Free At His Command by Karen Anders Page A

tensions between them. He could feel it even now as they started another lap on the deck. He was sweating freely now, but his body was warming up to the exercise, his muscles loosening.
    “After my run-in with Walker and his intriguing statements, I told my legalman to do some research on the deaths aboard the McCloud and other ships in the fleet to see if there are any correlations. It might give us a baseline and data to see if we have a consistent MO. It will also tell us if Walker was in the vicinity of any other accidents .”
    “And the second confession?”
    “I stalled you on the autopsy for Saunders.”
    Chris stopped in midstride, floored. After a few steps forward, Sia jogged back. She took his hand and propelled him forward. “Don’t stop running. We haven’t finished enough to cool down yet.”
    “I’m not about to cool down anytime soon,” he growled, anger beating in rhythm with his blood. “Why?”
    She didn’t flinch under his steady, snapping gaze.
    “I didn’t have a chance to look it over,” she said with a bit of miff in her tone. “I wanted to do so without you looking over my shoulder. I have a copy in my briefcase in my quarters. Billy gave it to me as soon as I met up with him yesterday in the legal office. I read through it after you dropped me off at my stateroom last night.”
    She offered him no apology and he could understand why. Sia considered this her case and he was along for the ride. Regardless of what her commanding officer said, Sia wasn’t one to relinquish what she considered her responsibility. He understood this woman all too well. Okay, so she had more at stake than he did. She wanted to clear her brother’s name, get him memorialized and bring a killer to justice on a case she thought she may have botched. Chris was sure she thought she could nail all those tasks. When Sia was on a mission, everyone needed to watch out. He just hoped she wasn’t setting herself up for disappointment.
    There was something else niggling at him and he didn’t want to fully acknowledge it lest he also set himself up for disappointment, but he couldn’t help it. She had him to gain.
    What if she wanted him back? What if she could justify to herself the accident had been foul play? Would she then be able to forgive him? Would that be enough for him? He wasn’t sure.
    And that eye-opener changed his entire outlook of his world to some new focus, as if he was looking through a kaleidoscope, trying to make sense of the chaotic colors with a view that was no longer his own to interpret—a potentially danger-filled view. It should have scared him more. He was feeling suddenly off-kilter, like the slowly pitching ship.
    Sia’s speed diminished and finally slowed to a walk. She was giving him sidelong glances as if he would suddenly explode. He was partly angry and partly frustrated she hadn’t trusted him with this information. They walked in silence to the exit that would lead them from the flight deck back down into the belly of the ship.
    They reached the point where they had to part ways and, without preamble, Chris grabbed Sia’s good elbow and steered her into a shadowed alcove. “You have a lot of nerve.”
    “Me?” Her chin angled with challenge and her voice was brittle. “You wouldn’t take the easy way out. You never do, Chris.”
    “I’m in command here, Sia. You will not withhold information from me again. Is that clear?”
    She breathed a heated sigh and faced him defiantly. “Not now, Chris. Not here.”
    “Yes, now. Yes, here. Not everything is on your terms!”
    And just like that she exploded. “I answer to the Navy, not to NCIS, Chris.”
    He didn’t miss the fact he’d said almost those same words to her. Throwing them in his face only made his ire grow. “I was there when your commanding officer gave you a direct order, so for all intents and purposes you do answer to NCIS. You answer to me.”
    “What?” she scoffed.
    “This isn’t a joke, Sia.”