Blood Lines
Authors: Mel Odom
Tags: #FICTION / Suspense, #Suspense, #Mystery, #Thriller, #Contemporary, #FICTION / Christian / General
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Blood Lines
Copyright © 2008 by Mel Odom. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of jet copyright © by George Argyropoulos/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of people copyright © by Brian MacDonald. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of map copyright © by Nathan Watkins/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.
Author photo copyright © by Michael Patrick Brown. All rights reserved.
Designed by Dean H. Renninger
Published in association with the agency of Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency, 548 Broadway, #5-E, New York, NY 10012.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Odom, Mel.
Blood lines / Mel Odom.
p. cm. â (Military NCIS ; #3)
ISBN 978-1-4143-1635-2 (pbk.)
1. Coburn, Will (Fictitious character)âFiction. 2. MurderâInvestigationâFiction. 3. United States. Naval Criminal Investigative ServiceâFiction. 4. VietnamâFiction. I. Title.
PS3565.D53B68 2008
813â².54âdc22 2008037937
Printed in the United States of America
14 13 12 11 10 09 08
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Table of Contents
God,
I ask for you to watch over me as I go through my life with my children and my wife. There are times that they don't understand me, and there are even times I don't understand myself. But you have kept my love for them strong even in times of crisis and loss. I know that is one of the best blessings you've ever given me.
I would be a less compassionate husband, a less understanding father, and a much weaker man without knowing you. Thank you for everything you've done in my life. Please continue to bless my family, especially the two new babies added to the mix in June 2008. I only hope that you guide my children to love their children as much as I've learned to love the ones you gave me.
And thank you for being a father to me, for counseling and caring for me during times I didn't want to listen and thought I was smarter than you were. That's just the relationship fathers and sons have.
Mel
Without Jan Stob and Karen Watson, the acquisitions team at Tyndale, and Jeremy Taylor, who edited me into a much cleaner form, though I had to coach him on a few Southernisms, this bookâone of the most important I've written to dateâwouldn't be in your hands. People, thank you very much.
1
>> Gymnasium
>> Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
>> 1203 Hours
“Did you come here to play basketball or wage war?”
Shelton McHenry, gunnery sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, shook the sweat out of his eyes and ignored the question. After long minutes of hard exertion, his breath echoed inside his head and chest. His throat burned. Despite the air-conditioning, the gym felt hot. He put his hands on his head and sucked in a deep breath of air. It didn't help. He still felt mean.
There was no other word for it. He wanted the workout provided by the game, but he wanted it for the physical confrontation rather than the exercise. He had hoped it would burn through the restless anger that rattled within him.
Normally when he got like this, he tried to stay away from other people. He would gather up Max, the black Labrador retriever that was his military canine partner, and go for a run along a secluded beach until he exhausted the emotion. Sometimes it took hours.
That anger had been part of him since he was a kid. He had never truly understood it, but he'd learned to master itâfor the most partâa long time ago. But now and again, there were bad days when it got away from him. Usually those bad days were holidays.
Today was Father's Day. It was the worst of all of them. Even Christmas, a time when families got together, wasn't as bad as Father's Day. During the heady rush of Christmasâmuted by the sheer effort and logistics of getting from one place to another after another, of making sure presents for his brother's kids were intact and wrapped and not forgotten, of preparing and consuming the endless supply of foodâhe could concentrate on something other than his father.
But not today. Never on Father's Day.
The anger was bad enough, but the thing that totally wrecked him and kicked his butt was the guilt. Even though he didn't know what to do, there was no escaping the fact that he should be doing something. He was supposed to be back home.
Usually he was stationed somewhere and could escape the guilt by making a quick phone call, offering up an apology, and losing himself back in the field. But after taking the MOS change to Naval Criminal Investigative Service, he was free on weekends unless the team was working a hot case.
At present, there were no hot cases on the horizon. There wasn't even follow-up to anything else they'd been working on. He'd had no excuse for not going. Don, his brother, had called a few days ago to find out if Shel was coming. Shel had told him no but had offered no reason. Don had been kind enough not to ask why. So Shel was stuck with the anger, guilt, and frustration.
“You hearing me, gunney?”
Shel restrained the anger a step before it got loose. Over on the sidelines of the gym, Max gave a tentative bark. The Labrador paced uneasily, and Shel knew the dog sensed his mood.
Dial it down,
he told himself.
Just finish up here. Be glad you're able to work through it.
He just wished it helped more.
“Yeah,” Shel said. “I hear you.”
“Good. 'Cause for a second there I thought you'd checked out on me.” Remy Gautreau mopped his face with his shirt.
He was young and black, hard-bodied but lean, where Shel looked like he'd been put together with four-by-fours. Gang tattoos in blue ink showed on Remy's chest and abdomen when he'd lifted his shirt. Shel had noticed the tattoos before, but he hadn't asked about them. Even after working together for more than a year, it wasn't something soldiers talked about.