Blood Trouble

by Connie Suttle

  "That's definitely not a legitimate excuse. Therefore," he pulled the grill shut and locked it, "I get to choose. I choose clean up, fuck, dinner and more fuck."

  "Who made these rules?" I frowned at him. He grinned.

  "I made most of them," he replied.

  I got to shower first, and to calm my nerves, I poured a glass of wine for myself and sat by my bedroom window, drinking it while I waited for Hank to finish cleaning up. My robe was wrapped tightly around me while butterflies chased through my insides.

  Hank walked into my bedroom naked, his hair damp and ruffled. He'd pushed me up the stairs earlier, pointing out the obvious—that my apartment was closer.

  "We're not staying in here," he informed me. "And take off that robe. My fuck buddy has to be naked if I'm naked."

  "Another rule?" my eyebrows rose at his statement.

  "Yeah. FBs have to be concurrently naked."

  "Damn, you do know a four-syllable word," I sighed. "I may swoon."

  "Don't swoon unless you want me to carry you to the kitchen."

  "The kitchen?" What the hell did he want in the kitchen?

  "Come with me, FB. Damn, that rhymes." He grinned, the white flash of his teeth a contrast to the dim light in my bedroom.

  "Uh-huh. The President will call any day and make you poet laureate," I huffed. He was still grinning as he herded me into the kitchen.

  "Now, this is for making you sore," he lifted me onto the bar. Since I hadn't removed my robe, he slipped it off my shoulders, allowing it to drop to the counter behind me. "Spread your legs, baby. I'm about to put my mouth on you."

  "What? No." I kept my knees tight together.

  "This is my fuck," he reminded me. "Spread your legs."

  I wanted to argue and resist, but his eyes hardened, so I didn't. He pushed my knees apart and stared at my privates for several seconds before dipping his head. The moment he sucked the tender part of me into his mouth, I moaned. If I thought his hands were good, his mouth was better. I think plenty of oh my gods came out of my mouth while he sucked and stroked and licked.

  "My turn." He hadn't let me come—he backed off every time I was on the edge of it. He lifted my boneless body off the bar and settled me on the end of the kitchen table. "See—just the right height." I stared at his erection.

  "On the table?" I squeaked.

  "Yeah. Lie back, I've got this." He pushed me back gently until I was spread out on the table. The foil packet of a fresh condom was ripped open. "Wrap your legs around me, baby, and hold onto the edge of the table," he instructed. My fingers gripped both sides of my small table. Hank lifted my legs and pulled them around his waist before sliding into me. I was coming and screaming as he pounded into me only a few minutes later. Surprisingly enough, the table didn't collapse when he lowered his weight onto me when he finished.

  * * *

  "Those pea pods are swimming with that shrimp. I will not eat them." I pointed my chopsticks at Hank an hour later. He'd called for Chinese takeout, after deciding that I didn't need to dress to go out. He'd answered the door wearing only his jeans, while I waited in the kitchen, wrapped in my robe. The moment the delivery boy left, he shucked his jeans and forced me to pull off my robe. I couldn't recall ever eating naked before.

  He'd ordered Kung Pao Shrimp, but shoved the pea pods aside, devoured the shrimp, rice and other vegetables, then offered the pea pods to me.

  "Baby, you don't eat enough," he rose to dump his container in the trash. "You weigh five pounds."

  "I weighed a hundred and two pounds," I corrected him. "This morning."

  "Are you fucking kidding?"

  "No." Actually, that was an improvement. I'd dropped to ninety-two after leaving Le-Ath Veronis behind. My weight had gradually built up over the months.

  "How the hell are you so strong?" he muttered, shaking his head. I could have told him. I didn't.

  "I'll buy a vinyl pillow to bring here," he told me later, after he'd stuffed every pillow he could find beneath me and having me that way. "They're built for that, and they clean up easy."

  I didn't argue with him; I was too tired. In fact, I wanted to curl up and sleep.

  "Bye, baby." Hank pulled the pillows from beneath me, covered me with the comforter on my bed and let himself out of my apartment. It made me wonder if any chance I ever had at romance had died without me knowing it.

  * * *

  For the next three days, we made a lot of progress on the club. We finished sanding the antique bar and Hank applied two coats of varnish, painstakingly painting the oak stain onto the wood with loving strokes. I envied the wood, it received so much care from his hands.

  Just as always, it was business in the bar. We didn't talk about sex or anything truly personal as we worked. All three nights, though, he was ready to fuck as soon as we locked the door. I wasn't sure why I'd ever allowed him to talk me into this arrangement. I wanted intimacy; he wanted sex.

  We were laying the hardwood floor on the fourth day when my cellphone rang. It was Mercy Crossings.

  Hank stopped what he was doing and stood up as I spoke with Barry Stokes, the Director of the charity.

  "Breanne, we're heading into Somalia," he informed me. "We need your language skills." He likely needed my negotiating skills, too, but I didn't point that out.

  "How soon?" I asked.

  "I've got a ticket waiting at the airport. Departure time is seven tonight. Can you make that?"

  "Yeah." Barry gave me the airline and flight number, then hung up.

  "I have to go," I shoved the phone in my pocket.

  "Baby, you can't go." Hank called me baby for the first time while we worked together.

  "I have to. They don't have anybody else who can speak the language." I watched as his jaw tightened—a rare display of emotion from Hank Bell.

  "Where?" his words were terse.

  "Somalia."

  "Fuck me running," he growled.

  "Interesting visual. I have to go." Somalia wasn't high on my list of places to visit, but the time away from Hank would give me breathing space to decide about my role as his fuck buddy. Outside of work, that's all I was—something to fuck and nothing else. Sure the sex was good, but I wanted to be held and kissed. Henry Hank Bell didn't want those things.

  "Bree, see that you come back," he growled deeper as I turned away. I didn't reply, I just walked out the door.

  * * *

  Somalia was in its secondary rainy season, usually lasting from September through November. We landed during the first week of October, to warm temperatures and no rain. I had no idea why they bothered to call it a rainy season—Somalia received an average yearly rainfall of eleven inches.

  Mogadishu, the largest city, was also Somalia's capital, and since many of the charitable organizations that wished to come had been banned from the country, Barry Stokes had achieved the near-impossible by getting us into the country to begin with. Once we arrived, we were searched, the equipment inspected, and then inspected again every time we moved from one place to another.

  Our destination was Beledweyne, to provide medical care after several attacks had occurred in the city and medical assistance was sorely needed. As we drove through devastated neighborhoods, I saw concrete walls riddled with bullet holes. What remained standing, anyway.

  Buildings had been destroyed, with only rough skeletons left behind. Most of the roads were pockmarked and difficult to navigate, and I wondered if I could get close to anyone important enough to allow food, water and other assistance to come in.

  I did speak with several minor officials with the African military—primarily forces from Djibouti, who, with Somali assistance, were busy working their way through the city, searching for those responsible for the attacks. Even with compulsion, nobody seemed to know much of anything. Our tents went up and children were brought in, often on stretchers, many of them unconscious.

  "Breanne," Ray Knowles, our chief of operations, whispered next to my ear as I worked to ge
t food and supplies through the country and into needy hands. My efforts were futile—nobody there had enough power or clout to bring anything in through Mogadishu and Ethiopia, which borders Somalia, certainly wasn't prepared to allow anything through.

  "Ray?" Ray took my elbow and led me away from the two men in charge of the Djibouti forces—they'd been offended to be approached by a woman to begin with, and after I laid compulsion and they became more compliant, I learned there wasn't anything they could do to help the situation.

  "We're getting additional help," Ray muttered as he led me away. "Special help."

  Special help could mean several things, but Ray's reading told me that people from Special Ops were coming in, disguised as volunteers for Mercy Crossings. I sighed.

  "All right," I nodded. Ray didn't know the reason they were coming, and that didn't surprise me. I'd find out eventually, when I read the new arrivals.

  "Look, you've been working since you got here," Ray said. "Take a break. Our help should be here in a couple of hours. They'll need your language skills when they arrive."

  "Okay." I walked toward the tent I shared with two doctors, both of them women. I thought about calling Hank on my cellphone, but reception was spotty at best and usually the calls would be dropped. Breathing a sigh, I pushed past the tent entrance and flopped onto my tiny sleeping cot.

  * * *

  Jayson Rome, Second Vice-President of Rome Publications, with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, was responsible for the magazine publishing portion of his father's publishing empire. Jayson's older brother, James, Jr., was First Vice-President and his offices were in Los Angeles, where the main body of the corporation was housed.

  "Why do you think the abductions stopped?" Jayson glanced up at Ross Gideon, who normally wrote articles for the Los Angeles newspaper his father owned instead of magazine articles for Jayson's publishing branch.

  "I think the killer was killed. Possibly by a vigilante, who doesn't want to be discovered."

  "Ross, that's pure speculation and you know it. What evidence do you have?" Jayson slid the offered thumb drive back toward Ross, who sat on the other side of Jayson's desk. "Look, I know your name carries a lot of clout, but this—I can't publish anything like this without at least some verifiable truth in it."

  Ross Gideon was practically a household name—if that household read political nonfiction and biographies of politicians. Ross was currently writing a biography commissioned by James Rome, Jayson's father. He'd stopped briefly to write a piece on the co-ed murders in San Francisco.

  "Most of that article is fact—the dead girls, their parents, the investigation, all of that is covered factually," Ross insisted.

  "But it doesn't have much of a resolution, and the fact that you added wild speculation into the mix leaves us nowhere. If you want to rewrite it, leave out the speculation and focus on the families left behind. That'll be a decent article and I'll publish that."

  Jayson Rome, six-three in his socks with blond hair, brown eyes and regular workouts scheduled five days a week in the gym downstairs, drew many a debutant's eye. He had no interest in any of them. Most nights he drove from the office to his spacious home in San Rafael, which overlooked San Rafael Bay. He worked at home, often late into the night, before going to bed, rising early and starting the same routine again the next day.

  "I don't have time for revisions. Let one of your hacks do it, give me credit and a paycheck and we'll call it even," Ross rose from his chair and nodded to Jayson. "I need to get back to that biography your dad asked me to write."

  "I'll see what I can do," Jayson said as he watched Ross stalk out of his office. It was never a good idea to get on Ross Gideon's bad side. He sighed and turned to gaze out the window of his penthouse office. He'd see which of his in-house writers was available, hand the thumb drive to them and see if they couldn't make something decent out of what Ross had provided.

  * * *

  Breanne's Journal

  I blinked when he stepped out of the van. Sure, he was dressed like the rest of us—in camo fatigues and a green T-shirt with the Mercy Crossings logo embroidered on the shirt pocket. Bill Jennings—the Bill Jennings—who was still Director of the Joint NSA and Homeland Security Department, walked toward Ray and me, followed by five Special Ops agents.

  Bill had been nice to me, the brief time I'd met him at SouthStar. He wouldn't know me from any other interpreter now, though. I waited for him to get close enough so I could read the purpose for placing himself in such a delicate position.

  Undercover operatives—gone missing. That was easy enough for me to see as Bill and the others shook hands with Ray. I was just the interpreter, not chief of operations, but Bill smiled and took my hand anyway.

  "I hear you can understand and speak just about anything," he said.

  "I can, sir." I nodded.

  "Even the dialects?"

  "Yes."

  "Wonderful. We're here to find some of our own, and we need all the help we can get."

  "I can give that help," I nodded. Bill's reading had given me information on the two missing men—one of them had two young children at home. If he were still alive, I'd go hunting for that reason alone.

  "We just need to keep things quiet, if you know what I mean," Bill leaned in to whisper.

  "Of course I do, sir," I nodded.

  That night, it rained just a little. Not even a quarter of an inch, but it was rain. Ray was closeted with Director Bill and the Special Ops guys, and since they didn't need an interpreter for that, I was left out of the meeting.

  I was called into a surgery tent instead, to calm a frightened mother while a bullet was pulled from an infected wound in her son's shoulder. I wanted to sigh—she'd dithered about bringing her child to the doctors in the first place, allowing the wound to grow even more infected. I hoped the physicians we had could ultimately save the arm.

  The mother was even more surprised when she learned how well I could speak and understand the Somali dialect she used. Some spoke Arabic, as it was listed as a national language just as Somali was, but there were three main dialects to the Somali language. It didn't matter—if I had any difficulty with the spoken words, all I had to do was read the speaker. It even told me when they were lying, and that was just a bonus.

  * * *

  Lissa's Journal

  "Norian, we're not speaking. Remember?"

  "Lissa, I don't forget things like that," Norian muttered.

  He'd appeared unannounced inside my private study and sat uncomfortably on one of my guest chairs. He hadn't been a victim of the mind cloud affecting Gavin and the others; he'd done what he had deliberately. If Ildevar hadn't stepped in, Skel Hawer would likely have gone free and the King of Serendaan would be dead, most likely, along with three of his wives.

  Belen had given me that information, which was unusual. Belen seldom offered sensitive information. He wouldn't tell me why, either, and my curiosity rose. I didn't ask, though. Belen can be more inscrutable than any Larentii.

  "Lissa, we have trouble. Big trouble," Norian said, raking fingers through thick, brown hair. "We've had a prison break. Every prisoner inside Yigga Prison has escaped. Information is sketchy since all the guards died, in addition to anyone within three miles of the prison. A witness from farther away than that says he saw a huge dust storm in the distance, heading toward the prison. After that, bodies were left behind and none of them were prisoners."

  "What?" I was standing and blinking at Norian in alarm. "Oh, no. No, no, no," I sat again, my mind and body in shock. "Norian," I whispered, feeling numb. "Norian, oh, God."

  * * *

  Breanne's Journal

  Bill Jennings spent the morning with his operatives while I translated for local parents and the wounded who could speak. We were treating adults, now, when our excuse for being in Somalia in the beginning was injured children.

  I watched dispassionately when a man came in, held up by two friends. He had a chest wound, which w
as bleeding profusely. The injury was fresh. The doctors knew it, as did I, and he was immediately placed on a table, his shirt cut away and two physicians and three nurses gathered around him. If they didn't move swiftly, he'd die. Actually, with the severity of the wound, the chances of his survival under such primitive conditions were very small.

  "How did this happen?" I turned to the injured man's companions. I'd only spoken aloud to give the medical personnel present a plausible reason for what I already knew—they had the operatives Bill was searching for, and the injured man had accidentally been shot when one of the prisoners wrestled a gun away. That prisoner now suffered from a head wound, inflicted by the two I spoke with after he was overpowered.

  Chest wound's companions gabbled some excuse—that their injured friend had been cleaning his gun. The excuse might have been a good one, except the man couldn't have shot himself with the rifle used. I think everybody in Somalia owned at least one gun, which was frightening enough in itself. Both of these had rifles slung over their shoulders.

  "Leave now," I commanded softly, compulsion thick in my voice. Without a word, both turned and left the surgery tent.

  "Let me know if you need me again," I patted the walkie-talkie clipped to my fatigues. The doctors and nurses barely gave me a glance—they were too busy attempting to save one of those who'd captured and tortured Bill's agents.

  * * *

  Compulsion had to be used—twice—before I was able to get in to see Bill. He was sequestered in a tent not far away, but his five Special Ops agents didn't want me near Bill. I disabused them of that notion. Ray was with Bill, going over a map and what little he knew of the area when I walked into Bill's tent.

  "Ray, get out," I said as pleasantly as I could, employing compulsion. "You won't remember I said that," I whispered as he passed me on his way out of the tent.

  "Young woman," Bill began, practicing as much patience as he could. He could call me young woman if he wanted—he was in his forties and I looked half his age.

  "Bill, someday you won't call me that. You'll know better. Now, if you want your two spies back before one of them dies of a head wound, then I suggest you gather those grumpy agents outside and come with me."