by S A Monk
“Hanna....” Nick moved his thumb to her lips, rubbing them, then parting them. His voice was low and guttural, rough with desire.
Hanna watched him as he slid his hand to the back of her neck. He slipped his other hand around her waist, then used both to pull her into his embrace. His mouth descended to claim hers, and suddenly he became the center of her universe, every bit of her awareness focused on him.
At first, his kiss was slow and sensual, just a gentle taste, a tender bite and nibble. Dazzled, Hanna closed her eyes and gave herself up to the drugging pleasure of it. He edged closer to her and tightened his hold on her.
Her world narrowed wonderfully and completely on him. His masculine heat and scent enveloped her. His arms tightened more. Unsure where to put her own hands and arms in the cramped confines of the Jeep, she curved them around his waist, bracing her hip on the edge of the console between the seats, her legs bent toward the driver’s seat.
The kiss grew fierce. His mouth moved hungrily over hers, while his tongue stroked and tangled with her own, then thrust deep. Liquid heat pooled in her loins. He was kissing her like he was famished for her, like he couldn’t get enough of her! Little whimpers of pleasure escaped her throat. They sounded so needy, she was mortified.
She tried to pull away, but Nick wouldn’t let her go far. He pressed his forehead to hers. He was breathing hard. His words came out husky with desire. “Aw, sweet Hanna, we’ve definitely got to do something about this!”
What was this? What did he want? It didn’t sound like he was going to retire and come home. For heaven’s sake, he’d just been promoted, and, damn him, he had probably already extended his term of enlistment! He’d be leaving her again. Her heart was too fragile for a brief affair with him, only to see him walk out of her life once again. The last time he’d done that, she’d ached so badly, she’d almost wished she had never let him make love to her.
Panicked and confused, she shoved away from him. “I have to go, Nick. I’ll be late.”
There was nothing else she could say, so she grabbed her purse, opened the door and jumped out. The instant her feet hit the ground, her legs felt boneless, but she made them move across the parking lot. When she got to the ER entrance, she hurried inside, without once looking back at the man in the Jeep behind her.
HANNA DIDN’T SEE NICK for the next day and a half. His mother replaced him as chauffeur. Jessie didn’t ask why. She didn’t pry, but she figured something was amiss.
She knew how Hanna felt about her oldest son, and she had always kept her confidences regarding Nick. When her young friend was ready to talk to her about it, she would listen and maybe advise. Until then, she’d just keep an eye on the two.
But Jessie played bridge on Friday evenings with Colleen and a few friends, so Nick had to pick Hanna up from work that evening. Only when he arrived, she was far from ready to leave. He came through the ER doors minutes after ambulance attendants and two sheriff’s deputies brought in a couple of high school kids who’d just crashed out on the highway.
The teenage boy was bloody and badly injured, but he was conscious enough to tell Hanna that his girlfriend had overdosed. He had been rushing her to the hospital when he’d lost control of his speeding vehicle and crashed. It took a bit of gentle prying on Hanna’s part to get him to tell her that his girlfriend had injected heroin into her veins. Despite the boy’s highly visible injuries, his companion was in worse shape.
Hanna saw Nick enter the emergency room doors, but all she could do was give him a brief wave. The girl strapped to the gurney was in big trouble. Her vital signs were so weak, they could barely get a read on them. Hanna rattled off instructions to her small crew, and in the midst of that, the young girl’s heart stopped.
“Get the crash cart over here!” she shouted.
She administered CPR until the cart arrived a moment later. The male assistant at her side handed her the paddles. He set the voltage, and Hanna told everyone to stand clear. Then she applied the paddles and the electric current. Nothing. She announced clear and tried again. All the attendants waited in eerie silence. She tried two more times, but after the fourth attempt, she had to give up. The teenager had no pulse.
Nick watched Hanna hit the side of the gurney with her open hand and swear softly. Even from across the room, he saw the anguish on her face. Losing a patient was not something she took lightly. In spite of that, though, she quickly proceeded to the teenage boy. He was still alive and breathing, but now unconscious.
“Let’s get him into the operating room,” she called. “Meet you there in five.” She quickly walked over to Nick. “This may take a while. He’s hurt pretty badly. Want me to get a ride home with someone here, so you don’t have to wait?”
“No, I’ll stay. Got a coffee machine somewhere?”
“There’s one in a smaller waiting room near the OR. It’s quieter than waiting out here.” She pointed down a long hallway.
He nodded. “I’ll be waiting there for you. If you see the cops who came in with the victims, would you tell them I’d like to talk to them?” Nick gave her an encouraging smile. “I’m sorry about the girl, but you’ll save the boy.”
She smiled tiredly back at him. “I hope so. They were so young. Damn drugs! She died of a heroin overdose. Can you believe that? At her age?”
“It’s bad shit.”
She sadly agreed, then turned away to hurry down the hall, where she disappeared behind the OR doors.
Nick watched her go with silent admiration. She was something else, he thought. Beautiful, intelligent, and compassionate. Amidst all of that trauma, she’d kept her head and directed the people around her better than some officers he’d worked with. And she’d done it with a soft touch. He’d never seen her in action, at the hospital, like that before. He was impressed.
Every time he had come home to see his family over the years, he’d noticed how much lovelier she got. It hadn’t eluded him that she had long ago outgrown her thin, boyish, teenage body and matured into a very attractive woman, with a figure that was definitely curvy in all the right places. And while she was still quiet and shy, she’d become more confident of herself.
Nothing had changed about her arrestingly beautiful eyes, though. They were still as big and green, as clear and guileless as they’d always been. She didn’t hide her emotions. It was one of the reasons the bullies at school had picked on her. They had seen how much their teasing had bothered her. Even now he remembered her humiliations with a surge of pure anger. She’d never deserved any of that, and he’d always tried to protect her from it. For her sake, he was glad she’d gotten a bit tougher and more confident of handling people.
The Marine Corps had been a satisfying life for him, but he had always missed Hanna. They wrote to each other regularly and faithfully, and he never failed to get a surge of pleasure when he got one of her letters, but it wasn’t the same as talking to her in person. Because of that, there was a lot he didn’t really know about her daily life. In many ways, it was as if their relationship had frozen in place twenty years ago. As friends, they were as close now as they had been growing up, but it had always seemed as if there should have been more. Nick thought it was probably one of the reasons their relationship had taken such an unexpected, intimate turn three years ago. While it had surprised him when it had happened, it hadn’t when he’d taken the time to examine it further.
“Colonel Kelly.”
Nick’s thoughts were interrupted by two sheriff deputies who walked up to him.
“We heard you’d like to talk to us.”
The older of the two deputies introduced himself, then his younger partner. Nick shook each of their hands. “Mind if we walk down the hall and talk in the OR waiting room? There’s coffee in there.”
“Not at all,” the older deputy said. “We’ll be closer to the boy that way, too.”
“Are you a friend of Dr. Wallace?” the younger deputy asked.
Nick nodded. “A long-time friend of h
er and her family. I’m waiting for her.”
Once they all got themselves cups of coffee from the vending machine and took a seat in the smaller waiting room, the older deputy told Nick how badly the whole department felt about the loss of Dylan Wallace.
“It doesn’t appear that your boss, Sheriff Thomas, shares your sentiment,” Nick commented bluntly, unable to keep all of the resentment out of his voice. “When I talked to him the other day, he didn’t seem too upset by the death of one of his deputies.”
“That’s because he’s an asshole!” the younger deputy volunteered.
The older man sent the younger one a look of censure. “None of us like him too well,” he clarified. “Most of us were hoping Dylan would run for Sheriff in the next election. Thomas has been in office a little over a year. Unfortunately, he has two to go yet.”
“What’s the problem with him?”
“He’s cocky, unconnected to his deputies, and almost completely unconcerned about the real crime issues in the county.”
“Like illegal drugs?” Nick checked.
“Yeah, we’ve had a rise in illegal drug sales and use from here to Port Angeles, but Thomas acts like it’s nothing,” the older officer continued. “He keeps saying it’s minuscule compared to the big cities like Seattle. But hell, when high school kids are shooting up and overdosing, that’s not minuscule.”
“Little communities like ours don’t usually have heroin problems,” the younger deputy added. “Marijuana, crack, pills, some other small stuff, but not the biggies like heroin and pure cocaine. No one can afford it with what folks make here.”
“So what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” the older one said disgustedly. “None of our cases get cross-referenced. There’s no sharing of data. Just a lot of isolated incidents with no correlations being made. You can’t solve cases or run good investigations with procedures like that.”
“Do either of you know who sold the heroin to the girl who died tonight?”
They shook their heads no. “When the boyfriend gets out of surgery and recovers enough for us to talk to him, we’re hoping he’ll know.”
“And tell us,” the second officer added.
“Would you mind sharing that information with me when you find out?”
“Don’t see a problem with that, Colonel, especially since you’re looking into Dylan’s death and trying to find your brother.”
“A friend of mine in the FBI, at the Seattle office, might be able to give us some information, too. I’ll share whatever I find out, if you’ll do the same with me. It might be wise to keep whatever we discover between ourselves, though. I don’t feel real comfortable trusting your boss until I find out more about him. Is that okay with you guys?”
“Sure is.” The younger officer made the comment, but both men nodded in agreement.
“Thomas has never smelled right,” the older deputy added. Both men pulled cards out of their shirt pockets with their names and contact numbers on them. The older deputy turned his over and hand wrote another phone number on the back of his card. “This is my personal number. Use it to contact me if you find any new information about what happened to Dylan or your brother. There are a few guys in the department besides myself and Anders, here, who would be glad to assist you in any way that will help.”
“I appreciate that, deputies,” Nick replied, pulling out his own business card with his SAT phone number on it. “We’ll keep in touch then.”
After they left, Nick put his head back against the top of the sofa cushion and gave some thought to what the two deputies had told him. They were correct. Something didn’t smell right about Sheriff Jeff Thomas. He’d been arrogant and flippant when Nick had talked to him the other day about Dylan and Lance. Neither case seemed to concern him a great deal. He told Nick they were both what they appeared to be— a death by drowning, due to intoxication, and a man taking off, probably to track down his ex-wife.
The Chief of Police for Port George, Phillip Douglas, had been in the room with Sheriff Thomas, along with the coroner. Phillip had seemed intimated by Thomas; definitely dominated by him. He had deferred to the older law enforcement officer on everything. And the coroner had been even worse. He’d had nothing factual to add to the conversation, only his overly simplistic explanation of Dylan’s death. The whole thing sounded manufactured as hell, as if they had rehearsed all their stories in advance so that they would not contradict one another.
He and Hanna had their work cut out for them investigating these situations. At this point, there was so little to go on. Nothing really, but suspicions and hunches.
His thoughts of Hanna brought him back to his earlier reflections, particularly to the kiss they had exchanged yesterday morning in the Jeep. Nick still recalled it in vivid detail.
Hot and passionate were two words that described it well for him. Christ, she’d turned him on! Just thinking about it was making him hard. Initially, he could have sworn she’d wanted that kiss as much as he had, too. But afterward, she’d hadn’t been able to get away from his fast enough.
Her reaction bewildered him still. He had enough experience with women to know when one was turned on, and damn it, she’d been turned on. So why had she shot out of the Jeep the way she had afterward? And why hadn’t she wanted him taking her home last night or to work this morning? His mother certainly hadn’t been willing to enlighten him.
He’d come home to find his brother, but he’d also hoped to find out how things stood between him and Hanna since his last visit. The memory of their first and only sexual encounter three years ago was a powerful one for him. He’d thought about it a lot since. Because she hadn’t wanted to talk about it in her letters, he’d left it alone. But that didn’t mean that he intended to leave it that way for good.
Making love to her had caused a major shift in his life, and he didn’t want to act like it had never happened. But he also didn’t know how to revisit it with her after three long years. In spite of their regular correspondence, he didn’t even know if there was another man in her life. She had never mentioned having a boyfriend. She’d never mentioned dating anyone. But he now knew the ER resident doctor had the hots for her, and he still wondered about his brother’s relationship with her. Of course, she and her brother had always been close to Lance and him. And he knew she really loved Lance’s handicapped son.
And Nick had discovered long ago that Lance was attracted to Hanna. From the time they had been teenagers, his brother had demonstrated an interest in her that was more than friendship. It had caused some serious friction between the two of them on more than one occasion.
Hanna had skipped so many grades in school because of her intelligence, she’d always been in Nick’s classes, even though he and his brother were four and three years older than her. In high school, when Nick had asked Hanna to their senior prom, in a rather convoluted dating mess, Lance had not been happy about it. He’d only been a junior, but he’d wanted to ask her to the big dance himself. The fact that Nick had beaten him to it had instigated a couple of good fights between them.
Then there was the big rift they’d had over Hanna three years ago.
After being badly injured in a disastrous mission in Pakistan, Nick had come home to recuperate. Hanna had medically overseen his convalescence. His body had begun to heal, but not his psyche.
He’d had a difficult time coping with the loss of most of his team in a mission gone wrong. He’d been in command, and they’d been hit hard and fast while trying to capture and extract a high value al-Qaida field officer. All but two of his men had died in a bloody firefight. Nick blamed himself. For the first and last time, he’d failed to do his own intel; leaving it to someone else. Stupid, tragically stupid! The nightmares and the guilt had plagued him relentlessly afterwards.
In a futile attempt to ease some of his torment, he’d gone to Yancy’s waterfront bar, where he’d gotten drunk and into a brawl with a loud- mouthed biker who had made some insulting
comment about him being a Marine. They’d busted up the place pretty good, and the police had been called.
But it had been Hanna who had come to his rescue and gotten him out of there before the cops arrived. She’d driven him home and poured a pot of coffee down him while she encouraged him to talk about his feelings. She’d listened to his anguished guilt over losing so many men, held him, and offered comfort. Her compassion and tenderness had begun an emotional healing for him, but it had also led to him making love to her that night.
Even after three years, Nick could still recall every detail of their intimacy. They’d been alone in his room, sitting on his bed. His mother, Lance, and Christopher had gone to see friends in Seattle and were not due home until the next morning. The moment Hanna had put her arms around him, he’d discovered he’d wanted her whole body wrapped around him. The need to bury himself in her sweet healing heat had been way too strong to resist.
The recognition of his desire for her had hit him so fast and hard, he hadn’t even considered she might still be a virgin, especially not at thirty-one. The eventual discovery had blown him away. No woman had ever given him her virginity. He’d offered to stop, but she hadn’t wanted him to stop. And secretly, he’d been thrilled to be Hanna’s first lover. Somehow it had felt so absolutely right, like it had been meant to be. The whole night had been a tremendous revelation for him. For the first time, their relationship hadn’t felt half full.
But Lance had been madder than hell when he’d found out the next day. The resultant scene wasn’t a pleasant memory. He rarely fought with his brother, at least not since they’d become adults. They were close, closer than most brothers. But they had nearly come to blows that day over Hanna Wallace.
