Souls of Men

by A. R. Ashworth

  Peter pulled up a chair in front of them. “Elaine will be under sedation for quite some time. Why don’t you both go rest?” He looked at Liz. “Do you want me to have another look at your face? No? Okay. Leave me a number, and I’ll be sure to call you first if I have any news.”

  Liz asked, “Did you talk to her? Before, I mean. Did you know?”

  “We were together until I came to work. What was I to know?”

  Liz shook her head. “Police stuff. I was wondering if she’d talked to you about something that happened today. Yesterday.”

  “Ah. She told me she had received threats. She was going to stay at my house for a while. It’s as secure a place as any. Now why don’t you go home.”

  Halfway down the corridor, she turned back to face him. “I’m glad it was you who took care of her.”

  Peter looked at his feet. “Yeah. I . . . me too.”

  A shower and another set of fresh scrubs later, he lay down on a sofa in the staff lounge, wondering what the night’s tragedy meant. Elaine had brought change to his life. Since he had given himself permission to need her, he started each morning with her in his life. His emotional numbness, his need to be alone with his past, had been dissipating. Now she was the one who needed him. He would certainly be there for her. He loved her.

  They had started building their relationship as equal partners. Now he had undoubtedly saved her life. They were no longer simply man and woman; they were savior and saved. A balance had been tipped. Any focus on the debt of a life owed and gratitude for a life given could topple what they had begun to build. It was a paradox. How each of them solved it would define their relationship or destroy it.

  He closed his eyes. God, he was tired. Elaine started calling his name. Diana joined her. They were right in front of him, but for every step he took toward them, they backed farther away. If only they would wait. Please, just wait for me. Another voice called his name and he woke.

  Sally stood over him. “Are you all right?” He nodded and sat up. Damn dreams.

  Peter splashed some water on his face and took the lift to the intensive care suite. Elaine lay in the dim light, covered by white hospital linens, swathed in bandages, sprouting IV tubes and drainage tubes and sensor wires. The rhythmic hiss of the respirator and the soft, regular beep of the monitor were the only sounds. He watched the screen for a minute, then checked the charts. Her vital signs had been steady for the last three hours. Good. Three hours? Had he been asleep that long? He leaned over the bed and stroked the strands of her hair that weren’t covered by gauze.

  “Hi, sweetheart. You’re going to be fine. I have to say, you coppers stick together. Bull, that young detective—Liz, I think—Cranwell, and a bunch of other cops I didn’t recognize. They were all here, crammed into the waiting room. There’s a constable stationed outside your door. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bull hijacked the guy and sat out there around the clock to protect you.”

  He took her hand. “I didn’t tell you last night before I had to go. I e-mailed Kate and Mom about you the other day. I didn’t tell everything, of course, but I told them I wanted to make a go of it with you. Mom thinks it’s wonderful. Kate is sort of wait-and-see about it, but I could tell she’s positive. She’s always been territorial about her little brother, but she comes around, eventually. They’ll be home soon, and we can have that dinner party we talked about.”

  “And I do love you.” He kissed her forehead and sat by the bed, holding her hand.

  FORTY-THREE

  “If I’d had my mobile, I could have told her. She must have thought Ximena was me!” Liz broke down sobbing and curled closer on the bed. “I know that’s what happened.” She was exhausted and scared, reacting to shock and guilt. Bull held her and didn’t say anything.

  He had told himself much the same thing. If he hadn’t stopped for petrol and to clean the fast food rubbish from the car, he would have been with Liz and she wouldn’t have a concussion, bruised ribs, and a black eye. It seemed such a little thing at the time. And why hadn’t he checked his phone before they left? It was damned hard not to blame himself. Liz and the guv were the two most important women in his life, and he had let both of them down. He needed a lot of forgiveness.

  No, they would certainly forgive him. What he needed was atonement.

  He remembered what his sergeant in Afghanistan had said when one of his squaddies didn’t make it. He held Liz close. “Listen to me, sweetheart. You didn’t do this, the Sreckos did—that Nilo bastard and that Anton guy. Get angry at them. Rage against them. But don’t blame yourself. They’re the bastards who hurt Elaine.”

  Liz looked up at him and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s hard to accept that. I keep asking ‘what if,’ and it’s always down to me.”

  “Exactly. I think the same thing. But it’s not all down to you or me. This maybe could have been prevented weeks ago if someone had done something just a little different. Who knows? But you and me, we can’t control the past. The Sreckos planned it and did it. Nilo is dead. The others aren’t, though.”

  He held her face softly between his hands and smiled at her. She didn’t look convinced, so he went on. “Cromarty said that Srecko means ‘lucky’ in Serbian, right?” She nodded and he continued. “It doesn’t anymore. Not if Bull and Barker have anything to do with it.”

  She smiled at him. “Thanks for that. We’ll make damn sure we have a say. When do we start?”

  That was more like the Liz he knew. He kissed her and wrapped his arms around her. “When we’re ready. Right now, I think you need a hot bath and a long sleep.”

  As soon as he heard the bath water start, Bull slumped back against the sofa. What the hell had happened in that hole? He and Liz had arrived at the same time as the ambulance. They had run inside to find blood-spattered walls and Elaine lying unconscious across a table, half-naked. The room reeked of blood. A dead woman was lying on the floor across the room from Elaine. Nilo was sitting against the sofa with a stupid, shocked expression on his face, a Fairbairn dagger sticking out of his neck like some kind of weird second head.

  “Wherever you are, you bastard,” Bull said to himself, “you need to know that Auntie Dragon got you. She put paid to your bill. I hope you realized that before you died.”

  Now Elaine lay in the intensive care unit. Doc Willend had said things looked positive. Bull got up from the sofa. Liz would need help and recovery time too. He would deal with the Sreckos later.

  * * *

  It was obvious to Peter that the nurse was upset and afraid to talk. She was almost shaking as she spoke. “They came this afternoon. Five or six coppers and some paramedics. Scooped up her medical records and rolled her right out. Matron tried to stop them, find out what they were doing, but they just flashed a paper at her and swept her aside.”

  Peter was dumbfounded. He had visited Elaine’s room before every shift to check on her progress. After his shift, he would sit with her into the early morning hours, reading or playing music to her from his iPod. It had been four days, and today they had begun withdrawing the sedative. He had been looking forward to her being aware of him tonight, but her room was empty.

  “Did they say where they were taking her?” he asked.

  “No. We tried to find out. One of them said it was for her safety, so they couldn’t tell us. Then they were gone with her.”

  He thanked the nurse and walked back to the lift. So they had her under protection. Until now, there had been a female constable in her room, one large male constable at her door, and another where the corridors crossed. To Peter, that seemed to be plenty of protection. He had never dreamed the Met would spirit her away.

  His next thought stunned him like a blow between his eyes. If they were scared enough, they could make it permanent and he may never find her. She could be here in London or on a beach in Virgin Gorda, and he’d never know.

  He knew he couldn’t let that happen. He had lost Diana forever, and he vowed not to lose Elaine. He wouldn’t a
bandon her.

  Elaine still needed medical care, follow-up surgeries, recovery, and rehabilitation. He could try the other surgeons. He didn’t think the Met would change surgeons at this point. Even if they did, most of the British medical community was no more than two degrees of separation apart. He could listen to rumors and cajole hints from people who owed him. It would take some prying, maybe some bribing, but someone had to know where she was. Liz and Bull might help, of course, although he couldn’t ask them to do something that would damage their careers. He’d start with her reconstructive surgeon.

  Besides, Elaine wouldn’t tolerate being shut away forever. Even if he couldn’t find her, eventually she would find him.

  He picked up his mobile and dialed.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Elaine stood at the window of her seaside cottage, watching a squall move in from the Atlantic. Waves rolled, crested, and crashed the rocks of the headland across the small Devon bay below her. Clouds gathered, as thick and gray as the frothy ocean. Rain obscured the horizon.

  She pulled her thick cardigan and her thoughts tighter. Why had Cranwell warned her away from the Sreckos? He had heard of their complaints through “unofficial channels.” Why had Jacko granted bail to Greene? Had they been pressured by someone higher up? Had Nilo known her backup wouldn’t arrive in time? It made no sense for Jenkins to have had any part in Greene’s murder, but why had he been there? Who had sent him?

  The longer she thought, the more certain she became that someone in power had a reason to protect the Sreckos. She had been betrayed.

  The ormolu clock from her London flat ticked into the surrounding silence. Time to put the tea on. Coffee. Peter drinks coffee, and he’ll be here in a few minutes.

  Her cane clacked on the wooden floor as she hobbled to the kitchen. Three weeks ago, when she first arrived at the cottage, it had taken twenty-five agonizing steps, and as many seconds, to walk fifteen feet to the kitchen door. Now she could make it in ten seconds, using only twelve steps. According to her therapists, that was progress. Maybe in another eight weeks, she could run to the kitchen, they chirped.

  She knew that wouldn’t happen. Her femur was too weak, even with the plate and its screws. The chunk of quadriceps and biceps femoris muscles that the bullet had carried with it on its way through her leg would never grow back. She’d looked it up and told them she understood the situation, but they continued with the peppy encouragement. It was part of their job.

  Scratch hopped up on the kitchen counter as she leaned on it for support. She gave him a stroke under the chin and shook a few kibbles onto a plate to occupy him. When she reached for the coffee, she almost toppled to the floor. Once she had steadied herself, she began to reach again, but the doorbell rang. It was Peter, right on time, damn the man.

  “Give me a minute!” she shouted, and she began her shuffle back to the front room.

  * * *

  Elaine watched the rain approach and sensed him standing solid, quiet, behind her. He granted her silence for her thoughts, as if he understood that although he had fixed her once, she could not allow him to fix everything.

  Liz had told her that when she was unconscious in those first days, Peter would sit next to her bed at all hours, talking, reading, playing music softly to her, or merely sitting in the dark. He had done what people do when they love.

  She was under protection in the weeks after they moved her from London, secure and alone. During that time, Peter had given Liz letters enclosed in funny greeting cards, which she forwarded to Elaine at first, then brought with her when she was allowed to visit the cottage. One day a letter from Peter arrived directly. He had finally found her. He asked if she would see him. He would not reveal how he discovered where she was.

  Elaine remembered his cathartic revelations during their first pillow talk and how they had talked about doubts, about their careers, and what the stress and uncertainty could do to them. Peter had listened quietly and accepted her concerns without interrupting or making facile denials. His response had been simple and direct, as always. He had said to her, “I’d rather deal with all that than not have you.”

  She had known then that the passion they shared would last, because she felt the same. She had allowed herself to be more intimate, sooner, with Peter than she had with any man in her life. It didn’t take long for her to know he was hers for the asking. That hadn’t happened for her before. She had always seen reservation in men, a wariness of her independence and strength. Most men didn’t realize that even the strongest woman sometimes needs a soft place to fall.

  She owed him her life. What could she say beyond thank you? What will happen here, now, she asked herself.

  “Look at me,” she said, turning to face him. He already had looked at her, of course. From the moment she opened the door to him, he did not once cast his eyes away nor flinch at what her face had become. He did not react to the cane or her hesitant hobble. She knew that to him, she would never be “poor, damaged Elaine.” She would always be the woman he loved.

  His palm cupped her cheek. There was no pity in his manner. “I want to be here for you. With you.” His love felt as natural as breath, as warm as his hand brushing her skin.

  “Oh, Peter.” Raindrops rattled against the window. “I don’t know where here is or where I’m going. Do you understand that?”

  “Possibly better than you imagine.”

  She watched the drops merge on the glass and wander downward, beginning their journey back to the ocean. “Perhaps you do.” She did not know how to tell him that she was not ready to make her journey his.

  How could he comprehend rape? Every morning she woke in isolation. She shuffled through her day with silent toleration for her therapists, the nurses, the maids who cooked and cleaned for her. Then, when they had gone at the end of the day, she sat in darkness and raged against the helplessness. The unceasing rage turned into acid in her gut, threatening to slowly dissolve the old Elaine and everything she had felt or held dear. She hated much now but not him. She needed vengeance, and she could not ask him to help with that.

  “There are things I have to do, and I simply don’t care what happens to me when I do them. Did you feel that? When you were in the hospital?”

  Peter moved closer. She felt the strength in his arms as he wrapped them around her.

  “It’s lonely, rebuilding. It’s a lot of work. I’ll be there for you.” His whispers caressed her ear.

  If only I could let go of everything and accept his care, she thought. But she could not let go of the questions that constantly whirled in her brain, questions about terror, disfigurement, betrayal.

  He stood next to her, looking out the window. “Have the nightmares started?”

  “Yes. They warned me about that. I’m in a maze, then I look down at the floor and it’s red. I feel something hot against my cheek, and I scream and wake up.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him how the helpless anguish of the invasion twisted her mind into knots or how she feared the heat of her own hatred.

  “You feel probably the most intense anger you’ve ever felt in your life, right?”

  “It’s deeper than that. And I think I never want to let go of it.”

  “It takes a long time to rebuild. Friends help.”

  She knew her journey was not one of rebuilding. With every step she took, wrong would feel more right. She did not want to begin that journey without him. Would a man like him even join her on such a quest?

  “A long while may be too long.” She turned to him and gathered his hands into hers. “I have things to do, things that I can’t explain right now. I have to find the right people, and then I have to use them. I must ask them to do things that I could never ask you to do.”

  His face was quizzical, as if he could not imagine what she was saying, as if he could not comprehend the decision she had made. She needed to finish this.

  “When you were desolate and grieving, could you have asked your mother or Kate to do something
that you knew went against everything they thought they were? To betray themselves? I mean, you know they would agree if you had asked, but would you have asked them?”

  He didn’t answer. His normally brilliant-blue eyes had gone gray.

  “There are burdens I can’t share, darling. If I do, I’ll either come to depend on you too much or . . .” She couldn’t admit to him that his love might diminish her hatred. She was not ready for that. She held his hands to her breast.

  “I’ll come to you when I’m free of all this.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her as he did the first time. His lips traced the path she would always cherish, brushing softly over her mouth, to her eyes, to her throat, and back to her mouth.

  Elaine pressed herself to him, burrowing into his safe, warm place. How good it feels, she thought. Hold on to this. She closed her eyes, breathed in his scent, and vowed to herself that she would keep the love of this man in her heart. She soaked him in until she could absorb no more.

  Then she kissed him softly on his lips, placed her hands on his chest, and gently pushed him away.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I couldn’t have written this account of Elaine’s journey without the help of many generous and talented friends and teammates. Thanks go to my critique partners—K. P. Gresham, Anna Castle, Connie Newton, Dan Roessler, Clint Whitaker, Gogi Hale, Jan Rider Newman, Michelle Escudier, and Amber Gunst—who kept me focused and learning. I also thank Nona Farris, Linda Ritzen, and Martin Barkley for their astute comments and suggestions.

  Many thanks to Bill Woodburn, a remarkable writer, critique partner, and professional counselor. Besides his nuanced critiques, his keen insight into how damaged souls cope with trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder was invaluable.

  Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Sue Hill, of the Metropolitan Police Service, gave instrumental guidance on police culture, regulations, and procedure. I promise I listened, Sue, but I write fiction, so any procedural errors in the book are mine alone.