“Oh?” Marsh inquired. “That’s all you have to say?”
His sarcastic drawl ignited a small flare of temper. Folding her arms, Julia glared at him.
“I’m sorry my cat activated your high-tech, state-of-the-art, oh-so-infallible transponder.” In her irritation, she didn’t even notice that she’d claimed possession of Henry. “And since we’re talking sorry, you might give a thought to my front door.”
The snide comment earned her another disgusted look. Realizing that she should show a little more gratitude for his mad dash to her side, Julia reined in her temper.
“I’ve already apologized. What more can I say?”
“You can say that you’ll keep the damned transponder with you!”
“All right! Fine! I’ll keep it with me!”
He rubbed a hand over his face, obviously battling with the surging emotions that had sent him careening through the night to protect her from Henry the Cat. Julia couldn’t help but notice the ripple of slick muscle the movement caused... and the wide stance to his thighs. A small dart of sensual awareness spiked into her belly.
A few nights ago, she’d asked for comfort from him. Warmth and nearness and nothing else. Now...
She wanted to spark tiny fires under his skin. She wanted to make him burn with the same heat he ignited in her. Impatient, she waited for him to control the coiled tension that had brought his bursting into her condo. He must have lost his inner battle, because he turned without a word and headed for the door.
“Ted!”
“What?”
“Let’s talk, calm down a little.”
Not bothering to reply, he took the short flight of stairs to the front door. Julia started to follow. She’d apologized, but she was damned if she’d grovel. Jaw tight, she watched while he examined the damaged door.
“Christ! You didn’t even have the dead bolt on. No wonder I got through so easily.”
With a muttered curse, he thumbed the safety on his weapon and shoved it into his shoulder holster. Then he put a shoulder to the door to jimmy it back into place and test the deadbolt.
While he worked, Julia made a serious effort to swallow her irritation. He’d come charging to her rescue, she reminded herself. He’d thought she was in distress and kicked her door down to get to her.
She worked up a tight, grateful smile and had it firmly in place when he came back upstairs and strode across the room. Her smile slipped into open-mouthed surprise as he slid his hands into her hair and tipped her head back.
“I...I thought you were leaving,” she said, suddenly, embarrassingly flushed.
“Not tonight. My heart couldn’t take another wild ride if your cat decides to sit on the transponder again.”
Her still erratic pulse skittered wildly at the steeling glint in his eyes. “Then you’d better understand something. If you stay, I refuse to regret what happens.”
“I’m past the point of regrets, Julia.”
His fingers tightened painfully in her hair, as if anchoring her in place. She had no intention of moving, but didn’t say so. The fierce expression on his face held her in thrall.
“I didn’t want to put any more pressure on you,” he told her, his voice rough. “You’ve got enough to worry about without the added complication of an investigator who can’t keep his damned hands off you.”
Her palms slid over the bunched muscles of his upper arms. The husky scent of male sweat teased her nostrils.
“Right now,” she murmured, “my only worry is that he will take his hands off me.”
This time, she didn’t have to urge him to stay. This time, his mouth came down on hers with hot, driving greed.
Panting, they scattered her robe and his clothes across the living room. Intent only on each other, they displaced an indignant Henry and tumbled to the sofa cushions. Cool, smooth leather kissed Julia’s back and buttocks. Marsh kissed her throat, her breasts, her belly. Then he spread her legs and kissed her heat.
His fingers dug into her bottom and lifted her hips to his mouth. Gasping, Julia closed her eyes and gave herself up to the sucking, soothing, exquisite sensation. He took her up, and up, until her only thought was that she didn’t want to take and not give. Pushing at his shoulders with both hands, she wiggled backward.
“Marsh! Let me touch you! Let me feel you inside me!”
He knelt between her legs, his chest heaving, and held her in place with hard hands. “Tomorrow, I’m going to stock up on a year’s supply of condoms,” he growled, lifting one of her legs to drape it over his shoulder. “Tonight, we'll have to do it this way.”
She gasped, arching her neck against his assault. “Is...that...right?”
“That’s...right.”
Later, she promised silently, feverishly. Later she’d give him the same pleasure he was giving her. At that moment, all she could do was anchor both hands on the arm of the sofa and lose herself in the heat streaking through her belly.
The shrill of the telephone brought them out of the stupor that comes with total and repeated satisfaction.
Marsh grunted and jerked awake. Julia started, her backside bumping the leg of the coffee table. She wasn’t quite sure when or how they’d ended up on the floor. She make sure, though, that they’d expend the year’s supply of condoms Marsh intended to procure upstairs. In bed. Hardwood flooring and this kind of energetic activity didn’t mix.
Levering herself up on one elbow, she groped for the phone on the table beside the sofa. Her mumbled greeting brought a sharp response.
“Colonel Endicott? Are you all right?”
Frowning, Julia swiped her tongue over swollen, tender lips. “Who is this?”
“Special Agent Lyles. Where’s Marsh?”
“He’s, ah, right beside me.”
“What the hell’s going on there?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Julia’s clipped retort drew a more moderate reply from the investigator.
“I’ve got the lead now on the Hunter case,” Lyles said crisply, “but the duty officer forgot that pertinent fact until a few moments ago. He just got around advising me that Special Agent Marsh responded to an emergency signal at your residence. All you all right?”
“I’m fine. It was a false alarm. My cat sat on the transponder.”
Marsh groaned and covered his eyes with one hand. Julia suspected his buddies at the headquarters would have a field day with that one.
“Your, cat?” Lyles sounded slightly stunned. “May I speak to my partner? My former partner,” she amended.
Marsh took the receiver from Julia’s sweaty palm. Naked and far more casual about it than she was, he pushed himself up to a sitting position.
“Everything’s secure here,” he assured Lyles.
Julia had no idea what his former partner said in reply, but she watched, fascinated, as the tips of Marsh’s ears turned a dull red. Suddenly, he surged to his feet.
“When?” he barked. He listened for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Slamming the phone into its cradle, he grabbed for his clothes. Julia scrambled up and snatched at her robe.
“What’s going on?
“We just got a fax.” He yanked on his sleeveless sweatshirt. “From Sergeant Forbes.”
“Who's...” Her hands tightened the terry cloth belt. “You mean the Sergeant Forbes in Dean Lassiter’s story?”
“The one and the only.” Marsh hopped on one foot, jamming his other into a high-topped sneaker. “Look, I’ll call you as soon as I take a look at...”
“Oh, no! You’re not leaving me here to wait and wonder! I’m coming with you.”
“Julia...”
“You will NOT leave without me, mister!” She raced for the stairs. “In case you have trouble recognizing it, that’s a direct order!”
She was back downstairs in less than five minutes. Snatching up her purse, she headed for the kitchen. “We’ll take my car. It has a heater.”
&
nbsp; He matched her stride. “This giving orders comes easy to you, doesn’t it?”
“It’s all part of being a colonel,” she threw at him with a grin.
She refused to let the thought that she might not be a colonel for much longer worry her.
They found Barbara Lyles with her palms spread on a worktable in a small conference room. Frowning, she was studying the three pages spread across the table. Julia had time to admire the woman’s classy style, even in jeans, before her head jerked up. The frustration in her face sent Julia’s stomach plunging.
Beside her, Marsh tensed. “Nothing?”
The agent shook her head. “Nothing that makes any difference to our investigation.”
She stood aside to give Marsh and Julia access to the table, unconcerned about the propriety of allowing a suspect to review evidence hot off the wires. She would have provided Julia and her lawyer copies of the documents eventually.
Her heart pounding, she skimmed Forbes’ handwritten account of the night in DaNang that Dean Lassiter had captured so graphically in his story. Disappointment sat like a stone in the center of her chest by the time she got to the end. Swallowing hard, she started again.
The sergeant recalled his exhaustion after a long drive into DaNang with his counterpart, Sergeant Troung Doc Li. They’d waited several hours for the aircraft that was to take them to Saigon, only to be told they’d been bumped and would have to catch a flight the next morning. Too tired to fuss with the folks at the billeting office, they’d gotten word of an empty hootch from one of the supply sergeants and bedded down for the night.
Forbes had been sound asleep when the siren went off but reacted on pure instinct. He’d rolled off his bunk, pulled on his flak vest, and squeezed under his bunk. Sergeant Li did the same. Forbes remembered hearing the shrill, whistling sound of the rocket, and, he thought, a distant thud. When no explosion occurred, he and Li crawled back into their bunks.
They were both asleep when the rocket detonated and took a small ammo storage facility with it. The explosion threw Forbes off his cot and across the hootch. Flames ignited the wooden structure. He stumbled outside and discovered Li hadn’t emerged. Dodging the flames, he rushed back inside and dragged out his counterpart.
Despite her crushing disappointment, Julia couldn’t help being moved by Forbes’ courage. For a moment, she was back in Vietnam, remembering the men and women she’d shared those desperate days with. Most of them hadn’t understood the politics of the war or of the prolonged, painful peace process. Most, like Julia, had served out of a sense of duty. Some, like Sergeant Forbes, had gone beyond duty.
She’d forgotten about things like service and duty and honor in the past weeks. She’d let Gabe’s ghost haunt her and tarnish her memories of her own service in Vietnam. Sergeant Forbes’ account helped restore a sense of balance.
She straightened, her breath easing out, and turned to Barbara Lyles. “Ted -- Special Agent Marsh -- told me that you were the one who tracked Sergeant Forbes down. Thank you for...”
Marsh interrupted unceremoniously. “What kind of rockets hit DaNang that night?”
When both women stared at him blankly, he thumped a knuckle on one of the faxed sheets.
“Forbes heard a distant thud. He was back in his bunk and sound asleep again when the explosion occurred. I don’t know much about the artillery used during the Vietnam War era, but that seems like a helluva long time for a delayed fuse to detonate.”
Barbara shrugged. “Vietnam was before my time.”
“It wasn’t before yours, Julia. How long a delay could you expect between impact and detonation?”
“I don’t know. I only went through a couple of rocket attacks, and none of them hit close.”
“Lassiter’s article,” he said to Lyles, frowning. "Where is it?"
"Right here."
She pulled out the yellowed clipping Claire had found among Gabe’s personal effects.
“It was a 107mm, Marsh said, skimming the first sentence. "He turned to Julia. "Does that have a delayed fuse?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
He stared at her, collecting his thoughts. “Suppose this rocket was a dud. Forbes heard it hit the ground. It could have burrowed in. Stuck there. And been set off accidentally."
"Or..."
Icy fingers clutched at Julia's throat. Suddenly she remembered Dean Lassiter leaning against her desk all those years ago, grinning....and vowing to make a story if he couldn't find one.
"Suppose... "
She wet her lips. What she was thinking was so inconceivable. So outrageous.
"Suppose Gabe and Lassiter went outside either during or right after the attack," she said slowly. "Suppose there wasn't any damage. No story for Dean to write or pictures for D’Agustino to take. The rocket had buried itself in soft earth beside the ammo shed. Suppose, just suppose...”
“You’re crazy!” Barbara exclaimed. “Both of you! Lassiter wouldn’t purposely set off an explosion just to get a story or a picture. He’s not that stupid, for one thing, and for another, he doesn’t have the balls!”
“No,” Julia replied, her whole body vibrating with tension, “but Gabe did.”
“Bingo,” Marsh said softly.
Their eyes locked across the conference table, his hard and flinty, hers leaping with excitement.
“That’s what Gabe’s note on the back of the article referred to. He was talking about a one way ticket to the big time...for himself as well as Lassiter!”
Barbara stared at them both, doubt and disbelief on her face. She snatched the article from Marsh’s hand and turned it over. Scowling, she studied the hand-scribbled note.
“Okay, okay! Just suppose for a moment that Hunter staged managed this explosion for the reporters. Why would Lassiter then kill him? They were in it together, pals, buds, co-conspirators.”
“Maybe Lassiter decided he had to keep his accomplice quiet,” Marsh theorized.
Barbara splayed her hands on her hips. “Then why wait almost two months to do it? Why not kill him sooner, to make sure he didn’t brag about the set-up to his hootch mate or his wife?”
“Maybe Hunter didn’t have time to brag to anyone.” Marsh appealed to Julia. “Didn’t you say he stayed at DaNang after the rocket attack, and Lassiter came back to Saigon with you?”
"That's right. The Easter Offensive made things hot for all of us. Gabe remained up country for several weeks, augmenting the gunship squadron. I don't know when he came back to Saigon.”
“We know he was back by the night of May 13th,” Marsh reminded her.
Julia swallowed, remembering all too well the party at the Caravalle Hotel and its vicious aftermath.
“Let me think a minute,” she ordered, forcing mind past that awful night. “Maybe Gabe didn’t realize the impact of the DaNang story until it was nominated for a Pulitzer. Maybe... Maybe he started thinking about how he could benefit from the prize, as well as Lassiter’s.”
Marsh piggybacked on her thoughts. “Hunter was getting close to his rotation back to the States. He’d been recommended for a Silver Star, but he wrote his wife that even an award as prestigious as that wouldn’t help him in the pansy-assed peacetime Air Force. Maybe he started putting pressure on Lassiter, who...”
“Hold it!” Barbara lifted both palms. “Let’s get a grip here. We can suppose all night long, but how do we prove any of this? Hunter’s dead. The photographer’s dead. That leaves Lassiter, and he isn’t going to admit he staged the story that catapulted him to fame.”
“So we find a way to get him to admit it,” Marsh said, his eyes glinting.
Lyles shook her head. “For pity’s sake, we don’t even know that 107mm rocket didn’t go off on its own! It could very well have been triggered by some kind of a delayed fuse!”
He reached for the conference room phone. “That’s easy enough to verify.”
Julia crowded beside him. “Who are you calling?”
“I’m
going to track down an ordnance expert. There’s got to be someone in this town full of military personnel who can give up the specifics on Vietnam era rockets.”
“There is.”
She took the phone out of his hand and punched in a number. Foot tapping, she waited impatiently through four rings. She’d almost given up when a calm, cultured voice answered.
“Jonas? This is Julia. I need a favor?”
“The 107mm Rocket was a primitive instrument,” Jonas Moreton advised calmly a half hour later.
In his crisp white shirt, black tie, and trademark gray wool sweater with its elbow patches, the historian glanced from his computer screen to the group hovering at his shoulder.
“It was a simple aim-and-shoot device. Twelve rocket tubes could be fired from a spin-stabilized launcher mounted on a two wheeled cart. The NVA also used a smaller, single tube launcher that could be back-packed into the field.”
“What about the fuse?” Marsh asked. “How long after they fired the rocket until it detonated?”
“The maximum range was ten to twelve kilometers, which would give it a flight time of...” Jonas did a swift mental calculation. “Eighteen to twenty seconds. It had to impact within that time or it would detonate in mid-air.”
“Could it have been rigged to explode after impact, say ten or fifteen minutes?”
“No, Mr. Marsh, it could not.”
Marsh straightened, his face tight and more dangerous than Julia had ever seen it. “I think I’ll have another chat with Mr. Lassiter. Maybe he can explain how a primitive, unguided rocket went off some fifteen to twenty minutes after it impacted the ground, taking an ammo storage facility with it.”
“You’re off the investigation,” Barbara reminded him pointedly. “If anyone’s going to chat with Lassiter, I will.
“No,” Julia said, her voice tight. “I think it’s time I talked to Dean. Personally.”
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