“Never married?”
“Nope. Not against it, mind you, but…”
“It’s overrated,” she said, but did not elaborate. She looked smaller now, all tucked into his big cable-knit sweater, her legs curled under her in the soft deck chair. If he closed his eyes, he could still visualize those legs when she was decked out for business. Copper hair, green eyes, small, almost pug nose, pale white skin with a few freckles. In-your-face sexy.
“Where’d you go, cowboy?” she asked, and he opened his eyes and saw that she was smiling at him. It dramatically softened her face.
“I was thinking,” he said.
“Uh-oh,” she said. The challenge was back in her voice.
“Yeah. Of how pretty you are, sitting over there. And how tough and hard-boiled you are in your day job. I was going to say, how tough and hard you try to be, but the fact is, I think it’s not an act. I was wondering why?”
“Simple,” she said with a small sigh. “I’m a redhead.”
“Uh, yeah?”
“What do think of when you see a redhead?”
He thought about being diplomatic. Nah. “Trouble?” he said.
“There you go. Men expect nothing but trouble from a redhead. So I oblige ’em. That way, they think they have me figured out, and when the occasion calls for it, I can surprise them.”
“Is all that necessary?” he asked. “In the NCIS business, I mean?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Most male agents meet a reasonably attractive female agent, or any government professional, they get hung up on the reasonably attractive parts.”
“Go on.”
“You meet another guy, you put a pleasant expression on your face and you shake hands, and that’s that, right? Guys meet me, they check out my face, legs, my front and back, legs again, and then ask, after I’ve already told them, what I do. It takes everything I’ve got not to tell them I’m a nine-hundred-dollar hooker, just to see what they’d do.”
“I think I might hit the ATM machine myself.”
She laughed out loud. “Studly guy like you?” she said. “Tell me you’ve never paid for it.”
“Only as a Marine in WestPac, and of course, over there, as we all know, it doesn’t count.”
She laughed again and sipped some wine.
“So why the provocative clothes?” he asked. “More dazzle?”
“Yep,” she said. “It works, too. That’s why I’m the boss of my own little resident agency, such as it is, at age thirty. What you see is what you get. That’s my approach.”
“But they don’t get it, do they?” he said with a grin.
“Nice one, Mr. Hall,” she said. “Does that shower work down there, or is there some special maritime incantation to make it produce hot water?”
“It’s complicated, but you can do it. Turn the left-hand knob, the one marked with the H, to the left and you’ll be good to go. In fact, you’d better turn the right-hand knob, too, or you’re going to be red all over. So to speak.”
She cocked her head at him, finished her wine, and gathered herself to go below. “Thanks for the company,” she said. “And thanks for not making some clumsy pass. You’re a very attractive man.” She stopped, as if wondering if she’d said too much. “I’m really bummed about Bagger, and I have this feeling that the Dell case is falling out of my hands.” She smiled up at him. “Takes the romance right out of it, you know?”
“I understand,” he said. “If you get bored later…”
“Yeah? What should I do if I get bored later, Mr. Hall?”
“Jupiter here plays a mean hand of gin rummy,” he said with a straight face.
She straightened and slowly smoothed the front of the exercise suit over the contours of her body, letting him watch as she did it. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. Then she went below.
Jim relaxed in his chair and poured some more scotch. He tried to think about the case of the tunnel runner, but his mind kept coming back to Branner. He wondered what it would take to get through all that armor. And then he realized that nothing would get through all that armor until and unless she decided to take it off.
“She’s a tough one, bird,” he said. But Jupiter already had his head under his wing. Bird, he decided, had the right idea. He gathered up the sleeping parrot and went below himself. He put Jupiter into his big cage, doused all the lights, set the alarm system, and then went into his own cabin. He read for fifteen minutes before the rack monster sounded its siren song and he turned off the light. He couldn’t quite figure Branner out. It was as if she were appraising him, as if she hadn’t made up her mind whether or not she liked him. Actually, like was the wrong word. Respect. Branner was all about respect. He drifted off.
He woke up to the sounds of somebody moving around out in the lounge. He looked at his watch and saw that he’d been down for no more than half an hour. He lay still, wondering if Branner was looking for something. There was some light coming through the portholes on either side of his cabin, enough to let him see the door clearly. The boat was moving gently in tune with the harbor’s tidal currents.
The alarm panel light was steady, so it wasn’t an intruder. Had to be Branner. A moment later, he saw the door handle turn down, but the door did not move. Then the handle moved again, and the door slowly opened wide. It was Branner. She appeared to be wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt, which didn’t reach much below her hips. She stood there for a long moment, barely visible in the dim light, her hair down around her shoulders, the curves of her hips and thighs lovely. She had an expression he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t move, curious to see what she’d do.
“You awake, Hall?” she asked softly.
“I am now. You want a light on?”
“No,” she said, coming over to the bed. She sat down sideways on the bottom edge, tentatively, as if she didn’t trust the bed to hold her. “I need to know something.”
“Shoot.”
“You said you got in trouble, over in Bosnia, when you were in the Marines. I’d like to know what really happened. If you want to tell me, that is.”
He lay back on the pillows and put his hands behind his head. “It was a blue on blue-friendlies firing on friendlies. I was the spotter-the guy who can see the bad guys when the friendly artillery can’t. My job was to call artillery fire down on this fifty-seven-millimeter cannon some Serbs were using to pick off schoolchildren trying to get across a street. Serbs’ idea of sport.”
“Who were the friendlies?”
“An Italian peacekeeper squad. They were emplaced on a hillside below the Serbian position. Serbs didn’t know they were there, but the Italians couldn’t do anything about the cannon.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
“Couldn’t. It was going to take artillery of some kind-mortars, bigger guns. The Italians had rifles. Anyway, I called the mission ‘danger close,’ meaning there were friendlies close to the intended target. The Brit radio operator told his arty people that it was danger, but not danger close.”
“And that made a difference?”
The boat rocked gently as something went by in the darkened channel. The curtains swayed, changing the light in the cabin. “Yeah, that made a difference. ‘Close’ means the artillery folks hedge their bets with the fall of their rounds. Remember, they can’t see the target, so they shoot the first one near the target. My job was to watch to see where it fell and then adjust their fire-control solution. Danger close, that first round is always fired long, or beyond the target, just to make sure.”
“And?”
“They dropped a one-oh-five round on top of the Italian position. Got ’em all. I wasn’t sure they’d been hit-I was three thousand meters away-but it looked bad. Not knowing, I went ahead and adjusted the fire onto the Serb position. They got on in three rounds, and then fired ten for effect. Hamburgered ’em pretty good. But the Italian local commander couldn’t raise his people, so they sent some folks to go look.”