Page 35 of Fatal Vision
“When have they ever?”
A hard laugh. “True.” She reached across the table, touched his hand. “There was nothing you could do about what happened to me. I know that drove you crazy.”
Her touch was as soft as her voice, making his fingers ache to touch hers, to grasp her hand and never let go.
He swallowed the lump in his throat, the memory of her lying in that hospital bed with tubes running in and out of her body and no way of knowing if she would live still a raw wound on his heart. “According to this town, I passed ‘crazy’ somewhere around second grade, but yeah. It was rough.”
The warmth of her hand enveloped his and she gave a squeeze, her large blue eyes beautiful and so damn sincere in the morning light. The caffeine in his system had nothing on the effect she elicited. A pure shot of adrenaline ran up his spine and he sat up, pulling his hand back. “Where are your notes on the case?”
She sat back as well, a pained expression clouding her eyes for a heartbeat. Shoving her plate aside, she used the table for leverage and stood. “I’ll get it.”
He moved to get between her and her walker. “Sit down and finish your breakfast. Tell me where it is and I’ll get it.”
Resistance flashed across her face and she started to retort, seemed to think better of it and relented, sinking back down in the chair. “My office. In the safe. I think.”
Must have been a whopper of a case. She’d always been careful not to leave her work lying around, but she’d also been a workaholic. She couldn’t leave her cases at the office any more than Colton could separate his civilian downtime from his military work. Being a SEAL was a lifestyle, not just a job.
While Shelby resumed eating, he went to her office at the back of the house and opened the safe. At least she hadn’t changed the combo. He found a blue folder, and brought it back to the kitchen.
“There may be notes on my laptop, too,” she said as she eyed the folder.
Colton cleared the table and shoved the dishes in the dishwasher. Salisbury napped in a blade of sunshine nearby.
When he returned to the table, Shelby was reading through the top papers.
“So tell me the basics,” he said.
Her eyes darted back and forth as she read, fingers rubbing her right temple. “The first wind I got of this was in February. Do you remember Bard Langton?”
“You mean Sully? Of course.” Bard had been through the Good Hope Children’s Home same as him, but Bard had gotten adopted by the Langtons and moved to Oklahoma City with his new family. Colton had crossed paths a few times with the man later in their respective military careers, including one very important rescue mission. “He was on a naval destroyer last I heard.”
She pulled a sheet from the folder and passed it to him. “Discharged last December. Never went home to see his parents or anyone else. His body turned up in an alley in Broken Arrow. He’d been living on the streets.”
Colton felt his insides cave in. “PTSD?”
“The Navy won’t share his records, but that’s the best guess I’ve got. There were no dog tags or other identifiers when his body was found, so the medical examiner ran the prints and put them into the system. The next thing she knew, NCIS showed up and took custody of the body. She didn’t even get to do an official autopsy.”
“That’s normal. They’d want to do their own investigation, handle the body on their end and make sure everything was cleared with the family.”
“The ME put down the cause of death as a bullet wound to the head.”
“Self-inflicted?”
“That’s what we don’t know since the Navy swooped in and took over the investigation before she finished. Suicide or murder? At the time I was looking into it, NCIS still hadn’t released the final report, and apparently, there was a mix-up with the funeral home once the body was turned over to his parents.”
“What do you mean?”
“Olympia and Fielding Langton planned to bury their son’s body in the family cemetery two miles south of here, but the funeral home claims the paperwork stated the body was to be cremated. All the Langtons got back were ashes.”
A suspicious gleam lit her eyes. “Mistakes happen, Shelby. It doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy.”
“He was SWCC.”
Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman. The SWCC consisted of a group of operators specifically trained to infiltrate and exfiltrate Navy SEALs on land, sea, coastline, or rivers. Just like the SEALs, they worked counterterrorism, search and rescue, and foreign internal defense operations. “What does that have to do with anything?”
She leaned forward slightly and he could see the wheels in her head spinning. “Was he involved in something the Navy wants kept secret?”
“Sure. Every classified mission he ever went on.”
