American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory (21 page)

“The… the last time… it was a
shooting and he didn’t come back,” she wept. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. It just
brings back very bad memories.”

Nash held her tightly, his face
in the top of her head.  He could feel her fear, her grief, and it broke his
heart.

“I’m coming back,” he assured
her. “I swear, I’m coming back. My vest is in the back of the car and I’ll put
it on as soon as I get there. I won’t leave you, Ellie, not ever. I promise.”

She pulled herself together,
wiping at her face and trying to pretend she was really okay with all of it. 
Mostly, she knew he had to go and she didn’t want to delay him any more than
she had.

“I’m fine, really,” she insisted,
sniffing and wiping at her nose. “You’d better go. They need you.”

Nash wasn’t convinced. He gazed
down at her, seeing how hard she was struggling, and he cupped her face and
kissed her sweetly on the lips, tasting her salty tears.

“I love you,” he murmured. “I
swear I’m coming back.”

She nodded, smiling bravely. “I
know you are.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I won’t.”

He didn’t believe her but he
didn’t voice his thoughts. Kissing her one last time, he gave her a squeeze and
made his way to his car, turning on the rotators as he pulled out of the
driveway.  Elliot could hear the siren light up as he hit the road at the end
of the driveway.  She stood there and listened until it faded off into the
distance, praying that he was right and that he would return to her. 

There was no way she could have
stood the grief if he didn’t.

***

The electrician and plumber
showed up about an hour after Nash left.  Part of the south side of the house
and part of the driveway was torn up with the plumber digging a new septic line
and he wanted to finish it.  The electrician was working a Saturday shift
because Beau had stressed how important it was to get the house fully wired and
cabled. He brought three men with him and they got to work sometime before
noon.

Meanwhile, Elliot had tried not
to think of what Nash was doing but it was difficult not to think of the man
every second.  She decided that keeping busy was the best thing for her so she
focused on unpacking the rest of her bedroom, using Alec to put together the
heavy bed frame so she could put her mattress on it.  The mattress was still on
the floor.  Between her and Alec, they managed to get almost everything
unpacked from her boxes and into drawers. 

Items that were still left in the
hanging boxes needed a closet, and there were none. Elliot thought they should
use the smaller back bedroom where the stairs to the kitchen were for their
closet items until they could figure it out what else to do. Alec liked the
idea of going to Wal-Mart and getting rolling racks, mostly because he just
wanted to get out of the house and do something. Elliot sent her stir-crazy son
out to Wal-Mart for the racks while she stayed at the house. She didn’t want to
leave Penelope alone with the contractors.

With her room at least somewhat
unpacked and organized, Elliot did something she hadn’t done in almost two weeks
– pick up her computer and resume work on a novel that had an October deadline.

This novel had already been
purchased purely based on the story outline for nearly a half million dollars,
something she was very excited about.  It would help pay for the restoration of
the house. It was the story of a knight who returned from King Richard’s
crusade a vampire, having been caught up in a coven in Bavaria on his way home
from The Holy Land.  Her agent and publisher loved it already and she had to
admit it was coming along nicely.   

Taking her laptop and a chair out
to the newly reinforced balcony, she sat outside of Penelope’s bedroom
overlooking the bayou and began to work.  Her daughter was in the yard below
her, still playing with the dog.  She could hear Penelope laughing and talking
to the dog, which she now had on a leash because of the contractors.  As Elliot
typed away, Penelope called up to her.

“Mom?” she yelled.

“I’m up here,” Elliot called
back.

Penelope moved away from the
house until she could see her mother perched up on the balcony.  “I want to go
for a run,” she told her. “Can I take the dog?”

Elliot stopped typing. “I’m not
sure that would be a good idea,” she said. “He just came here today. We should
probably let him get used to his surroundings before we start taking him out
and about.”

Penelope shrugged. “Okay,” she
looked around, spying a big chain that was anchored by a spike driven in to the
ground.  It was half way between the back yard and the driveway, lodged in some
trees.  She pointed at it. “Did Nash put that chain there for him?”

Elliot looked to see what she was
pointing at. “Yes,” she said. “He put that there this morning when he brought
him. Hook the dog up before you go and make sure he has a bowl of water.”

Penelope did as she was told,
also leaving the dog some of the rib bones that were left over in the new
refrigerator. Wolfgang had a delicious meal of barbeque ribs and bones, happy
in his shaded and cool spot but missing his new friend when she went into the
house to change into her running clothes. 

Elliot sat on the balcony where
she could see both the dog and the bayou, the perfect relaxing retreat had she
not been fighting off thoughts of Nash. 

Elliot could hear Penelope
banging around in her bedroom behind her. Shortly, her daughter emerged in
running shorts, a singlet and her running shoes.  Her light brown hair was
pulled back in a ponytail as she bent over to quickly kiss her mom good-bye.

“Where are you going?” Elliot
wanted to know.

Penelope was stretching out her
slender frame. “Down the street, down another street… I don’t know. I’m not
that familiar with the area yet.”

“If you don’t tell me where, you
don’t go.”

Penelope frowned. “This isn’t
California, Mom. There isn’t a drug dealer or criminal on every corner.”

Elliot looked up from her laptop.
“I’m serious, Pen.”

Penelope sighed with
exaggeration. “I’m going to go down the driveway and to the left for about a
mile. Then I’m going to come back and run the other way for about two miles.
Then I’m going to come back home.”

“So you’re just going on the main
road?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, you can go now.”

Penelope skipped off and Elliot
returned to her novel. As she wrote about the knight, who by now in the book
had turned into a creature of the night, she realized the description of the
knight nearly fit Nash perfectly. The knight was older, with brown hair, hazel
eyes and a sexy build, only now the knight’s eyes were jet black because he had
turned into a vampire. She snickered as she thought of changing the character’s
name from Sloane to Nash.  She wondered what he would have to say about that
when the book came out and he discovered that there were several very explicit
sex scenes in it, one involving a bloody orgy.  Much like her not liking what
he did for living, he might very well not like what she did, either. She
giggled again when she thought of a vampire knight named Nash.

The late morning rolled into noon
and the weather remained surprisingly mild for June in Louisiana. Elliot was
swept up in a chapter, her cell phone next to her and glancing at it every so
often as if willing Nash to call.  She heard her car pull up in the driveway,
knowing that Alec was home with the rolling racks.  Taking the computer inside
and putting it down on her bed, she went downstairs to help her son bring in
the racks.

By the time she reached the
driveway, he was hauling out boxes from the back of the Jeep.  Elliot casually
noticed the plumbers trenching and the electricians wiring up the porch light
as she went out to the car.

“How many did you get?” she asked
him as he continued to remove boxes.

“Three big ones,” he told her.
“One for you, one for me and one for Penny.”

Elliot scratched her head and
suddenly looked around. “Speaking of your sister, did you see her running out
on the road?”

Alec shook his head. “No,” he
replied. “Why?”

Elliot shrugged. “She’s been gone
a while.” She took one of the boxes and began hauling it towards the house. “Go
back out there and see if you can find her, okay? She doesn’t know this area
well and I’m afraid she might have gotten herself lost.”

Alec made a face, a normal
gesture with him. “She’s fine.”

“Go. That is not a request.”

He looked at her, his handsome
face sly. “Nash would have given me twenty bucks by now.”

Elliot fought off a smile. “I’m
going to give you a kick in the pants if you don’t get going.”

“Has Nash called yet?”

Elliot’s smile faded. “No, but
I’m sure he’s fine. He’ll call.”

Alec’s gaze lingered on her a
moment before nodding.  He had seen how upset his mother was earlier when Nash
had left on the shooting call and, as always, he was very tuned to that. He
didn’t like to see her upset. But he dutifully climbed into the car to go find
his hopelessly lost sister.

It wasn’t fifteen minutes later
when Elliot received a panicked call from her son.

CHAPTER TEN

  Elliot was really coming to
hate St. Elizabeth hospital and she was particularly coming to hate the
emergency room.  It simply made her ill to be there, fighting off her own
anguish in order to comfort her daughter and calm her son.  She had both of
them emotionally hysterical and it was imperative she keep her cool.

Alec had found Penny crawling out
of a ditch about a mile from Purgatory. He had almost missed her, unhappy that
his mom had made him go out and look for his sister and thinking the lump by
the side of the road was a dog.  But then he noticed that the dog had pink
shorts on.  He almost crashed the Jeep into the ditch pulling it to a
screeching halt.

It was evident that Penelope had
been hurt. Alec called 911 first and then his mother, describing the condition
of his sister and trying not to freak out about it. The ambulance had come
quickly and taken Penelope to St. Elizabeth as Alec followed in his mother’s
Jeep. 

Elliot had taken Penelope’s
little white Nissan and ended up following the ambulance also, frantic to get
to her daughter because Alec really couldn’t tell his mother what was wrong. He
didn’t know himself. All he knew was that she looked like she had been beaten
and thrown away, and she had mentioned something, in a daze, about ‘those guys
from the other day’.  When Alec told his mother that, she didn’t have to guess
what her daughter meant.  In the deep, nauseating pit of her stomach, she
already knew.

 A Sorrento police officer also
followed the ambulance to the hospital, the same officer who had taken Alec in
to the station for questioning.  When they took Penelope from the ambulance and
wheeled her in to the emergency entrance, Officer Bird was right by her side,
even when the doctors examined her. He had tried to talk to her to find out
what had happened, but Penelope was too shaken up.

So he backed off, standing with
Alec and Elliot as the medical staff took great care of Penelope. The young
woman had apparently been knocked unconscious for a short amount of time and
had no idea if she had been raped.  The examination turned into an
investigation at that point, and a rape kit was ordered.

Alec didn’t want to be around
when they did that to his sister so he wandered out into the corridor and
planted himself on one of the plastic chairs, his head dropping into his
hands.  He was absolutely distraught. Elliot was deeply concerned for her son’s
mental state but she was more concerned for her daughter.

 She remained in the examination
room, on the other side of the white curtain, while the doctor and two nurses
did a rape kit.  Listening to Penelope cry softly as they poked, prodded and
probed, it took every bit of strength she had to keep it together. She couldn’t
fall apart, not now while her children were so fragile. It wasn’t her right.

The afternoon dragged on with
painful slowness as Penelope was very carefully examined and Elliot ended up
filling out a bunch of paperwork for the insurance. Officer Bird interviewed
her and Alec, but they couldn’t tell him much other than what Penelope had said
when Alec had first found her. It wasn’t much to go on. 

As Elliot sat against the wall
next to her daughter’s gurney, exhausted and shattered, she heard a commotion
near the emergency entrance. Peering out into the corridor, she saw Ken
Havereau and another deputy hauling in an African-American man in his early
twenties who was bleeding profusely from a wound to the head.  The young man
was screaming that the cops beat him and the deputies struggled with him as
they dragged him into the operatory area.  

Instant chaos was in the air.
Coming right on his heels was another young African-American male being
escorted by none other than Nash himself and another uniformed deputy. The
young man was literally kicking and screaming,  blood on his neck and chest as
Nash and the deputy held on to him with latex gloves covering their hands.