and he’s a damn good mechanic. Starting from the back, yeah, he could’ve figured how to disable equipment without it showing until it was too late. Killing Latterly...”
Lucas stuck his hands in his pockets, looked away at the mountains. “I’d see him going after the son of a bitch once he found out Latterly was messing with his daughter. I’d see him beating the man bloody for it, especially considering Irene’s connection to the church. It’s harder to see Leo putting a bullet in him, but not impossible to see.”
He sighed once. “No, not impossible. He’d be capable of shooting up the base. Aiming for anybody, I don’t think so. But if he had, he wouldn’t have missed. And that’s one I’ve thought long and hard on since he’d have had Rowan in the crosshairs.
“Dolly? They kept at each other like rottweilers over the same bone. He’s got a temper, that’s no secret, and it’s no secret she caused him a lot of shame and disappointment.”
“But?”
“Yeah, but. The only way I can see him killing her is an accident. I don’t know if I’m putting myself into it, or if that’s a fact, but it’s how I see it. I guess what I’m saying is I can see him doing any of those things, in the heat. He’s got a short fuse, burns hot. But it burns out.”
“You’ve been giving all of this some long, hard thought.”
“Rowan’s in the middle of it.”
“Exactly. Hot temper. Hot and physical.” And, Gull thought, straight down the line of his own take on it. “Latterly and the tampering. Those were cold and calculated.”
“You’re thinking some of this, maybe all of it, comes from somebody who works on base. Maybe even one of your own.”
He thought of the men and women he’d trained with, the ones he fought with. “I haven’t wanted to think it.”
“Neither have I, but I started asking myself these same questions after L.B. told me about the tampering. After I settled down some. We’ve skirted around it, but I’m pretty sure L.B.’s asking himself the same.”
“Are you leaning in any particular direction?”
“I worked with some of these people. You know as well as I that’s not like sharing an office or a watercooler. I can’t see anyone I know the way I know those men and women in this kind of light. And I don’t know if that’s because of what we were—still are—to each other or because it’s just God’s truth.”
He waited a beat, watching Gull’s face carefully. “You haven’t told Rowan your line of thinking?”
“I did.”
Approval and a little humor curved Lucas’s lips. “We can add you’ve got balls to what I know about you.”
“I’m not going behind her back.” He thought of where he stood right now, and with whom. And grinned. “Much. Anyway, I made a spreadsheet. I like spreadsheets,” he said when Lucas let out a surprised laugh. “They’re efficient and orderly. She doesn’t want to think it could be true, but she listened.”
“If she listened, and didn’t kick the balls I know you have up past your eyes for suggesting it, it must be serious between the two of you.”
“I’m in love with her. She’s in love with me, too. She just hasn’t figured it out yet.”
“Well.” Lucas studied Gull’s face for a long moment. “Well,” he repeated, and sighed a second time. “She’s got a hard view of relationships and their staying power. That’s my fault.”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s circumstances. And she may have a hard head and a guarded heart, but she’s not closed up. She’s too smart, too self-aware, not to mention a bred-in-the-bone risk-taker to deny herself what she wants once she’s decided she wants it. She’ll figure out she wants me.”
“Cocky bastard, aren’t you? I like you.”
“That’s a good thing, because if you didn’t, she’d give me the boot. Then she’d be sad and sorry the rest of her life.”
At Lucas’s quick, helpless laugh, Gull glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to start heading back.”
“I’ll walk back with you. I run here off and on,” he reminded Gull. “And I have something I need to tell Rowan, face-to-face.”
“If it’s that you’re moving in with Ella, she heard.”
“Hell.” Lucas scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck as they walked. “I should’ve known it’d bounce through the base once I so much as thought about doing it. You’d think with everything going on, my personal life wouldn’t make the cut.
“Well?” Lucas jabbed an elbow in Gull’s ribs. “How’d she take it?”
“It knocked her back some. She’ll get used to it because she loves you, she respects Ella, and she’s not an idiot. Anyway, before we get back—and I’d as soon, unless she asks directly, Rowan assume we ran into each other on the road.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Generally I don’t mind pissing her off, but she’s got a lot on her plate. So, before we get back, I wanted to ask if I can e-mail you the spreadsheet.”
“Jesus Christ. A spreadsheet.”
“I’ve listed names in multiple categories, along with general data, then my take on each. Rowan’s take. Adding yours might help narrow the field.”
“Send me the damn spreadsheet.” Lucas rattled off his e-mail address. “Want me to write it down?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“Even if Brakeman didn’t do all this—or any of it, for that matter—as long as he’s behind bars it should end. You can’t frame him if you do any of this crap when the cops know exactly where he is twenty-four/ seven. I guess the question we should ask is, who’s got this kind of grudge against Leo?”
Lucas lifted his eyebrows when Gull said nothing. “You’re thinking something else?”
“I think it could be that, just exactly that. But I also think Brakeman, with his temper, his history with Dolly, makes a pretty good patsy. And I know whoever’s responsible for this is one sick son of a bitch. I don’t think sick sons of bitches stop just because it’s smart.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that and made me think the same. Fear the same. If I could I’d make Rowan take the rest of the season off, get the hell away from this.”
“I won’t let anything happen to her.” Gull looked Lucas dead in the eye. “I know that’s a stupid and too usual a thing to say, but I won’t. She can handle just about anything that comes at her. What she can’t, I will.”
“I’m going to hold you to that. Now, you might want to make yourself scarce while I go talk to her. Not too scarce,” Lucas added. “It’s likely she’ll need to take out how she feels about my new living arrangements on somebody after I’m gone. It might as well be you.”
Rowan finished her reports, rechecked the attached list of paracargo she’d requested and received the second day of the attack. All in order, she decided.
Once she’d turned it over to L.B., she could get the hell outside for a while, and then...
“It’s open,” she called out at the two-tap knock on her door. “Hey.” Her face brightened as she rose to greet her father. “Great timing. I just finished my reports. Got your run in?”
“I thought I’d take it this way, get a twofer and see my girl.”
“I tell you what, I’ll dig out a cold drink from the cooler, trade you for glancing over my work here.”
“If you’ve got any 7UP, you’ve got a deal.”
“I always keep my best guy’s favorite in stock,” she reminded him as he braced his hands on her desk, scanning the work on her laptop.
“Thorough and to the point,” he said after a moment. “Are you bucking for L.B.’s job?”
“Oh, that’s a big hell no. I don’t mind spending the time on reports, but if I had to deal with all the paperwork, personalities, politics and bullshit L.B. does, I’d just shoot myself and get it over with. You could’ve done it,” she added. “Gotten in a couple more years.”
“If I’m going to do administrative crap, it’s going to be
“Yeah, I guess that’s where I got it. Do you want to walk over to the lounge? Or maybe the cookhouse? I imagine Marg has some pie we could talk her out of.”
