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She blinked and waited but no more information was forthcoming.Okaaayy. “Perhaps you could uncomplicate it for me.” She was trying to keep herself reined in, but these two were pushing the limits.
Cain finally relented. “We are under Wainwright since he commands the MSRT group, but we report directly to Admiral George Bertrand, in Washington.”
Holy shit.She didn’t see that coming. A direct line to an Admiral. Who the hell were these people?
She looked back at Dane and decided to bite the bullet. He was already pissed off, might as well go for it. “What did Owens do when he found out about the report?”Something that never should have happened.Owens never should have known who lodged a report against him.
“He yelled at me. Told me I had it all wrong. It wasn’t his truck.”
She waited a beat, but Landry wasn’t talking. She knew there was more, but he’d clammed up. She’d thought he would tell her the whole story and she was pretty sure he intended to but something stopped him. There was more to this. Maybe whatever it was linked him to Owen’s death.
“That’s all he did?”
Landry didn’t respond, but Maddox jumped in. “Maybe we could move on. As I said, my people are tired. It’s been a long day.”
She was being dismissed, and that fact pissed her off, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. “Where were you last night between twenty-three-hundred hours and oh-four-hundred hours?”
“I was at my place. I went to bed at around twenty-two hundred. Got up at oh-four-thirty and was here on base at oh-five-hundred.”
“Is there anyone who can verify that you were home sleeping?” She suddenly realized she really wanted him to answer no. Not because she thought he’d killed Owens, although it was a possibility, but because she didn’t want him to have a girlfriend.No dating people at work, she reminded herself. Dane Landry just had something…some sort of energy that filled her belly with excitement.
“No.”
She was stupidly happy with that answer. “Right. I think I have what I need. If I need additional information, I will let you know.” When she stood, he stood as well. She nodded to him and walked out of the hangar; the entire team’s gaze was following her the whole way.
Once outside, she got in her car and drove the two minutes down the road to her office. The heat of the day was starting to wane. The gulls were still crying overhead but not like they did in the morning. The salt on her skin from her morning’s adventure out on the water was making it dry and scratchy. She needed a shower and a snack. Another muffin? Maybe not. She hadn’t had much luck today with muffins.
The issue topmost in her mind was Casper. The inaccuracy of the initial report had led her to get crushed in that interview just now. She needed to get back to her desk and review it again. There was a small chance Dane was lying, but she didn’t think so.Dane.She should call him Landry, but somehow in her mind, he’d made the switch to Dane. Instinctively, she liked him, believed him, but her instincts had been wrong before. The fact that this group had their own hangar and answered directly to an admiral in DC meant she was going to have to move very carefully around them.
It was time to confront Casper. If he raised his eyebrows, then she’d know for sure her boss had fucked up. The only real question would be, did he do it on purpose as Dane thought, or by mistake?
CHAPTERSEVEN
“Iknow you’re all exhausted and want to head home, but if you want, I’ll tell you the rest of what happened with Owens.”
He had planned on telling the whole thing to Rankin but something held him back. Maybe a sense of self-preservation. If he said what really happened in front of her, it gave him a hell of a motive to kill Owens.
The team joined him at the kitchen table. Jace retrieved beers from the fridge and handed them out, then took his seat.
Dane smiled. This was as close to sharing his story on his own terms as he was going to get. At least they’d gotten the ‘over beers’ part right. “After Owens found out about me filing the report, and confronted me, I asked for a transfer, but Wainwright said he didn’t have anything at the moment and wasn’t going to let an asset go to waste, so I had to stay put until something opened up. Owens and the rest of the team made my life miserable. They were pissed off. I got it. I didn’t blame them. I would be pissed, too.”
He took a swig of beer and allowed the cool liquid to wash away the lump building in his throat. He’d never said the rest of this out loud before. He had no proof, and there was no one to tell anyway. Who would believe him?
“We were running drills on a cargo ship like today. We did that a lot more with Owens. He was big on training. Anyway, it was the first run. My job was to provide cover fire from the top of the container, only it wasn’t from the top of one container. Like today’s exercise, it was from the top of the third container. The drill started fine. Everyone had cleared the deck and I was coming down the metal ladder attached to the stack when my hands slipped, and I fell backward. I landed on the deck about twenty feet down and broke my L1 vertebra. Hairline fracture and damn lucky it wasn’t more.”
He took another slug of beer, more to avoid looking at anyone than because he was thirsty. He cleared his throat. “I banged my head, but because of the helmet, I blacked out only for a second. I had a concussion, but I’ve had worse playing football. The real problem was a bolt that had been sticking up on the deck was lodged in my back near my spine. It was agonizing. Anyway, the rest of the team was slow to come over to offer help. I distinctly remember the surprise on Joel Cameron’s face when he saw my eyes were open. He thought for sure I was dead. He said, and I quote, ‘Shit, he’s still alive.’”
“Sonofabitch,” Tac mumbled.
Dane nodded. “They forgot I had an earbud in. I heard them discuss the fact that I didn’t die, and now what were they going to do?”
“Did you tell anyone?” Jace asked.
“Who the hell was he gonna tell?” Koa demanded. “His CO sent him to CGIS, and that’s how he got in that position in the first place. He had no one left to tell.”
He met Koa’s gaze and nodded. Koa had gotten it in one.
“How did they make you fall?” Cain asked.
