Chapter 30
Adele DeLong wasn't sure where she went wrong as a godmother. Perhaps she coddled the boy a bit too much and gave him unnecessary gifts to make Vic feel loved. That never meant that he wasn't disciplined when necessary but with a busy life that included political aspirations, perhaps she was a bit soft. That would explain his whimpering and blubbering like a petulant child.
Outbursts that were once infrequent had become the norm since his spat with Captain Rabb. Despite warning after warning that he was not to travel to Winfield house without prior authorization, Gregory stood before her for the third time that week.
"He's out!" Vic threw his hands up and then flailed them around like some poor version of an interpretive dance. He was out of uniform, wearing a double breasted gray Armani sports jacket and pants with a light blue shirt that was rumbled and only half tucked in. He was unshaved, unkempt and smelled like the floor of a brewery.
The flowers he once held, a beautiful bouquet of red roses, had been discarded in a trash bin across town and its recipient would never know he'd spent over a hundred dollars on the flowers in his endeavor to woo the unwilling.
Adele breathed a heavy sigh and considered having the boy removed from the premises. "He who?"
"Rabb! Rabb is out and back with her."
Christ, she was getting a headache and it was far too early for those sorts of things. "Gregory-"
"Vic, it's VIC. I told you never to call me 'Gregory' again!"
"It's the name I suggested to your mother when you were born. It's your name and I have every right to call you as I wish! Now, sit down and try to speak to me in a calm, rational manner before I have security toss you out on the curb!"
He didn't dare argue, the woman scared him more than Vic was willing to admit. Instead, he calmed down and dropped onto the antique sofa in DeLong's private quarters. "I'm sorry, Aunt Addie.. She's…she's driving me crazy. I've never felt like this over any woman."
She probably shouldn't have rolled her eyes but, Adele DeLong abhorred silly little melodrama and her godson had become a goddamned wuss in her eyes. "You really think you're in love with that woman?"
"I am and every time she shows interest that son of a bitch snatches her away." He'd driven to Harm's flat carrying the finest flowers he'd found - blood red roses, a rare variety of them - an expense he'd never spent on any other, even his fiance. "I drove to Rabb's place last night expecting her to-"
"Gregory! I warned you to stay away."
As well he should have but Mac had been so forlorn at the office that it simply tore his heart apart. "I couldn't. She's alone here; has no friends and I wanted to help." And if his brand of help led to kissing and sex on the bed she shared with Rabb, so be it. "He was there. I saw him get dropped off by Cresswell and…and I saw."
There'd been a ladder in the small alley between Harm's flat and the next building, a gift he borrowed from painters when he claimed to have left his keys. When angled a certain way, he was able to scale the fire escape to the very top of the building where he knew of a secret entrance into Rabb's flat.
It was a trap door which led to a spiral staircase that descended into a corner of the kitchen. He quietly made his way down far enough to see Mac's arms around Harm, their lips meeting in a fiery kiss. He remained still, heard them talking about one week anniversaries and the sham that was their marriage.
"I need you." She'd said and the pain in his heart crushed him like an anvil. He quietly made it back up the stairs, down the fire escape. The flowers were tossed in a trash bin of a local pub, the same one where Rabb had beaten the shit out of him weeks earlier. He sulked in the same stool, at the same corner of the bar as alcohol nursed his fragile heart.
"Gregory, what did you do?"
"Nothing. I saw them kissing and I left…I went to a pub. But I wanted to…hurt her and him."
All Adele could think of was her career and how it would be affected if anyone decided to dig deep into Vukovic's past. "I want you to stay away from Rabb and MacKenzie."
"I can't. I love her."
His pitiful expression destroyed her poise and control. She was never the physical kind but slamming her palm to the side of Vic's face was oddly satisfying. Adele slapped him twice and a third tap to the base of his skull was her attempt to knock a little sense into her godson. "You don't love her and she doesn't love you. Stop this shit, Gregory and stop it now. Do you remember what happened last time?"
He shivered like a newborn, memories of his failed marriage danced through his mind like a nightmare. Tally had torn his heart out and it had taken him years to find himself once again. "This isn't like that Aunt Addie…Sarah is-"
"Not. Yours." She smacked him one last time. "She'll never be yours and if this is the reason why you want me to go after Rabb, I'm out. I've had my kicks watching him get dragged to the brig. I won't destroy my career for you."
"I'm sorry."
"Are you really?" She sat next to him and took his hand in hers. "Do you want me to call Doctor Adisson?" Vukovic had issues, she had found the best psychiatrist to deal with them but sometimes, he slipped. Her fingers massaged his neck and she felt him gradually relax. "Let her go, Gregory. That woman does not deserve you."
"Let her go."
"Yes."
"Let Sarah go, okay." But he couldn't and he wouldn't. Sarah belonged to him.
The heavy scent of freshly waxed floors hung in the air of the darkened hallway. It made Mac a little dizzy and she used the cuff of her jacket to block the smell until she entered the sanctuary of Harm's office with him in tow. "Always hated the smell of that wax."
He locked the door behind them and scrunched his nose. "At least no one's in the building." Not that it mattered if they were. "Where's the thumb drive?"
Mac set her laptop down on Harm's desk and flipped it open. The program she'd updated and initiated bleeped in the background waiting for its next command. "Check inside the DOD war manual. Should be in the middle." She sat down and began to type a series of commands into a prompt that would hopefully allow the hidden files to be discovered. Her plan was to copy the drive and return it back to Vukovic's office but she'd forgotten.
"Where did you find this again?" Harm stared at the device in the palm of his hand, amazed at just how much information such a small piece of equipment could handle.
She looked up briefly, snatched the device from his palm and plugged it into the appropriate port. "Vukovic's office and I don't want to hear any jibe about breaking and entering."
"No loose lips here, Colonel." He made a 'zipping of the lips' sign that made her snort. "How long will this take?"
The decoding program had already begun reading files at light speed and breaking whatever encoding software Vic had used. "Could be minutes, could be hours or even days."
"Days?"
She shrugged. "Encryption is a funny thing and I don't hack computers for a living." Although she was more adept than most in breaking into files not meant for investigative eyes. That little nugget always fascinated Harm who could fiddle with a Tomcat's computers with ease but, at home, often had issues figuring out his printer. "Do you think he knows it's missing?"
Harm stood behind her warchting her software run though thousands of files. "I don't know but, as impulsive as he is, I'm sure he would have tipped his hand." He rubbed her shoulders, the tight muscles of her traps relaxing when he did. "Mac, relax. Even if anyone shows, we're here working on my case."
"That's not it." Mac's hands came over his. "It's the thumbdrive. It's him and I have this gut feeling-" Something warned her to stay away from those files and yet, she knew that the evidence on such a tiny drive would likely destroy Vukovic.
A sound came from the laptop signaling that its first scan was complete. "Okay, here we go." Mac cracked her knuckles, switched the file view to visible thumbnails and then sorted the folders in ascending order.
At first glance were the five main folders each created and named around the 1st week of every year ending in 2007. She used an attached mouse to navigate to the oldest, a folder labeled 2002. The thumbnails inside had mini images of each file type. Pictures of Navy life, promotions and finally the preparations for a wedding that never was.
Mac clicked on an image of the future bride and groom, an engagement photo taken in Paris. The woman in Vic's arms was none other than Tally Mayfield. She sighed heavily, recalling a conversation between three women in San Diego, one of the few times she'd let loose in front of her subordinates.
It was Mayfield warning Graves about Vukovic - the prince who would turn into a frog - reverse evolution. "Is that Mayfield?" Harm asked.
"Yeah, it is and now it makes sense why she'd warn Lt. Graves about Vukovic." She explained the indiscreet conversation and the way Vic openly flirted which felt even sleazier than before. "Not sure what we're looking for."
There were images of more women, each better looking than the last. But, what struck Mac as odd was another folder named "baseball" whose password the software had yet been able to crack. Mac tried manually accessing the file, typing in names and dates to use as passwords that she pulled from his personnel file. "Try 'Mayfield' or 'Tally." Harm suggested and the folder miraculously opened.
"That's not Mayfield." There were images of a woman taken from a distance. She had dark wavy hair, dark brown eyes and her skin tone a warm golden color. At first glance, the woman was a spitting image of Tally Mayfield in Winter blues until closer photos revealed someone else entirely, a petty officer third class.
As Mac flipped through each photo her heart began to race when she realized it was the kind of images a stalker would save of his victim's day to day life. It culminated with photos of the woman at a local pool wearing a bikini.
More images emerged of another woman with similar physical features, the photos less plentiful but what drew Mac was a video shot in black and white that depicted a couple on a sofa. They were kissing heavily, this new mystery woman and none other than Gregory Vukovic.
His sloppy, wet lip smacking crackled the recording's crappy audio and as his hand traveled to the woman's breast, she pushed him away. "I said, no."
"Well, you're not acting like a woman who says 'no.' You're hand was down my pants the entire ride." He reached for her again and this time the woman shoved him so hard that Vic nearly toppled over. "Cock tease."
"I don't feel well." The woman's hand came to her forehead and then her temples which she massaged vigorously. "I need a cab."
"I'll take you home."
"No!" She stood but some invisible force knocked her back down. "Fuck, I'm so groggy all of a sudden."
"Let me help you."
"Okay. Yeah, okay." Vic pulled her back onto the sofa, his hands immediately moving to cup her breasts. She reacted with a moan and another push that lacked any sort of strength. Gently, he placed her down onto the sofa and looked directly at the girl as his hand slid beneath her skirt. "I love you, Tally."
Mercifully the video ended shortly after but the silence which hung between the two senior officers weighed more than the building they stood in. Frantically, Mac bypassed several years, her mind racing to remember when it was that she'd first met Vukovic. She clicked the 2002 folder, found the appropriate month and moved quickly through the images.
She was in plenty but never alone, all seemingly images of the office staff on their trip to San Diego. In all of the pictures he leered at her lasciviously and Vic's expressions made Mac's skin crawl.
"Click on the folder that says 'homerun.'" Harm suggested and the second the files opened up, he wished he hadn't. There was a young woman who looked like Mac. The same woman he pleaded with to use her testimony as a way to bring down Vukovic. "It's Jess."
And just like the other's there were images congruent with stalking, at the end was a video. "I'm scared to hit play."
"Yeah, me too." He squatted next to his wife and guided her fingers to double click the file. "We need to know." In all honesty Harm wanted another reason to despise Vukovic, he just didn't expect the son-of-a-bitch to record a crime.
The video was in color this time, the camera pointed to an empty sofa until a couple stumbled in. They were laughing, kissing and seemingly having a good time but the image was too far away to detect who the man and woman were.
"You're lots of fun, Greg but I gotta go."
"So soon? Come sit." Vukovic finally came into clear view. His hands held the woman that he pulled with him until she sat on the sofa. "One more drink."
"No, Greg. I really have to go." Jess' face became visible and when she tried to stand, Vic pulled her down. "Stop it! I mean it."
"I know but I had a lot of fun tonight and I don't want it to end yet." He leaned in to kiss her and while Jess allowed for a few pecks, she pushed him away when his hands roamed over more of her body than she found acceptable. "Sorry. You're just so beautiful, Jessica. I can't help myself."
"Look, one more drink and then I have to go. I'm not that easy." Her sentiment would change minutes later after drinking a glass of wine that clearly had something extra inside of it.
Mac tapped the screen. "He put something in that drink. The drug didn't make her pass out and Jess was well aware of her surroundings, she just couldn't fight back when Vic began to kiss her."
"You'll like it…I'll be so good for you, make you forget Rabb…"
"Rabb?" Harm glanced at Mac and then back at the screen. Vic had taken Jessica's top off and worked on removing her skirt and panties. He touched her slowly, as if commemorating every inch of her skin to his memory.
Most of his clothes came next and when Vic laid Jess onto the sofa and straddled her torso. "I love you, Sarah…I love you and I'm gonna make you mine forever…"