by R. G. Ryan
The hand that wasn’t holding the pistol went to his wound as if to apply pressure, but the area was obviously too tender and he jerked it back quickly. Just as quickly he renewed his aim on them.
“You bitches enjoying this? Well, are you?” he shouted loudly.
Cassie noticed for the first time that his right eye was swollen completely shut and that the actual path of the bullet rather than beginning at his eyebrow began at the corner of that eye where it had obviously taken out a sizable chip of bone. He was almost certainly blind.
“Paul,” Cassie said wearily, “I don’t think either one of us enjoys seeing another human being suffer…you included.”
Cassie glanced over at Eddie who had sat down next to her, an unfocused vacancy having settled into her eyes.
Paul said, “What’s up with ditzo there?”
“I think you really scared her.”
“Scared her? Sister, I intend to do more than scare her. What I have planned for my little helper here will go down in the record books.” His face became more sinister. “See, I’ve had a little while now to give this some serious thought and, if I do say so myself, I’ve come up with a way to cause non-lethal, sustained pain. Yeah, I have.”
He nearly lost it as a hysterical giggle started to erupt.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Paul!” Cassie said, putting as much strength into her voice as she could manage. “You are in no condition to hurt anyone. In fact, judging by your appearance you’ve lost enough blood by now that you are barely conscious. It’s true, isn’t it?”
The effect on Paul was instantaneous as he fastened his eyes on her.
“I. Feel. Fine!” He shouted, slowly enunciating each word. “I am perfectly capable of dealing with the both of you.”
A flurry of emotions pulled and stretched at his face leaving it contorted into a mask of pure evil. However, the voice that spoke was eerily calm.
“I could shoot you right now, you know.”
The gun, which was resting on his knee, rose slightly until it was pointing directly at her chest.
“Yes, you could if that’s really the way you want this to end.”
She had to stall for time, but time for what she didn’t know. She only knew that she had to keep him talking.
“To…end?” His voice had suddenly raised an octave and fifty decibels. The effort cost him dearly as a fresh flow of blood began to issue from the corner of his eye. “Is there ever an end?”
“Paul, I want you to listen to me.” Cassie put a tranquil, soothing quality into her voice. “You need to stay calm. Sit quietly and breathe deeply because if you don’t, you will bleed to death.”
As Paul regarded her, his head was swaying back and forth as if it were fifty pounds too heavy for his neck to support.
“What are you doing to me?” he finally said coldly.
“I’m trying to save your life.”
“Oh, save me, Cassie. Save me,” he mocked in a singsong voice! “Listen, sweetheart, I may have lost a lot of blood, but I’m not stupid, so don’t try any of that funny stuff on me ‘cause it won’t work.”
His remaining eye blinked rapidly, shifting from side to side as if he weren’t in control.
And for the first time, Cassie realized…he wasn’t.
Oddly since Paul’s arrival she hadn’t been aware of any pain at all in her ankle. The sudden realization gave her a resurgence of strength.
“Paul, let me ask you a question.”
“A question?” he said, and then after a long pause, “Sure, why not?”
“We’re out here…it appears that we are moving toward some point of finality. So, I would really like to know about this obsession you seem to have with me. You know it’s not like I’m the most beautiful girl on the planet or have the best body or anything. So what is it?”
The question seemed to tax him beyond his resources.
“Ob…obsession? Is that what you think it is?”
“Clearly.”
“Oh, man…what are you talking about?” he laughed quietly as his speech trailed off.
“Well, then, if not an obsession, what is it?” she asked. “Why have you stayed after me all these years?”
“Why have I stayed after you?”
“Look, if you’re going to repeat every question I ask, this is going to take a long time,” she chided.
“Shut up! Shut up!” he screamed, and immediately regretted the outburst as the resulting pain nearly sent him into unconsciousness. In the process the gun slipped from his grasp causing him to lurch to retrieve it, which in turn stimulated more pain and more bleeding turning his face into a crimson horror.
“Why can’t you be honest with yourself, Paul?” Cassie asked calmly. “Why can’t you just admit the fact that for all these years you have been so obsessed with me that there literally hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that you haven’t spent time thinking of how to get me back. Thinking of what it felt like to touch me. Thinking—“
“Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?” he roared. “You think I haven’t had other women on my mind? You think I haven’t been able to get laid or, or even want a girl ‘cause…’cause I was so screwed up over you? Is that it?”
His voice seemed to grow stronger by the minute.
“Oh, that sounds real nice, Paulie, but I know the truth. Eddie told me all about you.”
Cassie smiled devilishly at him. At the sound of her name, Eddie reacted a little.
“She told…she what? What do you mean she told you all about me?”
“That’s what I said. She told me all about you.”
Cassie reached over, linked her arm through Eddie’s, and continued to smile. Her plan was to keep talking to him as if he didn’t have a gun trained on her and her life weren’t in jeopardy.
“Oh, that’s good,” he said derisively. “Eddie the dingbat tel…telling you all about me. I can’t wait to hear this. Go ahead; let me hear what she…what she had to say.”
“You already know what she said, don’t you?”
The blinking began again with his left eye.
Cassie had already decided where the conversation was going and had only to devise a way to lead him on.
She continued, “For instance, she told me about the pictures you kept of me. You know the ones.” She knew she he was getting to him. His breathing was becoming more and more erratic. “Eddie said she would see you looking at them at night…every night.” She added quickly, “And that’s not all. She also told me about other girls you would bring home. Tall, blonde girls who looked a lot like me. This triggering your memory, Paulie?”
“So what!” he said distractedly. “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Okay, then how about this: Eddie told me that when you would, you know, have sex with her that the whole time you would be saying my name over and over and over—“
“Stop it!” he suddenly shouted. “That’s enough…I’ve had enough.”
He trained his one good eye on Cassie, intensely examining her. For a fleeting moment a look was exposed on his ruined face of such longing, such tenderness that it pulled at her emotions in a way she didn’t think possible.
“I know your face so well,” he said in a whisper. “I know every plane, every texture…every rounded curve. You see, I’ve studied your face for years. And, God help me, I love that face…I…love that face.”
His voice trailed off becoming barely audible.
When he started again his good eye was closed.
“I see you in my mind, I see you in my dreams. I even see you in the faces of other women and then find myself hating those women because they aren’t you. They don’t have your smile, your incredible hair…your eyes.”
He paused to open his eye, regarding her gently.
“Obsession? I suppose that’s one way to put it. But I prefer to think of it as a dedicated and directed focus on ultimate beauty.”
&nbs
p; His expression had been so disarmingly eloquent, Cassie found herself unable to speak. Compassion she thought long dead stirred in her soul as she came face to face with his humanity. Could this be true? Could this man, whom she’d deemed a monster, really be just another poor slob unlucky enough to fall in love with a woman he could never have?
“Then again,” his voice startled her out of her introspection. “I could be a sick psycho who gets off on making up romantic prose because I know it’s the way to get a woman to do anything you want. So, will you, Cassie…will you do what I want? And, I think you know what I want!”
The laugh that followed went on for so long and had overtones of such evil that she felt humiliated and stupid for having been taken in so easily. A new issue of blood began dripping down his face and neck, causing her to wonder how long he could maintain consciousness.
Chapter Thirty-two
“Jake! Jake…hang on, man. We’re here now.”
Out of the cloud stepped a tall, golden-haired warrior who bent over me and began touching my head. I didn’t like the warrior. In fact, at that moment, I hated him. He was making my head hurt.
“Washington, grab that triage kit out of the bag.”
“I’m on it,” said a voice outside the periphery of my vision.
Strong arms were supporting me and someone’s voice was urging me to lie down. But, I didn’t want to lie down! I had worked far too hard and paid too dear a price to stand. No way was I going to give it up.
I shouted with all the strength I could muster, “Leave me alone! I’m not going to lie down!”
I heard someone say, “He’s hallucinating, man. What should we do?”
“Crack that ammonia vile open and give it to me.”
Someone shoved a foul smelling, penetrating substance under my nose and I jerked my head away. The pain was the worst yet and I nearly collapsed. With my eyes shut tightly against the intensity of agony, I felt comforting hands helping me to the ground. I offered no resistance for there was nothing left with which to fight.
Gentle fingers probed my wound.
“All right, Jake, this is going to sting a little but I’ve got to get this area cleaned and sanitized.”
How did the warrior know my name?
“Careful with that now, you don’t know but what there might be a fracture.”
“I don’t think so. At least it doesn’t look fractured to me.”
Suddenly the haze had cleared and I saw the two FBI agents Gerald Redfern had sent.
“Glad to have you back with us,” said the one who had starred in my vision, the one with blonde hair.
“It’s good to be back. Thank-you both for coming after me.”
“It’s what we do,” the other agent replied, who looked enough like Aaron to be his brother, size included. “I’m agent Washington and the good-looking blonde guy there is agent Carter.
“How did you manage to stand up?” Carter asked in amazement as he helped me take a drink of water.
“Oh, I guess you could say through continuous, obsessively sustained, and directed effort.”
I winced at the pain.
Agent Washington scanned the immediate area.
“So, where’s our boy?”
“He’s gone.”
“Agent Redfern said that you shot him.”
“I did. In fact, I think I hit him in the head, probably grazed him. He was walking very unsteadily.”
“But you’re sure it was Morgan?” Washington asked, while continuing to look around.
“Oh yeah, there is absolutely no doubt about that. Let’s just say that I got up close and personal with him before he took off. When I shot him, he was about fifty yards away and it was after he beaned me with that rock!”
Carter blew out a long breath of air.
“All I was able to do is clean out the wound and put a compress on it to try to prevent any more loss of blood, but this really needs stitches.”
He started putting the supplies back into the triage kit.
“So stitch it up,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“I said that if it needs to be stitched up, then you should go ahead and stitch it up.”
“But, I don’t have any anesthesia or anything to numb up the area.”
“Do you have a suture kit?”
He glanced down at the bag.
“Well, yeah. But—“
“Then start suturing.”
I saw him glance at the other agent before replying, “It’s gonna hurt like hell.”
“Look, you and I both know that if it doesn’t get done, the risk of infection is magnified greatly. So, get the stuff out and get to work. I’ll be fine with it. Really.”
He hesitated slightly and then started rifling through the contents of the triage bag.
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Within fifteen minutes the entire process was completed. Agent Carter placed a new compress on the wound and wrapped my head in gauze.
Through clenched teeth I said, “Okay…now, I know you’ve got some fentanyl pops down under there and I would appreciate it greatly if you would get one and administer it forthwith.”
Carter tore open a package and handed the “lollipop” to me. I stuck it in-between my cheek and gum. The effects were nearly instantaneous.
Washington asked, “Where was Morgan when you last saw him?”
I raised my chin toward the Joshua tree where I had last seen him.
“He was over there. Like I said, I’m pretty sure I shot him in the head because he went down like a sack of rocks and lay very still.”
Washington trotted toward the tree, bent down and examined the ground and hollered back, “I’ve got a substantial amount of blood on the ground and a blood trail leading off that way into the desert.”
He gestured toward a rise in the landscape and some low bluffs beyond.
I looked up at agent Carter.
“I’d appreciate some help getting to my feet.”
He reached down and hauled me upright. My head still hurt, but I was feeling better already. It’s amazing what the absence of pain can do for one’s sense of well-being.
“Can you walk?” Carter asked.
“Well, I’m not sure. But I probably need to find out sooner rather than later.”
He offered me his arm…and I took it. The first three or four steps were challenging, but after that I found that I could actually walk pretty well as long as I kept my pace slow and my vision focused on the ground in front of me.
I said, “I think this is going to work.”
Washington hollered, “Something over here you guys need to see.”
Carter and I made our way slowly to where he stood at the top of a low mound.
He gestured toward the bluffs.
“Can you see that over there?”
He was pointing toward a structure some distance away.
“Yeah. Must be an old mining cabin or something,” I replied.
“Well, whatever it is, the blood trail is moving in that direction.”
“Then that’s where we need to go.”
Carter said, “You sure you’re up for this?”
I had just started to answer when we heard a gunshot in the distance.
“Now I am!”
Chapter Thirty-three
The gunshot was surprisingly loud. Eddie cried out grasping her right knee.
“Eddie!” Cassie shouted. “Oh, my God! He shot you!”
“Kind of took you by surprise, huh?” Morgan was laughing again.
The control that Cassie had fiercely maintained threatened to collapse in the face of this sudden brutality. She crawled over to where Eddie lay and pried her hands away from her knee. Expecting to see a gaping bullet wound, she was relieved to see that it was in reality what they used to call in the old westerns, “a flesh wound.” The bullet had grazed Eddie’s knee just as the bull
et had grazed Paul’s head.
But he didn’t need to know that.
“Cassie, I’m scared,” Eddie managed to squeeze out between clinched teeth. “Oh, God…it hurts so bad.”
“Shhh, try to lie still and be quiet, baby.”
Cassie turned her attention to Morgan with a cold stare.
“Did you find that stimulating?”
He seemed to be in and out of consciousness and yet managed to answer, “Stimulating? Oh yeah! Very.” He laughed, more quietly this time. “In fact, I’m thinking of doing it again.”
She started to reply, but her words were lost in the booming of the gun. As it turned out, none of the bullets came anywhere near her and the metallic clicking that she now heard was the hammer of a gun falling on an empty chamber.
Cassie stood in one motion and without displaying even the slightest limp walked purposefully over to where Paul Morgan sat staring vacantly while continuing to fire the empty gun. She stood still for a moment, gathering her strength, and then more quickly than he could follow with one eye, bent and grabbed his head with both hands while driving a vicious knee strike into the side of his face where the bullet had grazed him. He dropped the gun and fell over onto his side where he lay moaning and semi-conscious. The force of the blow produced a fresh flow of blood from his head wound, but she was now beyond compassion. She stomped in the general direction of his groin before dropping with an elbow to the side of his exposed throat, which sent him into spasms of choking.
“Why don’t you just do us all a huge favor and die, you sick bastard!” she said despicably as she picked up the gun and searched his pockets. “No more bullets, huh?”
The temptation to hammer his head into a bloody pulp with the butt of the gun was nearly too strong to resist, so rather than give in to her primal urges she stood and walked away.
Suddenly, she lifted the pistol, stared at it closely whispering, “This is Jake’s gun!”
Which made her wonder how in the world a man like Paul Morgan had been able to take a gun away from a man like Jake Moriarity.
Eddie had managed to sit up but she was still clutching her knee.
“How’s it feeling, kid?” Cassie asked as she knelt down by her friend.