All Due Respect Read online

  Withholding a sigh, she looked over at Seth. “I intended to ask you about it, but you were talking with Linda, and it sounded serious. I didn’t want to interrupt. Then, the truth is, I got involved and forgot about it.” Not an admirable or easy thing to admit, but honest.

  “So someone switched the badge, and then switched it back? While I was in the inner lab?” Seth snorted. “Julia, that sounds absurd.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s what I think happened. I know the photo wasn’t yours.” She reached over to her cup of tea and took a sip. Fear dried out the throat in a hurry. “Did you deliberately remove your badge at any time before the briefing?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Okay, then who had the opportunity to switch badges with you?”

  “It could have been any of them. I met with all three separately before the briefing. And with Linda.”

  Linda, who was frustrated and stressed out at again being a Saudi widow.

  Seth frowned. “It’s hard to believe someone could have switched the badge and then switched it back without me noticing.”

  “Not really.” Julia set her teacup down and missed its warmth against her fingers. Inside, she felt ice-cold. “They taught us how it’s done in counterterrorism training, remember?”

  Seth blinked, grimaced, and then blinked again, looking totally disgusted with himself. As if he’d made a foolish mistake and regretted it. “Yeah, I remember.”

  Knowing Seth would beat himself up over this for a long time to come without added assistance, Julia turned the topic, focusing on finding a solution rather than dwelling on a mistake that couldn’t be changed. “So who did you meet with twice—once to switch the badges, and then after the briefing, to switch them back?”

  His grim expression turned grimmer. “All of them, including Linda.”

  Figured. Nothing could be easy in these situations. The thief would see to that. “Locking down the lab won’t tell us anything, Seth. But it will tell the thief plenty.”

  “We sure as hell can’t ignore it.”

  “No, we can’t. We’ve had a security breach, and we need to do the right thing.” He wasn’t going to like this. How could he? He looked guilty as hell of committing the crime.

  And he could be guilty.

  Oh, but she hated thinking it, much less testing the possibility for credibility, but in the past three years, he could have changed. Seth could have orchestrated this. “We can delay a little, but then we need to contact the OSI.”

  He blew out a long breath, rubbed his palms over his thighs. “You’re right.” His tone deepened, became more somber. “It’s going to look bad for me, Julia.”

  “Yes, it will.” She stared him straight in the eye, hating herself for doubting his innocence. Yet doubt was there—and it should be there. Hadn’t he trained her to consider all possibilities, every eventuality, regardless of who was involved? “But no matter how it looks, we have to fulfill our duties, Seth. We can’t compromise them or our integrity.” They would have nothing left, including no self-respect.

  He sat silent.

  And she worried. What if he asked her to keep the breach confidential until he could prove his innocence? Would she? Could she? She shouldn’t. Certainly she shouldn’t, and yet . . . She swallowed hard. Oh, but she hoped he didn’t ask.

  “My words to you. I remember.” He gripped the chair arms. “I meant them then, and they’re just as true now. We can’t compromise.” He swallowed hard. “We have no choice.”

  Through her relief, she felt his resignation, grasped what doing the right thing was costing him personally. And she wondered. If in his position, would she have his courage? She hoped she would, but she couldn’t be sure. Maybe no one could be sure until they were in that position.

  He hauled himself out of the chair. His knees cracked, and a muscle in his cheek twitched. “For the record, I didn’t do it.”

  The flicker of doubt flamed. Never before had Seth felt it necessary to defend himself on ethical issues to her, or to remind her that he had established the ethic. Why now?

  Her heart told her that he sensed her skepticism and wanted to put it to rest, and she wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, to trust him. But her head refused to let her do it. She tried to take that leap of faith—really tried—but the lessons she had learned against trusting on faith alone had been ingrained until they were as much a part of her as her DNA. She couldn’t do it, especially when she alone wouldn’t suffer the consequences of making the wrong choice. It wasn’t right to jeopardize unsuspecting others who had entrusted her with the responsibility of making those decisions wisely. That responsibility wasn’t a coat she could just take off and stuff in the closet because suddenly wearing it had become uncomfortable. It wasn’t right.

  It wasn’t safe.

  Hoping for reassurance and not getting it clearly disappointed Seth, but he quickly shielded it behind remote indifference. “No sense in delaying.” He lifted the phone receiver, punched down the secure-line button, and then dialed the Office of Special Investigations.

  “Agent Twelve, please.” Seth looked at the files on her desk, at the bare foot she rubbed with the toe of her pump-shod one. He looked at the mural—anywhere and everywhere, except into her eyes.

  Julia hated hurting him. He had always been good to her, always had been open and honest. His laughter had helped her heal.

  Seth is an ethical man, for God’s sake.

  But is he an innocent one?

  That, she didn’t know. Worse, she couldn’t prove it. And until she could . . .

  “Do you have some time on your schedule?” Seth’s fingers clamped around the phone’s receiver. His knuckles went white. “Dr. Warner-Hyde—Dr. Warner,” he corrected himself, “and I need a few minutes.” He let out a sigh. “Yes, I’m afraid it is.” He cranked his neck back, let his gaze drift across the dimpled ceiling. “We’ve had a security breach.”

  He paused to listen and then added, “Yeah, we’ll be right over.”

  Julia and Seth took the steps two at a time and entered the unnumbered brick building housing Grayton Air Force Base’s Office of Special Investigations.

  Seth opened the door, and Julia stepped through. Heat blasted her in the face. Evidently, the OSI office was having trouble with the base’s master climate control adjusting to the swift temperature changes outside, too. At the lab, people had been complaining. Yesterday they needed heat and had air-conditioning. Today, they needed air-conditioning and had heat. She walked across the reception area to the first of two desks.

  An older woman, wearing silver-rimmed glasses on the tip of her nose, looked up at them. “May I help you?”

  Seth answered. “Agent Twelve, please.”

  She skimmed a subtle look at their name badges. “Just a moment.” Lifting the phone receiver, she punched in a series of numbers, paused, and then said, “Drs. Holt and Warner have arrived.”

  Julia glanced over to the armed soldier standing guard behind a glass booth. The overhead light glinted on the metal butt of his holstered gun.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll send them right in.” The receptionist—Mrs. Anderson, according to her name plate—cradled the phone then tipped her gray head toward the first of two hallways. “He’ll meet you in the conference room,” she said. “Left corridor, second door on the right.”

  Julia nodded and then started down the long corridor beside Seth.

  Photos of former OSI commanders dressed in dark blue Class-A uniforms lined the wall. All men, all broad shouldered, all brigadier generals. Considering the responsibilities that went with commanding investigations of everything from petty crimes to computer-information theft, project corruption, security breaches, and murders occurring on Air Force installations, Julia supposed the commanders needed broad shoulders—and the clout that comes with rank. Not all crimes were committed by service members of lesser rank than the criminologists investigating them, and some suspects were civil servants, dependents of active-duty o
r retired service members, and some were civilians. The crime that had brought them here could have been committed by any or all of the above.

  At the second door, they stopped, and Seth rapped.

  “Come in.” A man’s voice carried through the wood.

  Recognizing it as that of the agent who had breached protocol and saved her life, Julia tensed.

  “Julia?” Seth motioned for her to go inside.

  She entered, and, needing a moment to collect herself, she avoided looking at Agent 12 by focusing on the only other thing in the room: a conference table surrounded by twelve chairs with worn leatherette cushions.

  “Agent Twelve.” Seth offered his hand. “Thanks for taking time to see us.”

  Agent 12. Typically, it wasn’t necessary or wise to know more about an OSI agent than his number. Interacting with one generally signaled serious trouble; something service members and civil servants alike attempted to avoid. Julia hadn’t even known his number, only that he was an OSI agent. Prepared now, she glanced up at him.

  Definitely the same man. Older than her and Seth’s thirty-seven, about forty-six, with blond hair, blue eyes, and a boy-next-door face that hadn’t seemed to age since their first meeting. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a brown suit, which was a common OSI agent practice. Rank anonymity leveled the field and eliminated intimidation barriers between lower- and higher-ranked suspects or witnesses and agents.

  “It’s good to see you, Dr. Holt.” Agent 12 shook and released Seth’s hand, and then turned to her. “You must be Dr. Warner.”

  “Yes.” Julia clasped and shook. Not a hint of recognition in his eyes. None. He looked at her as if she were a complete stranger. Convenient amnesia must be a job skill an agent developed with practice. He was good at it. “How are you?”

  He motioned for them to sit and returned to his chair. “Any better, and it’d kill me.”

  A lie, and they all knew it. Things were rough all over. In the last six years, the military had suffered a forty percent drawdown in forces and a budget strung so tight that a minor, unanticipated conflict outside U.S. borders sent the administration scurrying to Congress to beg for money and stretched resources and personnel so thin that CONUS—the continental U.S.—was left vulnerable. Things were definitely rough all over.

  “So,” Agent 12 said, “tell me about this security breach.”

  Julia let Seth talk, and he did so at length.

  The longer she sat there listening, the more intensely her head ached. Partly from pretending she had never seen Agent 12 before, and—she glanced at her watch—partly because she, Agent 12, and Seth had been cloistered in the secure briefing room for over an hour already. Every known detail about the sensor-code theft had been related. Every potential challenge that could arise had been thoroughly discussed. For the past ten minutes, Seth and Agent 12 had been rehashing events and the potential impact of the stolen sensor codes.

  Julia recognized the pattern’s methodology. Agent 12 absorbed all the data, sifted through, doubled back for verifications and clarifications—no doubt factoring in intelligence report contents he had access to that they did not—and then formed a plan of action. If jackhammers weren’t having a field day inside her head, she might have appreciated the intricacies of the mental process. Instead, she couldn’t focus beyond doubting Seth and hoping Agent 12 drew some conclusions soon. If she wanted to get through the headache—the guilt for doubting Seth would take longer—before it got to the migraine, throw-your-guts-up stage, then she needed food, medication, a hot bath, and a cold glass of juice. And she needed them fast.

  Agent 12 looked up from a legal pad of scribbled notes only he and God could possibly decipher. “So, in your professional opinions, the sensor-codes theft poses a real and serious danger, but not an immediate threat. Am I clear on that?”

  Seth responded. “Yes.”

  “Can we reprogram the codes?”

  “We can, but we’ll lose maximum effectiveness,” Seth responded succinctly. “The systems are interdependent. Change one, and you’ve got to change them all to maintain the highest precision probability ratings.”

  “It’d be a nightmare to do,” Julia added. “But if necessary, we have the ability to make it happen.”

  “True.” Seth nodded. “But maybe not before the hostiles do and they inflict serious damage on us.”

  Agent 12 fixed his gaze on his pad. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do.” He leaned back in his chair, gripped its arms, and then laid out his plan of action. “Officially, the OSI is investigating. But no word of the matter is to leave this room. Tell no one that the codes have been copied.”

  “Not even Colonel Pullman?” Julia asked. The lab commander should know about this.

  “Isn’t he still TDY to Switzerland?”

  “Yes, he is,” Seth said. “Two more weeks.”

  Agent 12 nodded. “Then, at the moment, he has no need to know.”

  Julia saw the logic in that. Pullman was thousands of miles away, unable to do anything, so why drag him into the net and risk further comprising security? “What about lab Security or the Home Base team members?” she asked. She knew the answer, but she wanted it official.

  “No, not a word about the theft,” Agent 12 confirmed. “And no one is to know an investigation is in progress. That’s vital.”

  “Is this the best possible course of action?” Julia squinted against the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights. “Being unaware, another team member could divulge crippling information to the thief.”

  “I hope so.” Agent 12 gave her a solemn nod. “When the theft seems to go unnoticed, the thief is going to doubt that he or she stole the right sensor codes. If the right codes had been stolen, then the lab would be locked down and a formal investigation launched. Security, OSI agents, Intel, a team from the Inspector General’s office—everyone would be swarming the place, crawling up everyone’s backside and down their throats, right?”

  “Yes,” Julia answered. They would be in everyone’s face with microscopes, digging into professional and personal relationships, sifting through every tidbit of data, much of which would prove insignificant but had to be investigated and verified to be dismissed.

  “So the absence of an investigation, and of anyone seeming to notice a theft in a high-security area has occurred, makes doubt gnaw at the thief. He needs confirmation.” The agent gave her a steely look. “When he seeks it, he tips his hand. We’ll know it.”

  “It’s our best shot,” Seth agreed.

  “That’s the way I see it.” Agent 12 stood up. “Keep me posted on anything unusual. Even if it seems trivial. Sometimes what seems insignificant makes the case.”

  Julia gathered her purse. “Nothing about a theft in a Black World vault’s inner lab is insignificant, Agent Twelve.”

  “True.” He nodded an apology. “I’ll have someone review the Security films. Maybe we got lucky and the cameras picked up your badge being switched, Dr. Holt. If not—”

  “I know.” Seth dipped his chin. “I’m guilty until proven innocent.”

  “I’m afraid so.” Agent 12 turned his gaze to Julia. “Theoretically, I should pull Dr. Holt’s clearances until this matter is resolved.”

  Julia glimpsed Seth out of the corner of her eye. He fully expected she would ask Agent 12 to do exactly that. And she should. But she hesitated, wavering, and then did the only thing she could tolerate doing, though she cursed herself as a damn fool for it. “I’ll accept responsibility. As I said, I noted the badge had been switched before the theft. As far as I’m concerned, Dr. Holt has already been proven innocent of the security breach.”

  She’d said and meant it. Now she had to hope she could live with it—without regret, and without creating more demons.

  Why had she done it?

  Seth closed the Lexus’s passenger door, glanced at Julia through the window, and then walked around the hood and got in on the driver’s side. He still couldn’t figure it out.

/>   Julia hadn’t accepted personal responsibility for him out of a sense of loyalty. When it came to security breaches, she had no loyalty. She might not be convinced he was guilty, but she doubted he was innocent. No way had he misinterpreted that.

  She sat silently, staring straight ahead, her purse in her lap. Something strange was going on with her, right down to her name. Jeff and the kids called her Dr. Julia. Understandable. Dr. Warner-Hyde was a mouthful for six-year-old kids, and confusing, with a “Mr. Warner” also teaching at the same school. But why had she introduced herself as “Warner” and dropped “Hyde” from her surname at Grayton?

  Seth cranked the engine, pulled out of the OSI parking lot, and then headed back across base toward the office. At the intersection of Powell Drive and General Mayes Boulevard, he braked at the four-way stop. A blue truck crossed the intersection. His headlights shone against its door.

  The silence in the Lexus was deafening; even the blinker flashing sounded like thunder. This wasn’t the companionable silence he and Julia had enjoyed. This silence was stone-cold, tense, and anything but comfortable.

  Seth punched down on the gas pedal, hooked a left, and fell into line behind the truck. He couldn’t blame her for doubting him. After all, he had trained her to doubt—particularly on security-breach incidents. Julia always had seemed wary of others’ motives, but he couldn’t fault her for that, either. Long before he had joined the Special Forces, wariness had proven its value as an essential survival skill.

  So, she doubted him. He couldn’t condemn her for it, and he hadn’t. Not verbally, anyway. But she sensed it; hence, the silence. He wasn’t being fair.

  Bent on making things right, he passed the credit union and stopped at the traffic light by the service station. He glanced at the dashboard clock, and then over at Julia. Still stiff and wooden. “It’s nearly seven. Do you want to grab some dinner?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s been a long day, and my head is killing me.”