by A. R. Moler
A minute later, Griff rolled to his side and Sean snuggled back against him. A shallow gasp slipped from Sean’s lips as Griff slid a slick finger within.
“You okay?” whispered Griff.
“Oh, yeah… more...” Sean breathed. More fingers, scissoring, stroking. Griff could feel Sean’s pulse pounding beneath the hand he had wrapped around Sean’s chest. His own chest brushed Sean’s back, and his face was buried in the long blond curls cascading over the nape of his lover’s neck. He bit lightly at the skin. Sean moaned and pressed himself back.
“’Kay… okay… now, God, I need you,” Sean groaned.
He squirmed around to face Griff and straddled his hips again. Griff had put the condom on and slicked it generously with the lube. As Sean lowered himself, Griff fought the urge to thrust upward. Tight, hot, oh, Jesus Christ. Griff held himself motionless, waiting till the overwhelming urge to come right then passed a little. Sean grinned down at him, raising his body a fraction at a time.
“You are just so gorgeous,” Griff huffed out as Sean eased back down. They took a minute to hit a rhythm, as Griff raised his hips to meet Sean’s body. A thin sheen of sweat filmed Sean’s torso, highlighting the muscles beneath the surface of his skin. Griff’s fingers stroked Sean’s hard arousal, thumb caressing the slickness at the tip.
“Ungh… close…” Sean gasped. His eyes were squeezed shut. Griff shifted a little beneath him, adjusting the angle to hit the sweet spot with every thrust. Sean came with a low moan, muscles contracting, spurting across Griff’s belly. The pulsing waves of his climax sent Griff over the edge, head slamming back against the mattress.
Sean sprawled limply on top of him, breathing in long gulps of air. He was heavy, but Griff enjoyed the weight of his blissed-out partner pressing down on him. Griff brushed his lips against Sean’s temple.
“Hey, you still conscious?” he teased.
“Mmmm… uh, yeah… God, that was good,” Sean mumbled. He turned his face, seeking a kiss, nipping a little at Griff’s lower lip. He slowly slid off and curled next to Griff. Griff let his fingers trace along the texture of Sean’s moustache. The short, slightly wiry strands of blond and red-gold outlined the top of his mouth. Trailing an inch lower, Griff’s thumb caressed along the Van Dyke style goatee, the almost-point emphasizing the lean line of Sean’s jaw. And his lips —soft, full, delicious. Griff pulled him back into a kiss, tongue parting teeth so he could taste the inside of Sean’s mouth. A thread of interest wound down toward his groin, tightening his balls a little, but his body was unwilling to respond again in the span of a handful of minutes. That was okay. Griff was pathetically happy to be sticky and plastered to the warmth of the body next to his.
“We should probably take a shower,” Sean suggested. “Should I go grab my cooler?”
“Huh? Oh. No, I don’t have the hangover from hell this time,” said Griff, remembering the kind gesture from that other morning. “And unless you really want to shower alone…”
“Nope, I was thinking we should save water and do it together.” Sean grinned at him.
They didn’t. Save water, that is. They got distracted.
§ § § §
Sean and Griff saw each other frequently over the span of the next several weeks. Sean’s apartment, Griff’s house, a restaurant —it varied with Sean’s work schedule.
Tuesday night, the two were supposed to meet at a Mexican restaurant. Griff was glancing at his watch as he went out the door, wondering if evening traffic was going to be bad. His cell phone rang.
“Rieckert,” he answered.
“Hey, Griff, it’s Sean. I’m not going to make it to the restaurant.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“I had to go to the hospital. One of my toddler asthma patients had a bad attack, and the parents are still a little wigged out. I’m probably going to be here another couple hours while we decide if the kid should be admitted or not.”
“I could swing by later and see if you’re free yet. We could grab a late cup of coffee or something,” suggested Griff.
“Okay, sounds like a plan. Come by around eight. I’ll leave word at the main desk that I’m expecting somebody. Even if I can’t break away, we can have some bad hospital cafeteria coffee and few minutes to talk.”
“Will do.” Griff hung up and sat down on the steps of his front porch, leaning his crutch against the railing. He was vaguely disappointed, but shit happened. It was slightly uncomfortable to realize how much he was coming to depend on Sean’s presence in his life.
His hand strayed to his thigh, rubbing at the ache in his quad. Therapy that afternoon with Monica had worked him pretty hard. She was such a sadistic bitch sometimes. He grinned a little to himself. He supposed it was all part of the job. PT didn’t really work if you didn’t continually push the limits.
They had spent a few minutes discussing whether or not he would be comfortable switching to a cane sometime in the future. It was seldom the few steps here and there that were the issue; it was the walking longer distances part these days. He had hopes. A cane would be less obvious than the crutch. It wouldn’t draw as much attention, and he could feel just a little bit closer to normal.
§ § § §
Driving toward the hospital, Griff was once again thinking about Sean. The sex was great, but there was more. They talked. A lot. About Sean’s patients, about the trip that Griff was contemplating, about Sean’s surfing obsession and Griff’s love of cars and the future. Griff hadn’t seriously thought much more than a few months ahead in a while. These days, that future seemed to include Sean, and it was a disconcerting idea.
There was a slight chill in the air as Griff pulled into the parking lot, and he wondered for a moment if he should have grabbed a coat on the way out. He was mystified by the presence of five police cars, a fire truck, and a SWAT van. There appeared to be more arriving. He pulled into a space at the far corner of the front lot and got out.
He saw a familiar face in deep conversation with a SWAT officer —Lieutenant Sheila McArdle, of the local police department. Swirling lights from all the vehicles cast blue and red glows across her features as she stood in the semi-darkness of the parking lot. Griff had worked with her on a couple hostage ops, back when he was still playing point man. She had even pulled him out of the line of fire during one particularly nasty op. That seemed like a million years ago; in reality, it had probably been eighteen months.
Suddenly his mind started connecting the dots. SWAT, more police, EMS; there was something serious going down at the hospital. Sean… His stomach immediately tied itself in a knot. Please, let Sean be just hanging out in the doctor’s lounge, waiting on him.
Griff limped across the parking lot. His leg was still bothering him badly from earlier in the day. He approached the car where Sheila was looking at a rough sketch of a floor plan.
“Lieutenant?” he said. She turned to look at him and seemed startled.
“Rieckert? I… You’re alive!” she breathed.
“Um… yeah,” he said. “Is there a problem with that?”
“No! Of course not! Christ, I heard you got killed in a case gone bad last year,” she tried to explain, and glanced down at his crutch.
“What was that Mark Twain quote? Reports of my death have been exaggerated? I got hurt. Pretty badly, but, well… So what’s going on?” he asked.
She drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly and jammed her hands in her pockets. “We’re still trying to get all the details. Some guy apparently drew a gun in the ER and started waving it around. As of about ten minutes ago, he was holding four people hostage in one of the bays. The rest of the ER has been evacuated and SWAT has their robotic camera making sweeps. We’re trying to set up communications with the guy. Our hostage negotiator was heading in this direction and somebody hit his car. So now he’s headed toward an alternate hospital, and I am just so fucked.” She glanced at the sky as if she was hoping for some sort of divine intervention. There was only darkne
ss above, broken by occasional clouds. Her gaze returned to him. “Guess what? You’ve just been drafted,” she said. Griff stared at her.
“Sheila, this is a bad idea. I haven’t done this sort of thing in a while,” he said hesitantly.
“Well, guess what? I’ve never been on the giving-the-orders end of one of these. So rusty is better than bordering on clueless,” she griped.
“Sheila, you’re not clueless.”
“People’s lives are on the line. Help me, Griff.”
“I can barely walk, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Damn you! I don’t need your feet! I need your brain! Your experience! Somebody else can put themselves in the line of fire. I need someone to help me call the shots. And besides… you owe me.” She gave him a harsh glare, and he flashed back to being on the receiving end of a flying tackle from her as a bullet passed through the spot where he had been standing.
The SWAT team commander strode over and stopped in front of McArdle. The name tag on his uniform read – Czuba.
“Lieutenant. We have a live feed,” Czuba reported.
“I’m coming,” she replied, starting to follow him. Then she glanced back at Griff. “Are you?” she asked.
He held his breath for a moment. If Sean was in there, would he ever forgive himself if she or someone else fucked this up?
He nodded and followed her.
§ § § §
Inside the SWAT van, a computer screen showed an interior corridor of the hospital ER. Sheila shoved a chair at him, and he sat where he had a good view of the video feed.
“Do we have audio?” she asked Czuba.
“In another minute,” the man replied. “I have my people on a headset channel.” He handed her an earpiece and cast a curious eye at Griff.
“He’s an FBI consultant, here to help me. Give him one, too,” Sheila said.
Griff opened his mouth to correct her. He had been declared retired by the FBI after the car incident, so technically he had no official status. Then he promptly shut his mouth and held out his hand. He had indicated he would help, if he could. He still didn’t know if Sean was trapped in the ER or not, and now seemed a really bad time to go dialing his cell phone.
Swat team leader, Czuba, handed him an earpiece, and Griff tucked it into his ear, listening to the intermittent chatter. The SWAT team was confirming that all but four people had been evacuated. Well, four people plus the nut with the gun. A sniper was setting up on the floor behind the main desk in the ER hallway, cutting a tiny hole in the base of the huge counter.
“This is Red Six, I have a tentative visual,” the sniper said. “If I’m looking at the right person, the guy is at the back, near the wall, with a woman about three feet in front of him. But there’s a curtain covering at least half of the front of the area. I can see shadows, but not the rest of the hostages.”
“I’m sending the ‘bot closer,” said Sheila, glancing at Griff. He nodded. The camera view wobbled slightly as the robotic machine rolled farther down the hallway. She handed Griff a microphone. “You talk.” He gave her a dubious look. “Tell him you’re PD, not FBI.”
Griff took a deep breath and pushed the transmit button on the microphone.
“This is the police department. We would like to speak with you, sir. We’re hoping we can resolve without anyone getting hurt. Who am I speaking to?” said Griff.
There was a faint whimpering sound, like a sniffling child, and a soft shushing sound. “I wanna talk with Dr. Alan Currin,” a male voice called.
“Okay, sir. We’ll find him. It may take a few minutes. Can you please tell me if everyone in there is okay?” Griff continued.
“None o’ yer fucking business. What’s with the damn toy tank thing? Back it off! I’ll shoot people!”
“Okay, okay.” Griff made a motion for Sheila to roll the camera-bot back a few feet. The view was mostly of the shadows behind the pale curtain. Griff could see only a hint of a woman’s shoulder and a child’s hand past the fabric. “Sir, the robot allows us to talk with you, without anyone else being put in danger. We really need to know if the people you’re holding are okay, sir. It would help assure us that you want to solve this.”
“The doc’s bleeding, but not like gallons or anything. The kid’s still coughing. Nobody’s dyin’.”
“Could you tell us exactly who you have with you? We’d like to let their families know.” Griff bit off the urge to add the part about the other people who cared about them, too.
“A nurse, a doc, and a kid and his mom.”
“Maybe you could find out what their names are,” Griff suggested. Standard protocol indicated that if a hijacker viewed his hostages as people with real identities, people were less likely to end up dead. He could hear terse muttering in the background. He tapped the microphone in his hand, turning it off, and glanced up at the SWAT commander.
“Does your sniper have a better view than us? I’d really like to know about the man he said was bleeding and the sick child,” Griff said.
The commander tapped his headset. “Red Six, we have an impaired visual. Can you describe any of the hostages? Especially those who might be injured,” he said.
The sniper responded, “He’s keeping a woman between him and the edge of the curtain. She’s wearing what looks like scrubs, so I’m supposing it’s the nurse. She looks to be mid-thirties, dark hair, probably just a touch over five feet tall.”
“Can you see anyone else?”
“She’s moved a couple times, and I saw the kid’s hand and I guess the mother’s arm. Different skin tone than the nurse, couple of shades darker.”
“This guy has mentioned a doctor twice. Do you see him? Maybe he’s sitting down? He said the doctor was bleeding.”
Griff forced himself not the clench his teeth in frustration as he listened to the exchange. He momentarily considered asking Sheila to have the hospital people try to get a roster of everyone who had passed through the ER that night. But, one, that was probably unlikely, because of the ebb and flow of personnel and patients; and two, it was considered a professional no-no to let a negotiator be more than peripherally involved if he knew one the hostages.
“I can see a foot and part of a leg past the edge of the wall. It might belong to an adult male, looks big enough. And based on the angle, he might be sitting on the floor. I’m at about a thirty-degree angle to the bay. So there’s stuff I can’t see. Can’t the robo-camera get you a better view?”
“No, not at the moment. He got antsy when we tried to get it closer,” said the SWAT commander.
Griff squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, scrabbling through his brain for shreds of past experience. He heard the rough voice of the gunman rise a little over the other connection.
“Hey, Cop, nurse’s name is Jamie. What’s yours?”
Griff pressed the on switch for the microphone. “My name is Griff. Thank you, that’s a start. How about the little boy?” Griff prompted. Go slow, he told himself. Don’t make it apparent you want to know the doctor’s name.
“I wanna talk to Dr. Currin!” the gunman demanded.
“We’re trying to find him. He may have gone home for the day, since it’s getting late. This may take a little while.” Griff turned and glanced at Sheila. She scribbled Currin has been paged on a note pad, followed by oncologist.
Griff took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Was the gunman a cancer patient? Or was it someone he cared for? Either way, the man might feel he had very little left to lose, and that was bad news. “Sir, could you tell us your name? That way, as soon as we get hold of Dr. Currin, we can tell him who’s looking for him,” suggested Griff.
There was a low, shuffling sound from the ER cubicle. “Dennis Webb.”
“Thank you, Dennis. How ‘bout the other three people? Can you tell me their names?”
Griff could hear more muttering that included “your kid” and “yeah, you.” Behind him. Sheila had pushed her chair back a few feet and was talking quietly
on her cell phone. She suddenly leaned forward and scribbled Got Currin on the pad in front of Griff. He pushed the mic button to turn off the sound.
“Is he on his way here? Does he have the slightest clue who Dennis Webb is?” Griff asked.
“Yeah, he does, and it doesn’t sound good,” she began, but stopped as Webb’s voice was heard again over the speaker.
“Yo, Cop. The kid and his mom are named Darla and Jason Hertzog. The doc’s name is Sean Avery. That satisfy you? I want to talk to Currin!” the man snarled.
Griff felt like he had been sucker-punched. He had suspected it was Sean, but hadn’t been sure. To know that Sean was being held hostage by this psycho with a gun, immediately sent an icy chill through his veins. Slowly, he pushed the talk button with stiff fingers.
“Yes, thank you. That was helpful. Dr. Currin is on his way right now. It should take maybe ten minutes or so to get him here.” He glanced at Sheila for confirmation, and she nodded.
“Okay. You got ten minutes, then I want to hear his voice, and then I want to see him!” This demand was followed by silence.
Griff turned off the mic again. He gazed at the lieutenant. “So, just how bad is this?” he asked.
“Currin said Webb is terminal. Pancreatic cancer that’s gone way past the treatment point. Stage four. He said the guy has maybe six months to live.” Her voice was flat. It was obvious that Sheila, as well as Griff, realized that Webb probably had very few objections to dying by gunfire and taking as many people as possible with him when he went.
A uniformed officer approached the open door of the van, leading a man. The man was probably in his mid-fifties, hair graying a bit, wearing a dress shirt and tie.
“I’m Alan Currin,” the man said as he stepped up into the van.