Navy Justice (Whidbey Island, Book 5)

by Geri Krotow

  Crap! She couldn’t tell Paul she wasn’t coming in today. Her plan had been to call in, but Brad had insisted she leave her phone at home. One less thing anyone could track her with.

  Usually the coffee line went quickly, as the early-morning baristas were the best; today, of course, it crawled. She tried to discourage further conversation by staring at the menu that was posted above the counter area.

  “How are you feeling on your second day of work? How did yesterday go?”

  “Great! I loved it.” She ignored her guilt over taking a longer lunch on her very first day to go to the base and arrange for files to be delivered that had nothing to do with her new employment.

  “Everyone’s been so nice and welcoming. I can’t thank you enough, Paul. My initial cases are very doable.” Did she just say doable? She couldn’t help flinching.

  “Glad to hear it. I know the transition from active duty to civilian can be rough at first. My brother is Navy, and getting ready to become a full-time civilian. You’ve met his fiancée—Serena.”

  She nodded, willing the line to go faster.

  “They met in unusual circumstances having to do with a family house. Have her tell you about it sometime. At any rate, take all the time you need to adjust and get settled in. I like to think I run a family business, and you’re part of our family now.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  She was grateful that he didn’t know she’d briefly dated his brother. Or if he did, he saw no reason to bring it up. And she wasn’t going to tell him what she and Serena had discussed yesterday. She was just getting to know Serena and didn’t want to betray her trust.

  Serena was right; Paul was the perfect boss.

  “Are you glad you went into law?” she asked.

  “Yes. It’s afforded me a life here on Whidbey, which works well for my family.” She could tell that Paul was starting to get tired of their small talk, too, judging by how he pointedly studied the menu.

  Would the damn floor open up and swallow her, please? Her legal training and Navy experience had taught her to interpret facts in all kinds of ways, but outright lying would never be natural to her.

  It’s for the right reason. Lives are at stake. It might involve national security.

  “Can I help you?”

  Finally. Reprieve in the form of a coffee cashier.

  “Cappuccino. Whole milk, please.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Bagel with everything, toasted.”

  She wasn’t hungry but had to keep up the ruse that she was on her way into her second day of work with no other plans. Dressed as if she was coming from a yoga class she’d never attended.

  “I’ve got it.” Paul’s hand reached around her, and he gave the cashier a credit card. “It’s on the office. I’ll take a large morning blend, please.”

  Joy smiled at him. “Thanks, Paul. I appreciate it. You don’t usually come in here, do you?”

  She would’ve noticed him before; he was too distinguished-looking not to attract attention, and she’d frequented the shop often when she worked on base.

  “No, I prefer the little mom-and-pop drive-through, but my run went longer today. I need to get in early for a conference call with Seattle and New York, so this was closer.”

  Of course he had a conference call. Paul was an accomplished, busy lawyer.

  And he’d just hired a lying, law-breaking woman who’d probably be on the lam before the week was out.

  * * *

  IT FELT LIKE FOREVER, waiting for Joy to turn around and come back for him. Fifteen more minutes, and he’d hike it down to General Grimes’s place on his own. Thirty-two miles on foot—it would take him the entire day to get there, especially with his need to remain hidden.

  He heard barking, and the bushes around him rustled. He knew the yelps were from the dogs in the nearby kennel, but the rustling had him on alert. Suddenly, with no fanfare at all, a large possum rambled out from under an overgrown rhododendron. He stepped aside to let it pass by, grateful it hadn’t been anything to worry about. Like a terrorist.

  Or a skunk.

  His respiration rate was up, and sweat beaded his forehead even in the cool morning. He sat down in the tall grass, closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down.

  Images of yesterday’s events flashed across his mind. The SAM apparatus in the small fishing vessel. The enemy agent lifting it, preparing to fire. The crisp blue of the sky as he fired his own weapon. The subsequent fireball.

  Joy’s lips.

  Joy. He didn’t deserve her belief in him. The sheer determination on her face as she told him she’d get the answers he needed had allowed a tiny flicker to ignite in his cold, dark heart.

  Hope.

  He opened his eyes.

  He had to talk to Grimes.

  * * *

  JOY WAS NEVER more grateful to be leaving the coffee shop for the parking lot. The diversion from her route had cost her fifteen minutes. Running into her new boss, almost literally, had made her wonder if she was really the right person to help Brad. Lying, hiding an undercover FBI agent and sneaking him to a secret meeting while she foraged through classified government documents that she had a mere thirty-six hours to access—she hadn’t been trained for any of this.

  Not intentionally.

  She smiled to herself as she thought of how scarily qualified she actually was to do all those things. She might not think of herself as a liar, but the ease with which she came up with blatant falsehoods had to be credited to years of piecing together seemingly random facts to create a defense or prosecution. The cappuccino was hot but worth the immediate lift it gave her. As if she and Brad hadn’t consumed enough coffee over the past twenty-four hours!

  Her usual confidence reappeared in the form of knowing she’d find the answers he needed. Brad had stumbled across something significant when he was in the middle of a difficult mission overseas. She was sure of it. They just needed the case documents to figure out what and to whom it was so damned important.

  She could do this.

  “Joy!”

  She spun around and faced her good friend and knitting partner, Emily Bowman. She and Emily had met at the base gym during a Pilates class over a year ago.

  “I don’t usually see you out and about in the mornings!” Emily’s brunette bob fluttered in the wind, her corkscrew curls wild, her cheeks flushed from exertion.

  “Hey, Emily. Are you on your way to or from the gym?”

  Emily laughed. “You know me too well. When I got off duty at the hospital, I hit the 0530 spin class they’ve started. You should come and join me.”

  “Yeah, well, with the new job and all...” Lying to protect Brad’s innocence was one thing. But now she was putting on a false front with a close friend. Emily had helped her through a rough period when she’d been weighed down by cases on base and had just broken off with another man she’d dated. It all seemed like such a waste of time. All that effort trying to find a man she could be with. When all she really wanted...

  Was an irrevocably unavailable man.

  “Oh, no worries. I understand. You know how crazy I’ve been since my book came out!”

  Emily’s book. Crap. Joy had forgotten—the signing was last night.

  “Oh, my goodness, Emily, I missed the signing! I’m an awful excuse for a friend. Please tell me there’s another one?”

  “There is. Tonight, in the yarn shop in Coupeville.”

  “Oh, um...”

  Emily’s face clouded for an instant before she smiled and patted Joy’s forearm.

  “Joy, it’s no big deal. It’s a knitting pattern book, not some big juicy novel or Pulitzer Prize contender.”

  “It’s your book, Em. You used my rosewood needles to create the sweater pattern!”

  “Yes, I did.” They’d been on a two-day jaunt to a fiber festival in Oregon. Emily had forgotten her complete needle set in the midst of designing a lovely tweed pullover for her pattern book. Joy had her circ
ular set with her, including the size Emily needed. It was a small thing as far as Joy was concerned. But Emily had been so grateful she’d knitted Joy an intricate lace scarf with the leftover yarn from the sweater. Joy cherished the scarf, which was the first gift she’d received from anyone on Whidbey, and it had made her feel she belonged somewhere besides an aircraft carrier, courtroom or Navy base. It made her feel that Whidbey was home.

  “Do you think you can make it tonight? Maybe we could do dinner before the event.”

  Joy faltered. This was getting harder.

  “Oh, I wish I could, but I have a meeting with my new colleagues that’s going to take all afternoon. I’ll probably have to grab something from a drive through for dinner.”

  Emily shrugged as though it was no big deal.

  But it was. Emily was her friend, and Joy prided herself on being there for the people she cared about.

  Wasn’t that why she was slinking around like some kind of a black ops wannabe for Brad?

  “I’ll see if I can get out of it early, Em.” She sent up a silent prayer that she didn’t have to go on the run with Brad before the signing.

  “I know you do—stop stressing out. We can go to dinner another time. And if you make it to the signing, great. If not...”

  A tall, slender man walked past them, so engrossed in his cell phone that he accidentally bumped into Emily.

  “Whoa. Sorry.” The man paused and stiffened as if he’d been hit by a two-by-four. It was impossible to miss the look of annoyance in Emily’s eyes.

  “Must be a really important text.” Emily’s grim tone surprised Joy. Her friend was usually upbeat, although she’d had her own sad times, losing her husband, Peter, to cancer while they were still newlyweds. But that had been more than a decade ago, and Emily seemed happy with her life. She was a talented Labor and Delivery nurse, and all the new mothers adored her.

  She and Joy didn’t talk much about Emily’s dating, but judging by the way Emily glared at the inconsiderate texter, Joy realized that maybe she and Emily suffered from the same thing.

  They didn’t know how handle it when a man showed interest in them.

  “Emily.” The man put his phone in his jacket pocket and stared at her. “Good morning.”

  Emily didn’t repeat the greeting. Wow, this guy—whom she obviously knew—must have really pissed her off somehow.

  Joy glanced around. She had to get to Brad ASAP or he’d start hiking to General Grimes’s, and she’d be out of touch with him until he showed up there tonight.

  “I’ve got to go. Emily, I’ll see you later, okay? Bye!” She smiled at Emily and was stricken by the shock on her friend’s face. Emily raised her hand.

  “Later, Joy.”

  Joy told herself she deserved to go to hell. Not just for lying so blatantly to Emily, but for leaving her to contend with a dude she obviously wasn’t pleased with. It broke girlfriend etiquette.

  But Joy didn’t have time for manners.

  * * *

  “CAN I BUY you a cup of coffee?” Dr. Ben Franklin, US Navy Commander and Pediatrician, showed no sign of the exhaustion Emily felt to her bones. Blast the man.

  “No, thanks.” She made a show of smoothing her fleece jacket over her bike pants and headed to the shop door.

  “You can’t keep avoiding me, Em.” He fell into step beside her, and she wanted to scream.

  “It’s Emily. And I’m not avoiding you.” She refused to look at him. That had been her undoing. His expression. His knowing eyes. His mouth—she couldn’t let herself think about his mouth.

  “You are.” He reached around her and opened the coffee shop door.

  Of course he was a gentleman. As well as a Navy Commander. Oh, and a highly respected doctor.

  “Thank you.”

  The immediate warmth of the shop and the hum of voices calmed her reaction to him. A bit.

  “I see you worked out after our shift.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was in the gym, too, but mostly I ran the path. A good workout after a hard shift is the best ‘sleeping pill’ I’ve ever known.” He referred to Naval Air Station Whidbey’s running path, which had magnificent views of the water.

  “I go to the spin class on Tuesdays. When I’m getting off the night shift, it’s perfect.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t.” She fixed him with her death stare, developed during years of working with sometimes-arrogant doctors who were a little too sure of their ability and not so good at listening to mothers in labor.

  All it got her was a flurry of awareness as he met her stare with a steady gaze that made no attempt to disguise his interest in her.

  He grasped her wrist, his hand gentle. “Please, Emily. Let me buy you coffee, and breakfast if you haven’t had it. I need to talk to you.”

  If he’d said “we need to talk” or “you need to hear me out” or “let’s be adults about this,” she would’ve walked away and found solace in a bowl of Cheerios and the stale store-bought coffee nestled in her refrigerator door.

  She was trained to take care of others, trained to assess, to listen to a patient’s needs.

  Ben wasn’t a patient, but his request was genuine.

  “Okay. But it’s not a date, Ben. I mean it.”

  “Who’s putting labels on anything?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHARP PAINS SEARED Joy’s chest, and she briefly wondered if she was having a heart attack.

  It was the damned coffee. She was more of a tea drinker, and having so much coffee on an empty stomach—no, make that a nervous empty stomach—had kicked up her GERD. Gastroesophageal Reflux Disorder, the bane of overachievers worldwide.

  She’d been diagnosed with it after her tour in Norfolk. During the long months when she’d told herself she was crazy to fall for a man she’d never kissed, a man who was off-limits to her.

  It wasn’t a cardiac event. It was her GERD.

  She rummaged in her purse for the bagel and took a bite, chewing as she drove back toward their rendezvous point. Brad had said he’d see her and come out of the woods and onto the road. Under no circumstances was she to park her car or get out to look for him. He said it was a standard precaution and made her promise to follow it.

  Her hands were shaking again. What was she so damned afraid of? Death—that was a good thing to be afraid of.

  You’re afraid you’re doing this because you’ve fallen for Brad, not because it’s the right decision.

  Maybe.

  Her GERD could be attributed to fear, too. She’d never faced the possibility of running for her life before. The circumstances with Brad had put this fear in her belly. Definitely Brad.

  She was putting her entire life on the line for him. Everything she’d worked for over the past several years and especially this last year. It wasn’t only her new job or her hope for a satisfying civilian career and a local community to call home that were at risk. If she blew this, she’d also find herself dishonorably discharged from the Navy and disbarred from the legal profession.

  Finding employment with a dishonorable discharge was problematic, to say the least.

  She threw the bagel back in her bag. Nothing was going to taste good until Brad’s situation was resolved. Worst case? She’d end up dead alongside him. Someone, or several someones, had their sights on him, and if her hunch was correct, this had been going on for a long time. Since the op in which he’d met Farid...

  As she approached West Beach, she slowed near the road they’d chosen as their rendezvous point. There was no sign of Brad in the tall grasses and weeds that grew from the shoulder up onto the slight rise and the fields. She looked between the trunks of fir and cedar trees that lined the wooded areas. No luck. Movement in the shadows caught her eye, and hope flared. Until she identified it as a small Whidbey Island doe, staring thoughtfully at Joy’s vehicle while she chewed brush.

  Awareness of needing to blend in with local traffic, while slowin
g down enough not to miss Brad, increased her nausea, and she turned the AC on full blast.

  She was seven minutes late. Not bad considering she’d had to deal with both Paul and Emily. But in Brad’s world, seven seconds could mean the difference between life and death, and to make it seven minutes, well...

  “Don’t lose it now.” She forced her spine straight and lowered the windows to let in the fresh morning air. The warmth of September was in the scent of the pine needles that had roasted in the sun all month long. August had been lovely, but September was almost always the warmest and sunniest month on Whidbey.

  “Hey!”

  The shout reached her just as she was about to turn around and go back past the kennels. She looked in the rear-and side-view mirrors; thankfully, no one was on the road with her, not even a bicyclist.

  She brought the car to a quick stop on the shoulder, and she waited, prepared to make a U-turn if necessary. Seemingly out of nowhere, a figure lunged at the passenger side of the vehicle.

  “Unlock it!”

  Brad’s voice jolted her from her momentary shock, and she unlocked the doors with the button on her left armrest. She felt a rush of air as he opened the back passenger door, heard a slam, and then he disappeared from her rearview mirror.

  She turned, straining, to see him in the well between the back and front seats.

  The car immediately filled with the scent of pine and cedar he’d brought with him. His profile against the lower part of the backseat was stark, and he looked as if he hadn’t eaten in days instead of having a substantial breakfast with her a couple of hours ago.

  Before the sun came up.

  “Go, go!” Brad gestured at her, urging her to turn around and drive.

  “I’m going!”

  “What the hell took you so long?”

  “I had company.”

  “What kind of company?”

  “I thought I was being followed. Well, I was being followed—so I drove to Starbucks instead of coming to get you, just like you told me. It turned out to be my boss. And then after I got rid of him, I ran into a good friend who, by the way, I’m supposed to meet tonight at her book signing in Coupeville.”