Navy Orders. Geri Krotow
times while he spoke to Ro.
She was the überprofessional she thought she should be, and she was shit-hot at her job. But she was too uptight, too by-the-book. His operational background was going to have to be what got them through this, especially if the case turned sour and wasn’t a suicide.
His one gripe with navy intel had always been that it was so easy for the spook types to do a slick PowerPoint presentation on enemy territory and weapons stats. But they weren’t the ones on the ground with zero visibility from a sandstorm, fighting off Taliban who’d grown up in the area and knew it like the back of their hands.
He watched her expression as she took in the whole grisly scene. It was normal to feel sick the first time—hell, every time—you saw a dead body. Especially one that had recently met its violent end. Suicide made it more emotional, too. If a young sailor who was apparently happy with his job and life was willing to kill himself, how close were they all to this kind of despair?
“You dealt with this a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan.” She didn’t ask, but assumed she was right.
“Probably not as much as you, or someone else who hasn’t been there, thinks. Some of the folks I worked with didn’t see anything too rough. Some saw way more than their share of death and destruction.”
“And you?”
He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t look into her rich violet-blue eyes and tell her the worst. She didn’t need it, not today.
“I’d say I was somewhere in the middle.”
Ro took out a notebook from her jacket pocket and began writing notes.
“What are you afraid you’ll forget?” From what he’d seen of her briefings, she had a near-photographic memory.
She shot him a quick glance. “As you said, it’s my first time doing this, seeing this.” She motioned at Perez’s body. “My emotions are running higher than usual so I don’t want to risk forgetting simple details.”
“So even when you’re upset, you control it? Is there anything you don’t try to control, Roanna?”
Her nostrils flared and her mouth set in a determined line. He’d pushed too far.
Oh, he’d love to kiss her until her annoyance with him turned into something more enjoyable....
“Just keeping it professional and giving Perez my best effort, Warrant.”
“Right.”
He wanted to tell her that no matter how many notes she took she’d never get the image of Perez’s body out of her mind, not entirely. He wanted to shout at her and tell her to put the notepad away and rely on her gut. Let her emotions do whatever they needed to and allow the bigger picture to come into focus.
Instead, he shoved his hands in his own pockets and looked out toward the sea.
CHAPTER FOUR
RO ENTERED HER small foyer with a deep sigh of gratitude. It had been a long day and wasn’t over yet. From the AOM to the meeting with the commodore and then the awful scene at the beach, she felt like she’d been at sea—as though one day was really a week long. Time seemed immeasurable.
She only had an hour, tops, before she had to meet with Miles again. Her years at the academy had taught her the value of power naps as well as power breaks. She’d have to make the next fifty-eight minutes feel like a weekend.
Her home wrapped its arms around her and her shoulders let go of the weight they’d carried since Miles had tackled her this morning. She didn’t have many people over, and that was by design. This was her oasis from all things navy-related. When she’d returned stateside after her last wartime deployment she’d decided it was the right time to purchase a house, no matter where she ended up via her navy orders. The fact that Dick had dumped her, and she’d accepted that she was truly alone, only hastened her quest to find her own home.
Oak Harbor, Washington, was a long way from Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she’d rented a condo while assigned to the aircraft carrier. The wilds of the Pacific Northwest contrasted sharply with the crowded suburban sprawl she’d grown up with in New Jersey.
She was thousands of miles from her family and childhood friends.
It was exactly what she needed and still wanted. Each month when she paid her mortgage, she was above all else grateful that she was a homeowner, free and clear of anyone else’s emotional tentacles.
She dropped her fitness and lunch bags onto the bench she’d reupholstered last Saturday. Had that only been a few days ago? Less than a week?
Her whole life had changed this morning.
She’d thrown Dick’s ring away. Let go of the shame, self-pity and sorrow she’d worn like out-of-date costume jewelry.
Finally.
Guilt tugged at her conscience as she untied her oxfords and slipped out of her uniform skirt. The investigation needed to be first and foremost on her mind.
Except it was the image of Miles, as he drove his big blue pickup truck, that flashed across her mind. The way his hand caressed hers for that brief moment on the West Beach cliff. The promise of heat in his eyes.
Why did all her emotions have to rise up at once? It was as if she’d cursed herself the minute she’d gone to throw that ring away. Miles had shown up and, ever since, she hadn’t been able to control her attraction to him the way she had for the past year.
Even the gruesome death of a good sailor wasn’t enough to take her mind off Miles and what it might be like to actually get to know him.
“Stop it.” She whispered the request to herself as a form of prayer.
While she and Miles were at the scene of Petty Officer Perez’s death, his body had been moved to the morgue. They spoke to the coroner and asked about a timeline for his investigation and the need for an autopsy. The coroner had been cryptic but respectful as he’d relayed that he would be required to do an autopsy even though the preliminary investigation pointed to suicide, just as the commodore had said. The coroner had made it clear that his business didn’t involve the U.S. Navy.
Still, Miles told her he was hopeful they’d get into the autopsy, which would probably be performed tomorrow or Sunday. Time was of the essence.
Miles suggested they take a break for dinner and regroup in a couple of hours. They needed to keep the commodore appeased, yet the reality was that between NCIS and the local LEAs, there wasn’t much wiggle room for two non-JAG naval officers to glean extra information. They’d have to track down every possible lead they could within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, before sources shut down.
As soon as she had pulled on her jeans and cream-colored nubby wool sweater, she went into her kitchen and got a bottle of sparkling water from the refrigerator. She slid her feet into plastic gardening clogs and walked out onto her patio.
The cottage-size home afforded her a wonderfully wild garden area out back, nourished by the moisture and rain-forest climate of Puget Sound. Her patio was the only level spot in her entire backyard. The ground sloped up to her neighbors’ wooden fences—fences she never saw except when she did her annual cleanup of brambles and fallen branches.
Ferns, junipers and other low-climbing evergreen growth blanketed the yard, offset by random patches and containers of flowering plants. Roses thrived in the upper left corner of her garden, while the half dozen whiskey barrels she’d planted with fuchsia and seasonal bulbs gave the green carpet pops of vibrant color.
She took a swig of her water and smiled when the bubbles tickled her nose. Even if she only had five minutes of free time in a day, she spent it here.
With her knitting needles, of course.
Her fingers itched to go back in the house and get the chemo cap she was working on but she wasn’t convinced she had enough time. She