An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) Read Free Page A

photographers had nervously joked about karma and about how they’d all be different sorts of newsmakers that evening if the helicopter crashed. Maybe White had heard all this. He was zipped into a flight suit, helmet swinging by one hand when he walked over from the bird. He polled the group for how many had flown in a helicopter. Besides the Pentagonofficial and the guy from National AeroStar, only Chase and Paul Shapiro with the Honolulu Current newspaper raised their hands. White had broken into a smile, clearly loving all this. With his helmet resting against his left hip under the weight of an arm, Major Tony White exhibited a quiet confidence. He spouted stats about the 81 and about how vital the bird had been during Desert Storm and current Middle East operations. He confessed his number of missions, smiling through it all, and Chase had appreciated how his confidence calmed everyone’s nerves, including hers.
    A few minutes later, the group ran behind her, hunched under the spinning blades. She paused outside the bird until everyone had climbed aboard, then signaled a thumbs-up to White. Inside, the crew chiefwas passing around headsets. She had reached overhead for hers, heard the crackling of air broken into bits of chatter between White and the tower, and then the nose of the bird lifted. When the theme song for Hawaii 5-0 filtered through their headsets, the spread of smiles, thigh slapping, and thumbs-up gestures had filled her with assurance for positive press coverage. And the rest of the trip couldn’t have gone better. Major White had acted as if he were a paid tour guide, pointing out Diamond Head and the house portrayed in the television series Magnum, P.I. and hovering over Sacred Falls for photographs of the breathtaking eighty-seven foot wall of water that belonged to a beloved part of Hawaiian folklore. He had flown low over the canyon where Jurassic Park had been filmed,and then he’d flown over the Dole Plantation, pointing out the world’s largest maze. Next came a fly-over of Pearl Harbor. Yes, the positive press for this dog-and-pony show, she’d thought, will be well worth all the hassle with Stone.
    Chase stared at White’s name on the list. She couldn’t conjure much more about the man other than the charm he’d affected over the media those months earlier. What she could conjure, however, was the face of a woman in a crisp photograph Major White had wedged into the corner of his curved windshield just after Chase had given him the thumbs-up for take-off. There wasn’t anything particularly unique about the woman. She was pretty enough, with regular features and dark hair. It was the idea of thewoman, Kitty White, there in her husband’s cockpit that had caused Chase to make a mental note of asking Stone whether he flew with a photograph of her, or of her and Molly. And if so, why? Sure, she wanted to think of herself as being there with him always, but not when he flew. He needed a clear head for flying, one for the ethereal side of life, not the earthbound one. But in the flurry of the media circus and its heady aftermath of accolades, Chase had forgotten to ask Stone.
    Now Major White was dead, and the photo of his wife, Kitty, lost at sea.
    North appeared in Chase’s doorway with an armful of media releases and the car keys. Halfway down the stairwell to the lobby, they heard a pounding on the locked front door.
    “What the—?” North raced ahead as if to preempt whatever danger might befall his officer. By the time Chase reached the lobby, he had already unlocked the glass door and was ushering in the woman who looked as if she’d just climbed out of Major White’s photo.
    “I’ve seen you on TV,” the woman said to Chase. “You’re taller in person.”
    The woman in her jeans, flip-flops, and white tank wasn’t dressed at all the way an officer’s wife was expected to dress outside her home. Yet under these circumstances, who could blame her? “I’m Captain