The Marine. Leah Vale
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“Nope.” Man, he’d needed a beer after taking one look at Pete.
“Didn’t think so.”
She didn’t sound thwarted at all. Or even perturbed. She sounded intrigued, like a woman unwilling to butt out.
Not good. Not good at all.
THE LATE-MORNING SUN glared off the papers within the folder and made Lynn too warm in her suit coat. Still, she stood there next to the truck and read through the rest of the faxed copy of the police report, using far more care than she had the first time in her hotel suite while familiarizing herself with the case after she’d finally received all the documentation. Now that she’d met the soon-to-be-ex-Major Rick Branigan, different things were jumping out at her. Things that didn’t make sense. Things that were making her instincts go nuts.
While she was no defense attorney or any kind of a trial lawyer, she didn’t get to work for McCoy Enterprises’s Legal because she was just good at contracts. She’d worked her tail off at the University of Missouri and Columbia Law to be the best of the best. A regular G.I. Jane of law up against all the Ivy League grads. Her instincts had yet to fail her, and she’d learned to trust them.
Once again she squinted through the dirty driver’s window at the deflated airbag, very much like a big white balloon that had been popped and forgotten. Then she realized the window wasn’t dirty on the outside, but coated with residue left by the powder from the airbag. Drivers often had burns as well as bruises and abrasions on their arms and faces from an airbag’s violent inflation.
She looked down at the mile of man stretched out at her feet. No sign of injury of any kind, old or new. Just muscle, sinew and a bullheadedness she might normally have respected.
The copy of the mug shot in the file she’d barely glanced at earlier—she’d simply registered a McCoy family resemblance then—was of a disturbingly handsome face marred only by a heartbreaking stoicism. It was the face of a man prepared to give nothing but name, rank and serial number.
She searched through the police report for any indication that he’d had injuries from the accident or bore evidence of taking an airbag in the kisser, which, for whatever reason, wasn’t visible in his picture. She didn’t find anything.
She knew drunks often walked away from horrific wrecks without serious injury because their bodies were so relaxed that the jolt of the impact didn’t harm them. But she doubted being relaxed would save someone from the punishment that an early-model airbag—which this truck surely had—could dole out.
She chewed on her lip for a minute. Branigan was tall. His chest could have taken the brunt of the force. She could ask him to remove his shirt so she could check for bruises…A trickle of sweat ran down between her breasts.
Instead, she asked, “Have you done laundry lately, Major?”
He paused in his battle with the bumper and squinted up at her. “What?”
The guy had nice teeth. Among other things. “I was just wondering if you’d washed the clothes you were wearing the night of the accident.”
He went very still. “Why?”
“Because I’d like to see them.”
“Why?” he repeated, but with even more suspicion.
“To check if there’s residue on them from the airbag. The same stuff that’s all over the inside of your truck.”
He squinted up at her for a moment more, then used his strong leg to push himself farther beneath the bumper. “Sorry. Laundry day was yesterday.”
Liar.
She had no idea why she was so certain, but she was. And he had no reason to lie to her. He knew his guilt or innocence didn’t matter to her. If he didn’t want her to see his clothes because he didn’t want her help, he could just tell her no.
So why lie to her? Unless he was lying about other things…Or copping the Fifth to avoid having to lie…
She snapped the folder closed and leaned her shoulder against the side mirror. “So what were you celebrating?”
“Celebrating?”
“Yes, celebrating. There was nothing in your files about any sort of drinking problem, so you must have been celebrating something to tie one on like that.”
More clanking, more protesting metal. “Guess it’d been a good day.”
“A good day? Hmm.” She flipped to another page in the file. “Let’s see. It says your MOS is 0302. What does that mean?”
There was a long silence, and just as she was deciding he wasn’t going to answer, he said, “MOS stands for Military Occupational Specialty, and 0302 is Infantry.”
She already knew as much, having spent several late hours the night before she flew out to California poring over the USMC’s Web site. By the time she finished, she’d wanted to join up. But she needed to draw him out.
“Thank you. I imagine you form quite a few strong bonds in the infantry. So who were you with? You know, at the bar? Who were you drinking with?”
Silence from beneath the truck.
Lynn’s confidence in her gut instinct grew. “Or were you drinking alone? The witnesses said there’d been just one person in the red pickup. And if you’d been with friends, they wouldn’t have been very good friends to let you get into your truck and drive away drunk enough not to recognize your right from your left. So were you at the Rancho Margarita Bar drinking alone?”
While she didn’t expect one, she gave time for an answer.
When enough time had passed, she continued. “Though the cops wouldn’t have bothered checking, because you’re making their job easy as hell, I’m sure the bartender will remember you. Definitely the cocktail waitresses. I mean, a guy like you—” She caught herself before she elaborated on his very memorable traits.
No need to let him know she found him attractive. She was there simply to get him out of this potential disaster with the civilian authorities and have him discharged from the Marines fast.
She straightened away from the side mirror. If there was more to this story—namely, that Major Rick Branigan hadn’t been driving this truck when it plowed into another car—then she could either get him free of the charges quickly, or she’d end up dragging the investigation out for months. Especially if he continued to behave like a jackass and withhold his cooperation.
Considering the clock always ticking in the back of her mind and what she had at stake, did she dare risk finding out?
Chapter Three
“What do you mean, a guy like me?”
His speculative tone from beneath the truck snapped Lynn out of her dire musings. She realized the major wasn’t wrenching on the bumper anymore.
Still conflicted over what she wanted to do about his potential innocence, she tried for a casual approach, as if she were stating the obvious. “The type waitresses remember.”
“Which is?”
“Are you looking for compliments, Major?”
“Only if you’re in the mood to give them, Miss Hayes.”
What she was in the mood for was an open-and-shut case. A case that wouldn’t give her a moment’s pause but would earn her one more notch in her belt. One more promotion to insulate her from the numbing chill of her past. One more reason to be able to sleep at night. If she shut down her instincts about his innocence right here, right now, this case could garner her the security she craved.
But could even she, a woman perfectly willing to dart in front of a more tenured co-worker to get the next promotion, let an innocent man plead guilty to anything to get him where he