Alpha Squad

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Lucy gazed around Sarah’s living room. It wasn’t until the baby was well on its way that Sarah and Richard had gotten around to furnishing their new house. For nearly a year, there had been almost nothing in the living room. But now everything was finally out of boxes. The house was filled with furniture that was toddler friendly. There were no sharp edges or breakable surfaces; everything was softly rounded, designed for being bumped by small heads and grabbed by tiny fingers. Yet despite its functional furnishings, the living room was tastefully decorated. Sarah wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  “No,” she was saying into the phone. “I’m still waiting for this baby to decide that it’s time to be born.” She laughed. “Don’t worry, you’ll get a call.” She paused, glancing up at Lucy. “Yes, she’s here. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “Who is it?” Lucy mouthed.

  “Tom Harper,” Sarah mouthed back. “Oh, okay. I’ll give her that message. Consider her on her way.” She laughed. “Sure, Tom. Thanks. Bye.” Sarah pressed the off button, looking up at Lucy. “Tom was calling with a message from the chief. You’re wanted down at the station. Immediately.”

  Lucy drained the last of her orange juice. “Did he happen to say why?”

  Sarah smiled. “He mentioned something about Chief Bradley putting you in charge of the entire investigation since you did such a good job tracking Blue McCoy down.”

  Lucy nearly dropped her glass. “Me?”

  “I don’t understand,” Lucy said vehemently, climbing into her truck. “Every other person on this police force is better qualified to handle this investigation. Why me?”

  Blue stowed his duffel bag under his feet and calmly closed the passenger door, locking it with his elbow. “Because every other person on this police force thinks that I killed Gerry.”

  “And since when does Chief Bradley let the prime suspect select the officer in charge of the investigation?” she sputtered.

  “Drive this thing, will you?” Blue said, squinting as he gazed out the front windshield. “I want to get out of here.”

  It was clear that he wasn’t going to answer any of her questions until she put her truck in gear and pulled out of the parking lot.

  It wasn’t until she was on Bluff Drive, heading down toward the beach, that Blue started to talk. “Bradley doesn’t know that I chose you,” he said in his soft drawl. “He thinks he did. He was trying to get me to sign a confession and he claimed that the case against me was gonna be open and shut. Even though they don’t have enough evidence to hold me today, the chief said this one was so easy that even the dumbest, greenest rookie on the force would be able to collect the necessary evidence to send me to jail within forty-eight hours. I took the opportunity to maneuver him into standing by his claim.”

  “And I’m that dumbest, greenest rookie,” Lucy said dryly.

  “You’re green, Yankee,” Blue said, “but you’re not dumb. And you’re not going to overlook any evidence that supports my innocence in your zeal to hang me.”

  Lucy was silent for a moment. “What if I only find evidence that will help convict you?” she finally asked.

  Blue pointed toward the beach parking lot. “Pull in,” he said. “Please.”

  Lucy did. At this time of the late afternoon, the parking lot was almost empty, the last of the beachgoers heading home. She pulled up to the big boulders that lined the lot and turned off the engine. When she was in high school, this was where kids had come at night to park and make out. She’d never gone, but she was willing to bet that Blue had brought Jenny Lee here plenty of times.

  Blue turned in his seat to face her. “I have a gut feeling,” he said slowly, “that you’re only going to find evidence that points to my guilt.” He held up one hand, stopping her before she could speak. “Something about this whole thing reeks of setup. Whoever killed Gerry wants it to look like I’m the murderer. I don’t know who’s involved, or how far they’re willing to take this. Until I do know, there’s only one person I’m going to trust in this town, and that’s you.”

  Lucy stared at him in disbelief. He was serious. Out of all the people he could have turned to for help, he’d turned to her.

  But as the officer in charge of the investigation, her job wasn’t to play favorites with a suspect. Her job was to find the killer—no matter who that killer turned out to be.

  Lucy rested her head on her folded arms atop the steering wheel. “What if I decide you’re guilty?”

  “I believe you already decided that I’m not.”

  Lucy lifted her head. “I need to question you,” she said. “you need to tell me where you were at the time of Gerry’s death.”

  “I don’t have an alibi,” Blue told her. “I was by myself.”

  Lucy took her notebook out of her pocket and opened the truck door. “Let’s walk on the beach,” she suggested.

  Blue nodded. “I’d like that,” he said, following her out of the truck.

  The sand crunched beneath Lucy’s shoes. Blue had kicked off his sandals, she noticed, and his feet were now bare. He had nice feet. They were strong looking, with high arches and long, straight toes.

  Lucy held her questions until they reached the edge of the water. They headed south along the coast in silence, watching the play of the early evening sun on the ocean.

  “We’re in an interesting position here,” Lucy finally said. It wasn’t easy, but she had to be honest with him because she needed him to be honest with her. “Last night we were on the verge of a…certain kind of relationship, but today that relationship has to be something entirely different.”

  Blue was quiet, just listening, so she pushed on. “I’m going to ask you a whole bunch of questions, and you’ve got to answer them honestly, do you understand?”

  Lucy moved away slightly so that a wave rushing up to shore wouldn’t get her shoes wet. Blue let the water wash over his bare feet. It soaked the hem of his pants, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. He glanced up as if he felt Lucy watching him, and nodded. Yes, he understood.

  “Okay.” Lucy exhaled a burst of air. She hadn’t realized it, but she had been holding her breath. “I dropped you off at your motel room around 8:30 p.m.,” she said. “Tell me everything you did from then till the time you checked out.”

  Blue narrowed his eyes, thinking. “I went inside the room, took a shower and changed out of my dress uniform. I got some fried fish and a salad to go from the Grill, went back to my room and watched part of a movie on cable while I ate dinner,” he said. “It wasn’t very good—the movie, not the food—so I turned it off before the end. It was probably around ten at that point. The air conditioner wasn’t working real well, and I was…restless, so I went outside, for a walk.”

  Restless. Lucy had been restless last night, too. She knew he was watching her, so she kept her eyes carefully on her notebook. “Where did you go? It’s possible someone saw you while you were out.”

  “I went down Main and cut over some back lots to the marina,” Blue said. “I sat down there for a while—I don’t even know how long.” He paused. “And then I walked up toward Fox Run Road.”

  Lucy couldn’t keep from turning and looking at him. Her house was on Fox Run Road.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I went to see if maybe you were still awake, like me.”

  She had been. She’d been awake last night until well into the early hours of the morning. She’d stared at the shadows on her ceiling, wishing that she had been reckless and bold, wishing that Blue were there with her. But even as she’d wished for his presence, she knew that what she really wished for was some kind of fairy-tale ending, for him to kiss her and confess that he couldn’t live without her, that his only hope of finding true happiness was there in her arms.

  She’d told herself all along that she was walking into a short, hot, love affair, a one-night stand. She’d tried to convince herself that that would be enough. But all along, she’d hoped—secretly, even from herself—that something magical w
ould happen and Blue would stay in town.

  Lucy stared down at the neat lines of notes in her pad, but her eyes were unfocused, and the notes looked more like the tracks of seabirds in the sand than words. Blue was going to stay in town, but the something that had happened was far from magical. It was evil and deadly.

  If Blue hadn’t killed Gerry—and he was right; she didn’t believe that he had—then the real killer had long since disappeared or, worse, was somewhere out there, watching and waiting, biding his time.

  Lucy glanced up to find Blue still gazing at her. “There wasn’t a light on in your house,” he said, “but even if there had been, I wouldn’t have knocked. You made it clear when you dropped me off at the motel that you didn’t want me around.”

  That wasn’t true. She had wanted him around. But it just got way too complicated when she’d seen him holding Jenny Lee in his arms out on the country-club dance floor.

  “I don’t know why I even walked over to your place,” Blue continued, glancing away from her, out at the ocean. “I guess maybe I hoped I’d find you out dancing naked on your back lawn or something.”

  Lucy had to laugh. “I don’t spend much time dancing naked these days,” she said.

  “Too bad,” he said, looking back at her with a slow smile.

  Too bad. It was too bad that Blue hadn’t knocked on her door last night. And it was too bad that Lucy had turned down his invitation to come into his hotel room earlier. “If I’d spent the night with you, you would have had an alibi,” she noted.

  Blue met her eyes, the heat in his gaze suddenly dangerously high. “That’s right,” he said softly.

  Lucy looked away, scanning her notes again, knowing without a doubt that it was time to get into the sticky questions, the ones she’d been avoiding asking. She needed to know about Blue’s conversation with Jenny Lee and the ensuing argument with Gerry. That would keep them from drifting into these dangerous waters.

  “Let’s backtrack a bit,” Lucy said. “Last night, at the country club…”

  “I arrived at the club a little before six-thirty,” Blue said. “See, I’d called Gerry’s office in the afternoon, after I’d checked into my room at the motel. His secretary said he would be in meetings all day and that he’d said he would see me at the party, that I should come early to talk to him.”

  Lucy stopped walking. “What did you talk about?”

  “He never showed.” Blue drew a line in the wet sand with his toe and watched as a gentle wave erased all but part of it. “I watched for him until after seven, but the first I saw of him was when he and Jenny Lee made their grand entrance.”

  Blue had been looking for his stepbrother at the country club last night, Lucy realized. He hadn’t been watching and waiting for her as she’d thought. Disappointment washed over her, and she forced herself to ignore it. There was no room for such emotions in their current relationship as investigator and suspect.

  “Any idea what he wanted to talk to you about?”

  Blue raked his fingers through his thick, blond hair, pushing it back from his face. The breeze immediately made a wavy lock fall forward again. It danced lightly about on his forehead. “I thought it was just a casual meeting,” he said. “You know ‘Hey, how are you? How’s it goin’? Whatcha been up to in the past two years since I last saw you?’ Catching up. That stuff.”

  “But…?”

  Again Lucy saw that glimmer of hurt on his otherwise expressionless face. If she hadn’t seen it before, she might not have noticed it. He started forward down the beach and she walked backward, in order to watch his face as he spoke.

  “After that little show on the dance floor,” Blue said. “I’m thinking Gerry was originally intending to give me his ‘get lost’ speech in private, before the party started.”

  “You can’t blame him for being jealous,” Lucy remarked. “You were dancing with his fiancée.” She caught herself, turning away, facing forward now, as if she were intent on reading her notes. She wasn’t here to give her opinions on the situation. She was supposed to be gathering facts. “Okay, I know where you were from seven-fifteen until a few minutes before eight.”

  “I remember that part pretty damn clearly, too,” Blue said.

  Lucy knew that if she glanced up, she’d find him gazing at her, so she kept her eyes carefully locked on her notebook. “You went inside to talk to Gerry,” she said. “Apparently you didn’t find him.”

  “He was in the middle of a business conversation with Mr. Fisher,” Blue told her. “So I gave my regrets to Jenny Lee.”

  “By asking her to dance?” Lucy couldn’t keep the incredulousness from her voice. God, she sounded like a jealous girlfriend. She immediately backpedaled. “I’m sorry. Please continue. What happened then?”

  But Blue didn’t continue. He stopped walking and looked at her, studying her face and her eyes, his gaze probing, searching. The sensation was not unlike being underneath a microscope.

  “You didn’t believe me when I told you that the only thing between Jenny Lee and me was ancient history,” Blue finally said. “When you saw me dancing with her—that’s what changed your mind about spending the night with me, wasn’t it?”

  “That has nothing to do with this investigation—”

  “Come on, Yankee,” Blue drawled. “I’m answering all your questions honestly. The least you can do is answer one of mine.”

  Lucy lifted her head and looked him squarely in the eye. “Yes,” she said. But it was only half the truth. The real answer was yes and no. Seeing Blue with Jenny Lee had somehow broken the spell he’d cast over her. Seeing him with her made Lucy remember that she didn’t do things like sleep with sailors who were in town for only a few days.

  Blue was watching her. He moved a step toward her and then another step. Lucy found herself immobilized, unable to back away. He reached out and gently tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.

  “Let’s get back to Jenny Lee,” Lucy said desperately. The mention of Blue’s former girlfriend was successful, as usual, in dissolving the odd power he had over her.

  “When I told her I was leaving the party,” Blue said, “she told me that she wanted to talk to me.” He crouched and picked up a smooth rock from the beach, wiping the sand off it, weighing it in the palm of his hand. “She seemed really worried, really upset about something. It was clear that she wanted the conversation to be private, and since pulling her off into some secluded corner of the room seemed inappropriate, I asked her to dance.”

  Blue straightened up and flung the rock out into the ocean, past the breaking waves. It skipped several times before it vanished. “You probably won’t believe me,” he said, his voice still matter-of-fact. “But what I’m gonna tell you is God’s own truth, Lucy.”

  Lucy nodded, her pen poised to take notes.

  Blue wiped the remaining sand from his hands, glancing at her notebook. “You don’t need that,” he said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the case.” His gaze was steady. “I just wanted you to know that the entire time I was dancing with Jenny Lee, I was wishing it was you in my arms.”

  Lucy closed her eyes. My God! Was it possible Blue still thought he had a chance with her? Was it possible that he didn’t realize that their current roles didn’t allow for any type of romantic interaction whatsoever? And, really, did he honestly think she was so naive she would believe he’d prefer her over Jenny Lee Beaumont?

  “Let’s stay focused on the case,” she said. “I’d rather hear God’s own truth about what Jenny Lee said to you while you were dancing.”

  Lucy didn’t believe him. Blue hadn’t really expected her to. But now, perhaps, was not the best time to convince her otherwise.

  “Jenny Lee told me that she was worried about Gerry,” Blue said. “He was acting strangely, as if he was under a lot of stress. She told me that she believed she’d made a mistake in inviting me to the wedding. Apparently it was her idea to ask me to be best man. She thought Gerry liked the idea
—if he didn’t, he didn’t tell her otherwise. But over the past few days, Jenny Lee was starting to wonder if Gerry’s upset was caused by my coming back to town, considering my and Jenny’s history.” He paused. “In short, Jenny asked me to leave.”

  Lucy nodded, scribbling in her notebook, lower lip clasped gently between her teeth in concentration.

  Blue couldn’t help but remember how soft those lips had felt, how delicious Lucy’s mouth had tasted, how willing she’d been to take that kiss to a more intimate level. Before he left town again, he was going to find a way back to that moment they’d shared. And when he did, the attraction that ignited between them like rocket fuel was going to launch them past the point of no return. It was going to be good. It was going to be very, very good.

  It was also going to be good to track down the son of a bitch who’d killed Gerry, to see him brought to justice. Although Blue and Gerry had had their disagreements in the recent past, and despite Gerry’s harsh words to Blue last night, Blue couldn’t forget the friendship he’d shared with his stepbrother during his childhood and adolescence. And he still couldn’t believe that Gerry was really dead. The thought that he’d never see Gerry’s upbeat smile again made him feel empty.

  “I’d like to take a look at the body,” Blue said. “See if there’s anything that the police might’ve missed.”

  Lucy shook her head. “The state medical examiner’s office is performing an autopsy. It’s required on all suspicious deaths. If everything goes smoothly, the body will be returned to town on Friday for Saturday funeral services.”

  “Who’s taking care of the funeral arrangements?” Blue asked.