Marie Ferrarella - Military Man

Collin stopped dead.

He and Emmett had made their way into the bowels of the three-story building where the chief medical examiner had both his office and the three austere, sterile rooms where the various autopsies were performed. It was lunchtime and most of the personnel were gone, or at least out of sight. The entire area was eerie, the way only a place that housed the dead and their secrets could be.

But it wasn’t the dead that had caused him to all but freeze in his place. In his line of work, he’d grown accustomed to seeing the dead.

The living were the ones that carried surprises with them.

And he was surprised now.

Framed in the doorway of the second autopsy room, he felt as if he’d just been catapulted back across a sea of years. Back to when he’d first walked into his bio lab in high school and had first laid eyes on her.

On Paula.

The woman in the white lab coat looked so much like Paula, for a moment he forgot to breathe. She was as petite as Paula, who’d stood no taller than five foot four. And her coloring was almost exactly the same.

From this distance, he couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, only that her hair was the same honey-brown, with reddish highlights. The woman in the room had her hair pulled back, away from her face. The last time he’d seen Paula, her hair had been long and looked as if it was in the middle of a storm. A sensuous storm that sent her hair curling in every conceivable direction.

As if sensing his presence, the woman raised her eyes and looked directly at him.

They were green.

Her eyes were green.

Like Paula’s.

Lucy had just made her way into the autopsy room through the rear entrance, pushing another gurney, empty this time. The gurney’s last occupant, the second of the morning, had been stitched back together as reverently as possible and deposited in a steel, life-size drawer, to remain there like so much discarded memorabilia until a mortuary vehicle was dispatched to claim him. Death had been ruled accidental. The deceased was ready to go to his final resting place.

The realization that she and Dr. Daniels were not the only two breathing occupants of the room suddenly struck her.

Dr. Daniels apparently noticed it, too. Sidling up beside her, his eyes on the man in the doorway, Daniels leaned in until he had Lucy’s ear and whispered, “Is it just me, or is that guy looking at you as if you were the last tall glass of cool water available to him before he has to go on a fifty-mile march?”

She wouldn’t have put it that way, but now that Dr. Daniels had, Lucy had to admit that was exactly the way the man in the doorway was looking at her.

She felt a warmth creeping up her sides, adding color to her face. It took effort to halt its progress, but she managed. She always managed. It was a matter of pride with her.

The man in the doorway was dressed in civilian clothing, but there was something about his bearing that seemed to fairly shout “military” at her. Maybe it was because she’d been around so many soldiers when she was growing up, she felt she could spot a man who had military in his blood a mile away.

Now was no exception.

His dark hair was cut short and he was wearing a black leather jacket, but even so, she could see that he had shoulders so broad, they could have each served as a diving board. From what she could see, the man’s waist was small, his hips taut. G.I. Joe come to life, looking as if he could fulfill every woman’s fantasy.

But not hers.

The thought whispered along the perimeter of her consciousness, as if to remind her of who and what she was. And what she’d been through.

Squaring her own shoulders, Lucy stood in silence, waiting for someone else to speak. After all, eager though she was to advance both her career and her knowledge in this specific field, she was low woman on the totem pole around here. It wouldn’t do for her to usurp the physician she’d been assigned to by asking the two men in the room what they were looking for.

But her more-than-healthy dose of curiosity was eating away at her.

Not to mention that she was getting exceedingly uncomfortable because Military Man’s eyes hadn’t left her from the moment she’d looked up. Was he trying to unnerve her for some reason? If he was, he was in for a surprise. She didn’t unnerve easily. Not after the kind of life she’d led.

Luckily for her, Dr. Daniels stepped forward. “Can I help you two gentlemen?” He was all business as he looked from one man to the other, waiting for an answer.

The second of the two visitors replied. “Did you perform the autopsy on that prison transport driver who was killed?”

The inquiry startled her. Talk about coincidences, Lucy thought.

“And you would be…?” Harley pressed, looking from one to the other.

It was evident to Lucy that the doctor was not about to remotely entertain the thought of answering any questions until he had his own answered satisfactorily.

With supreme effort, Collin tore his eyes away from the woman with Paula’s face and focused on the reason they were here. She looked so much like his ex-fiancée that for a moment there he’d felt as if he were coming unglued. Maybe, he told himself, after this was over, if he wasn’t being sent off on another assignment, he was going to take some real time off. He had a feeling he needed it.

“Very interested in finding out information,” Collin concluded the statement that the M.E. had left hanging in the air.

The doctor’s small eyes moved from one man to the other. More questions presented themselves. “How did you get in here?”

Collin merely smiled. “You’d be surprised what the right badge will get you.”

Unable to remain silent any longer—it simply wasn’t in her nature to contain her curiosity or to hold her tongue for long—Lucy spoke up. “So far, we haven’t seen any badges, right ones or wrong ones.”

Damn, even her voice faintly reminded him of Paula’s. Collin tried to quell the almost-jittery reaction he was feeling inside.

It was as if all his inner walls were turning to Jell-O.

Listening closer, he found more differences than similarities between the two cadences. This woman’s voice, he pointed out to himself, was a bit more forceful. Paula’s had always been soft, easygoing, like the woman herself.

Maybe that had been the problem, he thought. Had Paula not been as easygoing as she was, had she made some noise, maybe he would have come to his senses about his course of nonaction and done something before he’d lost her.

Reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket, Collin took out his wallet. He flipped it open and held it up for both of them to see.

“Special Ops?” the doctor read. “Army Rangers.” His eyes went from the title to Collin and back again. Wiping his hands on a nearby towel, he frowned. “Why Special Ops? What is there about this case that would bring out someone like you?”

“Are you with Special Ops, too?” Lucy asked, looking at Emmett.

“FBI,” Emmett corrected, taking out his own ID and showing it to both of them.

He knew he was violating several standard protocols by using his badge to get at information that he hadn’t specifically been assigned to uncover, but there was no way around it. He had always believed in taking the fastest road to get somewhere. And there was no way on earth he was going to back off until he brought Jason to justice.

Besides, he knew that Ryan would never be safe until Jason was back behind bars. The man had told him during his first visit to the Double Crown Ranch that from almost the moment that Jason had escaped, letters threatening his life, his home, his family had begun coming. Letters that announced Jason’s intention to kill Ryan when he least expected it. And then his wife, Lily, had been kidnapped, an event that could have ended tragically if it hadn’t been for Emmett. That was a hell of a lot for a man to endure.