American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory (12 page)

Nash turned away from the body,
looking up at the tall, imposing house that had once housed pirates and
mystery. Even though it belonged to Elliot, still, his blood ran through it. It
was a part of him.

“She’s not going to leave it,” he
told his brother. “You’d better do what you can to make this house livable as
fast as you can.”

Beau looked at him. “That’s
impossible.”

“Then you’d better figure out something.
I don’t want Ellie living in a derelict old house.”

Beau stared at his brother a
moment, his brow beginning to furrow. “Ellie?” he repeated.  “What do you mean
that
you
don’t want her living in a derelict old house?”

Nash peered down at his brother.
“I’m going to assume you’ve had some conversations with her, at least enough to
see what she’s like.”

Beau shrugged. “Enough, I guess,”

“What do you think?”

Beau gave him a knowing look. “I
should have guessed there was something going on when you called me this
morning,” he said. “And when you ask me a question like that, I’m thinking that
you
think she’s something pretty nice.”

“She is.”

“I know she is. I don’t disagree
with you at all. But you haven’t had a serious relationship since you and Julie
divorced. You don’t have time. All you do is work.”

Nash gave him a half-grin and
looked back at the house. “I may have just found a reason not to work too much.
God knows, I’d sure like to come home to someone like her every night. Hell, I
might never leave the house again if she was in it.”

Beau looked surprised. “You?” he
shook his head. “What about the commissioner job you’re taking at the end of
the summer?  You’re going to be in Baton Rouge.”

He shrugged. “Only to work. I
don’t have to live there.  It’s only a thirty mile drive from here.”

Beau shook his head, this time in
resignation. “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it. I’m going to marry
that woman.”

Beau rolled his eyes. “And I’m
going to be sick,” he muttered, waving his brother off as he headed towards the
house. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Nash grinned as he watched his
brother go.  But his grin faded when he thought of Femmie Loreau lying dead
behind him and how the Loreau family was going to react.

All of their hostility would be
directed at Elliot, and down here in the bayous, the attitude was very much an
eye for an eye. People still believed in vengeance. That worried Nash a great
deal but he wouldn’t let on, at least not now.  Elliot had enough to worry
about with Alec’s injury. 

He could hear the ambulance
pulling out of the driveway, the siren beginning to wail, and he made a dash
for the front of the house in time to see the ambulance driving away with
Penelope’s white Nissan following it. Elliot wasn’t anywhere to be found and he
rightly assumed she was in the ambulance with her son.  A Sorrento officer was
standing a few feet away, writing in his notebook.

“Where is the ambulance going?”
Nash asked him.

The man looked up from his paper.
“St. Elizabeth’s.”

Nash thanked him for the information
and headed back into the house to find his brother to tell him where he was
going. He also corralled Steve and told the man to stick close to the house in
case the Loreaus came around looking for their pappy. Steve knew, as Nash did,
that there was going to be a heaping load of trouble once word got out about
the killing. Sorrento P.D. already had an I.D. on the body and chatter was
taking it out over the airways. Now, it was only a matter of time until the
knowledge became public.

Nash made a call to the private
security company he had used in the past and set up round the clock patrols on
the property. He wandered through the house, talking to the security company’s
owner, finally bumping into his brother in the kitchen. He finalized the
security arrangements for the property before hanging up the phone.

Beau was inspecting the propane
pipes that led into the stove area, which was really the original fireplace
that had been converted to fit the stove. Most older homes used the kitchen
fireplaces as stove receptacles.

Beau was positive that the pipes
were bad but made a brilliant suggestion on how to temporarily bring propane
from a new unit into the house that would suffice until they were able to do
something more permanent. He also already had suggestions about bringing more
power into the house from a new set of lines he intended to bring down from the
overhead power line that ran adjacent to the structure.

Nash listened to the ideas, liked
them, and gave his brother his blessing. It wasn’t even his house, but he told
his brother to do it anyway.

By the time Nash pulled out of
the driveway, Beau had an entire collection of contractors heading for the
house in an attempt to make the old beauty at least marginally livable again.
Nash figured it was the least they could do considering the trouble Elliot had
since setting foot on the property.

But given recent events, he knew
the trouble was not going to end there.

***

St. Elizabeth Hospital was the
biggest hospital in Ascension Parish, about fifteen miles south of Baton Rouge.
Both of Nash’s boys had been born here and his ex-wife was a hospital
administrator, so he knew the hospital well. He pulled into the parking lot of
the emergency room entrance, having arrived less than an hour behind the ambulance.

Entering the emergency room, most
of the veteran personnel already knew him on sight. Nash Aury was rather famous
around the place, even more famous with the female personnel when he and his
wife divorced. He went to the Admissions counter and asked where Alec Jentry
was. The Admissions nurse pointed him towards the emergency facilities behind a
locked door and he headed in that direction as the woman buzzed the door to
unlock it.

“Sheriff Aury!”

He heard his name, turning to see
Penelope walking towards him through the crowded waiting room. She was
clutching her purse, her mother’s purse, and looked pale and frightened. Nash
instinctively put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. She looked badly
in need of it.

“Why are you waiting out here all
by yourself?” he asked kindly.

Penelope shrugged her slender
shoulders. “They would only let my mom in. They told me to wait out here.”

Nash turned her for the door that
led into the operatories. “Come on, darlin’,” he said softly. “You can come in
with me.”

The Admissions nurse pushed the
button to unlock the door again and Nash pulled it open, ushering Penelope
through.  It opened into a moderately dark hallway with white walls and waxed
tiled floors, smelling strongly of antiseptic. Nash took her arm and escorted
her around the corner and into an area that had four big operatories, all in a
row.  Only a white curtain separated them. All four were full and Nash made his
way down the row until he came to the last one where Alec and Elliot were.

A young African American doctor
was with them. Nash recognized the man. He was inspecting the wound on Alec’s
shoulder blade, looking up when he saw Nash. The young doctor grinned.

“Sheriff Aury,” he said, his
voice deep and warm. “I haven’t seen you in awhile.”

Nash smiled weakly. “That’s a
good thing.”

His gaze moved to Elliot, sitting
in the corner on a rolling stool.  Her big blue eyes gazed back at him and he
swore he could see relief and gladness in the deep blue depths. But she also
looked very small and scared sitting in the corner, something he didn’t like at
all.  As Penelope left him to go to her mother, Nash stood at the end of the
gurney, his gaze moving between Alec and Elliot.

“How’s the young man doing?” he
asked.

The doctor peered at the wound.
“Well,” he said, turning to the nurse when she appeared with a suture kit.
“He’s got a decent wound. It’s not deep enough to require surgery but I’m going
to stitch him up.  He’s also got some nicks on his hands that I’m going to
suture. We’ve already given him a tetanus shot and an antibiotic shot, but I
think overall, he’s in good shape. He’ll be out of here in an hour.”

“Good,” Nash felt a great deal of
relief at that, as if it had been one of his own kids.  He put his big hand on
Alec’s leg. “Can you stand it here another hour?”

Alec made a face, as he was so
capable of doing quite frequently. “That tetanus shot hurt, dude,” he
grumbled.  “My arm is killing me.”

Nash laughed softly, looking at
Elliot as he spoke. “Your mom will take you to get some ice cream when this is
all over for being such a good boy.”

Alec grinned. “I’d rather have a
steak.”

“Steak it is.” Nash took his hand
off Alec’s leg and crooked a finger at Elliot. “Can I speak to you a moment?”

Elliot obediently rose from the
stool and followed Nash from the small operatory. He took her around the corner
into a darkened hall that ran between major corridors. There was another narrow
hall off of that and he took her into that one, just to make sure they had
complete privacy. The hallway was dimly lit and quiet. Once he was sure there
was no one around, he stopped and looked at her.

He tried to speak but at first,
nothing would come out except a heavy sigh. He just couldn’t get past the pale,
sad expression on her face.

“Can I hug you?” he whispered. “Can
I at least do that?”

Elliot didn’t say a word. She
collapsed against his warm, broad chest and burst into deep, painful sobs. Nash
wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding her close as she expended her
fear.  She had held it in admirably but Nash’s soft offer had her collapsing.
It felt so good to collapse against someone, to stop being strong for just a
moment. She had missed this kind of comfort and Nash felt so good, she never
wanted to leave his embrace.  It was heaven.

“Who…?” she sobbed. “Who would do
this? Who did this to Alec?”

Nash leaned back against the
wall, holding her tightly against him as she wept. A big hand stroked her head
gently.

“The police are working on it,”
was all he would say. “Alec is going to be fine and that’s all that matters.”

“But… but….”

He shushed her softly. “It’s all
right, darlin’,” he whispered. “Everything is all right now.”

Elliot couldn’t pull herself
together, not just yet. She’d just spent the past two hours in hell and she
wasn’t ready to collect herself yet. Nash offered comfort and she was going to
take it.  They stayed in their tight embrace for several long minutes, at least
until she stopped sobbing so painfully. Nash remained silent, stroking her hair
gently and hoping that he was at least bringing her some reassurance.

“Can you tell me what happened?”
he murmured. “Did you see what went down?”

That set Elliot off again and her
sobs renewed with a vengeance as she nodded. Nash rocked her soothingly.

“Okay, okay,” he murmured into
the top of her head. “You don’t have to talk about it now. It can wait.”

Elliot’s face was completely wet.
She suddenly pushed herself off of him, wiping at the rivers on her cheeks.

“I…I don’t have a tissue,” she
sobbed.

Nash had her stay put while he
went around the corner and came back with a tissue box a few seconds later. 
Elliot gratefully pulled out several tissues and wiped at her face, looking up
at him with big watery eyes.

“Will you please still hug me?”
she whispered.

Nash immediately wrapped his big
arms around her, tucking her head up underneath his chin.

“You don’t even have to ask
that,” he murmured, laying his cheek against the top of her blond head. “I’ll
hug you as long as you need it. I’ll hug you even when you don’t need it.  I’ll
hug you until you chase me away and tell me to quit hugging you.”

He said it so softly, so
comically, that Elliot began to giggle through her tears.  “You’re crazy,” she
sniffled.

“Yes, I am,” he whispered. “Crazy
about you.”

She didn’t say anything for a
moment. Then, she lifted her head, gazing up at him as he held her in an
extremely intimate position. She was plastered up against him and he was
wrapped around her and, at the moment, they were the only two people in the
entire world. Something warm and intimate was settling between them, something
deeper than mere attraction.

“You know,” she whispered, her
hose stuffy from crying, “when I came to Louisiana, I just wanted to start a
new life away from bad memories. I really never had any expectations of
anything else.  I can’t even believe how sweet you’ve been to us.  You’re like…
like my own personal guardian angel.  I’m just so thankful in so many ways to
have met you.”

He smiled at her. “Me, too,” he
murmured. “I have to tell you, however, that when I went to Purgatory yesterday
to make arrangements to get the rest of our furniture out of there, I wasn’t
sure what to expect. I really wanted to meet the person who bought the home
that had been in my family for two hundred years just to make sure they were
worthy of it. But within the first five minutes of knowing you, I was so glad
you had bought the house because you already loved it as much as I do. Soon
after that, I realized I didn’t give a damn about the house anymore.  It was
you I was interested in.”