Adam scowled at her for being inept and uninformed. “Project Duplicity,” he said. “Now can we get back to the point?”
“Which is?”
It took every ounce of control he could summon to not bellow. “Keener, you’re a real piece of work.”
“So I’ve been told.” She didn’t look at all offended. “Your point?”
He propped his hands on the table, stretching the chain between the cuffs tight, and then leaned toward her. “Let me lay this out for you in simple, easy-to-comprehend terms. You dig too deeply, you’re going to ruffle feathers. You ruffle too many feathers, and you’re going to wind up short a defendant.”
“Exactly what are you saying, Burke?”
“I’m saying, within forty-eight hours of you nosing around like a little puppy, O’Dell and Hackett will see to it that I’m dead.”
“Oh, please.” Tracy guffawed. “Aren’t you being just a little melodramatic? Who’s going to kill you?” She lifted a hand heavenward. “You’re in the hole, for God’s sake.. “Yes, I am in the hole.” He leaned closer still, until they were nearly nose to nose. “Open that closed mind of yours long enough to think, counselor. If you’re going to murder someone, your victim being isolated makes getting to him damn convenient, now doesn’t it?”
Tracy opened her mouth to dispute him, but the logic in ‘ what he’d said hit her. Without uttering a sound, she snapped her jaw shut.
“Finally, she sees the light.” His exasperated breath warmed her face. “Check out my team’s eyes.”
“Excuse me?” Her brows arched, registering her confusion at the sudden topic shift.
“Their eyes,” Burke repeated. “If my men were exposed to chemicals, then their eyes could show signs of mitosis.”
“Mitosis?” Another I-haven’t-got-a-clue response. No wonder he considered her inept.
“Fixed and dilated pupils.” He refrained from Failing her “fluff” again, she felt sure, only by an act of sheer will and determination.
A sneaking suspicion crept into Tracy, triggering her intuition and issuing her a warning. Burke hadn’t pulled that particular affliction out of thin air. And in it, she claimed his team’s sensed a grain of truth. The repo bodies had been blown to bits, but Burke had seen the bomber make the run; their bodies were intact. That, his specific reference to tosis, and his tenacity had her sensing some truth in what he had told her. If his men had been blown to bits, he wouldn’t be issuing her a challenge to check out their eyes-unless he was deliberately misleading her.
He seemed too cocky and confident to be lying about this. But what that meant, she wasn’t ready to explore. Not yet. “Why am I feeling this mitosis is extremely significant?”
,,Because it is extremely significant.” Approval rang in his voice. “Unofficial reports are that Project Duplicity deals with the development of a chemical which causes mitosis.”
Tracy’s stomach lurched and landed somewhere around her kneecaps. She hated what she was hearing, and what she was feeling. Knowing all she knew about Burke, how could she consider believing a word that came out of his mouth? How could she consider finding any truth in what he was telling her-even a grain of it?
And how could she find the man appealing, much less attractive? He was curt, rude, spiteful, intrusive into her private life, and he was an accomplished liar. Physically he was a work of art, even wearing prison grays. But, dear God, he was a horrible excuse for a human being.
And yet, what he was saying about this mitosis in his men would establish a direct link between the incident and Laurel’s god’s pet project, Duplicity.
Good Lord, Burke wasn’t just implicating O’Dell and Hackett and maybe Carver. Now he was pulling General Nestler into this. Wait. Wait. She focused on Burke.” Unofficial reports?”
He rolled his gaze. “Unofficial’ doesn’t mean inaccurate, counselor.”
,It doesn’t mean accurate, or official.” leave it. But Project Duplicity was Tracy couldn’t be Nestler’s pet project, and while she would love to ignore that, she couldn’t. She had to check this out. See if the project did involve a chemical that could cause mitosis the men’s eyes. She had to do it. Because when she loaded everything on the scales, one thing became glaringly apparent and it refused to be ignored-That damn grain of truth.
Burke’s men’s bodies hadn’t been blown to bits or he wouldn’t have challenged her to check their eyes. But y, she didn’t know other part of his story was true, if an yet. But she felt that grain’s presence down to her bones, and it weighed a ton.
She’d have to tangle with Hackett and O’Dell. And with Nestler. Laurel’s god. Sees all, knows all.
Dread raked through her. She was screwed. Screwed. Pure and simple. She’d never get promoted or he selected for Career Status. Hell, before this was over, Burke would probably get her dishonorably discharged right along with him-if not executed.
But what if Burke was rights What if that grain of truth proved to be one of many grains, and chemicals had been released on unsuspecting soldiers and civilians?
While the grain of truth weighed a ton, doing the right thing and checking out that possibility weighed two. Since the accident, she had sworn off taking risks. Yet to face that eighty-year-old woman she would become in the mirror without more regret, now she had to investigate his claim and find out the truth.
And she had to do it, knowing that finding it would probably destroy her.
Chapter 5.
Destruction can come quickly. It can bear down with the force of a hurricane for a swift kill. Or it can come slowly, creep up as innocently as a swollen river creeps up its banks until it overflows and floods, drowning everything in its path.
The first warning of Tracy’s destruction crept … Swiftly, The morning after her discussion with Adam Burke, accidentally or intentionally through the base public affairs office, news of Tracy’s assignment to the Burke case broke through base barriers and leaked to the outside world.
At seven-thirty A.M., the start of her duty day, the local media, via phone and fax, began hounding her for interviews.
By eight A.M., she had received the first phone threat.
The call had come from a woman who slurred as if she’d been on a week-long bender and regretfully had sobered up enough to have a monumental hangover. Now she wanted something, or someone, to scream at to take her mind off the pain. Tracy didn’t.take the comments personally, or worry about them.
The second call rattled her, but she gritted her teeth and sloughed it off. The man phoning her wasn’t drunk ‘ He was stone-sober, vulgar, and enraged that she would “dare to defy righteousness and defend Adam Burke.”
A colorful string of character-assassinating expletives against Burke and her-followed. Tracy hung up on the man, wishing her defense of Burke had at least been her own choice.
The third call scared the hell out of her. It came in not ten minutes before she had planned to leave for lunch.
“Keener?” the caller asked in a whispered rasp.
Male or female, she couldn’t tell, but she felt the menace in the gravelly tone down to her toenails. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, fear tightened her stomach, and she knew she would be looking back over her shoulder all afternoon. “Yes?”
“Burke is guilty. Get him off, bitch, and you both die.”
Tracy stared at the phone in a terrified stupor. She shouldn’t be shocked; Janet had warned her to expect this kind of reaction. Yet expecting to be threatened and experiencing it firsthand were two different things.
As she put the receiver down, Janet cracked open the office door. “I’m back-” She stopped mid-sentence and her smile faded. “Hey, you okay?”
Rattled from the bone out, Tracy straightened at her desk and nodded, wiping her clammy palm on the thigh of her skirt when her every instinct beckoned her to grab her locket with both hands and hold on tight. But Janet would notice that and she would worry. Neither of them needed that. “I’m fine.”
Accepting her at her word, Janet lifted a white paper sack. “I brought you some egg rolls. Extra spicy. You don’t want to go out just now. Reporters are swarming at the gate entrance.” She walked in and dropped the bag on Tracy’s desk. “So far, I think they’re just locals.”
Relieved that CNN wasn’t crawling up her backside along with everyone else, Tracy inhaled deeply and caught a whiff of the spicy egg rolls. Her stomach had been growling for an hour and the food smelled like a slice of heaven. “Thanks.” She reached in and pulled out an egg roll, pushing the call out of her mind. The paper sack crinkled, and she recalled Burke’s first question. Why had she been assigned?
Considering their persistence this morning, the press had to be what had kept the case here for trial, just as Colonel Jackson had said. It made sense that the military would want to diminish publicity, especially considering Senator Stone, Mississippi’s most powerful Washington representative, was up for re-election in November. He definitely would want to play down this incident, and being a prime force on the Armed Services Committee, he had the clout to have an impact. But why her?
Why had Nestler specifically requested her to defend Adam Burke?
Janet dipped her chin. “So what’s wrong?”
“Nothing you don’t already know.” No closer to an answer now than then, Tracy forced a smile to her lips and bit into the egg roll, wishing she had some hot mustard. “Just some clowns playing on the phone.”
“Damn media hounds.”
Tracy didn’t correct Janet, or elaborate. The crank cal Is and threats would calm down and stop. The public had just buried four men; emotions were running high. In a few days, that part of this ordeal would blow over. Sad, when you got right down to it, but the public tended to have a short attention span. Once the initial flame of indignation burned out, apathy quickly followed.
Swiping her hair back behind her ear, Tracy swallowed the bite of egg roll. Too much cabbage in it for her taste, but she was too hungry to care enough not to eat every bite. “Have you had any luck on Burke’s Intel file?”
“Not yet.” Janet scrunched up her face. “It’s a delicate matter. No one is eager to help him-not even the operatives whose backsides he’s saved. But the team’s funerals aren’t over yet. The last one is today ..
Which meant that emotions were still raw and even Burke’s strongest allies, if he had any, were still on hiatus. “What about the team?”
“I’m working on it. I had lunch today with Dr. Steven Kane. He’s the. forensics expert who was supposed to autopsy the men.” Her purse dangling from its strap at her shoulder, Janet leaned a slender hip against Tracy’s desk. “Indulge me a minute, okay? The romantic in me is in warp-mode, hormone overload.”
Tracy couldn’t resist a smile. “Go for it.” She crunched down on another bite of egg roll.
“The man’s a walking fantasy.” Janet softly sighed. “Brown hair and eyes, a profile that would do Adonis proud, and a give-me-your-heart-darling-you’ll-never regret-it smile.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Be still, my heart.”
Seeing next week’s heartbreak in the making, Tracy resisted an urge to roll her eyes back in her head. “Did you ask him anything about the bodies, or just spend the entire luncheon visually devouring him?”
“I did both.” Janet’s eyes glittered. “You’re the only one around here who believes business and pleasure are a combustible mix. Personally, outsiders just don’t have that special spark insiders do. I thrive on it.”
She did. But losing patience with waiting to find out what Janet had learned, Tracy urged her to talk. “Well, while you were devouring and thriving, what did Dr. Kane say about the bodies?”.
Why “They weren’t autopsied.” Janet dug in her purse, pulled out three packets of hot mustard and two of sweet and sour sauce, then dropped them on Tracy’s desk. “They were cremated.”
The bottom fell out of Tracy’s stomach. “Why?”
Janet cocked her head. “Now, that I didn’t ask.” How could Tracy check out Burke’s team’s eyes if their bodies had been burned to ash?
She couldn’t.
Had Burke known she wouldn’t be able to do it? Is that why he had suggested it? Her gut instincts said no. He expected the evidence of mitosis would prove his credibility.
She should have gotten a stay order right away to prevent the cremations from taking place until after she’d had the bodies professionally examined. If she had known Command was going to break normal protocol and not do autopsies, she would have gotten the order. But no one had bothered to notify her. Hell, why should they?
She was only the defendant’s damn lawyer.
Fluff.
Burke’s slur echoing through her mind, she ripped open a packet of hot mustard. Her spirits sank even lower. Maybe he had been right about Command and the assignment. Maybe with her defending him, the honchos did feel assured of getting a conviction.
First the beating, and now this. Was she bent on blowing his case to hell in a handbasket singlehandedly?
She squeezed her eyes shut. No way was she going to drop the matter. No way was Burke going to look at her through those icy dove-gray slits and make her eat dirt for months because she hadn’t found out about his men’s eyes. And no way was she going to look him in the face and admit she’d failed … again.
She grabbed her purse and the egg roll bag, then rounded the desk and stretched back to snatch up the mustard. “I’ll be back, Janet.”
“Where are you going?” She followed Tracy to the hall door. “The reporters-”
“I’ll be on base.” Tracy hiked up her purse strap and yelled back over her shoulder. “I’m going to talk with Dr. Kane.”
The bodies might have been cremated, but someone had to have seen them first. Someone had to be able to answer her questions about their eyes. And God, but she prayed that “someone” wouldn’t include members of their families. As Burke’s attorney, she’d rather face a pit of hissing rattlers than a single victim’s’ family.
She walked outside, trying to remember where she had parked that morning. Bypassing regular channels and going directly to Dr. Kane was a breach of protocol she would probably come to regret, but it would save her a ream of paperwork and a lot of time. And it wouldn’t warn the prosecutor what avenues she was exploring in mounting her defense.