Before she could react, he'd whipped out her. Wrapping an elbow around her throat, he dug the barrel into her side.
"Let go of the gun, Julia! For God's sake, let go!"
Realization burst even as the elbow tightened brutally. He was staging her death! Just as he'd staged Gabe's. His frantic cries for the benefit of the wire he'd guessed she was wearing.
"Dean," she choked out. "Listen to me!"
The thud of running footsteps didn't penetrate Lassiter's utter absorption in his role or Julia's frantic struggles. Her first indication of a third presence was the glint of blue steel denting the reporter's temple.
"Get off her." Marsh's low, lethal command cut through the roaring in Julia's ears. "Now, you bastard, or I'll put a bullet through your skull just as you did Gabe Hunter's."
The reporter went rigid, his body sprawled atop Julia's in obscene intimacy.
"Get off her."
For a heart-stopping eternity, Lassiter didn't respond. Then carefully, very carefully, he eased his weight to the side. He didn't, however, release his death grip on her throat. Or the Smith and Wesson gouged into her side.
"Was she worth it, Marsh. Oh, I heard she screwed you, just as she did Hunter. She spread her legs and compromised the hell out of you. Now you're both trying to pin his murder on me to clear yourselves."
He was still playing for the wire. He didn't know who was listening. Didn't care! Desperate now, he'd do whatever he had to.
Julia couldn't move. Couldn't think. The acrid scent of fear rose in waves around her. Choking, she clawed at the arm locked around her throat.
"They're not worth it," she panted. "All these secrets we've carried. They're not worth what Gabe made us pay for them. I've let go of his ghost. You need to let go, too."
His breath was harsh and ragged in her ear. Julia could hear its frantic rhythm, feel its hot wash on her cheek.
"I understand how Gabe was. God, I understand! He made me despise myself for wanting him and laughed at me the entire time. He could..."
She broke off, choking as his arm tightened.
"Let her go, Lassiter." Low, calm, implacable, Marsh's voice cut through her frantic gasps. "It's over. We've got Sergeant Forbes' deposition. The expert testimony Julia mentioned. It's over."
The two men's eyes locked above Julia's head. Whatever Lassiter saw in the OSI agent's put a tremor in his voice.
"You're wrong. I haven't written the final copy yet."
The gun dug into Julia's side dragged upward, bruising her ribs despite her layers of clothing. She felt rather than saw the barrel tip toward the underside of Lassiter's chin.
"Don't do it, Dean! Listen to me! I've lost my career, my pride, everything that matters but I'll survive. You will, too. Dean! Oh, God! Don't!"
The gunshot exploded in a deafening roar. Lassiter jerked back, dragging her with him. Sobbing, Julia tore out of his slackened hold and threw herself at Marsh.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Julia stood alone, her numbed hands locked on a cold wrought iron railing. Before her stretched the flat darkness of the Potomac. Behind her, intermittent red and blue flashes from the assembled emergency vehicles pierced the night. She strained to hear the calming rush of the river over the cackle of police radios and the muted voices of the ambulance crew.
Marsh had wanted her to leave the scene after she’d given the D.C. police her statement, or at least wait in the warmth of a car. Julia couldn’t bear to sit inside the suffocating confines of a closed vehicle. She had to feel the cold air in her face. Had to listen for the sounds of the river as the ringing in her ears gradually disappeared. Had to believe the nightmare was truly over.
It was, she realized wearily...and it wasn’t.
Dean had died without confessing to Gabe’s murder or to rigging the story at DaNang. His death hadn’t exonerated Julia. That would come eventually, though. No court-martial board could now determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had killed Gabe. Nor would anyone everr know if Lassiter had. Gabriel Hunter would always remain a shadowy ghost.
She could almost see him out there in the darkness beyond the river. A mocking grin tipped up his mustache. His eyes glinted as he laughed at her. At them all.
She wanted to curse him, and discovered that she didn’t have the anger left in her to do it. She closed her eyes and let the night take her back a final time to a land of purple mountains and green, checkerboard paddies.
She’d left Vietnam on a day much like the one she’d arrived. Dark thunderclouds piled up on the horizon. Puddles shimmered on the runway. The acrid scent of jet fuel hung like a heavy, muggy blanket over all.
She stepped off the bus that had transported the departing passengers from the aerial port to plane side and glanced around. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of her mind, she half expected to hear a jeep roaring up and watch while a rakish, grinning Gabe clambered out.
Hunter wouldn’t come to see her off, as he’d come to greet her a year ago. He was missing in action. He had been for several months. And Julia wasn’t the same woman who would let a man like Gabriel Hunter sweep into her life and leave it in shambles. Not again. Never again.
Her fingers curled around the metal railing. Slowly, she climbed the steps, following the file of jubilant of troops heading home. She paused at the top of the steps. As it had a year ago, her gaze settled on the distant line of peaks. Misty clouds obscured the scars. From here, the mountains looked so beautiful, so serene.
Swallowing, Julia stepped inside the 747 and let the raucous excitement of the returning soldiers claim her.
Her war was over.
“Julia?”
Marsh’s voice pulled her from the past. The mountains faded, and there was only the swift, rushing river. He came to stand behind her, a solid presence in a dark world eerily pierced by red and blue beams.
“We have everything on tape,” he told her quietly. “I’ll make sure the transcript gets to General Titus tomorrow. He'll want it included in the Article 32 inquiry.”
Marsh moved closer, his body shielding hers from the business of death taking place behind them.
“Professional opinion...this matter will never go to trial. If it does, no court martial will convict you.”
She nodded, her eyes on the dark river. They watched it in silence for a while, then Marsh asked the same question that echoed in her mind.
“What will you do now?”
She didn’t answer right away. Letting go of Colonel Julia Endicott was both easier and more difficult than she’d imagined it would be.
“I think... No, I know. I’m going to hang up my uniform and find out what life is like outside the Air Force.”
His arms came around her. She loosened her tight grip on the railing and leaned back.
“I’ve spent my whole life in the military,” she murmured. “Either as a dependent or an officer. I’ve done my duty as best I could, and served with honor. Now,” she mused, “I’m going to let my hair down. I’m going to give up wearing panty hose for the foreseeable future, and I’m going to lie in the sun with Henry the Cat.”
His chin rested on the top of her head. “Sounds like a good plan to me. You and Henry want some company?”
She smiled into the darkness. “I can’t speak for him, but I wouldn’t mind sharing a beach towel.”
He didn’t speak for long moments. A sense of rightness drifted through Julia. She laid her head against Marsh’s shoulder.
He held her. Just held her.
The rightness flowed into peace, and the beginnings of wonder.
“I think... No, I know,” he said firmly. “I want to share more than a beach towel with you Julia.”
“Are you sure?” she asked softly. “Or are you confusing the woman I am with the girl in the picture taped to your wall?”
“They’re one and the same in my mind,” he said simply. “They always will be.”
She closed her eyes. She knew, if Marsh didn’t, how different she was f
rom the young lieutenant who’d set off for Vietnam, determined to serve out the tour her father had never finished. She’d been so sure of herself then. So confident in her abilities and the profession she’d chosen for herself. Gabe had changed that. And Marsh.
“The day we met,” she confessed, “I felt as through you brought my world crashing down around my ears.”
“And now?”
She twisted in his arms, turning her back on the darkness. “Now... Now I think I might be on the point of exploring a whole new universe.”
His mouth came down on hers, and Julia took her first step into a future unshadowed by her past.
THE END
Duty and Dishonor Page 26