Hard Landing (24 page)

She wasn't supposed to keep her phone powered in the ER, since any electronics had the potential to hinder the operation of the many life-saving machines. But desperation had driven her to flout the rules. She didn't want to miss Bronco's call—if and when he finally decided to call her back.

"You'll feel the anesthesia kicking in any minute now," she assured the patient with a fractured tibia. She had recently added a dilution of Dilaudid to a port in his IV. If only pain relief were so easy to come by for herself.

Days had passed since Bronco had left her apartment, Saturday morning. His silence was eviscerating. Hadn't he felt the perfect connection she had experienced the night he'd stayed over? The sex had been phenomenal—yes—but it was the sense of completion she'd experienced afterwards that had convinced her that they belonged together, that he would want to stay with her.

But, perhaps with his much more extensive experience, he had felt the same post-coital glow a hundred times before, and she was naïve to think she was anything special to him. Hearing nothing from him day after day left her questioning her perceptions, her reasons for leaving Max—everything.

Had she been played for a fool? She couldn't bring herself to believe that the warmhearted human being she knew Bronco to be would treat her so callously.

As the young man's grip on the gurney's rail slowly relaxed, Rebecca edged toward the curtain. "The orthopedist is on his way," she promised, slipping through the door.

Hurrying to the break room, she stepped inside and sneaked a peek at her phone. Her hopes plummeted. Not Bronco. Nor did she even recognize the number that had left her a voicemail.

At least it wasn't Max calling to pressure her for that dinner date he'd suggested the other day. In spite of his stating, emphatically, that he would
never
sign off on her separation agreement, he seemed to be honoring her request for privacy and no contact. Or was that just wishful thinking on her part? It wasn't at all like Max to remain complacent and let circumstances take their course. He had to be planning something awful—she just didn't know what, yet.

Accessing her voicemail, she listened to the message.

"Hello, Rebecca. This is Special Investigator Maya Schultz with NCIS. I was wondering if you would be free to visit my office on Oceana NAS, tomorrow at 4 P.M. Sorry for the last-minute notice, but I had a cancellation. You can text me your response, if you like, or call me back at your convenience."

Rebecca's heart trotted.
This is really happening
. Master Chief Kuzinsky had initiated the investigation of his own commander.

Her stomach churned with sudden doubts. What if Max hadn't done anything wrong and she'd instigated a pointless witch hunt?
Nonsense
. What kind of honest man associated with the likes of Tony, who'd pressed a pistol to her head and bound and gagged her? All that money that had gotten them out of debt and the other money that she'd glimpsed in a foreign account under Max's name hadn't come from his fairy godmother any more than it had come from a great uncle.

With a tremor in her fingers, she texted the investigator back.
I can make it tomorrow at four. Thank you.
Within seconds, she received a reply text with an address and a room number.

Phone in hand, Rebecca battled the impulse to reach out once more to Bronco. She had called him the morning she'd awakened to find him gone. She had called two more times after that and left heartfelt messages. What made her think another call would make any difference? Clearly, he had no wish to communicate. But how could that be?

Closing her eyes, she puzzled it out. If only she could be angry with him. He'd taken advantage of her vulnerability—used her to satisfy himself and then left her without so much as a thank you, the way he treated all those other women who meant nothing to him!

Just as she succeeded in whipping herself into a rage, her conscience spoke up in his defense.
She
was the one who'd begged him to stay. He'd given her multiple chances to rein in their runaway passion. And he had told her point blank that he couldn't protect her. What he had meant, evidently, was that he wasn't the man for her. He was a love-'em and leave-'em kind of guy. She'd known that all along, hadn't she, so how could she possibly blame him now?

I can't,
she decided, powering her phone off and sliding it back into her pocket.

Thank God for her job, which kept her too busy to dwell on her loneliness and confusion, at least while she was at work. And now she had an appointment the following afternoon to look forward to. That sure beat returning to her quiet and empty apartment, where the memories of her night with Bronco lingered like a haunting perfume.

* * *

The following afternoon, Max threw open his office window to bellow across the Spec Ops parking lot.

"Adams, where the hell are you going? We have shooting quals at sixteen hundred hours today."

The handsome chief drew up short, tension in his spine as he slowly turned around. "Yes, sir," he called back, shading his eyes against the glare of the late afternoon sun. "Master Chief needs me to pick up some paperwork from supply before they close. Their fax machine's not working."

The depot that stored most of their equipment was located at Oceana NAS, ten minutes up the road from Dam Neck.

"He should've run that by me first," Max grumbled. Adams would miss the mandated testing, which took place every Thursday. Not that there was any need for him to prove himself when he was already the sharpest shooter in the task unit, possibly in all of Team 12, with the exception of Max himself.

"Go ahead," he barked, slamming the window shut and watching the chief climb nimbly into his truck.

Just wait
, Max thought, anticipating the moment that he would slip enough OxyContin into the chief's veins to stop his heart. The fact that Adams hadn't ventured anywhere near Rebecca since the night he'd parked his Bronco in front of her apartment didn't change Max's mind about killing him. The way the chief looked at him these days made him suspect he knew more than he should. If Rebecca had told him about Max's offshore account and they'd decided together to dig into the memory on Max's laptop, then the situation was more severe than he'd guessed.

Luckily, he wouldn't have to wait long before the laptop ceased to be an issue. Members of a local street gang had agreed to pillage Rebecca's apartment and retrieve the laptop in exchange for four thousand dollars. Their fee amounted to highway robbery, but getting that laptop back meant all the difference to Max's future, so he'd agreed to two thousand up front and two thousand later.

Hopefully, the Scarpas never caught wind of his dealings. If they knew how careless he'd been in leaving information out where his wife could get a look at it, they'd probably take him out themselves before he proved a liability. As it was, they had to be less than happy with him for arousing the suspicions of the FBI special agent.

Out in the parking lot, Adams' old truck pulled away, scattering the seagulls taking refuge in the parking lot. Max turned back to his desk, where his cell phone gave a muted chime, alerting him to the chief's movements. The transponder he had affixed to the old Bronco had sent him a signal, providing the man's exact location on a map. In a matter of minutes, he would know if Adams was lying to him about his destination or not.

Riveted to his phone, Max counted his heartbeats as he watched the tiny dot progress toward the gate and up Dam Neck Road. If he continued straight past General Booth, then he had probably made plans to rendezvous with Rebecca, either at the hospital park where they'd met before or—worse yet—at her new place, where she might even hand off Max's laptop.

For five full minutes Max's temples throbbed as he waited for an answer. But then the dot turned right onto General Booth and then left at Oceana, suggesting that Adams was bound for the supply depot, exactly like he'd said.

Max still didn't trust him. Chances were the chief had already impressed Rebecca in the bedroom, giving her something with which to compare her husband's performance. He could think of no better reason to get rid of the man. But, even in concentrated form, OxyContin dissolved in water wasn't enough to stop a man's heart. Alcohol provided the other half of the equation. Luckily, Adams was known to go out drinking every Friday night with his friends. Catching him without around them would be the hardest part.

Once Rebecca's lover lay dead from an overdose, her eyes would be opened to his true character. She would realize that her influential and well-respected husband was the better choice, and she would come back to him.

If that didn't do the trick, then the street gang breaking into her apartment and giving her the scare of her life would make her long for the security of their well-protected home.

* * *

"Does this Tony look exactly like your sketch?" Special Investigator Maya Schultz's celery-green eyes conveyed skepticism as she regarded Rebecca from the other side of her large desk. Beyond the walls of the woman's third-floor office, the NCIS building thrummed with activity.

Ms. Schultz's partner, an older gentleman introduced as Ben Metier, occupied the chair adjacent to Rebecca's. Given his benign expression and the manner in which he inclined his robust frame close to her, Rebecca guessed that he had elected to play "good cop" while Ms. Schultz asked the tough questions. To her dismay, the female inspector didn't seem to fully believe that a man calling himself Tony had abducted her in order to procure Max's phone number.

"Yes, it's a close resemblance." She wished her tone didn't sound so prickly, but she resented the implication that she would make up such a story. "I used to earn money drawing portraits at the waterfront."

Ms. Schultz laid the picture back down and consulted her notes. "Tell me more about the foreign account you saw in your husband's name."

Rebecca described what she had seen—an account held by a company called Emile Victor DuPonte with a balance of fifty thousand dollars in it.

The roar of a departing fighter jet delayed the investigator's next question. "Has he held any other jobs outside of the Navy while you've known him?"

"Only one. A security firm paid him to be a consultant, once. But that was three years ago, and they paid him hardly anything."

"I see." The woman put her pen down and laid her interlaced hands on the surface of her desk. "Well, the account you mentioned has been closed," she announced, articulating her words carefully. "If he has a new account, we don't know where it is, how much is in it, or where any money in it could have come from. And it's beyond our powers to find out."

Rebecca stared at her. "You think I'm making this up." She sat up straighter. "Do you think I'd pursue this matter if I weren't absolutely convinced that Max is doing something illegal?"

"We can see that he paid off his home equity line of credit," Ms. Schultz allowed, "with cash," she added, her eyebrows flexing, "which makes the source of the money untraceable but isn't, in itself, illegal. Nor does it constitute proof that he made any money by illegal means." She sent Rebecca a helpless shrug.

"Why would he pay cash unless he's covering his tracks?" Rebecca challenged.

"Listen." The investigator met her gaze with an intent expression. "In order for your husband to be charged with illegally obtaining funds in a foreign account, we would have to initiate an Article 32 hearing. Once your husband was apprised of the hearing, he would also learn that you were planning to testify against him for actions that occurred when you lived together. His best tactic would be to discredit your testimony. It is therefore critical that you be a credible witness."

"Of course," Rebecca agreed. Why would the investigator think her anything but a credible witness?

"I have to ask you a very personal question, Mrs. McDougal," the woman warned her.

Rebecca braced herself. "Go ahead."

"Are you and Chief Adams having an affair?"

Rebecca's blood flashed cold then hot. It took her a moment to find her tongue. "I wouldn't call it an affair, exactly," she muttered. Heat won out, rising up the column of her neck like mercury in an old thermometer. "We haven't spoken in six days."

The older woman sat back, her fingers interlaced. "But you're lovers?"

Ben Metier sent her an encouraging nod, as if to say that it was safe to answer.

Rebecca drew a tight breath. "Chief Adams has been a friend of mine for years. I never cheated on my husband while I lived with him, if that's what you're asking me."

Silence filled the spacious office. Behind her lenses, the investigator's eyes softened slightly. "You're not lovers, then," she paraphrased.

A fresh wave of heat flooded Rebecca's cheeks. "Not currently," she said between clenched teeth.

Ms. Schultz's finely drawn lips quirked. "I'm glad to hear it," she said, in a firm but not unfriendly voice. "If you were having an affair with Chief Adams, it might look like you were trying to discredit your husband in order to justify your infidelity—not because he was doing anything illegal."

In other words, she and Bronco needed to keep rumors about their relationship from reaching the ears of the military judge. Good thing Bronco had been keeping his distance since their one night together. Perhaps that was the reason? she wondered hopefully.