Terry’s heavy footsteps came closer. “Hold out your hand, I have your medication,” Terry said.
As Spencer held out his hand for the pills he asked, “Do you think I should call Craig Collins? While I was in the hospital, Craig called me every couple of days. I think I should let him know that I’m okay.”
“Here is a glass of water,” Terry said. Spencer noticed Terry’s speech had turned short and clipped. He also hadn’t answered Spencer’s question.
Spencer accepted the glass of water and used it to wash down the medication. Holding the glass out for Terry to take, Spencer asked, “Terry, do you have a problem with me contacting Craig?”
“Let’s see how you’re feeling tomorrow,” Terry said. “Now move over, you always settle down better when I hold you.”
Spencer scooted over. The bed dipped and Terry slid his arms around him before pulling him against his body. Spencer relaxed and let the drugs take him under their spell.
His mind started swirling unable to form a clear thought. Something wasn’t right. He wanted to sleep and never wake up. He wanted to move but couldn’t.
Terry’s voice penetrated the turmoil. “Relax, Spencer. I can make you feel good.”
Gentle hands messaged his back. The thick gray started taking over him mind. Hands were now squeezing his buttocks. Again he tried to move. Pain sliced through his abdomen.
Hands messaged the front of his thighs. Blackness took Spencer away.
* * * *
Tony turned around and shot everyone around the room a dark look. Fiery spots of color highlighted his cheeks. “We’re good, but what the hell do you expect? Even at that time of morning, do you have any idea how many cell phones are making calls in a hospital that size? I mean, a hint at a telephone number would be helpful.”
In a fit of temper, Tony turned his back on the team, and his fingers started pounding the keyboard. The video of the lobby fast-forwarded until it showed a hooded figure pushing a wheelchair containing a small hunched-over man. The desk where the guard had sat was empty. Ruger wanted to reach through the screen and snatch Spencer up and hold him until he was healed.
“Sit down, Ruger. Let’s watch the rest. Hopefully, we can see something that will lead us to him,” Cade said.
Ruger sat. It said a lot about his feelings toward Spencer that he’d lost control and hadn’t realized he’d stood up. As he did while in combat, he pushed all emotion into a cave deep inside and locked the door.
The hooded figure stopped the chair a few feet from the Dodge Dart. He leaned down and said something to Spencer. Ruger watched Spencer tip his head to the side as if he were thinking before he nodded and said something back.
Ruger wasn’t much of a lip reader, but it didn’t take a genius to make out the words, “All right. Let’s go.” Shit. The door holding back his emotions burst open.
“Damn, there was his consent,” Shane said, frustration evident in each word.
“Yeah, but he was drugged out of his mind,” Gabriel said.
“That’s our interpretation,” Cade responded. “Unfortunately the Mona Valley Police Department saw something else.
Cramping pain seized Ruger’s hand when the heavy man put his arms around Spencer and lifted him into the car. At one point, it looked as though Spencer cried out. Ruger glanced down and saw he’d clutched his fist so tightly the skin around his knuckles appeared a stark white.
“Shit,” Treb said, describing Ruger’s feelings.
The car left the camera’s range, and the images froze. No one spoke. Ruger forced himself not to go find a wall to put his fists through.
Boone turned his head and looked at Tony. Both men smiled at the same time and said, “Street cameras.”
Ruger didn’t know fingers could move so fast. On the wall to the left of Ruger, the monitor lit up, and a street map of Mona Valley appeared. Red dots appeared on the corners of what Ruger assumed were the most traveled streets of the city.
A block away from the hospital a red dot turned green. A view of the street appeared on the monitor in front of Ruger. About the time Ruger thought they were following the wrong lead, a dark Dodge Dart drove past the camera.
Two blocks farther up the street, another red dot turned green. The screen before Ruger flickered, and a different view came up. Ruger watched the Dart pull to a stop and turn right. On the street map, a red line appeared between the first dot and second, tracing the car’s route.
Dot by dot Tony and Boone marked out the Dodge’s course until it reached near the edge of the city. Ruger’s frustration mounted when he saw that a whole cluster of streets had no dots.
“The battery either needs replacing, or the cameras are broken on those streets,” Tony said as he pointed to the middle of the dotless section of streets.
“I guess we check every camera around the last camera that the Dodge appeared on,” Shane said.
An hour later the tension in the room hit a boiling point and swearwords rang out. Ruger again was on his feet.
The dark Dodge Dart never appeared on any of the cameras. It had disappeared.
Cade stood, gaining everyone’s attention, and walked over to the monitor showing the street map. With legs slightly spread and hands on his hips, he surveyed the map. After a few minutes, he lifted his hand and traced the area that had no dots.
“Can you find out how many calls the hospital received from this area?” he asked.
A monitor on the wall to the right blinked as Tony typed. Two lines filled with numbers appeared. “Two,” Tony answered. “And they’re both from cell phones.
On the street map, two black dots appeared five blocks apart.
“What do you want to do, boss?” Treb asked. “Spencer’s been gone almost two weeks. Should we go and stake both places out?”
“Let me try something,” Boone said. The monitor in front of him went black.
Five minutes later, the walls were starting to close in on Ruger. The strain of the situation started eating at him, and a drop of sweat ran down the side of his neck. The muscles of Ruger’s abs clenched tight, and it became a battle of wills to keep his fragile control. And yet, unless someone caught the line of moisture, Ruger’s outward appearance was calm, cool, and collected.
A refrigerator appeared on the screen. The view bobbed and moved. A ripe yellow banana surrounded by red shiny apples and purple grapes popped up. After a moment Ruger realized he was seeing a painting.
The view blurred and moved. A silver pot sitting on a gas range came into the picture. There was a small flame under the pot, and steam escaped out from the edge of the cover.
The screen distorted again, and a kitchen sink came into sight. Next to the sink sat at least a half dozen orange and white prescription bottles.
“Why does the picture keep changing?” Rock asked, breaking the silence of the entranced group.
“The person is moving while he or she is talking on the phone,” Boone answered.
“So we’re looking through someone’s cellphone?” Gabriel asked.
“Yep, through the camera,” Tony answered.
Everything became hazy before Ruger saw a small table containing a head of lettuce, three tomatoes, and an open package of deli meat. Behind the table was a doorway. Through the doorway, a lone figure huddled in a rocking chair before a huge window.
“Zoom in, zoom in,” Cade shouted while everyone leaned forward, and Boone’s typing became feverish.
The figure filled the screen for a second before it turned blurry.
Every man in the room jumped to their feet.
“Gear up and be at the hanger in fifteen,” Shane ordered. “It’s going to take at least forty-five minutes to fly there.”
Chapter Three
Spencer sat next to a huge bay window in an antique wooden rocking chair and enjoyed the warm sunshine, hoping it would thaw his frozen body. His feet rested on a padded ottoman the same colored blue as the hand-tied felt blanket covering him from his neck to his toe
s. Spencer couldn’t seem to get warm anymore.
In the background, dishes clinked together, and a metal lid clanked, telling Spencer that Terry was preparing lunch. That was good because his belly was starting to feel uncomfortable. He didn’t know why, but eating helped him feel relaxed, helped his ability to sleep, and took the pain away. Except, after yesterday’s noon meal, dinner last night and this morning’s breakfast, he had thrown up while using the bathroom. He didn’t bother telling Terry. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t puked before when the pain had become too much, since he’d been here. This time might be a little different, as the pain in his guts had increased, but to Spencer, it really didn’t matter.
To be honest, he didn’t care about the whys and hows of anything. Not much had changed in Spencer’s attitude since his stay at the hospital. Terry might have taken him away, but that didn’t alter the fact that Heartland had destroyed what little he had accomplished in his life.
To be fair, one thing had changed. The agony in the exposed nerves of his empty eye socket had receded to a dull ache. That alone made life almost bearable.
This morning, after Spencer felt his way through breakfast, Terry took the eyepatches off and put the different eye drops into his good eye and the empty socket. For the first time, Terry replaced only the patch on the eyeless side. As the morning progressed, the sight in Spencer’s good eye cleared, and to his surprise, he could see more than three feet in front of his face without glasses.
Spencer remembered how excited he was upon receiving his first pair of glasses in fifth grade. That excitement deflated when his eyes steadily worsened as he matured until he’d barely passed the sight requirements while wearing glasses at the police academy. After the surgery to save his eye, the doctors explained that they replaced the damaged eye lens with a synthetic mono-focal lens. At the time, he didn’t know or care what that meant.
Now as he looked out the window and watched green leaves dancing in the breeze, he knew. For the first time in years, Spencer could see clearly without glasses.
A scrape of a shoe on the hardwood floor brought Spencer’s attention to Terry entering the sitting room while wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
“Lunch is ready,” he said.
Spencer studied Terry for the first time. The blind deductions he’d made when Terry was helping him were correct. Terry was taller than Spencer and overweight. Now that Spencer could see, he speculated that Terry’s height reached just under six feet, and he was carrying at least a hundred pounds more fat than Spencer.
“How long have I been here?” Spencer asked.
“Almost two weeks,” Terry answered. “Come on. Let’s get you into the kitchen before the food gets cold.”
“Huh, I thought it was longer,” Spencer commented. He took the towel from Terry before he was lifted, blanket and all, into the bigger man’s arms. Because his sore stomach had gotten worse, Spencer was still unable to walk. At times, he lay on the bed curled in a ball of agony until Terry brought him more pills that dulled his mind into mush.
“Nope, it’s only been two weeks. I made turkey sandwiches with macaroni and cheese today.” Terry smiled down at Spencer.
Terry may be overweight, and his blond hair was receding in the front, but Spencer still considered him a good-looking man. Terry had smooth, tan skin and big blue eyes framed by thick black lashes. A cute round nose and full lips completed a face that was pleasant to look at.
“How old are you?” Spencer asked, thinking Terry looked older than his own twenty-four years.
“I’m thirty-four,” Terry answered and set Spencer on a blue cushion tied to a painted white wooden chair. Easily he pushed Spencer closer to the matching white table.
Spencer surveyed the solid blue bowls filled with food. His similar colored plate already contained a delicious looking sandwich. It was cut in half displaying crisp green lettuce, white turkey meat, and red tomato between slices of some kind of grain bread. Next to the sandwich was a mound of creamy orange macaroni and cheese. Green beans completed the inviting images on the plate. Off to the side sat a smaller plate containing a huge slice of chocolate cake.
“Wow, this looks wonderful. The way you set up this table, it could be a picture in a magazine. It’s so pretty,” Spencer said, complimenting Terry.
Terry frowned. Picking up Spencer’s glass of milk, he said, “I don’t think your milk is cold enough. I’ll go get you some fresh.”
Now it was Spencer’s turn to frown at Terry’s confusing actions. Soon Terry was back with his fresh milk and sitting across from Spencer.
Spencer picked up his fork and tried to spear a few noodles of macaroni and cheese, and missed. Frowning, he moved the fork’s tines over, and this time he managed to catch some of the macaroni on the utensil. Except he hadn’t been aiming the fork at that side of the small mound of noodles. Tipping his head back a bit, he tried again. This time things worked a little better.
“I’ve read that when someone loses an eye it takes a while for them to get their depth perception back. The article said the brain will adjust,” Terry said.
“Good, because this is kind of weird,” Spencer said. He tried again, and those damn noodles ended up spilling off the plate and onto the table. Giving up, he picked up the sandwich.
“Is it good?” Terry asked.
Spencer chewed a bite of the sandwich before carefully finding the glass with his fingertip so that he could take a large sip of milk to wash the food down. “Yes, you are a great cook.”
Terry beamed. “Thank you.”
Spencer looked down at his bloated stomach bulging out against the material of one of Terry’s T-shirt. The shirt was so big it reached Spencer’s knees.
“Terry, I think something is still wrong with my belly. It’s so big that my skin is stretched tight, and I think I have a fever.” Sweat covered Spencer, and a wave of shivers danced through his body. He grabbed up the ends of the soft blanket and pulled them tighter.
“Drink some more milk. It will help,” Terry instructed. “I guess if it isn’t better by tomorrow, I’ll have to find a doctor to look at you.”
“The doctors at the hospital seemed to know what they were doing. Maybe you should take me back there?” Spencer asked, taking another sip of liquid as instructed.
“We’ll see. Drink your milk and finish eating. I want to enjoy this beautiful day with you before you take your nap.”
Spencer took his time and ate as much as he could, hoping the food would stay down this time. Stuffed, he lifted the glass and drank until the milk was gone. Terry took such good care of him that he didn’t have the heart to tell the man the milk was going sour.
Maybe today Spencer would again broach the subject of calling Craig. So far the few times he’d asked, Terry had put him off and became impatient with him. Spencer figured his friend had to be starting to worry. He tried to find a reason for Terry’s reluctance at letting him contact Craig, but his mind wouldn’t cooperate and he gave up. Sleep always seemed more important.
“That was great, but I’m full,” he said, trying to lean back. Slicing, burning pressure seized his abdomen and had him crouching forward.
Warm arms closed around Spencer, and Terry lifted him up against his chest. “Let’s go relax.”
Terry carried Spencer into the back den. Keeping Spencer in his arms, Terry sat down on an overstuffed leather sofa. Terry holding Spencer wasn’t something new. He sat with Spencer on his lap every day after lunch and in the evening after dinner until Spencer fell asleep.
Warm fuzziness filled Spencer’s body and spread through his mind. As time passed, he relaxed into the comfort of Terry’s arms.
Spencer’s eyes popped open when a hand burrowed under the blanket and slid up his bare leg. Because of his fever, instead of feeling the softness of a hand, Spencer felt as if a sharp razor was scraping his skin off. The buzz that was cloaking Spencer’s mind thinned, making reality clearer, and he remembered hands messaging his back, ass, and the f
ront of his thighs. Now he wondered if anything else happened. “Terry,” Spencer protested and shifted his leg.
“Kiss me,” Terry whispered. “I’ve waited long enough.”
A hand at the back of Spencer’s neck forced him toward Terry’s upturned lips. Spencer put his hands on Terry’s chest and tried to push him away.
“Terry, what are you doing?” Spencer tried to struggle, but his limbs were fast becoming dead weights.
Terry’s hand cupped his balls before stroking Spencer’s flaccid dick. “Relax, Spencer. Let me make both of us feel good.”
“Stop it, Terry. Stop!”
“Cut it out, Spencer. You wouldn’t have let me bring you here if you didn’t want me,” Terry said.
“I thought you were my friend,” Spencer yelled and then screamed for help when Terry gripped his balls in a tight painful hold.
Sharp cracks of splitting wood and a crash of wood against wood echoed from the front of the house. At the same time, from the back of the house, wood splintered, followed by a dull thud.
The window across the room shattered in a spray of glass, and the long thin barrel of a rifle appeared, pointing straight at them.
A huge man dressed in black stood in the doorway. Black eyes bore into Spencer. Through the curtain of drugs overrunning his system, Spencer had a moment of recognition. Despair overwhelmed him because he knew it was an impossible dream that this scary dude striding toward him was someone special from his past.
Terry lifted Spencer before letting his body crash to the floor in an explosion of pain that stole Spencer’s breath. Terry jumped over Spencer and stood in front of his prone, pitiful body. Spencer caught a glimpse of Terry’s raised fists, the man ready to take on the fully armed deadly looking man in front of him.
The guy never hesitated. One long arm extended, and a hand grabbed Terry by the throat, lifting him in the air and shoving him to the side. The momentum sent Terry colliding with the wall. Pictures rattled and fell to the floor, adding to the chaos of Terry’s bellows and the invasion of more men in black.
Spencer's Reluctant Rescuer [Rescue for Hire 9] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) Page 3
