the obvious pick to go undercover.”

“And you wouldn’t necessarily do that with a partner, anyhow.”

“Right.”

The casserole was in the oven, so she began to prepare steamed veggies in her pressure cooker. If they were going to enjoy a carb fest, she needed to include some greens. She had brownie mix in the pantry, and frozen yogurt in the freezer. Did they need dessert, though? Normally her mouth would be watering at the thought.

Instead, she picked up her glass of ice water to moisten her dry mouth. She took several gulps before she grasped what Brad had said. The glass almost slipped out of her hand before she clunked it onto the counter.

“You think it’s the same group Farid helped you take out in Afghanistan, don’t you?”

Brad shrugged. “That’s what headquarters and the Intel analysts were telling me. These guys fit the pattern. We had indications that they might try to interrupt the Naval exercise that’s going on this week in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I was supposed to be halfway between the shore and the Abraham Lincoln. You know Old Abe is the flagship for the exercise.”

“As expected.” She didn’t know a lot about Navy Special Operations or practice scenarios, but Brad was probably familiar with all the possible circumstances under which the Navy trained.

“I was at the boat rental place two days ago, ready to get my own little powerboat to take me out to the prearranged area, when it occurred to me that I’d be better off using my own equipment. If anything was going to happen at sea, I wouldn’t be able to prevent it, but I trust the ability of the aircraft carrier and her ship’s company to do their jobs. I certainly couldn’t protect them.”

“What are you most worried about?”

“That’s classified.”

Joy shook the bottle into which she’d mixed oil, vinegar, lemon juice and salt. When she finished, she poured a generous amount over the ready-made salad she’d bought.

“Save the classified routine for someone else, Brad. I’m the one risking my neck getting classified information for you, remember? What about your boss? Can you contact him now?”

“I could use your phone, as you suggested. But I’d rather not. I’m pretty damn sure that everyone’s calls on this side of the island are being monitored. So if a call went into the Bureau from either your landline or your cell, it would immediately pop up. I don’t want to bring anyone into this, no matter how legit they are.”

“Maybe you should calm down and be a little more trusting of the process.”

“I trust no one.”

Joy washed her hands and looked out her kitchen window at the windswept coastline. The emergency vehicles of this morning were gone, but she knew Brad was correct. Several lookouts had been assigned to keep an eye on the beach for whatever—or whoever—washed up in the next few days. She didn’t have to see them to know it.

They were looking for the domestic terrorists whose group Brad had infiltrated.

She shuddered. The thought of American citizens willingly working for such an evil cause gave her the creeps.

Brad was a solid military man who now worked for the FBI. He wasn’t going to emerge from his undercover role until he had the answers he needed. That they all needed to ensure the safety of the base and surrounding area.

“I’m going to get into more comfortable clothes,” she told him. “Please help yourself to some of this and I’ll be right back. We have to come up with an action plan.” She pointed to the dish of crudités and hummus she’d prepared and left on the dining room table.

“I’ve kept myself occupied all day. I think I can manage another five minutes.” He walked over to the table. “Wow, you’ve fixed us a regular feast.”

“It’s the least I can do to support my local counter-terrorist undercover FBI agent.”

“Well, not the least.”

Joy didn’t react to his comment—she wasn’t sure he realized he’d said it so loudly.

Brad’s tone was steady, the same level voice she remembered from Norfolk. But his expression was worrying. It wasn’t the five o’clock shadow or the rumpled hair. They’d worked long hours together with few breaks and had seen each other at their worst.

It was the faraway look in his eyes. As if he was there physically, talking to her, but his mind was preoccupied with figuring out a puzzle.

She’d have to help him get to the bottom of it. Especially since she preferred her yoga pants and T-shirt to an orange jumpsuit.

* * *

THEY SAT WITH half a bottle of wine unfinished between them as she took notes and Brad leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs. She’d left the dinner plates in the sink for later, much as that pained her. What they were doing was more important.

“You must know something or you saw something downrange that’s incriminating to whoever wants General Grimes, and maybe you, dead. Let’s list all your missions and detachments. Anything you think was suspicious about them.”

Brad actually laughed, a rumble from deep in his chest. It seemed to echo in her dining room.

“The real question is what mission wasn’t suspicious or fraught with shady characters. Hell, Joy, do you think they send former SEALs and FBI agents to deal with the ‘aboveboard’ terrorists? Do you think there’s such a thing?”

The skin around his eyes crinkled, and she noticed his even white teeth. He’d always been attractive, but as an enlisted man he wasn’t available to her, even with his engagement on the rocks. He’d acted on his beliefs and on what he knew was right; she respected him for that. His behavior was typical of most Navy personnel she’d known, but she’d met a few officers as well as enlisted who’d crossed the line into fraternization. Brad had never so much as tried.

His good looks and their chemistry tempted her nonetheless.

“Cut me some slack, Iverson. I don’t have the battle scars you do.”

“I’m sorry, Joy. I guess I needed to blow off some steam with a good laugh.”

“Glad I could help. Now that it’s out of your system, how about refocusing and going over what you know?”

The thought of a bomb or a missile hitting either of the bases on Whidbey and injuring innocent civilians as well as Navy personnel stoked the fire that’d fueled the most fundamental reasons Joy had joined the military. She’d wanted to serve her country, protect its citizens and help defeat the bad guy wherever and whenever possible.

“Joy, you know I can’t tell you any of that.”

“You can’t tell me details, fine. But you can list who you’ve been targeting. No names—just call them persons A, B, C, whatever. I just need a timeline.”

“I realize now it was a cell of four, three since this morning’s events. I think one of them is a veteran, unfortunately. Army.”

“I hadn’t even thought of it being another vet.” She should have, though. The horrors of war were enough to make the most stable, honest human being turn to alcohol, drugs and worse. Mental illness rates among war vets were skyrocketing, and the VA Hospitals overflowed with PTSD patients.

“It’s not anyone I ever worked with, not former Navy or Marine. The guy was in the Army and saw several people in his unit killed or injured by an IED. Based on what I’ve seen of him, he probably has TBI.”

Traumatic Brain Injury. “That’s rough.”

“I’ve met all three players in this local cell face-to-face. The shooter is the first one I didn’t know. The cell’s small, and they’re not the type who have the months of training by al Qaeda or ISIL behind them. They’re homegrown terrorists who want some kind of vengeance because they feel the US Military wronged them—or the cause they’ve been associated with online.”

“Only one of the three you know personally is a veteran?”

“Yes. There’s one guy who acts like he has ties to another suspect, but I don’t have anything solid there. Look, you have to trust me. I know my job, Joy.”

“If you know it so well, why are you here asking me for help? Asking me to put my honorable discharge on the line, not to mention my new civilian job? A job, by the way, that wasn’t easy to land?”

“Because I need your help. I can’t say it any more clearly. I can’t do this alone. If these lowlifes have somehow hooked up with the worst of the bad guys from overseas, they have to be stopped more than ever. I promise you, you’ll come out a hero when all’s said and done.”

“I’m no hero, Brad, nor am I interested in being one. I’m a lawyer. A civilian lawyer. Maybe you just should’ve taken them out with your SEAL methods.”

He grunted. “Trust me, it crossed my mind. But a SEAL’s trained to take out the enemy on foreign soil. Not civilians in American territory. As an FBI agent, I have to play by the rules, too. And there’s more—don’t ask me for details here. The longer I track them, the more Intel we get, and the better our odds of finding how and what they’re communicating with the overseas operatives. How they got hold of a surface-to-air missile, for instance. Plus, the likelihood that they’re going to slip up increases with each hour I remain undercover. These seemingly loner operatives could help us blow open a much larger network.”

She leaned back in her chair. It was mind-boggling to consider how much the FBI and other LEAs did to keep the country safe on a daily basis.

Her task was much simpler.

“Tell me about your boss.”

“Mike Rubio. You met him briefly during the Norfolk trial. He was the officer in charge of my SEAL team. We’ve worked together for almost two decades.”

“And yet you have no way to contact him other than through official channels? I’m not getting this, Brad. You have to have someone to reach out to. And won’t he be worried about you?”

“He might be, but we’ve been through worse. I already told you. I can’t make a move until I know where the cell is and what they’re up to. Or if my team’s narrowed in on them or even taken them out by now. That might not show up in the press right away.”

“Yeah, I know.” So many Navy cases had initially attracted media attention, but after it was determined that it would be in the nation’s best interests to keep the facts classified, reporters had been notified and the cases left to die a quiet media death.