An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) by Carver Greene Page B

next to the alarm clock was a note: Took Molly to school. Call me when you wake. Love, Samantha
    The telephone rang again. It was going to ring nine times more before switching over to voice mail. She used her elbows to lift her upper body. Fourth ring. She was sharply inhaling, wincing from the pain and thepounding of pressure within her head. Seventh ring. She slid her legs over the side of the bed and stretched for the phone. “Hello?”
    An excited voice, vaguely familiar, shouted, “Are you okay?”
    “Who is this?”
    “Paul Shapiro—I just heard you were in a wreck yesterday. What happened?”
    “Paul, why are you calling me?”
    “Damn it, Captain Anderson—don’t you think it’s just a little more than coincidental that my sister and Major White are dead and you were almost killed?”
    The alarm clock on her nightstand read 8:45. Samantha would have taken Molly to school nearly two hours ago. “My brakes,” Chase said, drawing short breaths to compensate for the pain in her back andchest, “went out.” She sucked in several more breaths. “Just an accident, Paul.”
    “You left yesterday before I could tell you that Melanie called me a week ago, frightened out of her mind. She said someone in a dark sedan had nearly run her off the road.” His voice choked with emotion. “I didn’t take it seriously. Told her it was just probably somebody in a hurry or some drunk on the road after the football game. You know? If only— anyway, did you notice anything unusual yesterday on your way up the H-3, or on the way down?”
    “No, Paul. No dark sedan. The only crazy driver on the H-3 yesterday was me when the brakes went out.”
    “You’ve got to admit that it’s more than a little coincidental that—”
    “Paul, stop.” She couldn’t let him draw her into his conspiracy theories. She was sorry he had lost his sister, but she would be making a mistake to see him as anything other than a reporter, a reporter on the hunt for a story. She couldn’t afford her name to be tangled in yellow journalism. Even if she could tell him more about the 81, which she couldn’t, if he quoted her as a “reliable government source,” Hickman would assume it was her. The guilt by association would end her career.
    “Don’t you see? Melanie knew about the problems with the 81 from Major White. She said White was furious when his hard landing wasn’t reported. According to Melanie, White threatened to go over his CO’s head if somebody—”
    “Paul,” she shouted above his escalatingramble, “whatever information you think you have is most certainly unreliable. I don’t want to talk to you outside my office. Send your request in writing.” She ended the call and slammed the phone to the nightstand.
    The phone rang again. “Paul, I said—”
    “You let reporters call you at home, Captain Anderson?”
    “Who is this?”
    “The man who put you to bed last night.”
    “What?” She tried to sit up and winced, easing back across the bed.
    “Don’t worry. Samantha Harold was a proper chaperone. This is Colonel Fig.”
    “You were here last night?” Why did he always make her feel as if she were handicapped around him? She couldn’t recallanything of the night before beyond Samantha’s driving her and Molly home from the hospital.
    “By Paul,” he was asking, “do you mean Paul Shapiro with the Current ?”
    Her mind was spinning, her head throbbing with pain. “Paul said he heard about the wreck. I guess he read a police report about it, or someone from my office—” She took a deep breath. The pain caused her to exhale short breaths. “Colonel, I’m hurting. I think it’s whiplash. I need to go. Did you call for something specific?” She wasn’t sure he even heard her because she’d detected the muffled footsteps of someone entering his office and of someone rustling through paperwork.
    “I’ll call you back,” he said.
    But he didn’t. Instead, he showed up around eleven. Chase, after