Inamorato

by Keira Michelle Telford

  “And if I say no? I could pen my letter of resignation tonight and send it to you first thing on Monday morning. I could propose to Ella on Tuesday, and I could make her my wife by the end of the week.”

  “Sure, you could do all of those things.” He finishes his cigarette. “But could you live with yourself if she died in combat because you weren’t there?” As he gets up to leave, he pats Alex on the shoulder. “Think about it, son. Think very carefully.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Accidentally on Purpose

  Monday morning arrives, and while Alex sits in his apartment, staring at his PDA, his finger hovering over the ‘send’ button on a file marked ‘Letter of Resignation’, Ella is out in the field with a third line Hunter Division unit.

  She’s working with McKean.

  Left alone with him to clear a nest in an old corner store, they suffer through hours of stilted, meaningless conversations and closed off body language.

  They don’t like each other.

  It’s glaringly obvious.

  Together, they finish off the last of the Chimera on the shop floor, and Ella checks the basement.

  She comes back up shaking her head.

  It’s empty.

  McKean heads for a staircase. “Wait here. I’ll check the roof.”

  He goes, and she follows the order patiently.

  She waits.

  She hears a gun go off.

  And again.

  More firing.

  Thinking there might be more Chimera up there than McKean can handle alone, she breaks the order and heads up the staircase. When she emerges onto the roof, everything is quiet.

  She doesn’t see anything, and she doesn’t hear anything.

  She takes one step.

  Two.

  As she turns around to check out the rest of the roof, she feels a sudden pressure in her chest. She hears something crack beneath her Kevlar vest, and she’s unable to breathe. There’s not much pain; her whole body feels numb. Almost instantly, she becomes aware of a familiar taste in her mouth.

  Blood.

  Lots of blood.

  Staring straight ahead of her, she locks eyes with the man who just shot her.

  McKean.

  Her vision blurs and she stumbles back. As she topples over the edge of the building, the world turns gray … then black. She’s out cold by the time her limp body hits the ground.

  She lands in dirt and foliage, in a small patch of wilderness that was once someone’s backyard, and the impact forces the last bit of air out of her lungs. She aspirates tiny droplets of blood onto the yellow petals of some dandelions beside her face.

  She’s not breathing.

  Harkin is the first one to reach her side. He kneels beside her and feels for a pulse: she has one, but barely. He tears open her Kevlar vest, hoping to relieve some of the pressure in her chest, and then he tries to revive her.

  It doesn’t work.

  Oz is the second one there, and Harkin instructs him to help with CPR.

  Ella remains unresponsive.

  Harkin orders Oz to radio in for an ambulance to be sent out to their location immediately—which is highly unprecedented. Ambulances are never dispatched outside the city walls.

  But she’s the Hunter General’s daughter.

  They can’t let her die.

  After several minutes, Harkin manages to coax life back into her, but she still can’t breathe. She tries, but her airways are filled with blood. He rolls her onto her side and watches, helpless, as she coughs up precious ounces of red liquid, trying desperately to draw oxygen into her body.

  Now there’s pain.

  Shooting like knives through her pleural cavity, it hurts to inhale; it hurts to cough; it hurts to do nothing at all. Harkin encourages her to take quick, shallow breaths, but he’s far out of his comfort zone.

  She’s not bleeding externally—only internally. He’s used to wrapping tourniquets around limbs, cauterizing wounds, sewing imperfect stitches into flesh, and even performing amputations. He’s not used to watching a girl die without even a scratch on her.

  She passes out again, less than a minute before the ambulance arrives.

  Harkin is at a complete loss, and he hands her off to the EMTs with the fear that she may already be dead.

  *************************

  Ella is whisked into emergency surgery as soon as the ambulance arrives at Western Point Hospital.

  She’s in surgery for a little over an hour.

  Maydevine is at work on the first line, and although a messenger was sent out immediately, the news will take time to reach him. Ergo, when she wakes up from her surgery, she’s alone.

  Not for long.

  Oz had placed a call to Alex as soon as the ambulance had left, and Alex has been trying to persuade the nurses to let him into her room for the last twenty minutes.

  Eventually, exploiting their shift change, he manages to slip into her room unnoticed.

  He gasps at the sight of her. “My god, El.”

  Her eyes light up when she sees him, and she smiles weakly, but she’s in too much pain to do anything else. A single tear cascades down her cheek and soaks into the pillow.

  She’s pale and fragile, and for all that she’s five-ten and has more muscle than some men, she looks so small in the hospital bed. Her hair is loose and matted with sweat, dirt, and blood. Her eyes are bloodshot, with dark circles beneath them.

  She can barely speak, but as he gets closer, she mouths: kiss me.

  He has every intention of it.

  He pulls the privacy curtain around her bed to hide them from the cameras, then leans over her and presses his lips against hers. They kiss for a while—for as long as he dares—and then he pulls up a seat beside her bed, holding her hand.

  “It hurts to breathe,” she rasps.

  “I’ll bet.” Alex holds back tears. “What happened out there?”

  Rolling down the covers, she unfastens her hospital gown, which opens at the front to make it easy for the nurses to check on her two surgical dressings. One surgical dressing covers a small vertical incision between her breasts, and another covers a horizontal incision just below her right lung. There’s blood seeping through them.

  Between them, her ribs are wrapped tightly in bandages.

  “He shot me here,” she whispers, pointing to the bandage on her sternum.

  “Who shot you?”

  She mouths: McKean.

  Alex can’t quite fathom it. “How? Did he not see you? What the heck did he think he was shooting at?”

  Ella points to the corner of her eye, then at Alex’s eyes, mouthing: I saw him.

  Alex needs her to clarify that. “Are you saying he meant to shoot you?”

  Ella nods.

  Alex ruffles a hand through his hair. “That’s one hell of an accusation, Silver.”

  “He looked me right in the fucking eyes and he shot me.” She wheezes violently before reeling back in pain.

  “Okay, okay.” Alex holds out his hand to calm her. “I believe you.”

  He closes her gown and tucks her back up in the sheets.

  “Do you know what he shot you with?”

  Ella nods and points to her Kevlar vest, which the hospital staff have folded into a pile with the rest of her clothes and left on a chair at the foot of her bed.

  Alex inspects it, and removes a shotgun slug from the fabric.

  “A shotgun?!” He looks at the slug in the palm of his hand. “Twelve gauge.” He looks back up at Ella. “At what range?”

  She beckons for him to step closer.

  One step.

  Two.

  Three.

  She holds up her palm.

  He’s less than six feet away from her.

  Alex covers his mouth with his hand, running his fingers over his stubble. She’s lucky a shot at that range didn’t rupture her heart on impact.

  Just then, the door flings open and a familiar voice barges through into the roo
m, waving her press pass at the nurses.

  “Five minutes, that’s all,” she bargains with them.

  Celia.

  Ella rolls her eyes theatrically.

  Alex does the same and shakes his head in irritation.

  Celia flings back the curtain, shocked to see Alex standing there. “Well, now. I’m here to write a piece for the paper. Why on Earth might you be here?”

  “I’m checking on the health of one of my students. My TA, in fact.”

  Alex looks over his shoulder at Ella, making sure she’s on board with the notion.

  She is.

  “Your teacher’s assistant?” One of Celia’s eyebrows rockets upward. “Really?”

  “There’s no crime against that.”

  Celia glances at Ella, then back at Alex. “It looks like she’s alive. I’d say that your presence here is no longer required. Wouldn’t you?”

  Ella flips her off.

  “Nice to see that a brush with death hasn’t changed your charming outlook on life,” Celia sneers at her.

  “She can’t speak.” Alex stands protectively beside Ella’s bed. “You won’t get much of a story.”

  Celia holds up a notepad and pen. “Not to worry. I came prepared.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Alex insists.

  “She will if she wants her side of the story heard.”

  Alex is about to send Celia packing when Ella shocks him by holding her hands out for the pen and paper. She snaps her fingers, demanding haste.

  Smugly, Celia obliges. “It looks like she has something to say to me after all.”

  Ella writes something on the pad, then turns it to face her.

  FUCK YOU, BITCH.

  Alex smirks. “I think she’s speaking for both of us.”

  Celia scowls. “I’m going to write an article on this incident whether you talk to me or not. It really makes no difference to me. I’m guessing it could make quite a bit of difference to you, though. You see, the Hunter Division’s already prepared to release their formal statement of events, and it’s not looking too good for you.”

  Ella glances up at Alex for answers, but Alex shrugs and shakes his head: he has no idea what she’s talking about.

  “You got shot as a result of your own negligence,” Celia explains. “You disobeyed a direct order, and ended up getting punched in the chest with a shotgun slug.”

  Ella’s jaw drops.

  She scribbles something on the notepad and holds it up: I was shot on purpose.

  Celia frowns at her. “By whom?”

  Ella scribbles: McKean.

  Celia snorts. “As if.”

  More scribbles: It’s not the first time.

  “Ella …” Alex cautions her.

  She scribbles something else down anyway: He’s tried to kill me before.

  Celia looks over at Alex. “You knew about this?”

  “She claims he threw a grenade at her on purpose while we were clearing a third line sector a few months ago,” he begrudgingly divulges. “There’s no proof.”

  Ella writes one word down on the paper in capital letters and underlines it: TWICE.

  “Twice?” Celia questions Alex.

  “A few weeks ago, Ella was suspended for breaking the rules in an Academy training session. She says McKean set her up to lose a fight with a Chimera.”

  Ella writes one more thing down on the paper: He wants me dead.

  Hmm.

  Thoughts begin to buzz around inside Celia’s head. This could be more interesting than she’d first thought.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cohorts Conspire

  In her cozy Sentinel District apartment, Celia begins writing her article for the Amaranthe News and Times.

  Her press credentials give her access to all sorts of things that aren’t available to other members of the public, and Ella’s personnel file is one of them.

  She begins scanning through that on her home computer, and learns all about Ella’s history with McKean. Delving through other restricted files, she pulls up a file documenting all of the complaints that have been made against her over the years.

  McKean’s name comes up a number of times.

  Insubordination.

  Reckless endangerment.

  Bodily harm.

  It starts to look as though he might have a grudge.

  She also finds out about the stolen RPG-7 launcher—which is still an open case—and as she prints all of this information out, she begins taping it to a large white board in her home office.

  Little by little, she pieces together all the sordid details of Ella’s life: the suspensions, the misdemeanors, the underage drinking charges—all of it.

  When she’s done researching for the night, she beats back her exhaustion with a caffeine pill and starts getting ready to go out. After all, there’s still one more thing she has to do before she can go to print: get McKean’s side of the story.

  Using her press credentials to get access to the DDH loading bay, she’s waiting there when Lockie McKean and the rest of Ella’s third line unit finally return at their end of their shift.

  Wearing a red dress that’s so tight it looks as though it must’ve been sprayed on, she catches McKean’s eye instantly.

  “Hey, stranger.” She smiles at him. “Hard day?”

  He doesn’t even attempt to be subtle as he casts his eyes over her proudly displayed breasts, her cleavage on view for the entire bay to see.

  “It’s getting harder.” He admires her. “What do you want?”

  “I thought you might like to buy a girl dinner.”

  “Not really, but I’ll take you to my bed if you want me to fuck you.”

  *************************

  Celia is on her elbows and knees, her face pressed up against a pillow. Still wearing the red dress, her legs are spread and McKean is kneeling between them, ramming his cock into her.

  It’s rough and dirty, and there’s nothing loving about it. Without warning, and without regard for her pleasure, he finishes inside her. Celia doesn’t realize what he’s done until he pulls out and collapses on the bed beside her.

  She punches him in the shoulder. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”

  “You didn’t remind me.” Out of breath, he reaches for a cigarette.

  “Nothing ever changes with you, does it?”

  “You like it.” He spanks her. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t keep coming back for it.”

  “I should know better.” She gets comfortable beside him. “You always were an asshole, and you’ll always be an asshole.”

  “But it feels good when I fuck you.”

  She steals his cigarette off him, forcing him to light another.

  “Trust me, your dick is your only redeeming feature.” She puffs on the cigarette. “My ex could never take me the way you just did.”

  “Old Tea Leaf? Why not? Don’t tell me he’s one of those softies who needs to see the face of the woman he’s banging? The face is the least important part.”

  Celia slaps his arm. “He had no imagination, that’s all. In all the time we were together, I don’t think we ever had sex outside of the bedroom. It was so formulaic and predictable.”

  McKean sucks on a fresh cigarette. “Maybe he just wasn’t that into you.”

  “I wasn’t the problem, Mickey. He was a timid and unadventurous lover. You have no idea how many times I came home from work and just wanted him to fuck me on the kitchen table instead of eat dinner off it. In almost four years, it never happened once.”

  McKean starts to get hard again.

  “Take your dress off.”

  She looks down at his swelling anatomy and pulls a face. “Again? Already?”

  “I haven’t had your cunt in months. You should be flattered.”

  Abandoning the cigarette in an ashtray, she slips out of her dress and reaches for her purse on the bedside table.

  His cigarette pinched between his lips, he grabs her by the
waist and pulls her toward him. “What’re you doing?”

  “We’re going to use a condom this time, since you clearly can’t be trusted.”

  He yanks the purse out of her hands and tosses it across the room, the contents spilling everywhere.

  “I either fuck you my way, or not at all. It’s up to you.” He lies down on the bed, now fully erect. “Climb on, sweetheart.”

  Celia does as she’s told.

  Still smoking his cigarette, he lies there, motionless, while she moves up and down on him.

  Deriving very little pleasure from this, Celia attempts to kill two birds with one stone by quizzing him about Ella while she pleasures him.

  “Why do you hate Ella Cross so much?”

  McKean watches her tits bounce. “That kid pisses me off.”

  “You’ve had it in for her since that night in the Belt when we were teens.” Celia pauses for breath. “You held a knife to the throat of a five-year-old girl. Do you remember that?”

  “That bitch doesn’t know how to toe the line. She thought she was better than us then, and she thinks she’s better than us now. I’ve missed months of work because of her, and I’m still relegated to light duties in the third line until the back-to-work program releases me.”

  “What did she do to you?”

  “She pushed me off a building.” He finishes his cigarette.

  “I heard you fell.”

  “And I’m saying she pushed me,” he growls at her.

  Suddenly grabbing her hips, he throws her off him and down onto the bed. He moves her legs apart and pushes himself back inside her, lifting one of her legs up over his shoulder.

  He pushes as deep as he can get.

  He’s trying to make it hurt, but he’s not quite big enough to do the job.

  Celia’s fakes it anyway.