Breaking Away (Military Romantic Suspense) (Book 3 of the SEAL TEAM Heartbreakers) Read online

  Sam tipped her head in acknowledgement.

  “If there’s anything you need, just page the nurse,” Simons said. He left and closed the door behind him.

  “I’m just here to get some photographs and take your statement about what happened last night, Mrs. Cross,” Tami said. “Your earlier statement has already been filed.”

  Sam nodded.

  The woman pulled a straight-backed chair close to the bed and sat down.

  Sam studied the young woman’s face with her one eye. “Can I see your identification?”

  “Sure.” Ms. Mai reached into her satchel, pulled a small wallet free and extended it to her.

  Sam studied the ID. “I suppose you have to do this a lot.” She handed the badge back.

  “More than I want to.”

  Sam remained silent for a moment. Could she trust this woman? Did she have a choice? “What do you want to know?”

  “Is it okay if I tape our conversation?”

  Sam nodded.

  “How long has your husband been doing this? Tammi asked.

  “Three and a half years. We’d been married about six months when he slapped me the first time.”

  “Why did you stay?”

  “He was so sorry, he begged me to forgive him. He swore it would never happen again. And, like a fool, I believed him.”

  “Then?”

  “I was seven months pregnant when Will slammed my head into a wall and gave me a concussion. I pressed charges and he was arrested. When I showed up in court, I was told the time of the hearing had been changed and, since I hadn’t shown up, Will had been released. He came home that afternoon while I was packing to leave and told me if I ever tried to have him arrested again, he’d kill me. If I tried to leave, he’d kill me. I believed him.”

  “What triggered his latest attack?”

  “He was already upset about something. I have no idea what. The angrier he became, the more our daughter Joy did her babbling baby talk. I could see the violence building, so I got the car keys and was going to take Joy to McDonalds until he either left or calmed down. He grabbed the keys out of my hand and locked Joy in her room, said I was treating her like a baby and that was why she was talking like one.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She’s four. But when she senses he’s angry, she starts using baby talk. I tried to explain to him when he gets angry he frightens her. He said I blamed him for everything and punched me in the stomach. I went down and curled into a ball. Will has been fixated on having a son lately. I think his father’s been harping on wanting a grandson to follow in their footsteps. Will threw away my birth control pills three months ago, but I got a refill and hid it. But the month I missed my pills—” She swallowed against the pain. She should have run away the moment she suspected she was pregnant. The baby would still be alive if she had run.

  Sam swallowed and looked away. “I knew I was pregnant. I tried to protect the baby. He kicked me in the ribs and told me to get up. I couldn’t. The last thing I remember is his fist coming at my face. When I woke up, I was hemorrhaging, the living room was destroyed and Joy was still locked in her room screaming. The neighbors found me and called 911.”

  “What happened last night?”

  “I had called my grandmother. I wanted to check on her and Joy because I was anxious about Will locating them. He’s threatened to kill them both if I talked to the police. I was so tired and my ribs hurt, so I couldn’t reach the phone, so the nurse helped me. After I was through talking, I pushed the off button and pressed the call button for the nurse so she could hang it up for me.”

  “When someone came into the room, I thought it was her. The person hung up the phone, but stood next to the bed and waited. I opened my eyes and it was Will.”

  The room blurred. Her breathing hitched. Will’s hand covered her mouth. She could taste the sweat on his hand as he pushed against her bruised face. Pain shot up through her eye, her temple, and she touched the patch.

  Tammi rested her hand on her arm.

  Sam jerked. She stared down at the small hand with its perfectly trimmed nails as it rested on her skin. She clung to the reality of it, until the flashback receded.

  The woman’s chocolate brown eyes held hers for a moment. “Just take it slow. I’m going to ask you some questions.”

  “Could I have a drink of water?” Her mouth was dry as the Nevada desert.

  “Sure.” Tammi rose and filled the plastic cup from a small, insulated pitcher and handed it to her.

  Sam cupped the container in her hand and allowed the solidity to ground her.

  The woman’s gentle, unhurried technique pulled every detail of the assault from Sam’s memory. After she’d gone over every moment of the attack the night before, every muscle in her body felt weak from the constant tension. Her legs shook beneath the blanket.

  “I need to take some photos of your injuries,” Tammi said. She turned off the recorder. “Do you think you can stand?”

  Though she wasn’t sure, Sam nodded.

  Tammi lowered the side of the bed. Sam flipped back the covers and slid free of them, her movements careful. Her hand went to her ribs. Her legs felt spongy and weak.

  The nurse had given her a sanitary napkin and a belt. Every time she felt the flow between her legs, a fresh wave of regret and guilt engulfed her. She should have run away. She should have left the moment she thought she was pregnant.

  “Who is going to see these pictures?” she asked.

  “Possibly only the lawyers and the judge. Most assault cases are settled outside a courtroom.”

  Sam swallowed against the knot of tears in her throat. “If it goes before a jury?”

  “They may see them, or the defense may try to suppress them. But before it goes to trial the attorneys have to go before a grand jury. If the defense sees these pictures, they may decide to take a plea. But at least what Will Cross did to you will be on the record, and he’ll have to face the consequences of what he did.”

  Tears clouded Sam’s eyes. “He won’t care. If he cared, he could never have hurt me like this.” She pulled the string at the back of her neck and tugged at the front of the hospital gown to free her arms. She let it go and the gown fell to the tile floor. “The only thing he’ll care about is that someone finally knows what he does in his spare time.”

  She knew what she looked like. Old bruises green and yellow, new ones purple, red and black. She’d looked in the mirror and seen them for four long years. She peeled the tape free and jerked the patch off of her eye. Let them see. Let the world see what he did. A scream of pain and rage pushed against her chest. Maybe someone would stop him. Someone has to stop him!

  The door swung open. Sam covered her breasts with an arm.

  “Of course she’ll see me. I’m her mother—”

  A security guard gripped Paige Cross’s arm. Both froze at the open door. Paige’s mouth opened and closed as though she couldn’t catch her breath. The security guard turned his face away with a jerk. “Sorry ma’am.” He dragged Paige back out, grabbed the edge of the door and closed it.

  “Who is that?” Tammi asked.

  Sam fought the urge to crawl back under the bed, as she’d done last night. “That’s my mother-in-law.”

  San Diego

  Flash wrapped the stone seals and tablet in bubble wrap and shoved them into the cardboard box. Trusting this kind of merchandise to UPS seemed wrong somehow, but he didn’t have much choice. He couldn’t exactly drive up to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s building and drop it off in person.

  NCIS wouldn’t be brought into the investigation anyway—not yet. FBI guys didn’t admit they needed help or that they’d made a mistake. By sending evidence to NCIS, he might motivate someone to stir the pot a bit, and someone might turn a beady eye on the agents involved in the sting.

  But then, Gilbert could tell them anything and they’d buy into it. Cops trusted cops.

  But what did he have to lose by doing
this?

  He wrapped the cell phone he’d used during the mission. NCIS would access the voice mail and hear the message themselves. Thus far the phone and the answering machine audio file were the only proof he had he had been under cover as one of the smugglers.

  And he was taking no chances. He’d also copied Dobson’s final cell phone message onto his computer’s hard drive. Just in case.

  Captain Morrow, the commander in Iraq, could vouch for the FBI’s visit. And there would be a record of his participation in this sting at headquarters. It had to go through the chain of command. He had the short email message from HQ stating his orders were amended. But it didn’t state what the amendment was. Hell, he’d been in a freaking war zone. It wasn’t as though he could get letters every day. But he’d received the hard copy of his paperwork when he got home, and it was in his safety deposit box.

  Why hadn’t he demanded more info? Why hadn’t he double-checked with HQ?

  Because his mind had been on other things. Brett had been in a coma, Hawk was injured, Doc was messed up too, and everything was up in the air about whether or not they were going to make it back as a team.

  As for the money, he didn’t know where the hundred thousand had come from. Dobson hadn’t mentioned a name. And he’d been cagy about some details of the mission.

  Flash had acted out the scenario as he’d been instructed. Followed orders. There had always been a tracking device in the artifacts bag during each sale. But apparently not this time.

  If there had been, the FBI would be in his face right now.

  They obviously hadn’t thought they’d need to track the artifacts or turn in the money. And now that he had it instead, all they had to do was accuse him of exactly what they’d planned to do themselves. With his juvie past and his gambling—he was the perfect patsy.

  But why would they risk everything for a little over thirty thousand dollars each? There had to be more to it.

  What if they were skimming money from each sale? And Dobson had discovered it?

  Jesus! This was driving him crazy. He was sick of going over and over the same scenarios in his head.

  He read through the letter he’d written outlining the sting, folded it into a thin strip, then wrapped it around the phone and secured it with a rubber band. He stuffed the phone and the two FBI badges into the box with the artifacts and sealed it. As he wrote the address across the front, his stomach muscles tightened. He was trusting UPS with his future—and NCIS. He’d send the next package in a day or two, once he was clear of the area.

  He went to the head, then stared at his reflection in the twelve by twelve piece of glass over the small sink as he washed his hands. The side of his face and head were still swollen from the trauma. Multicolored bruising encompassed his ear, temple and one eye. The trench the bullet had carved though his scalp was crusted with a beginning scab. It looked ugly.

  He’d neglected to shave. A beard much darker than his brownish-blond hair shadowed the lower half of his jaw. He’d scare young children if he didn’t cover up. Hell, he scared himself.

  Returning to the galley to retrieve his ball cap, he adjusted the plastic clip at the back to accommodate the swelling and pushed a pair of cheap sunglasses onto his face to cover his eyes. The moment the side stem touched his head it triggered a dull throbbing. Fuck! Just when it had eased off. But he had to wear the glasses. People remembered eyes more than any other feature, and he still had no idea what steps Gilbert had taken to find him.

  He shoved his arms into the sleeves of his windbreaker, slung the backpack over his shoulder, and picked up the box. Keeping his head down and his face shadowed by the bill of his cap, he strolled the four blocks to the UPS mailing office.

  The early morning sunshine reflected harshly off the concrete sidewalk, intensifying his headache, so he moved into the shadows to avoid it. A car rental place came up on the right and he eyed it with longing. Paying for cabs sucked and limited his mobility, but he’d have to use a credit card to rent a vehicle. Had they found the car he’d leased? Would they have it staked out? It wouldn’t hurt to check that out.

  Only three people were ahead of him in line, and while he waited he called a cab to pick him up outside the store. When he inched up to the counter, the woman looked up, and her gaze traced the bruising he hadn’t been able to cover with either the hat or his glasses. “Motorcycle accident?” she asked.

  The lie came easy. “Car accident.” His car had been involved. It had more holes in it than he did.

  She grimaced in sympathy and weighed the package. “Do you want to purchase insurance?”

  How much insurance would he need to replace something that was irreplaceable? “No. I trust you to get it where it’s going in one piece. But you’ll need to stamp it fragile.”

  She smiled and stamped the box, put a printed tag on the outside and taped both ends. “Just in case,” she said with a smile.

  Flash forked over the ten-fifty and offered her a grin as she handed him a receipt.

  The cab was waiting outside. The driver leaned against the side of the car, his arms crossed “You call a cab?”

  “Yeah, that was me.” He slid into the back seat and gave the man an address four blocks from the parking structure where he’d left his leased Porsche. The San Diego traffic swallowed them, and he leaned back in the seat and, bending his head, took the glasses off and let the pain recede a little.

  “What business do you want me to drop you at?” the driver asked.

  “You can drop me at the corner of B Street and Sixth.” He shoved the glasses back on his face.

  “There’s a bunch of lawyers got their offices on that street, isn’t there?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking about seeing one.”

  “Looks like you got a good case. Better take pictures before the damage fades.”

  “Good idea.”

  The cabby fell silent and ten minutes later he whipped the car just past the corner.

  Flash tucked money for the trip into his hand. “Thanks for the advice and the ride.” He slid out of the car and slammed the door. He waited until the cab pulled away before turning down Sixth Street. Then he wandered past the downtown businesses and entered the parking structure.

  Instead of heading to the elevator, he took the stairs in the center of the building to the second tier, then jogged up the steep incline to the third level. The rows of parked vehicles stretched silent and shadowed. He scanned the area for anyone sitting in a car and eyed the one van parked close by. Nothing seemed out of place, and the only movement was a guy getting into a Hyundai. Flash waited for him to pull out and head down the incline before approaching his Porsche.

  The Porsche’s cherry red hood reflected the dim florescent bulbs from overhead. She sat sleek and powerful, just waiting for him to slide behind the wheel. Why hadn’t they found the car and confiscated it? Had they found it and put a GPS tracker on it? Were they just waiting for her to move? Or had they forgotten about the lease? Gilbert might have believed he had returned the car to the dealership.

  Were these wheels worth the risk?

  Flash set his pack down on the concrete next to the front wheel, then circled the car, running his hands inside each wheel well. The Porsche sat close to the ground, so he lay on his back and scanned the undercarriage on first one side, and then the other, then checked out the front and the back. Satisfied the exterior had no tracking device installed, he pulled the key from his pocket and hit the button to unlock the car.

  Though it took time, he then searched every inch of the interior and the trunk. Satisfied nothing had been touched, he got behind the wheel and started the car.

  He sat for a moment waiting for his heartbeat to slow and the wave of anxiety to ease. If he’d missed a tracker, they’d be on him in a heartbeat. He pumped the gas and listened to the sound of the engine, allowing it to sooth him. Fuck’em. He put the car in reverse and backed it out of the space.

  He was halfway to Gilbert’s apartmen
t before he relaxed enough to enjoy driving the Porsche again. He wasn’t going to blend into any neighborhood with a car like this, but what the fuck. He shifted gears and settled further into the seat. It felt good to be mobile.

  He studied Gilbert’s apartment complex as he approached it. Set within a residential area of condos and homes, the place was a step above his own apartment but not flashy. That wasn’t surprising. If you had bundles of cash you weren’t supposed to have, you didn’t wave your arms around to let everyone know.

  He drove past the complex and parked two blocks down in the visitors’ slots of another apartment complex. Grabbing his backpack, he climbed out, locked the car and walked toward the apartment directly in front of him, then cut across the well-trimmed grass to the driveway of the complex next door.

  Sticking to the trees that lined the parking lot, he followed the fence around the pool. Reaching the complex, he scanned the parking lot to make sure Gilbert’s nondescript car was absent before mounting the back steps to the third floor. A woman passed him going down, and Flash nodded but kept climbing. He slowed his pace and waited for her to get into her car and drive away. Then he pulled out the lock picks he’d cobbled together from an old umbrella he’d found in a corner of the boat.

  Certain Gilbert wasn’t home, he still paused outside the door, braced himself, then knocked. If by some twist of fate the man actually was at home, he’d rush him and take him down fast. When no one came to the door or called out, Flash pushed the improvised picks into the flimsy door mechanism and, with an easy twist of his wrist, opened the lock. The dead bolt took a few more seconds.

  He pushed the door open and scanned the living room. Jeez Gilbert, you ought to have better security. Pausing briefly to listen to the silence, he finally stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

  CHAPTER 8

  Las Vegas

  As she stared at her distorted reflection in one of the chrome bars of the hospital bed railing, the openmouthed shock on the security guard’s face played through Sam’s mind.