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.
That Ryan Fortune hadn’t gone into hiding was a testimony of the man’s mettle. There was no way he would allow Jason to make good on his threat.
The doctor peered closely at the FBI credentials. “That makes a little more sense,” he commented with a nod. “As a matter of fact, we had to redo the autopsy. Some kind of glitch in the system lost the records for the original so we were forced to exhume the body and perform a second autopsy. We just finished it this morning,” Daniels confessed. As if suddenly making a conscious decision to be friendly, Daniels moved around Lucy and put out his hand. “Dr. Harley Daniels, M.E.” Both Emmett and Collin took turns shaking it. “If you want to talk to the Chief Medical Examiner—”
Collin shook his head at the offer. “In my experience, you find out a lot more by talking to the people in the trenches.”
Trenches. He even talked like a military man, Lucy thought. Once her world had been saturated with military personnel. She’d been away from that world for eight years now. Funny how being around someone she associated with the military brought all the old memories rushing back at her.
A vague sense of nostalgia drifted over her.
It almost amused Lucy, seeing as how while she was living the life, she couldn’t wait to put everything associated with the military and its nomadic existence behind her. When she’d been very young, she used to fantasize that her parents would both suddenly decide to quit the military and set up housekeeping in some lovely suburban area. It didn’t matter what part of the country, what mattered was that it was away from any base. She’d envisioned them taking regular nine-to-five jobs and being there with her—for her—at dinnertime.
She’d clung to that fantasy for more than five years. It had never materialized, but at the time, the hope that it would had been what had kept her going.
Why she suddenly found herself missing that period of her life was beyond her. Most likely it was because of the mind’s tendency to romanticize the past and remember only the good.
It was also because that was the time when her mother had still been alive. Though she’d trained herself to be independent years before her mother had met her untimely fate, there were still times when she missed her mother with a fierceness that went straight down to the bone.
She became aware of Daniels looking at her. “Well, that would be us, eh, Luce? In the trenches.” He sounded as if he was savoring the phrase. And then he nodded in her direction. “This is Lucy Gatling, the most promising med student we’ve had around here in a long time.”
So that was her name, Collin said to himself. Lucy. Luce. Luz. The Spanish word for light. It suited her, he thought. He extended his hand to her. The feel of her skin was soft, almost erotic.
“And what is it that you promise?” he heard himself asking, not quite sure where the words, so unlike him, had come from.
Her eyes met his. The word feisty entered his mind. “Not to be flippant and put people in their place unless I really, really have to.”
The response summoned a rare smile from Emmett, who had been looking at Collin as if he’d taken leave of his senses.
“What
