Читать книгу The Marine - Leah Vale - Страница 9

“You should have more faith in my abilities, Major Branigan.”

“Your abilities are not in question, Ms. Hayes.” Though Rick had tried to keep his attention fixed on the distant view of the late-morning sun glinting off the Pacific Ocean, his body was all too aware of the woman seated behind him. His gaze strayed from the older apartment complex down the hill from his condominium to his smashed red pickup truck sitting out front.

What had Pete been thinking?

But that was just it. Pete didn’t think; he simply did. Always had. When they were kids, Rick, as Pete’s best friend, had been there to divert disaster. A lot had changed between them since, yet not everything.

Needing to move, to do something, he turned from the window and headed for the door. Nothing more than a symbolic way out, but at the moment, he’d take anything he could get.

“What is in question is how we’re going to—Major Branigan?” she practically yelled.

He glanced back at her as he yanked open the front door. Her exotic eyes were wide. For the first time since she’d strolled through his door she looked flustered, no longer the queen of her domain.

Normally, he would have felt guilty about being so rude, but he’d stowed his conscience the day the cops had come knocking.

He was about to step out—

“Major!”

He relented and made up an excuse to toss her. “I have to work on my truck.” He reached back in and scooped his keys off the small table in the hall. “Just be sure you shut the door behind you after you’ve gathered your stuff. Don’t want Buddy to get out.” He pointed at the cat beneath the table, watching him with blatant interest. Rick never knew what the damn thing was going to do from one minute to the next.

The lawyer glanced from the cat, to her files, to him, opening and closing her mouth as if wanting to sputter but too polished to actually indulge in something so telling. Rick took advantage of her distress and left the condo, shutting the door behind him.

He’d barely made the landing before he heard his door open and close quickly—good, no escape for Buddy today, the slippery cat—then her heels rapped on the stairs as she hurried down.

“Major Branigan—”

His attention on finding the key to his storage closet at the back of the carport, he called, “Thank you for delivering that letter, Ms. Hayes.” He passed his tarp-covered Suzuki motorcycle and when he heard her walk up behind him, he added, “At least now I know my father’s name.”

It didn’t change the way he felt about the man, or how he intended to live his life. Duty bound and with honor. All the way to the ugly end.

“Major. Rick.”

Her imploring use of his name made him glance at her as he opened the storage closet. She visibly clenched her jaw while she stared at him, single file folder gripped in her hands, marring her smooth, perfectly sculpted face.

This one didn’t back down. He liked that. But with him, such tenacity wouldn’t help her get what she wanted. Her three goals—whatever the third one was—would not be achieved.

Mustering as much finality and sincerity as he could, he said, “It was nice meeting you, Ms. Hayes.”

She studied him for a moment. Rick had the distinct impression he was being searched, that she was trying to see through him to the truth of him. To the sort of man he really was.

Wouldn’t do her any good. That man had been sacrificed to repay a debt.

He turned away and reached into the closet for his tool kit. When he straightened, she was reading the papers within the folder she had balanced open in one hand.

She mused, “So you admitted guilt to the arresting officers—”

He shut the storage-closet door. “We’ve already covered that.”

She ran a finger across a page. “But you refused any form of testing for blood-alcohol levels despite repeated warnings that doing so would be used against you at trial, and you refused further questioning.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “How do you know what I refused?”

“I have a copy of the police report right here.”

“How did you get that?”

A finely shaped black brow twitched. “The McCoys are remarkably connected, Major.”

“You mean rich enough to buy what they need.”

She slowly raised her eyes to his. “Actually, based on my experience during the five years I’ve worked for McCoy Enterprises, people are often eager to do things for the McCoys.” She shrugged. “Whether out of hope for future business opportunities or simply to be able to say they’ve had personal dealings with billionaires.”

Not interested in either of those things, and not caring to have his life bared for perusal by anyone except the military, he shifted the large, red metal toolbox to his other hand. “What else do you have there?”

Her smile was supremely confident. “I have it all, so you might as well accept the fact that I’m here to help you. I didn’t come all the way from Missouri for nothing.”

“No way, Ms. Hayes.” He turned and headed out of the carport.

She followed, her strides remarkably long and determined despite the height of her heels and the snugness of her skirt. Which were two things he hadn’t wanted to notice, given the disaster his life had become. So he stopped and asked, “Or is it ‘Mrs.’? Don’t you have a husband or someone waiting on you? Why don’t you fly home early and surprise him, ma’am.”

She made a disgusted-sounding noise. “Afraid not, Major. It’s Miss, and even if it weren’t, even if there was someone waiting for me to come home, which there isn’t, he’d just have to wait.” She glared for several moments, then her expression softened and she shifted toward him.

His survival-training-honed instincts went on high alert.

In a beguiling tone that was a far better match to her unusual eyes and full mouth, she said, “On the other hand, the more you cooperate with me, the sooner we can get you free of this unpleasantness. And the sooner you’re free of this unpleasantness, the sooner you can be rid of me. So it’s entirely up to you, Major.”

It was Rick’s turn to make a disgusted sound as he started again toward his truck. He might free himself of her, but they both knew he’d never be free of the stain “this unpleasantness” would leave on his reputation.

Nor would he be free of the McCoys, for that matter. His mood darkened further. He wasn’t about to run to them because he had nothing else to do.

He dropped his toolbox with a bang next to the crushed left front of the once dingless Dodge.

Planting his hands on his hips, he tried to ignore the woman next to him by focusing on the truck’s damage. The lights on this side were completely obliterated, the hood had buckled and the side panel was creased and streaked with black paint.

From the other car. The car of Emelie Dawson, forty-six, divorced mother of two.

If only he’d looked closer that night, he would have realized a tree hadn’t caused the damage. His throat tightened and his stomach turned.

Focus on what you have power over.

He examined the front of the truck. He’d have to pry the bumper away from the wheel to keep from further trashing the tire if he wanted to drive the truck to the repair shop rather than have it towed—a minor concession he’d make to his restrained pride. There’d be a little too much symbolism involved in having to watch his truck being winched up onto a flatbed and hauled away.

He pushed the button on the key fob and unlocked the truck so he could get a crowbar from the space in back of the seat.

Behind him, Miss Hayes said, “I’m surprised they didn’t impound your vehicle.”

“They did. My Acme lawyer got it returned to me right after the police processed it.”

Without commenting, she said crisply, “Back to the police report. You initially admitted to having driven this truck the night of the accident. Is that correct?”

Rick stifled a sigh as he backed out of the cab and straightened, crowbar in hand. Maybe if he let her see exactly how little help she could provide, she’d leave. He shut the truck’s door. “Correct.”

He’d said the words that night; now he’d pay the price.

She moved just enough to let him get down on the blacktop to search beneath the bumper for a good leverage point. “But then you exercised your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in order to avoid incriminating yourself. Why? Why not just ask to speak with an attorney before you answered any more questions?”

He found a notched spot and fit one end of the crowbar against it, then braced the other one on the bumper. “Because talking to a lawyer then wouldn’t have made any difference. I still wasn’t going to answer any questions.”

“Because you’re guilty.”

He grunted an answer, but the acceptance in her tone made him shove on the wedged crowbar extra hard.

“Okay, then. Let’s walk through the facts.”

“I don’t want your help, Miss Hayes.”

“Humor me. And please, call me Lynn.”

She was cozying up to him, to get him to let her into the game. The healthy male in him locked and loaded at the mere thought of cozying up to a looker like her—but no way.

“Witnesses have you leaving the Rancho Margarita Bar’s parking lot in a truck matching the description of this one—”

She stepped close and lightly kicked the tire next to his shoulder with her beige, high heeled shoe. She wasn’t wearing any hose, and her incredibly smooth, lightly tanned skin pulled his gaze upward over a slender ankle, a toned calf, a perfect knee, a satiny thigh shadowed by the hem of her skirt…

“—and heading south in the northbound lane for approximately a hundred yards before making a correction.” She humphed and shifted her weight. “Hard to claim a momentary lapse of control caused the accident.”

Rick jerked his attention back to the crowbar, practically forgotten in his hands. “That it would be,” he concurred, pretending that he hadn’t just been peering up her skirt. He knew the perspiration forming on his back and his forehead said otherwise.

He gave the crowbar a fast, hard push.

She shifted again, but this time he only allowed himself a glance. Damn, but she had nice legs. Runner’s legs. The kind that had to be earned, especially since she appeared to be about his age. Thirty-something women didn’t keep legs like that free.

He gritted his teeth and pushed again. The bumper moved an inch with a satisfying metal-on-metal squawk.

“Why don’t you just let them crank the thing up on a flatbed and haul it to a shop?”

“Because.” He grumbled and pushed at the bumper a third time. “It’s not that bad.”

She scoffed. “If you say so. But according to this, you must have been traveling about thirty miles per hour when you ran the light after getting into the right lane. No skid marks before you hit the black sedan as it was starting its left-hand turn. Just because you could back up and drive away doesn’t mean your truck isn’t trashed.”

She took a step nearer and he glanced up to see her peering into the cab. “Ah. So that’s what an airbag looks like. Can’t be easy to drive with all that hanging out of the steering wheel into your lap. Or feel pleasant when it nails you.”

Good thing he had no intention of taking his shirt—or anything else—off around this woman, because she was certain to spot that he didn’t have a mark on him other than his tattoo.

“Too bad the airbag in the car you hit couldn’t prevent the driver from getting her pelvis broken. I can’t imagine anything that would hurt worse.”

He grunted in response, using all his strength to shove the bumper outward, away from the wheel well so the tire could turn freely. He didn’t want to think about the specifics of that night, didn’t want to form a picture that would play over and over in his head. The future held enough nightmares for him as it was.

But he was a man of his word, and he’d given his word. Besides, now it was all too late.

“Interesting.”

He paused, only barely refraining from asking what?

“It says here, you refused a breathalyzer and blood test at the station, but exhibited no signs of inebriation. Even though they were able to track you down within the hour from the partial plate number the victim noted as you were backing away and the fact that you were holding a beer when you opened the door. Care to comment?”

“Nope.” Man, he’d needed a beer after taking one look at Pete.

“Didn’t think so.”

She didn’t sound thwarted at all. Or even perturbed. She sounded intrigued, like a woman unwilling to butt out.

Not good. Not good at all.

THE LATE-MORNING SUN glared off the papers within the folder and made Lynn too warm in her suit coat. Still, she stood there next to the truck and read through the rest of the faxed copy of the police report, using far more care than she had the first time in her hotel suite while familiarizing herself with the case after she’d finally received all the documentation. Now that she’d met the soon-to-be-ex-Major Rick Branigan, different things were jumping out at her. Things that didn’t make sense. Things that were making her instincts go nuts.

While she was no defense attorney or any kind of a trial lawyer, she didn’t get to work for McCoy Enterprises’s Legal because she was just good at contracts. She’d worked her tail off at the University of Missouri and Columbia Law to be the best of the best. A regular G.I. Jane of law up against all the Ivy League grads. Her instincts had yet to fail her, and she’d learned to trust them.

Once again she squinted through the dirty driver’s window at the deflated airbag, very much like a big white balloon that had been popped and forgotten. Then she realized the window wasn’t dirty on the outside, but coated with residue left by the powder from the airbag. Drivers often had burns as well as bruises and abrasions on their arms and faces from an airbag’s violent inflation.

She looked down at the mile of man stretched out at her feet. No sign of injury of any kind, old or new. Just muscle, sinew and a bullheadedness she might normally have respected.

The copy of the mug shot in the file she’d barely glanced at earlier—she’d simply registered a McCoy family resemblance then—was of a disturbingly handsome face marred only by a heartbreaking stoicism. It was the face of a man prepared to give nothing but name, rank and serial number.

She searched through the police report for any indication that he’d had injuries from the accident or bore evidence of taking an airbag in the kisser, which, for whatever reason, wasn’t visible in his picture. She didn’t find anything.

She knew drunks often walked away from horrific wrecks without serious injury because their bodies were so relaxed that the jolt of the impact didn’t harm them. But she doubted being relaxed would save someone from the punishment that an early-model airbag—which this truck surely had—could dole out.

She chewed on her lip for a minute. Branigan was tall. His chest could have taken the brunt of the force. She could ask him to remove his shirt so she could check for bruises…A trickle of sweat ran down between her breasts.

Instead, she asked, “Have you done laundry lately, Major?”

He paused in his battle with the bumper and squinted up at her. “What?”

The guy had nice teeth. Among other things. “I was just wondering if you’d washed the clothes you were wearing the night of the accident.”

He went very still. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to see them.”

“Why?” he repeated, but with even more suspicion.

“To check if there’s residue on them from the airbag. The same stuff that’s all over the inside of your truck.”

He squinted up at her for a moment more, then used his strong leg to push himself farther beneath the bumper. “Sorry. Laundry day was yesterday.”

Liar.

She had no idea why she was so certain, but she was. And he had no reason to lie to her. He knew his guilt or innocence didn’t matter to her. If he didn’t want her to see his clothes because he didn’t want her help, he could just tell her no.

So why lie to her? Unless he was lying about other things…Or copping the Fifth to avoid having to lie…

She snapped the folder closed and leaned her shoulder against the side mirror. “So what were you celebrating?”

“Celebrating?”

“Yes, celebrating. There was nothing in your files about any sort of drinking problem, so you must have been celebrating something to tie one on like that.”

More clanking, more protesting metal. “Guess it’d been a good day.”

“A good day? Hmm.” She flipped to another page in the file. “Let’s see. It says your MOS is 0302. What does that mean?”

There was a long silence, and just as she was deciding he wasn’t going to answer, he said, “MOS stands for Military Occupational Specialty, and 0302 is Infantry.”

She already knew as much, having spent several late hours the night before she flew out to California poring over the USMC’s Web site. By the time she finished, she’d wanted to join up. But she needed to draw him out.

“Thank you. I imagine you form quite a few strong bonds in the infantry. So who were you with? You know, at the bar? Who were you drinking with?”

Silence from beneath the truck.

Lynn’s confidence in her gut instinct grew. “Or were you drinking alone? The witnesses said there’d been just one person in the red pickup. And if you’d been with friends, they wouldn’t have been very good friends to let you get into your truck and drive away drunk enough not to recognize your right from your left. So were you at the Rancho Margarita Bar drinking alone?”

While she didn’t expect one, she gave time for an answer.

When enough time had passed, she continued. “Though the cops wouldn’t have bothered checking, because you’re making their job easy as hell, I’m sure the bartender will remember you. Definitely the cocktail waitresses. I mean, a guy like you—” She caught herself before she elaborated on his very memorable traits.

No need to let him know she found him attractive. She was there simply to get him out of this potential disaster with the civilian authorities and have him discharged from the Marines fast.

She straightened away from the side mirror. If there was more to this story—namely, that Major Rick Branigan hadn’t been driving this truck when it plowed into another car—then she could either get him free of the charges quickly, or she’d end up dragging the investigation out for months. Especially if he continued to behave like a jackass and withhold his cooperation.

Considering the clock always ticking in the back of her mind and what she had at stake, did she dare risk finding out?