Nelson, page 4
part #21 of SEALs of Honor Series
But she didn’t make a move. He turned at the top of the stairs to see her and her two bodyguards had disappeared.
He looked over at Taylor. “She’s got a temper.”
“I forgot how good you were with blades.” Taylor chuckled. “Although I’m not sure you’ve got such a smooth attitude with women.”
“She was a little too arrogant for me,” Nelson said at that.
Taylor burst out laughing.
Up in their rooms Nelson sat down and checked the laptop to see if they had any messages. He’d felt each vibration as they had come to his phone, but bar-hopping and street-fighting weren’t the time to get into the details. Mason had sent him the little information he had gleaned from the NCIS, but they were not being very helpful. On the other hand, Elizabeth had come through and had emailed both reports.
He fired off both reports to Taylor and to Mason. “Taylor, if you want to look into her father’s file, I’ll read her brother’s.”
They sat down, one at the desk and one on the bed, and went over the two files.
“So their father did have a heart attack, but there’s also a suggestion of suicide. He took an exorbitant amount of his heart medicine.”
“Any reason for him to commit suicide?”
“Not listed here,” Taylor said as he flicked through the pages. “There isn’t a whole lot actually. They didn’t investigate it too closely.”
“If they didn’t investigate it too closely,” Nelson said in exasperation, “how did they know somebody didn’t force that medication down him?”
“Apparently, he had no bruising at the mouth or signs of restraints, so they assumed the medication was self-inflicted.”
“It might have been at that. Did the autopsy reveal any disease, such as cancer or a brain tumor or anything? Something to explain the suicide. Financial ruin? Depression? Blackmail? Criminal activity?”
“I don’t have a copy of the autopsy report here.” Taylor hesitated. “We should ask Elizabeth.”
“Better you than me.”
“I’ll pick my time.”
“Don’t wait too long. It might be connected.”
“You think it’s related?”
“I don’t think anything at the moment,” Nelson said. “But it’s all too possible, if Chris is in trouble, their father might have been originally in trouble. Just think if somebody coerced the father into doing something, and, rather than that, he committed suicide. Now it’s falling to Chris. We need the NCIS file on their father.”
“None of those scenarios sounds very good. What’s in the other file? Open it up and get to reading,” Taylor invited.
“Again almost nothing’s here. NCIS did a bunch of interviews, checked with everybody on board ship as they put into port here in Ensenada, checked with the crew members he’d gone on shore leave with, and they came back without him.”
“Did they say why?”
“Chris refused to come. Said he would stay and party on. If he was reported not on board, then you know the consequences would not be something he wanted.”
“Maybe he woke up the next morning, realized he was in trouble, and decided to just screw that whole life anyway.”
“That’s the easy answer. Wouldn’t it be nice? He’d pay the penalty for not reporting in on time, but then he’d get his life back,” Nelson said.
“Do you think he’s alive?” Taylor asked suddenly.
Nelson thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “I do. At least I haven’t found anything that would lead me to believe he wasn’t. He’s a healthy young man, and, if he thought something was going on that he couldn’t fix, he might have just walked.”
“Did he take the easy way all the time?”
“No, he didn’t. But he also knew when to cut his losses. So, for the moment, I’ll hold out hope he’s alive.”
On that note Nelson went back to reading. Just as he finished going through the file, he heard something at the door. The two men hopped to their feet. Nelson slid to the door, only to find a piece of paper. He opened the door and looked outside, but the hallway was empty. Frowning, he snatched up the piece of paper, came back in and locked the door.
When he read the message, he snorted and held it out for Taylor. “Get out of town. Your friend is gone. Deal with it,” he read aloud. “That’s not exactly helpful, is it?” Nelson said. “How do we send a message back?”
“Good question,” Taylor said, now looking over both sides of the note. “It’s not like they left a return address.” He put down the note, took a picture of it, sent it to Mason and texted, We’re getting a great reception here. People are so friendly. And he sent it off.
Mason sent a text back. Watch your back.
Hey, don’t I always? Taylor asked in the next text.
Mason’s response was Maybe, maybe not. It’s quite possible Skunk has already met up with foul play. We won’t have you two ending up the same way.
You mean us three, Taylor typed. Or do you not know Elizabeth came down here too? She’s in the hotel right beside us. We were sitting in the bar, looked up, and there she was, asking everybody in the damn place if they’d seen her brother. His phone rang. Taylor hit Speakerphone.
“She what?” Mason barked. “Are you serious? She’s down there with you?”
“Oh, we’re very serious,” Nelson said. “And she’s already being a pain in the ass.”
“Now you have to look after not only yourselves but her too,” Mason warned.
“I know,” Nelson said. “Why do you think I said she’s already being a pain in the ass?” And he hung up.
Chapter 4
Elizabeth woke up the next morning, disgruntled and out of sorts that she had not heard from the men. She hopped out of bed, had a quick shower, dressed to step outside to find her car gone. Not exactly surprised, she reported the theft to the day manager. He was not surprised either. With a big sigh, she returned to her room, figuring out what to do next—as far as finding Chris. As for her stolen rental car, she’d report it later to the rental company, when she was stateside once again.
What she needed to do now was contact the men and prove to them how helpful she could be. But where the hell were they staying? It wasn’t like they had given her the name of their hotel. She’d handed over her contact information, but they hadn’t reciprocated. And she hadn’t gotten any clues from them.
“Of course not.” She laughed out loud. “That would be way too easy.”
She wandered downstairs, through the front lobby area and out onto the street. Six hotels were nearby. What were the chances the men were staying somewhere close? It was an obvious choice to stay in the same area where her brother had last been seen.
On impulse she walked into the next hotel and asked if the two men were registered here and was delighted to find out they were, indeed. “Any chance I can get their room numbers?” she asked. “I want to deliver breakfast to them.”
The man looked at her, giving her a tilt of his head.
She winked at him and said, “I know one of them really well.”
He sniggered. “So it’s breakfast you want to give them?”
She gave a nonchalant shrug. “Hey, you never know what might come of it.”
He leaned forward. “Not supposed to tell you, but they’re on the second floor.”
“And a number?”
“It starts with the two, and you add two and then you add two,” he said, “but I didn’t tell you that.”
She beamed a smile at him and walked over to the coffee shop around the corner, picked up two coffees, then added a third for herself. As she studied the breakfast array, not a lot was here, but she added three muffins to the tray she had picked up and headed to the cashier to pay.
Walking past the guys’ hotel clerk, she winked and headed toward the elevator.
On the second floor she walked up to Room 246 and knocked. She could hear scrambling noises from inside the room, then dead silence. She stepped to the side and waited. When the door opened, she smiled up at Nelson. “Good morning. Coffee delivery,” she said cheerfully.
The look of surprise and then the frown that immediately followed lightened her heart.
She brushed past him. “You see? I do have some uses.”
Taylor sat up in bed. He caught sight of her and the coffee and grinned. “Hey, if you’ll deliver coffee in bed every morning, you absolutely have your uses.” He reached for one of the cups as she held it out to him.
“How did you find us?” Nelson asked in a growling voice.
She turned toward him. “You’re not the only one who can figure things out. And stop growling. I’m not going away. Especially since my rental car was stolen almost immediately. So you guys have to give me and Chris a lift home.” She laughed when Nelson crossed his arms and widened his stance. “Very combative early in the morning, aren’t you?”
She picked up a coffee and a muffin and sat down. “I guess I should have brought you cream and sugar, huh? You’re kind of sour in the morning.” She glanced at Taylor, busy munching away on his muffin. “At least you appear to be a morning person.”
He flashed her bright grin. “You brought food and coffee,” he said. “That’s always an icebreaker.”
“For you, yes,” she said. “For me, no.” She unwrapped her muffin, took a bite and watched Nelson, who had grudgingly picked up his coffee, taken the lid off and sipped. He hadn’t touched the muffin so far. “So tell me what else you found out last night.”
“Not much,” he snapped.
She stared at the note on the coffee table in front of her. Finally the message emblazoned through her brain. “Oh, my God! He’s gone? Who sent you this?”
“It was shoved under the door last night.”
She turned to look at him. “You think Chris is really gone?” She couldn’t help the shocked tone in her voice. Or the shortness of her breath, the constriction of her chest. She tried really hard, but the only way to function was to keep all thoughts of her brother being dead at bay. Otherwise it would crush her.
“No,” Taylor said firmly yet softly. “We don’t work on assumptions. Or threats. When we find proof about Chris, either way, then we’ll know something for certain. And we’ll share that with you. In the meantime, all possibilities are out there, but none are for sure.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. Taking five deep breaths, she could feel her heart rate slowing. She wasn’t hungry, but nervously nibbled at her muffin, studying the writing. “Looks like a woman’s hand,” she announced.
The men turned to look at her.
She shrugged. “It’s got lots of loops and tails. Very feminine looking.”
Nelson took a look at the note and then nodded. “You’re right. We sent it to Mason last night. I don’t know if he can match it with anyone.”
“Not likely,” she said. “Who’s he matching it with? NCIS won’t give a shit. And who they’ll really be looking at, most likely at this point, would be other crew members. There isn’t a navy database for handwriting like there is for fingerprints and DNA. It’s a good idea though, but there’s no money to create one much less update it.”
“Too bad,” Nelson said. “I heard they would soon be archiving palm prints and potentially cheek impressions.”
Elizabeth’s gaze widened as she looked up at him. “Are you kidding?”
He shook his head, sat down at the table across from her with his muffin in hand now. “No, and apparently no two ears are the same either.”
“Interesting,” she muttered. She nudged the note farther away from her so she could finish her muffin without having it in her face. “What’s the plan for today?”
“We’ll track down the woman who attacked us last night,” Nelson said. “She had information, and we want it.”
“You were attacked?” she asked in shock. “Seriously? Was it connected to my brother?”
“Yeah, no big deal. She was just there to give us a warning. Basically the same message as the note there,” Taylor said with a nod at the paper beside her. He gave Elizabeth a quick rundown on the incident.
“What makes you sure that this woman would give you information today when she wouldn’t last night?”
“Last night she had men around her,” Taylor said calmly. “The trick is to get her alone. She’s weaker then. The men are bodyguards, a shield, and she won’t talk in front of them.”
“So you can threaten her?” She tried to not let it bother her, but the idea of these men isolating a woman so they could forcefully question her was unnerving on some level.
“Where she doesn’t have to be the big chief and prove herself,” Taylor corrected. “She can be herself without all that outward bravado.”
“Or she’ll be more aggressive as she’ll feel cornered.” Elizabeth considered that. “That might help though. Especially if I’m with you. She might talk to me, woman-to-woman.”
“I don’t think she’s part of any girls club or had any intention of joining one,” Nelson said sarcastically. “She was leading this trio. Don’t forget that. She’s a dangerous one to turn your back on.”
“She doesn’t have to be,” Elizabeth said calmly. “But she might understand, if she knows it’s my brother I’m looking for.”
“She’s pretty streetwise, hardened,” Taylor said. “I think the only thing she’ll understand is cold cash.”
“Or a gun in her face,” Nelson added.
Elizabeth glared at him, then ignored him. Addressing Taylor, she said, “Maybe that money route is okay too.” Elizabeth sighed. “I don’t have a ton of money, but I do have some.”
“Did you bring any cash with you?” Taylor asked.
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Five thousand dollars.”
Silence filled the room, but Nelson gave her a healthy glare too.
She shrugged. “It did occur to me that I might have to pay for information. I just didn’t know what the going rate was.”
“I hope to God you are not carrying that much cash on your person. And let’s hope it doesn’t come anywhere close to that amount,” Nelson said. “But some might help get information out of the Queen of the Block. I think money did matter to her. At least that’s the most popular currency anywhere.”
“How will you know where to find her?”
“I think she lives in the first hotel on the block, across from the bar, just outside where we were accosted. She was lounging on the top step when we came out. She probably thought I didn’t notice her, but she was pretty hard to miss.”
“Okay, as soon as we’re done here, we’ll go talk to her,” Elizabeth said. “Anybody from the base have any more information? And did you guys read the files?”
“We did. I’m sorry about your father,” Nelson said. “That’s tough.”
“Also why I don’t want my brother to be dead right now too. It’s hard enough to deal with one major loss, but, to deal with a second one, that’s more than I care to experience.”
“Do you believe your father’s death was natural?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, I don’t. And that’s also why NCIS isn’t interested in talking to me about my father’s death anymore. As far as they are concerned, they investigated my father’s death and are happy with their conclusions. It’s case closed for them. Neither do they want to talk to me about my brother’s disappearance.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I really pushed to have them investigate my father’s death.”
“So now they think you’re making a big deal about your brother being missing too. Is that it?”
She nodded sheepishly. “I admit, my father’s death was fast and maybe a decent way to go, considering some of the alternatives, but it was still hard to accept.”
“Did they do an autopsy?”
She shook her head. “He had a heart condition already, and he was seeing a cardiologist. So, when he dropped dead, they decided he had taken too much of his heart medication. Maybe he thought he had missed a pill, so, due to his confusion and panic, took two in the same day—or something to that effect.”
“You could have pushed for a more in-depth investigation.”
“I did push, and they cited budget limitations,” she explained. “They had to save it for cases where they actually needed it. There was absolutely no reason to believe my father’s heart attack was anything other than that, when he already had a known heart condition.” She hesitated, then added, “I think they believed he’d killed himself but were avoiding making that official. And a part of me wonders if they weren’t correct. My father battled depression off and on for years after my mother’s death.” She gave them a sheepish smile. “And maybe a part of me doesn’t want to know.”
Taylor nodded. “Makes sense on their part. If there was nothing obvious to suspect foul play, then it makes sense they wouldn’t put out that kind of money.”
“Maybe, but now that my brother’s missing, they’re looking at Chris’s reaction being one of grief and loss. That he’s just decided to take a walk because he can’t handle life after losing our father.”
“I gather you don’t agree with that,” Nelson asked, eyeing her closely.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
He stayed quiet after that.
Although she was grateful, she was also irritated. Finally she burst out, “I’m not making a big deal out of this. You know that, right? Chris is missing. If he wanted to go missing, I’m sure he would have said something to me. We’ve always been close.”
“I can see that,” Taylor said. “If it’s just the two of you, and you were close, you would think he would contact you.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“Then you know what it means if he didn’t,” Nelson said shortly.
