Military Man

by Marie Ferrarella

  Who knew, Ryan mused, if life had turned out differently for him, maybe he would have gone into that sort of work himself.

  With all his heart, he certainly wished he could tell death to go to hell at the present moment.

  “I realize that, sir,” Collin said politely, his voice soft, in direct contrast to the swiftness with which he could mete out punishment when called upon to do so. “But my cousin—” he nodded toward Emmett “—tells me that you had several dealings with Jason. And it’s Jason we’re tracking.”

  Collin wasn’t giving away any secrets. Jason, the cold-blooded killer of his own brother and the woman who had been posing as his wife, needed to be brought back to face the justice he thought he’d eluded. Jason had used his inherent cunning to take advantage of whatever situation had presented itself to him, whether it involved talking one or both of the two men driving him to the maximum security prison into lowering their guard, or perhaps believing him when he offered to bribe one or both. Collin didn’t know what had happened. No one did, because the only three people who could provide the answers were either dead, missing or in a coma.

  So right now Collin was pinning his hopes on Ryan Fortune, the unwitting target of Jason’s unspent wrath.

  “Jason,” Ryan repeated, shaking his head.

  Collin exchanged glances with Emmett, not certain how to read the older man’s expression. There was no fear in Ryan’s voice and no anger, both of which were emotions that he would have expected. Instead there was sorrow, something he didn’t quite grasp in this context.

  A self-deprecating smile slid along Ryan’s lips. He thought of the poor young woman, Melissa, who’d made a rather embarrassing and shameless play for his affections. As if he’d ever leave his Lily after what he’d gone through to finally marry her. Melissa’s far-from-innocent flirtation, he told himself, should have been his first clue, his first warning that something was decidedly wrong with Jason. But even so, a man couldn’t be blamed for what his wife did, and vice versa. And Ryan had always liked to believe the best of everyone. But sometimes, it appeared, a person had no best.

  “A man hates to discover this late in the game that he is such a poor judge of character,” Ryan confessed to the two strapping young men in his living room. “Jason, I’m afraid, is the perfect chameleon, being everything I thought the job needed. A go-getter from the second he walked into a room.”

  It had all been a ploy, a weapon Jason Jamison, who’d called himself Wilkes at the time, had used to get close to him. The intricacy of the plot overwhelmed Ryan now that he looked back at it. It was something he’d expect to find in an entertaining movie, not something he’d actually discover himself living through.

  “I thought he was the perfect executive in training for my nephew’s company,” he continued. Ryan still found it difficult to refer to Fortune TX, Ltd. as Logan’s, though his nephew had succeeded him as CEO. Ryan now acted in an advisory capacity. That was how his path had crossed Jason’s. And all by Jason’s design. “All the times I talked to him—and there were more than a few—I never once saw anything in his eyes to indicate that he hated me so much.”

  “He’s a textbook sociopath, sir,” Collin told him kindly. “He didn’t intend for you to see. Until he’s within the reach of his goal, a sociopath can be anything he needs to be. It’s the nature of the beast.”

  Collin suppressed a sigh. This was his cousin he was talking about. Someone he’d grown up knowing. More than that, he was Emmett’s brother. But one glance toward his cousin told him that Emmett felt no more kinship toward Jason than he would a rattlesnake.

  Ryan cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the conversation. With his own lack of perception in the case. He looked at Emmett who had lost so much and would lose more.

  Did Emmett secretly blame him, as well? Ryan would have said no, but his faith in his own abilities to read people had been badly shaken. The ache in his temples grew. “I swear I had nothing to do with your grandfather’s impoverished state. I knew nothing about—”

  Emmett held his hand up, curtailing any further apology. He wasn’t here to erode Ryan Fortune’s pride or to foster any false sense of guilt. He wasn’t his grandfather’s champion, because in his estimation his grandfather and no one else was responsible for his own fate.

  “Everyone knows how generous you are, Ryan,” Emmett said. “News of your largesse even reaches shacks at the base of the Sandia Mountains.” Emmett had never had the rapport that Jason had had with their grandfather. Maybe because he’d seen the old man for what he was. A bitter man who needed someone to blame for his lack of accomplishments, for his failures. “Grandpa’s mind left him a long time ago.”

  “There are men who can never take responsibility for their own misfortunes,” Collin commented. His mouth quirked at the unwitting use of the word. “No pun intended, sir.”

  Ryan nodded, forcing a smile to his lips. The pain at the back of his skull was getting worse again. He wasn’t certain how much longer he could stay on his feet here, talking as if he didn’t feel as though he was being beaten down to his knees.

  “None taken,” he told Collin, slowly meting out each word.

  Noting the pained look on the older man’s face, Collin backed off. He didn’t want to push or pry, not when Ryan appeared to be unwell.

  “Maybe we can stop by the medical examiner’s office and see if they’ve discovered anything that might give us a lead.” Collin knew that finding out anything was going to take a great deal of finesse. Information wasn’t just released to anyone, especially not in this day and age. If he flashed his credentials, it would be assumed that he was there in an official capacity, and he wasn’t comfortable lying outright. But maybe, if the examiner should “accidentally” glimpse his credentials in his wallet as he went to take out something, then that would convey an official air without his having to actually state the fact.

  He intended to try.

  He rose from his seat and Ryan followed his lead. “You think Jason’s still in the area?” the older man asked.

  Collin gave him a pointed look. “You still are—and you’re his prime target.”

  As they’d approached the house earlier, Collin had surveyed the area and had seen no security. But then, good bodyguards, the kind that Ryan needed, wouldn’t have been out in plain sight. He sincerely hoped the man was smart enough to avail himself of that kind of protection.

  As they walked to the living room door, Ryan turned toward Emmett. “Would you mind if I had a word with you?” Glancing at Collin, he added, “This’ll only take a minute.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Collin told him. “I’ll be right outside.” He indicated the hallway beyond the living room, then stepped out, giving them the privacy that was required.

  Turning from the doorway, Ryan looked at the younger man with him. He saw beyond the rigid features. Emmett looked worn and yet ready to snap. A gun cocked to fire. Jason had done more damage to his own family than he’d ever done to the Fortunes he despised.

  “I won’t keep you…” Ryan began. As he spoke, he slipped his arm around Emmett’s shoulders. “I just want you to know again how sorry I am about Christopher.”

  Emmett nodded, not knowing what to say. He wanted to be flippant, to say something blasé. But it wasn’t in him. Not about Christopher. Christopher deserved better at his hands, even if he hadn’t received it at Jason’s.

  “He was always the good guy in the family,” Emmett remembered, a distant fondness entering his voice. “The white sheep.”

  Ryan thought of his own brother, gone so many years. “I know what it’s like to lose a brother. They leave behind an emptiness nothing can quite fill.”

  Emmett’s expression hardened. “Jason won’t leave behind an emptiness when he’s gone.” He laughed shortly, a bitter taste in his mouth. “I plan to go on a three-day drinking binge to celebrate the fact that he’s no longer a blot on our family name.”

  Ryan had no idea if that was just t
alk or if Emmett intended to carry out his words. He was aware of the younger man’s recent self-imposed exile and the extent to which it went.

  “Don’t let revenge eat you up, Emmett,” he warned. “That would be Jason’s final triumph, turning you into a bitter man.”

  Emmett had become that long before Jason’s path had taken him to murder their brother and that woman, as well as the guard and who knew who else. The cases he’d handled had seen to that. Lives cut down in their prime for no reason. Emmett knew that had all contributed to making him the man he was now. But Jason’s actions had certainly been the proverbial icing on the cake.

  And yet, in a way, they had pulled him out of the depression he’d fallen into, given his life a focus, a purpose that merely returning to work for work’s sake never could have.

  The irony of it made him smile as he looked at Ryan, touched by the man’s concern. “Too late.”

  Ryan had another opinion. “We’re put on this earth to help one another, Emmett.”

  The similarity jarred him. “You sound like Christopher.”

  “Then he was a wise man,” Ryan told him, his smile widening despite the force of the pain assaulting his temples. “Christopher wouldn’t want you to let revenge govern your life. If you let it do that, then you’ll be just like Jason.”

  It wasn’t a new thought for him. It had crossed his mind more than once. But Emmett shrugged. “Maybe we’re more alike than I thought.” And then, before Ryan could say anything further, Emmett added, “Don’t worry. I’m an FBI agent. My job is to make sure the bad guys are separated from the good guys before they can do any harm.”

  Ryan remained unconvinced, although he wanted to be. “Just as long as it remains your job and you don’t make it personal.”

  “It already is personal,” Emmett said quietly. Shaking Ryan’s hand, he tried to smile. “I’ll give your words a lot of thought,” he promised.

  “That’s all I ask,” Ryan replied.

  Collin stopped dead.

  He and Emmett had made their way into the bowels of the three-story building where the chief medical examiner had both his office and the three austere, sterile rooms where the various autopsies were performed. It was lunchtime and most of the personnel were gone, or at least out of sight. The entire area was eerie, the way only a place that housed the dead and their secrets could be.

  But it wasn’t the dead that had caused him to all but freeze in his place. In his line of work, he’d grown accustomed to seeing the dead.

  The living were the ones that carried surprises with them.

  And he was surprised now.

  Framed in the doorway of the second autopsy room, he felt as if he’d just been catapulted back across a sea of years. Back to when he’d first walked into his bio lab in high school and had first laid eyes on her.

  On Paula.

  The woman in the white lab coat looked so much like Paula, for a moment he forgot to breathe. She was as petite as Paula, who’d stood no taller than five foot four. And her coloring was almost exactly the same.

  From this distance, he couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, only that her hair was the same honey-brown, with reddish highlights. The woman in the room had her hair pulled back, away from her face. The last time he’d seen Paula, her hair had been long and looked as if it was in the middle of a storm. A sensuous storm that sent her hair curling in every conceivable direction.

  As if sensing his presence, the woman raised her eyes and looked directly at him.

  They were green.

  Her eyes were green.

  Like Paula’s.

  Three

  Lucy had just made her way into the autopsy room through the rear entrance, pushing another gurney, empty this time. The gurney’s last occupant, the second of the morning, had been stitched back together as reverently as possible and deposited in a steel, life-size drawer, to remain there like so much discarded memorabilia until a mortuary vehicle was dispatched to claim him. Death had been ruled accidental. The deceased was ready to go to his final resting place.

  The realization that she and Dr. Daniels were not the only two breathing occupants of the room suddenly struck her.

  Dr. Daniels apparently noticed it, too. Sidling up beside her, his eyes on the man in the doorway, Daniels leaned in until he had Lucy’s ear and whispered, “Is it just me, or is that guy looking at you as if you were the last tall glass of cool water available to him before he has to go on a fifty-mile march?”

  She wouldn’t have put it that way, but now that Dr. Daniels had, Lucy had to admit that was exactly the way the man in the doorway was looking at her.

  She felt a warmth creeping up her sides, adding color to her face. It took effort to halt its progress, but she managed. She always managed. It was a matter of pride with her.

  The man in the doorway was dressed in civilian clothing, but there was something about his bearing that seemed to fairly shout “military” at her. Maybe it was because she’d been around so many soldiers when she was growing up, she felt she could spot a man who had military in his blood a mile away.

  Now was no exception.

  His dark hair was cut short and he was wearing a black leather jacket, but even so, she could see that he had shoulders so broad, they could have each served as a diving board. From what she could see, the man’s waist was small, his hips taut. G.I. Joe come to life, looking as if he could fulfill every woman’s fantasy.

  But not hers.

  The thought whispered along the perimeter of her consciousness, as if to remind her of who and what she was. And what she’d been through.

  Squaring her own shoulders, Lucy stood in silence, waiting for someone else to speak. After all, eager though she was to advance both her career and her knowledge in this specific field, she was low woman on the totem pole around here. It wouldn’t do for her to usurp the physician she’d been assigned to by asking the two men in the room what they were looking for.

  But her more-than-healthy dose of curiosity was eating away at her.

  Not to mention that she was getting exceedingly uncomfortable because Military Man’s eyes hadn’t left her from the moment she’d looked up. Was he trying to unnerve her for some reason? If he was, he was in for a surprise. She didn’t unnerve easily. Not after the kind of life she’d led.

  Luckily for her, Dr. Daniels stepped forward. “Can I help you two gentlemen?” He was all business as he looked from one man to the other, waiting for an answer.

  The second of the two visitors replied. “Did you perform the autopsy on that prison transport driver who was killed?”

  The inquiry startled her. Talk about coincidences, Lucy thought.

  “And you would be…?” Harley pressed, looking from one to the other.

  It was evident to Lucy that the doctor was not about to remotely entertain the thought of answering any questions until he had his own answered satisfactorily.

  With supreme effort, Collin tore his eyes away from the woman with Paula’s face and focused on the reason they were here. She looked so much like his ex-fiancée that for a moment there he’d felt as if he were coming unglued. Maybe, he told himself, after this was over, if he wasn’t being sent off on another assignment, he was going to take some real time off. He had a feeling he needed it.

  “Very interested in finding out information,” Collin concluded the statement that the M.E. had left hanging in the air.

  The doctor’s small eyes moved from one man to the other. More questions presented themselves. “How did you get in here?”

  Collin merely smiled. “You’d be surprised what the right badge will get you.”

  Unable to remain silent any longer—it simply wasn’t in her nature to contain her curiosity or to hold her tongue for long—Lucy spoke up. “So far, we haven’t seen any badges, right ones or wrong ones.”

  Damn, even her voice faintly reminded him of Paula’s. Collin tried to quell the almost-jittery reaction he was feeling inside.

  It was
as if all his inner walls were turning to Jell-O.

  Listening closer, he found more differences than similarities between the two cadences. This woman’s voice, he pointed out to himself, was a bit more forceful. Paula’s had always been soft, easygoing, like the woman herself.

  Maybe that had been the problem, he thought. Had Paula not been as easygoing as she was, had she made some noise, maybe he would have come to his senses about his course of nonaction and done something before he’d lost her.

  Reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket, Collin took out his wallet. He flipped it open and held it up for both of them to see.

  “Special Ops?” the doctor read. “Army Rangers.” His eyes went from the title to Collin and back again. Wiping his hands on a nearby towel, he frowned. “Why Special Ops? What is there about this case that would bring out someone like you?”

  “Are you with Special Ops, too?” Lucy asked, looking at Emmett.

  “FBI,” Emmett corrected, taking out his own ID and showing it to both of them.

  He knew he was violating several standard protocols by using his badge to get at information that he hadn’t specifically been assigned to uncover, but there was no way around it. He had always believed in taking the fastest road to get somewhere. And there was no way on earth he was going to back off until he brought Jason to justice.

  Besides, he knew that Ryan would never be safe until Jason was back behind bars. The man had told him during his first visit to the Double Crown Ranch that from almost the moment that Jason had escaped, letters threatening his life, his home, his family had begun coming. Letters that announced Jason’s intention to kill Ryan when he least expected it. And then his wife, Lily, had been kidnapped, an event that could have ended tragically if it hadn’t been for Emmett. That was a hell of a lot for a man to endure.

  That Ryan Fortune hadn’t gone into hiding was a testimony of the man’s mettle. There was no way he would allow Jason to make good on his threat.