The Possibilities - Desire - A Collection of Short Stories (5 page)

When Jason was finished talking,
Nathan simply took Bridie by the arm and directed her towards the
elevator.  He didn’t say goodbye to Jason nor speak a word to
Bridie.  When they were inside the elevator, Bridie turned on him
angrily.  “I don’t know who the
hell
you think you are,” she spit
out, “but I’m not some rag doll you can just shove around any old way you
want.  You can either talk to me like a human or you can kiss my
ass!  I won’t be treated like this!”  Her face was a bright red and
she was magnificent in her anger.  Nathan looked at her, his serious gaze
seemingly taking her in for the first time.  His large, strong hand reached
out and flicked a switch on the elevator control panel.  The elevator
stopped.

“Ornery, aren’t you?” he asked
quietly.  He didn’t wait for an answer.  “I’m not going to tell you
Torres is a ‘bad man’, I’m guessing you’ve already heard that enough tonight. 
Let me tell you something specific so we can be clear about who we’re dealing
with.  Six years ago I was working undercover in Colombia.  Even
undercover a man has a private life.  I fell in love with a dark eyed
Columbian beauty.  I wondered how I was going to be able to talk her into
coming back to the states with me when my assignment was done, especially after
she discovered that I had been lying to her about who I was.  Torres
suspected me, and unknown to me, he had me followed to Estrellita’s house one
night.  I left her, as was our custom, to go to my apartment to change the
next morning.

The next time I went to visit her
Bridie, I found her in the kitchen…and in the living room, and in the
bathroom.   There were three very select pieces of her arranged on
the bed in her bedroom.  It was very clear to me that being cut to pieces
was not the only indignity she bore before she died.  So if I turn into
the same kind of asshole as my brother when I hear Torres is in my hometown, I
apologize.  I’m not usually like this, but for some reason, whenever I
hear Torres name I become an unpleasant person.”  He reached out, flicked
the switch on the control panel, and they were moving down again.  Bridie
was nauseous.

They had taken only a few steps from
the entrance of the newspaper office towards a Ford SUV when Bridie, still sick
from Nathan’s story, caught a flash of moving shadow coming at them from
between two parked cars. There was a muffled grunt from Nathan as he doubled up
in pain, but he managed to rise before the muscular Hispanic in dark clothing
could grab her.  Just as the man’s hands were about to encircle her waist,
Nathan fired twice from a large semi automatic pistol in his hand. 
Bridie’s assailant dropped straight to the ground and didn’t move.  Nathan
didn’t say a word, he just handed Bridie a set of keys and pointed at the
SUV.  He staggered over and got into the passenger seat.  “You
drive,” he croaked.  It was obvious to Bridie that he was in pain.

She got in and began driving without
adjusting the seat or the mirrors or fastening her seatbelt.  They were
moving at a high rate of speed when his rucksack tumbled to the floor and he
told her to slow down.  “We won’t get anywhere if you kill us getting
away.  Where the hell are you going, anyway?”

“I’m taking you to the emergency
room,” she retorted.  She had seen the blood pooling in front of him as
soon as she had closed the door of the big SUV.  She stared at him in
unfeigned horror.  “You killed that man…was that Torres?”

“No, that was one of his men, Jimenez.  Wherever he is, you can bet Torres
is nearby. Torres is probably watching your apartment.” He groaned as he turned
to watch out the back window.  “Slow down to about five miles an hour
under the speed limit, and make a bunch of slow turns so I can see if we’re
being followed.”

“But…Nathan, you’re
bleeding
! 

“I’ve been cut worse,” he said, “I
have a pretty good first aid case in the rucksack, and I’ve got direct pressure
on the wound.  Please Bridie, don’t argue with me, just do as I say.” 
Bridie did as he instructed.

After thirty minutes or so, he gave
her directions to a hotel along the interstate twenty odd miles away in a
suburb of the city. Bridie checked them into a double room suite with an
adjoining door.  They came in the back way, away from prying eyes,
Nathan’s rucksack over her shoulders.  He left the camera bag stowed in
the SUV.

Nathan lay back on the bed and
Bridie began ripping his shirt off.  The razor sharp knife had cut through
both the shirt and his jeans, and though the blood was sticky and thickening,
there was a lot of it.

She had no time for niceties. 
The belt was severed cleanly, and the jeans parted wide without having to
unfasten them.  It was clear that Nathan was in pain, but he made no
sound…until she slid his bloody undershorts down his legs.  He looked up
into her intelligent green eyes.

“I don’t usually go this far on a
first date,” he grimaced.  Bridie looked down at the long and ghastly
looking cut on Nathan’s hip.  It started about four inches above his groin
and wrapped around in an upward angle towards his kidney.  He was correct
in his assessment, it was not very deep, it was just very long and quite
bloody.  Her eyes reflexively glanced at his ‘package’ and was astounded
as it began to rise, even in while he was in such pain.  It was
impressive.

“Bridie?” his dry voice broke
through the mild fog of lust she was in.  “Would you mind getting a
towel to cover me and then the first aid kit from the rucksack?”  He
grinned.  “If you’re still curious after we get this thing stitched up
I’ll let you look at it all you want to!”

Bridie reddened and ran to the
bathroom, filling the ice bucket with warm water and grabbing a handful of
washcloths and towels before returning to his side.  She cleaned the wound
and doused him liberally with an antiseptic/local anesthetic, pulling aside the
edges of the wound and inspecting for muscle damage and foreign objects such as
strings and bits of cloth, just as he told her to do.  She was nauseous,
but she did as he asked.   When she was satisfied that the wound was
free of debris and that there were no cut muscles, Nathan pulled the edges of
the wound together while she used the pre-threaded stitching needles sealed in
airtight packages to sew him up. She used more than the instructions on the
packing called for; making her stitches tight, tiny, and close together. 
It was a very neat and solid job, and she admired it as she covered it with a
bandage after slathering it with antibiotic ointment.

She had given him an injection of
the morphine from one of the measured doses in the bag.  Bridie read
the directions carefully as Nathan focused on controlling the pain, and only
gave him a minimal dose to ease the pain…she told him it was an
antibiotic  as she gave it to him so that he would remain still. His eyes
glazed over and he stared at her.

Bridie Halloran’s appearance was
more gypsy than Irish.  Her dark hair hung below her shoulders to the tops
of her full breasts, and her dark eyes were filled with alert
intelligence.  What came from Nathan’s lips next should have surprised
her, but it didn’t.  “Estrellita!” he whispered.  His hand reached
for hers, amazingly gentle.

Tears filled Bridie’s dark brown
eyes at the loneliness and love in his voice, and she ached for him. She could
see the tears and the wonder in his eyes as he tentatively raised his hand to
her breast, cupping it softly through the fabric of the ‘little black dress’
she had worn to the club.  Allowing the strap to fall, she lay down next
to him on the bed, her hand caressing his hot brow and his thick hair. 
When he reached for her bra, she shrugged her shoulder to make it easier for
him to uncover what he sought.  His lips closed around her nipple and she
shuddered with pure pleasure at the wet heat of his mouth.  The towel over
his middle tented, and then slipped aside.  His manhood was more than just
impressive.  Bridie sat up, curled her hand around its rigid heat…and then
she gave him the only comfort she could.

They awakened in the early
morning.  He was naked and she was wearing only the panties she’d worn
under her dress.  Bridie was terribly embarrassed, and Nathan was at first
non-plussed, and then mildly aggravated because he knew she had drugged
him.  “What if he had shown up last night?” he hissed as he reached for
his backpack.  He didn’t bother to try to conceal himself as he pulled on
his jeans and a black tee shirt.  He didn’t mention what had passed
between them in the night.  “He would have slaughtered us in our
sleep!”  He needed help getting his boots on, but the stitches held and
there was no fresh bleeding.  He went to the door and peeked outside as
Bridie slipped on her dress and started the coffee pot in the small kitchen of
the suite.  “I’ll be right back,” he whispered, closing the door behind
him silently.

Bridie stood in front of the coffee
pot, tears of confusion and frustration pouring down her cheeks.  In the
adrenaline rush of the assault and the unusually rapid development of her
miniscule surgical skills, she had come to care for the silent stranger. 
Seeing his love for the dead Estrellita had touched her heart in a way she had
never felt before.  She remembered her response, she blushed, her full
body changing color as she remembered every minute of what she had done. 
What she had done to him, for him and his lost love, and what she had done for
herself as she took care of him.  They had been together at the finish,
her eyes finding and locking with his as they peaked at the same time. 
The love in his eyes had been heart wrenching, and she hadn’t pulled away from
him.  This morning, she was sure that the love hadn’t been for her, it had
been for the dead Estrellita.  Bridie was in pain…for herself, for Nathan,
and for poor long dead Estrellita.

Nathan returned moments later, and
she managed to straighten her face before he returned his gaze to her. 
“The parking lot is clear,” he said, “we got lucky.”  He lifted his cell
phone to his ear after pushing a speed dial number. He was calling his brother.

“I’ve set it up with the TV people,”
Nick said, “They’ll be announcing all day that I’ll be doing a live interview
at six o’clock in front of the Courthouse.  He’s pissed, doubly so if that
was really Jimenez you took out last night…we’ve got nothing yet for an I.D. on
the body.”

“It was Jimenez all right,” Nathan
said, “I knew him in Colombia.”  His voice was cold and tight.

“Are you in any shape to participate
in the trap we’re setting for him tonight?” Nick asked him.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,”
Nathan said.

He sat down and complemented her on
the coffee after he had explained the extent of his injuries to his brother,
reassuring him that he was capable of functioning.  Bridie found herself
staring deeply into his like a lovesick teenager.  She quickly shook it
off, berating herself for her adolescent feelings.  What was it about this
man that turned her knees to jelly and made her heart race as if she had just
sprinted a hundred yards?

Gathering her feelings into herself,
she gazed calmly at him.  “You have an awful lot of scars for a
photographer,” she said, deliberately fouling his concentration by reminding
him she had seen him naked.  His face colored and his gaze dropped for a
moment, but he quickly recovered and lifted his eyes back to hers.

“The rewards of a misspent youth,”
he said with a grin.  “I usually don’t have to explain my scars until the
fifth or sixth date.”

“That long?” she asked, for some
reason amused.

“I’m easy,” he grinned, “but I’m no
slut.”

“And your Estrellita?” she
asked.  She could have bitten her tongue off when she saw him wince as if
she had hit him with something large and heavy.  He hadn’t looked as bad
as this after Jimenez had knifed him.  “I must have talked because of the
drugs,” he said heavily.

Bridie reached out to him, touching
his hand.  “There’s no shame in loving someone,” she said quietly.

“I wasn’t in
love
with
Estrellita,” he said, “but I cared for her deeply and I feel responsible for
her death…nobody should have to die like that.”

“The man who did it should,” Bridie
said evenly.

“The man who actually did the
killing died last night in front of your office,” Nathan said, “the man who
ordered him to do it is the man we’re going after tonight at six.”  She
could tell that Jimenez had died much too cleanly and quickly to suit him.

“Then you need to make sure that you
catch him alive,” Bridie said, “I understand the prisons in Columbia are not
very nice places.”

“He would buy himself out of a
Columbian prison in no time at all,” Nathan said, “nevertheless, I want him
sent back to Colombia alive.”  Seeing Bridie’s confused look, he smiled at
her…a deep malevolent smile.  “Somehow, a package of evidence showing that
he was stealing from his old partners ended up in the hands of those old
partners.”  Nathan smiled again, “It’s a very convincing file.”  He
knew very well what the reaction of those angry partners would be.  Torres
would last for a long and agonizing time before they let him die.

In the end, the capture of Emilio
Torres was ridiculously easy.  Nathan and Bridie sat in a cupola high above
the courthouse, with the sun setting behind them.  Nathan had mounted a
pair of Nikon binoculars above a Leupold Spotting scope.  He swept the
courtyard where Nick was speaking before the television reporters and located
Torres less than ten minutes into the interview.  With a hand held radio,
Nathan directed the uniformed officers to Torres.  They grabbed him and
wrested him to the ground, where they cuffed him and disarmed him.