LITMIR.BIZ

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      “In what way?” Annie hoped that if she could get Joe to talk, it might ease the tension between them.

      “Jacobs was a screwup, as I said. All he was interested in was punching his ticket to get the necessary provost-marshal time on his personnel record and continue his goal toward being a major someday.”

      “Oh, that kind of officer….”

      “You got it.”

      She glanced at him, his profile set and his mouth a hard-looking line. Annie wondered if Joe ever smiled. Probably not often, after working under someone like Jacobs. No wonder he was sour. “A lot of problems?” she probed.

      “That doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

      “Were you badly understaffed?”

      “Very. Captain Ramsey just transferred four new brig marines to our office.” Joe sighed. “It’s going to help. We’ve all been standing twelve-hour duty, five days a week. Finally, we can start getting back to eight-hour shifts.”

      “It must have been pretty rough on you. You’re the section leader.”

      “I guess.”

      Annie decided that Joe Donnally was the master of understatement. She had been in her share of grueling, mismanaged situations, where the officers in charge were less-than-spectacular managers. “Pulling that kind of duty must have been hard on your family,” she ventured softly.

      “I’m not married.”

      “Oh….”

      Joe turned onto the asphalt highway that led back to the brig office, needled by her attempt to talk to him. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to Annie. It would mean dropping his defenses, and he wasn’t about to do that. No, somehow he’d have to get Captain Ramsey to put Annie into someone else’s section—anyone’s but his.

      * * *

      Joe hung up the phone unhappily. He’d just called Captain Ramsey at home, and Annie sat expectantly at her desk, looking at him. Stifling a curse, he ripped a piece of paper off the yellow legal-size pad and folded it haphazardly.

      “Ms. Tyler gave the captain specific information on where the shooting occurred. We have to get back there and check it out.”

      “No rest for the wicked,” Annie said with a slight smile, reaching for her cover.

      Joe glanced at his watch. It was 1700, quitting time. “No, we’ll do it tomorrow. I know you have to get moved into a new apartment, so I’m going to send you home. We’ll go out at 1400 tomorrow and check out this new area. I’ve got a bunch of work to catch up on for the transfer of a couple of brig prisoners. That has to be gotten out of the way first.”

      Annie rose and picked up her purse. Since her return to the office, she’d discovered that Rose had kindly set up her desk with everything she would need. “Okay, I’ll see you at 0800,” she agreed.

      Joe nodded and said nothing, watching her move toward the door. Why couldn’t Annie be less pretty? Less graceful? Less everything? Grumpily, he turned back to the demands of the long-overdue paperwork that crowded his desk. Not only did he have to bring Captain Ramsey up to speed, but Private Shaw, a marine in his section, had been discovered to be illiterate, and Joe had been assigned to watch over him and make sure the kid learned to read. On top of everything else, he had Annie. Well, it was too much. At first opportunity, he was going to talk long and hard to Ramsey about getting rid of her. He just didn’t want her around him or his section—the pain, the memories from the past that her presence called up were too great for him to deal with on top of the responsibilities he already shouldered.

      * * *

      The hot afternoon sun bore down on Annie as she climbed out of the HumVee. This time she had a camera slung over her shoulder, a report in hand, and she was prepared to search the area where Libby Tyler had said she’d fallen. Joe Donnally was no different, however much she’d hoped he would be. No, he was just as gruff and grumpy as ever. Compressing her lips, she moved around to the front of the HumVee where he stood, arms crossed, surveying the terrain.

      “This is it,” he said, discouraged by the rough rocks and sparse vegetation. How the hell were they supposed to find the exact spot where Libby Tyler had fallen? Frustrated, he looked over at Annie’s clean profile. He’d thought a day would make a difference in how he felt toward her, but it hadn’t. After a broken night’s sleep, with memories of the past bleeding into the fabric of the present, he was in an even fouler mood than yesterday, if that was possible.

      “We need to look for sagebrush or tufts of grass that have been disturbed,” Annie said.

      “Yeah? Well, it’s like looking for a needle in a damned haystack, if you ask me.”

      Annie smiled a little and set the report on the hood of the HumVee. Waves of heat, like invisible curtains, shimmered in front of them. It was over a hundred degrees, the sky a bright, cloudless blue. Only the refreshing scent of the Pacific Ocean less than ten miles away offered refreshment to Annie’s senses. “Maybe not.” She pointed toward the left. “You see that area?”

      “What, that bunch of sagebrush?”

      “Yes.”

      “What about it?”

      “I’ll bet that’s where the horse dumped her.”

      “How can you tell?” Joe looked over at her, incredulous.

      “I’ll show you.” Annie felt good about this opportunity to demonstrate to Joe that she knew her job as a tracker. As they walked about two hundred feet into the desert, she pointed to several surrounding markers. “She said she fell in a ravine. There are rocks on both sides of this V-shaped area. And the sagebrush down there looks damaged.”

      “It doesn’t to me,” Joe said flatly.

      Annie said nothing, but gingerly made her way down the steep side of the rocky ravine. Once at the bottom she knelt. Feeling Donnally’s presence, she looked up at him. “The sagebrush is broken here and here. This is where she fell.” Annie turned over several branches to show him they recently had been broken.

      Amazed that she could be so bold and sure about her discovery, Joe snorted. “Sure, and the next thing you’ll find is where the bullets hit the rocks.”

      Lifting her chin, Annie tried to ignore the sarcasm in his tone. “There’s one,” she said, pointing to a gray-and-black rock on the other side of the ravine.

      His eyes widening, Joe’s gaze followed her finger’s path. Stepping across the ravine, he spotted the rock she’d indicated. The surface of the huge boulder had been scarred recently by a bullet. Without a word, Joe lifted the camera and took a photograph of it, as well as where the brush had been broken by Libby’s tumble from the horse.

      Annie rose and started a rock-by-rock search for a second bullet indentation. About five feet away, on the opposite side of the ravine, she found what she was looking for. Calling Donnally over, she pointed to the rock.

      “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, and took another photo.

      Annie felt hope soar within her. Joe’s look had been one of praise, not anger. In her heart, she wanted to like him a lot. If only he would drop that angry wall he held up like a shield. Time, Annie cautioned herself. They needed time to adjust to each other.

      “The trajectory of the bullets indicate they were fired from that direction,” she told him, pointing off into the distance.

      Joe straightened. “You’re probably right.” He frowned and looked down at the rocks. “Whoever was doing the firing hit five feet either side of that horse.”

      “Yes,” she murmured, “the shooter knew what he was doing.”

      “I don’t think this was an accident,” Joe said quietly.

      “I don’t, either.”

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