The Marine

He dropped his toolbox with a bang next to the crushed left front of the once dingless Dodge.

Planting his hands on his hips, he tried to ignore the woman next to him by focusing on the truck’s damage. The lights on this side were completely obliterated, the hood had buckled and the side panel was creased and streaked with black paint.

From the other car. The car of Emelie Dawson, forty-six, divorced mother of two.

If only he’d looked closer that night, he would have realized a tree hadn’t caused the damage. His throat tightened and his stomach turned.

Focus on what you have power over.

He examined the front of the truck. He’d have to pry the bumper away from the wheel to keep from further trashing the tire if he wanted to drive the truck to the repair shop rather than have it towed—a minor concession he’d make to his restrained pride. There’d be a little too much symbolism involved in having to watch his truck being winched up onto a flatbed and hauled away.

He pushed the button on the key fob and unlocked the truck so he could get a crowbar from the space in back of the seat.

Behind him, Miss Hayes said, “I’m surprised they didn’t impound your vehicle.”

“They did. My Acme lawyer got it returned to me right after the police processed it.”

Without commenting, she said crisply, “Back to the police report. You initially admitted to having driven this truck the night of the accident. Is that correct?”

Rick stifled a sigh as he backed out of the cab and straightened, crowbar in hand. Maybe if he let her see exactly how little help she could provide, she’d leave. He shut the truck’s door. “Correct.”

He’d said the words that night; now he’d pay the price.

She moved just enough to let him get down on the blacktop to search beneath the bumper for a good leverage point. “But then you exercised your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in order to avoid incriminating yourself. Why? Why not just ask to speak with an attorney before you answered any more questions?”

He found a notched spot and fit one end of the crowbar against it, then braced the other one on the bumper. “Because talking to a lawyer then wouldn’t have made any difference. I still wasn’t going to answer any questions.”

“Because you’re guilty.”

He grunted an answer, but the acceptance in her tone made him shove on the wedged crowbar extra hard.

“Okay, then. Let’s walk through the facts.”

“I don’t want your help, Miss Hayes.”

“Humor me. And please, call me Lynn.”

She was cozying up to him, to get him to let her into the game. The healthy male in him locked and loaded at the mere thought of cozying up to a looker like her—but no way.

“Witnesses have you leaving the Rancho Margarita Bar’s parking lot in a truck matching the description of this one—”

She stepped close and lightly kicked the tire next to his shoulder with her beige, high heeled shoe. She wasn’t wearing any hose, and her incredibly smooth, lightly tanned skin pulled his gaze upward over a slender ankle, a toned calf, a perfect knee, a satiny thigh shadowed by the hem of her skirt…

“—and heading south in the northbound lane for approximately a hundred yards before making a correction.” She humphed and shifted her weight. “Hard to claim a momentary lapse of control caused the accident.”

Rick jerked his attention back to the crowbar, practically forgotten in his hands. “That it would be,” he concurred, pretending that he hadn’t just been peering up her skirt. He knew the perspiration forming on his back and his forehead said otherwise.

He gave the crowbar a fast, hard push.

She shifted again, but this time he only allowed himself a glance. Damn, but she had nice legs. Runner’s legs. The kind that had to be earned, especially since she appeared to be about his age. Thirty-something women didn’t keep legs like that free.

He gritted his teeth and pushed again. The bumper moved an inch with a satisfying metal-on-metal squawk.

“Why don’t you just let them crank the thing up on a flatbed and haul it to a shop?”

“Because.” He grumbled and pushed at the bumper a third time. “It’s not that bad.”

She scoffed. “If you say so. But according to this, you must have been traveling about thirty miles per hour when you ran the light after getting into the right lane. No skid marks before you hit the black sedan as it was starting its left-hand turn. Just because you could back up and drive away doesn’t mean your truck isn’t trashed.”

She took a step nearer and he glanced up to see her peering into the cab. “Ah. So that’s what an airbag looks like. Can’t be easy to drive with all that hanging out of the steering wheel into your lap. Or feel pleasant when it nails you.”

Good thing he had no intention of taking his shirt—or anything else—off around this woman, because she was certain to spot that he didn’t have a mark on him other than his tattoo.

“Too bad the airbag in the car you hit couldn’t prevent the driver from getting her pelvis broken. I can’t imagine anything that would hurt worse.”

He grunted in response, using all his strength to shove the bumper outward, away from the wheel well so the tire could turn freely. He didn’t want to think about the specifics of that night, didn’t want to form a picture that would play over and over in his head. The future held enough nightmares for him as it was.

But he was a man of his word, and he’d given his word. Besides, now it was all too late.

“Interesting.”

He paused, only barely refraining from asking what?

“It says here, you refused a breathalyzer and blood test at the station, but exhibited no signs of inebriation. Even though they were able to track you down within the hour from the partial plate number the victim noted as you were backing away and the fact that you were holding a beer when you opened the door. Care to comment?”

“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.