The disembodied voice of the stewardess saturated the line once more, asking passengers to turn off their phones. Mira ignored the request along with Ramsey as she headed out of her living room. "We could use the national security card."
"We may have to. But, so far, we don't have cause. And if MPD finds out we pulled a fast one, it'll piss off their chief in a major way. I'd like to avoid that if possible."
So would she. Cops had long memories.
Mira reached her bedroom and grabbed a suit from her closet. The plane's engines cut in as she tossed the dark-blue jacket and slacks on her bed. "Who caught the case?"
"Detective Dahl."
"Jerry Dahl?"
"The one and only."
Mira grinned. She knew exactly why Ramsey had called her. It had nothing to do with a preemptive whine-fest from some agency shrink and those four remaining psych sessions. But it did have to do with her. She and Jerry had history. The kind that made a cop grateful. Indebted even.
"I'm on it."
Mira filed the JAG's address into her brain, hanging up as she headed into the bathroom to turn on the shower. By the time Ramsey's plane touched down in DC, the JAG's case would be hers—and she did not plan on letting go. Because if she worked the resulting investigation hard enough, she just might not have time for those final shrink sessions…mandatory or not.
The blue and white strobe-lit circus was in full swing when she arrived.
Mira eased her black Chevy Blazer in behind the dozen MPD cop cars, crime scene vans and unmarked SUVs clogging the townhouse-lined street. She was willing to bet her own federal credentials that at least one of those Explorers was registered to a colleague from the J. Edgar Hoover building across town.
Confirmation came in the approaching clean-shaven, twenty-something Boy Scout sporting a pinstriped tie and higher-end version of her JC Penney's navy-blue special.
Definitely FBI.
Judging from the no joy stamped along the Feebee's jaw as he tossed his shiny, stainless-steel crime scene kit in the nearest Explorer, Jerry had already won at least one pissing contest tonight. Fortunately, she'd long since discovered that the Scouts were only partially right. Sometimes it was prudent to come prepared…and sometimes not.
Or at least, to not look like it.
Mira retrieved the bare necessities from her own battered crime kit, smoothing the protective booties, latex gloves and a few other crucial items into her trouser pockets as she bailed out of the Blazer and into the freezing night.
At least the snow and ice from the freak Christmas storms that had hit the entire eastern half of the country had finally melted.
She suppressed a shiver as she headed for the blood-red brick facade of the JAG's Victorian townhouse, making it to the crime scene tape before an MPD uniformed patrol stopped her.
"Excuse me, ma'am. I—"
She flashed her credentials. "Special Agent Mira Ellis, NCIS. I'm here to see Detective—"
"Mir!"
Jerry's rough-and-ready Irish form bounded through the townhouse's gaping door and down its half-dozen stone steps. Mira was still tucking her credentials home as Jerry elbowed the uniform aside so he could reach over the wrought-iron gate to haul her into his generous warmth for a soul-balming hug.
"Damned good to see you. Though, given the customer inside, I can't say I'm surprised." Jerry eased back, patting the side of her face as if he had forty years on her instead of twenty—and she let him. "You look great, Mir."
She laughed. "You look gray."
His grin deepened, splitting into the lines bracketing his lips. The same lines stress had begun to carve in during the fiasco that had heralded the twilight of Jerry's own career with NCIS. "I see that mouth and those manners haven't improved."
"Nope."
The uniform cleared his throat.
Jerry spared the kid a glance as he swung the gate wide and waved her in. "She's with me, Mandello." Jerry hooked his arm about her shoulders and gave her another squeeze as they headed up the stone steps. "I'd heard you were back in town. Meant to holler sooner but the murder biz kicked into hyperdrive this fall. Winter hasn't been any slower, especially with that weird rash of snow and ice. Then the news broke on New Year's Day about that goddamned Marine." Jerry shifted his hand to the back of her neck and gently nudged her into the townhouse's narrow, empty foyer, his voice scraping low as they halted. "I left a message for you at the field office."
Mira focused on the closed door of the ground-floor condo, unable to deal with that all-too-seductive compassion face to face and from this man any more than she had over the phone with Ramsey. "I took a couple weeks off."
Whether she'd wanted to, or not.
"That's what I figured." He gave her arm a final squeeze, then dropped his hand. "How you holding up?"
"You know me."
His clipped nod was tempered by two years of working together across abutted desks…and a few stark confessions on both their parts as Jerry's mentorship had drawn to a close. "They making you see someone?"
"Yup."
"Don't fight it."
She blinked.
"Yeah, I know. Blame it on Shelli. I never told you, but things weren't all that great between us before that little shit accused me of tugging on his pecker. And after they found the photos he planted on my hard drive? Let's just say they got worse."
That surprised and infuriated her. "I could've sworn she believed you."
"She did. Shell and I had other issues, ones there weren't easy solutions to. That lying shit's antics just made it all worse. And I don't have to tell you that exoneration counts for piss in this field. Suspicion lingers—even after your electronic sleuthing blew Internal Affairs out of the water. Hell, it got so bad that I seriously considered bailing on nineteen years and heading off to parts unknown."
It was her turn to squeeze Jerry's shoulder. "I wish I'd known."
But she had. And the life-weary detective pulling a set of protective booties
