Chapter 37

"Sorry Sir, I guess I could have found a more diplomatic way of saying that," Mac sighed. "Vicky Frazier was involved in the accidental death of her mother's boyfriend when she was twenty years old. Then just before she moved here, she had been released from prison for the stabbing death of the man that killed her mother. Both times it appears that she was protecting her mother from abusive men."

"Good Lord!" AJ exclaimed, reaching for the file folder that Mac held out to him. Flipping through it he stated, "Even with all that, there's no reason for her to want to kill me. I never knew her mother!"

"Yes you did Sir. It was a long time ago, but you and her mother were high school sweethearts. Her mother was Louise Tate."

"Louise! I haven't thought about her in years…still our romance, such as it was, was before Vicky was born. What reason would she have to kill me?"

"I don't claim to know how her mind works Sir, but I'm sure that she is the one after you and it has to have something to do with her mother. Bud found out that the two of you had an argument at your graduation party, did you maybe…I mean could things have gotten out of hand and you…" Mac broke off not knowing how to voice the question she didn't really want to ask at all.

"No Mac! I never laid a hand on her, or any other woman for that matter, and I can't believe that you would even think it!"

"I'm sorry Sir! I know you better than that now, but we all do things in our youth that we regret, so I felt that I had to ask. So if you never hurt her mother, why does she want to kill you?"

"I never said I didn't hurt Louise," he sighed softly.

"Sir?" Mac questioned disbelievingly.

"I had proposed to Louise, but then found out I was going to be shipped off Viet Nam. I asked her to wait for me, but she didn't want to, she wanted to be married before I left. I felt that it would be harder on her to be left a widow than if we were just engaged, so refused. She vowed to hate me forever as I got on the train."

Mac wiped a tear from her eye as she thought of that sad parting when he was such a young man. To be going off to war with the woman he loved vowing to hate him…she sighed, she would never have done such a thing! She would have waited for him forever! It didn't matter that she was thirty-seven and all this happened before she was born, she knew that if she had ever been given the chance to love AJ openly, she would have done all she could to keep him! But that didn't matter here and now, and would never happen anyway, so she had to get her mind back on what they were dealing with now. AJ's life depended on it! "Sir, if her mother had told Vicky that…"

She was interrupted by the buzz of the intercom. Coates announced that Vicky was there for her lunch date with the Admiral. AJ turned to answer, and Mac thought quickly. Reasoning that if Vicky were made jealous, then maybe she would come after the person that made her jealous. If she did so, then maybe AJ would see that it had to be Vicky that was out to kill him. But how to make Vicky so jealous that she would come after someone else? Then it hit her, as if from out of the blue! She could do what she had always wanted to do and it would serve two purposes!

The first would be that she would finally know what she had missed out on all those years ago, and the second, hopefully, would make Vicky so jealous that she would come after her. So she jumped to her feet and was inches from AJ's face when he turned back from telling Coates to send Vicky in.

AJ was startled to find Mac 'in his face' when he turned around, and with nowhere to back up to, he was pinned against his desk. Just about to demand to know what she was up to, Mac whispered, almost against his lips, "I hope you'll understand," right before she kissed him!

To be continued…..