Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines) (10 page)

Every time he had come home to see his
family over the years, he’d noticed how much lovelier she got. It hadn’t eluded
him that she had long ago outgrown her thin, boyish, teenage body and matured
into a very attractive woman, with a figure that was definitely curvy in all
the right places. And while she was still quiet and shy, she’d become more
confident of herself.

Nothing had changed about her
arrestingly beautiful eyes, though. They were still as big and green, as clear
and guileless as they’d always been. She didn’t hide her emotions. It was one
of the reasons the bullies at school had picked on her. They had seen how much
their teasing had bothered her. Even now he remembered her humiliations with a
surge of pure anger. She’d never deserved any of that, and he’d always tried to
protect her from it. For her sake, he was glad she’d gotten a bit tougher and
more confident of handling people.

The Marine Corps had been a satisfying
life for him, but he had always missed Hanna. They wrote to each other
regularly and faithfully, and he never failed to get a surge of pleasure when
he got one of her letters, but it wasn’t the same as talking to her in person.
Because of that, there was a lot he didn’t really know about her daily life. In
many ways, it was as if their relationship had frozen in place twenty years
ago. As friends, they were as close now as they had been growing up, but it had
always seemed as if there should have been more. Nick thought it was probably
one of the reasons their relationship had taken such an unexpected, intimate
turn three years ago. While it had surprised him when it had happened, it
hadn’t when he’d taken the time to examine it further.

“Colonel Kelly.”

Nick’s thoughts were interrupted by
two sheriff deputies who walked up to him.

“We heard you’d like to talk to us.”

The older of the two deputies introduced
himself, then his younger partner. Nick shook each of their hands. “Mind if we
walk down the hall and talk in the OR waiting room? There’s coffee in there.”

“Not at all,” the older deputy said.
“We’ll be closer to the boy that way, too.”

“Are you a friend of Dr. Wallace?” the
younger deputy asked.

Nick nodded. “A long-time friend of
her and her family. I’m waiting for her.”

Once they all got themselves cups of
coffee from the vending machine and took a seat in the smaller waiting room,
the older deputy told Nick how badly the whole department felt about the loss
of Dylan Wallace.

“It doesn’t appear that your boss,
Sheriff Thomas, shares your sentiment,” Nick commented bluntly, unable to keep
all of the resentment out of his voice. “When I talked to him the other day, he
didn’t seem too upset by the death of one of his deputies.”

“That’s because he’s an asshole!” the
younger deputy volunteered.

The older man sent the younger one a
look of censure. “None of us like him too well,” he clarified. “Most of us were
hoping Dylan would run for Sheriff in the next election. Thomas has been in
office a little over a year. Unfortunately, he has two to go yet.”

“What’s the problem with him?”

“He’s cocky, unconnected to his
deputies, and almost completely unconcerned about the real crime issues in the county.”

“Like illegal drugs?” Nick checked.

“Yeah, we’ve had a rise in illegal
drug sales and use from here to Port Angeles, but Thomas acts like it’s
nothing,” the older officer continued. “He keeps saying it’s minuscule compared
to the big cities like Seattle. But hell, when high school kids are shooting up
and overdosing, that’s not minuscule.”

“Little communities like ours don’t
usually have heroin problems,” the younger deputy added. “Marijuana, crack,
pills, some other small stuff, but not the biggies like heroin and pure
cocaine. No one can afford it with what folks make here.”

“So what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” the older one said
disgustedly. “None of our cases get cross-referenced. There’s no sharing of
data. Just a lot of isolated incidents with no correlations being made. You
can’t solve cases or run good investigations with procedures like that.”

“Do either of you know who sold the
heroin to the girl who died tonight?”

They shook their heads no. “When the
boyfriend gets out of surgery and recovers enough for us to talk to him, we’re
hoping he’ll know.”

“And tell us,” the second officer
added.

“Would you mind sharing that
information with me when you find out?”

“Don’t see a problem with that,
Colonel, especially since you’re looking into Dylan’s death and trying to find
your brother.”

“A friend of mine in the FBI, at the
Seattle office, might be able to give us some information, too. I’ll share
whatever I find out, if you’ll do the same with me. It might be wise to keep
whatever we discover between ourselves, though. I don’t feel real comfortable
trusting your boss until I find out more about him. Is that okay with you
guys?”

“Sure is.” The younger officer made
the comment, but both men nodded in agreement.

“Thomas has never smelled right,” the
older deputy added. Both men pulled cards out of their shirt pockets with their
names and contact numbers on them. The older deputy turned his over and hand
wrote another phone number on the back of his card. “This is my personal
number. Use it to contact me if you find any new information about what
happened to Dylan or your brother. There are a few guys in the department
besides myself and Anders, here, who would be glad to assist you in any way
that will help.”

“I appreciate that, deputies,” Nick
replied, pulling out his own business card with his SAT phone number on it.
“We’ll keep in touch then.”

After they left, Nick put his head
back against the top of the sofa cushion and gave some thought to what the two
deputies had told him. They were correct. Something didn’t smell right about
Sheriff Jeff Thomas. He’d been arrogant and flippant when Nick had talked to
him the other day about Dylan and Lance. Neither case seemed to concern him a
great deal. He told Nick they were both what they appeared to be— a death by
drowning, due to intoxication, and a man taking off, probably to track down his
ex-wife.

The Chief of Police for Port George,
Phillip Douglas, had been in the room with Sheriff Thomas, along with the
coroner. Phillip had seemed intimated by Thomas; definitely dominated by him.
He had deferred to the older law enforcement officer on everything. And the
coroner had been even worse. He’d had nothing factual to add to the
conversation, only his overly simplistic explanation of Dylan’s death. The
whole thing sounded manufactured as hell, as if they had rehearsed all their
stories in advance so that they would not contradict one another.

He and Hanna had their work cut out
for them investigating these situations. At this point, there was so little to
go on. Nothing really, but suspicions and hunches.

His thoughts of Hanna brought him back
to his earlier reflections, particularly to the kiss they had exchanged
yesterday morning in the Jeep. Nick still recalled it in vivid detail.

Hot and passionate were two words that
described it well for him. Christ, she’d turned him on! Just thinking about it
was making him hard. Initially, he could have sworn she’d wanted that kiss as
much as he had, too. But afterward, she’d hadn’t been able to get away from his
fast enough.

Her reaction bewildered him still. He
had enough experience with women to know when one was turned on, and damn it,
she’d been turned on. So why had she shot out of the Jeep the way she had
afterward? And why hadn’t she wanted him taking her home last night or to work
this morning? His mother certainly hadn’t been willing to enlighten him.

He’d come home to find his brother,
but he’d also hoped to find out how things stood between him and Hanna since
his last visit. The memory of their first and only sexual encounter three years
ago was a powerful one for him. He’d thought about it a lot since. Because she
hadn’t wanted to talk about it in her letters, he’d left it alone. But that
didn’t mean that he intended to leave it that way for good.

Making love to her had caused a major
shift in his life, and he didn’t want to act like it had never happened. But he
also didn’t know how to revisit it with her after three long years. In spite of
their regular correspondence, he didn’t even know if there was another man in
her life. She had never mentioned having a boyfriend. She’d never mentioned dating
anyone. But he now knew the ER resident doctor had the hots for her, and he
still wondered about his brother’s relationship with her. Of course, she and her
brother had always been close to Lance and him. And he knew she really loved
Lance’s handicapped son.

And Nick had discovered long ago that
Lance was attracted to Hanna. From the time they had been teenagers, his
brother had demonstrated an interest in her that was more than friendship. It
had caused some serious friction between the two of them on more than one
occasion.

Hanna had skipped so many grades in
school because of her intelligence, she’d always been in Nick’s classes, even
though he and his brother were four and three years older than her. In high
school, when Nick had asked Hanna to their senior prom, in a rather convoluted
dating mess, Lance had not been happy about it. He’d only been a junior, but
he’d wanted to ask her to the big dance himself. The fact that Nick had beaten
him to it had instigated a couple of good fights between them.

Then there was the big rift they’d had
over Hanna three years ago.

After being badly injured in a
disastrous mission in Pakistan, Nick had come home to recuperate. Hanna had
medically overseen his convalescence. His body had begun to heal, but not his psyche.

He’d had a difficult time coping with
the loss of most of his team in a mission gone wrong. He’d been in command, and
they’d been hit hard and fast while trying to capture and extract a high value
al-Qaida field officer. All but two of his men had died in a bloody firefight.
Nick blamed himself. For the first and last time, he’d failed to do his own
intel; leaving it to someone else. Stupid, tragically stupid! The nightmares
and the guilt had plagued him relentlessly afterwards.

In a futile attempt to ease some of
his torment, he’d gone to Yancy’s waterfront bar, where he’d gotten drunk and
into a brawl with a loud- mouthed biker who had made some insulting comment
about him being a Marine. They’d busted up the place pretty good, and the
police had been called.

But it had been Hanna who had come to
his rescue and gotten him out of there before the cops arrived. She’d driven
him home and poured a pot of coffee down him while she encouraged him to talk
about his feelings. She’d listened to his anguished guilt over losing so many
men, held him, and offered comfort. Her compassion and tenderness had begun an
emotional healing for him, but it had also led to him making love to her that
night.

Even after three years, Nick could
still recall every detail of their intimacy. They’d been alone in his room,
sitting on his bed. His mother, Lance, and Christopher had gone to see friends
in Seattle and were not due home until the next morning. The moment Hanna had
put her arms around him, he’d discovered he’d wanted her whole body wrapped
around him. The need to bury himself in her sweet healing heat had been way too
strong to resist.

The recognition of his desire for her
had hit him so fast and hard, he hadn’t even considered she might still be a
virgin, especially not at thirty-one. The eventual discovery had blown him
away. No woman had ever given him her virginity. He’d offered to stop, but she
hadn’t wanted him to stop. And secretly, he’d been thrilled to be Hanna’s first
lover. Somehow it had felt so absolutely right, like it had been meant to be.
The whole night had been a tremendous revelation for him. For the first time,
their relationship hadn’t felt half full.

But Lance had been madder than hell
when he’d found out the next day. The resultant scene wasn’t a pleasant memory.
He rarely fought with his brother, at least not since they’d become adults.
They were close, closer than most brothers. But they had nearly come to blows
that day over Hanna Wallace.

The morning after making love to her
half the night, he’d gotten a call from his XO directing him back to duty ASAP.
Being involved in Special Ops was like that. You had to be ready to report to
duty within hours of a call-up. He’d never minded it before. Probably because
he’d never had to leave someone as important as Hanna had become to him that
night.

She’d gotten up early and left to
catch the ferry to Seattle to teach one of her classes at the University.
Discovering the note she’d left him, he’d waited for his family to return home,
then caught a ride from Lance to the naval airfield on Whidbey Island, where he
was scheduled to fly out.

After parking Lance’s truck onboard
the ferry that sailed across the bay, they’d climbed the stairs to the top deck
for the half hour ride. They stood at the rail talking for the first fifteen
minutes. When Lance mentioned Hanna, Nick remembered wincing inwardly. With his
head a bit clearer that morning, he’d realized that he hadn’t used any
protection with Hanna. He didn’t want to tell Lance that he’d slept with her,
but he needed his brother to keep an eye on her, in case she ended up pregnant.
He didn’t think Hanna would tell him if she thought it would worry him while he
was on one of his missions.