“Oh.” She took a breath, setting her empty plate aside. “That’s my friend, Polly.”
I focused on Polly’s face. Like Mila, she was gorgeous, but their beauty was different. Where Mila’s hair was the color of caramel with lots of soft tones and highlights, Polly’s was almost jet black. Polly’s eyes were blue to Mila’s green. Mila’s makeup was light and natural-looking, where Polly’s was dark and sultry. They wore identical smirks, though. “You two look like trouble.”
“We were.” Her tone went flat. “Not anymore. She’s the one who was murdered. It happened not long after we took that picture.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“I didn’t lose any friends in the service. Hell, I wasn’t even in long enough. I can’t imagine what that must be like.”
“Your injury wasn’t combat related?”
“Nope. They came from accidents.”
“Accidents? As in plural?”
“Yep. The first accident happened when the landing craft air cushion broke down and I was part of the team doing the recovery. When one of the LCACs break down, the team only has a few minutes to recover the air cushion before it sinks, and we lose everything it’s carrying. Gear, people, everything. I mean, when a recovery goes south, the operators usually make it to the boat, but sometimes they don’t. And nobody wants that shit on their conscience, so we bust our asses to recover it in time.”
“Makes sense.”
“Well, we have to use this long, heavy spanwire to reach the LCAC, and the girl behind me dropped her end. It came down on my back just right to fuck up my spine. But it wasn’t like I could just stop what I was doing and go get checked out. We finished the recovery. Then one of the ship’s medics gave me a cortisone shot and I was back on duty twenty-four hours later.”
“Which probably caused long-term damage to your back.”
I nodded. “Bottom disk slipped and fused in the wrong damn spot. Muscles tore and incorrectly healed on the right side of my back, pulling the shit out of my spine. Fractured hip. Minor paralysis in my feet from my sciatica and scoliosis. Whenever I couldn’t function, they’d give me another cortisone shot. There’s an option for more surgery, but it comes with a fifty percent chance I’ll end up worse off than I am right now.” And I didn’t think I could handle worse.
She was staring at me like I’d grown a second head. “And you got hurt again?”
“Yeah. I was one of the few hazmat certified crew members, so I had to handle the acid we used to clean the guns on the side of the craft. I’d just finished cleaning and was carrying the five-gallon bucket back to the secured hazmat locker, when a couple of junior sailors slammed an ammo rail down, causing me to fall fifteen feet off the flight deck. I was trying to keep control of the bucket, so the sailors wouldn’t get a face full of acid, and the bucket slammed into my left knee while my right jammed into the floor, destroying the cartilage behind my knee cap.”
She blinked. “I don’t even know what to say right now.”
“You’re probably just stunned by my incredible masculinity. How I took all those lumps and just kept goin’. Like fuckin’ Rambo or something.”
She laughed. “I mean, it does sound kinda badass.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t. I hobbled around the ship best I could, trying to fake like I wasn’t hurt. But when I couldn’t perform the physical tests anymore, they put me on limited light duty and transferred me to shore command. I started physical therapy and took every damn drug they gave me, narcotic or not, to get through that shit. I studied my ass off and took the tests to get a goddamn desk job to stay in the service, but no matter what drugs they gave me I still couldn’t pass the physical exam.”
“They kicked you out of the navy?”
And it still hurt like hell. “They gave me a medical discharge.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a friend, but I lost the hell out of myself.”
Mila looked away. I didn’t think she was going to open up to me, but she finally nodded, as if making the decision to share. “It’s weird. I know Polly’s dead, but I keep expecting her to call and ask where the hell I am. We kept tabs on each other. She was my one constant, you know?”
I did know. I had Annie.
“Polly would flip her lid if I ever left without telling her where I was going. We told each other everything.” When Mila looked back at me, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Only I have no idea who she was with that night. No clue who the fuck killed her.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I replied, surprised at the conviction in my voice. But I absolutely meant it. I’d do anything in my power to bring Polly’s murderer to justice.
Especially if it meant keeping Mila safe.
11
