Title: Blood Ties (8/8)
Disclaimer: Don't own anything to do with CSI: Miami, and all you'd get if you sued me is a laptop and a couple pairs of really nice shoes. Hardly seems worth it, right?
Rating: Plain old PG-13, for language and whatnot.
Pairing: Eric/Maria (OC)
Feedback: Yes please, yeah, yep, uh-huh, yup, si, oui, etc.
Note: Yep, that's right, this is the end...end of the beginning, anyway. Wait...end...beginning. Crap! That's not right...(supportive inner voice: "Quick, Chesty, move on and they won't notice...") Eh, anyway, I'll try to have the first part of the next story in this series up as soon as possible. Cause that's what I do. I give. I love you all. Send money. (Or just feedback. I'd settle for feedback.)
___________________________________________
Eric closed his eyes for a moment as he turned away from the bloodied girl lying on the floor. He turned his attention to the paramedics who were working frantically on the other girl, who was barely alive.
The voices and hurried footsteps outside the dorm room were a welcome distraction. He had almost reached the door when Maria and Calleigh burst in, followed a moment later by Tim.
"Oh my God." Calleigh gasped. Abby was dead, with a single bullet hole in her forehead. A few feet away, Lisa was spread out on a stretcher, shot in the chest. A handgun lay a few inches from Abby's outstretched hand. "Please tell me you got the son of a bitch."
"They took him out of here a minute ago." Eric replied.
Calleigh leaned against the wall and buried her face in her hands. No one needed to tell her what had happened. "So, Matt was waiting for the girls when they got here, he shot Lisa, then shot Abby, and put the gun next to her to make it look like she'd killed herself. Am I right?"
"Yeah." Eric confirmed. "Looks like he was trying to plant evidence, too, when Hagen came in and caught him. He was trying to frame Abby, to make it look like she had framed him." He noticed Maria was still in the doorway, staring at the puddles of blood on the carpet and rocking back and forth slightly. He approached her and placed his hand on her shoulder.
"Where were they taking him?" She asked hoarsely.
"Back to the lab." Eric said. "Look, you did everyth-"
Maria put up her hand to stop him. "I'm going back. Calleigh, are you coming? Looks like they don't need us here."
"Yeah." Calleigh replied, taking one last look at the body before she turned around and followed Maria out.
"I'd better go with them." Tim stated. He'd seen the rage in Calleigh's eyes, and the pain in Maria's. There was no telling what could happen if the two women were left alone.
_______________________
"I drugged Lisa, and left the hotel room as soon as she was out, so she'd think I'd been asleep next to her all night. I had to do something about Jessica and Kyle." Matt was saying. "I didn't want to hurt Jessie. But I couldn't stand seeing her with him anymore. He wasn't good enough for her."
Maria leaned against the wall, glaring at the young man she had felt so much sympathy for just twenty-four hours earlier. Calleigh was seated across the table from Matt, trying to look unaffected as he rambled on. Hagen was at the back of the room, and whether he was there to protect the CSIs from the suspect, or the suspect from the CSIs, he wasn't quite sure.
"When Lisa had told me that Jessie might be pregnant..." Matt continued. "I lost it...I couldn't let her have a baby with him. And they weren't married, don't you know how bad that would look?"
"So instead, you murdered own sister and your friend?" Calleigh asked bitterly. "And then tried to frame an innocent girl, and then killed her and attempted to kill your girlfriend? You think that looks any better?" She turned to Hagen. "Get him out of here."
As Hagen led Matt out of the room, Calleigh turned her attention to Maria, who had barely said a word since they'd left Abby's dorm. Her eyes were downcast, and her face was practically white. She had her arms crossed tightly across her chest, almost as if she was trying to shield herself. It was painful for Calleigh to see her like that. As torn up as she was over Abby's death and Lisa's injury, she had dealt with situations like this before. It didn't make it any easier to accept, but did make it easier for her to accept that there was nothing she could have done. Maria, on the other hand, looked like she had been slapped repeatedly across the face.
"Hey." Calleigh said softly. "We did everything we could. I know you don't believe that now, but-"
"You're right, I don't." Maria interrupted. Before Calleigh could say anything else, she rushed out of the room, fighting back tears.
________________________
"Maria?" Horatio approached the young woman in the break room, as she poured what had to be her tenth cup of coffee of the day. "I thought you would want to know, I just heard from the hospital, Lisa Denton is going to be just fine."
Maria didn't answer, didn't give any indication that she'd even heard him.
"I understand that you're upset." Horatio continued. "It's okay."
"It's not okay!" Maria sobbed, turning suddenly to face her boss. "It's not, she shouldn't have been shot in the first place! Abby shouldn't have died, we should have been protecting them!" Her coffee cup slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor. Cursing, she knelt down and started picking up the pieces.
Horatio crouched down beside her and helped her clean up the mess. "Well, you're right, none of it should have happened. But it did. Maria, you put the pieces together, you did a good job."
"Not good enough." Maria insisted, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Yes, you did." Horatio assured her. "You're going to be amazing at this job, I can tell. But right now, I think you should take the rest of the day off. Go home, get some rest."
Maria thought about it for a moment, then nodded. "Okay." She said, taking a deep breath and wiping away another tear.
___________________________
"I just saw Maria leaving." Eric said. "Where's she headed?"
"I gave her the rest of the day off." Horatio replied. He frowned and shook his head. "Something about this case really got under her skin, I'm afraid Abby and Lisa being shot only made it that much worse."
Eric had seen Maria's face as she'd left, the sorrow he had seen in her eyes had been unbearable. "H, I'd like to go after her, to make sure she's all right."
"That's fine, Eric." Horatio said, not seeming at all surprised by the request.
___________________________
Maria shut the hotel room door behind her and leaned against it for a moment. Then she kicked off her shoes and opened a drawer in the table, searching for the bottle of migraine pills she kept in there.
When there was a knock on the door, she simply opened it and went back to what she was doing, expecting a cleaning lady or the manager.
"Hey." Eric's voice startled her.
"Hey." She replied, turning around quickly. "Did you follow me here?"
"Yeah." Eric admitted, hoping she wouldn't get mad.
Maria smiled. "I knew there was a reason I liked you. Come on in." She stepped aside to let him in, and closed the door behind him.
Looking around, Eric saw an entire life crammed into one small hotel room. The room smelled like Maria's perfume, and evidence of her was everywhere, brightening the dull, sterile hotel decor. Framed pictures and old magazines covered every surface in the room. The sheets on the bed obviously weren't provided by the hotel. They were satin, a deep shade of red. Similar to the bra that Eric knew Maria was still wearing under her fitted white blouse. Just thinking about it made him feel lightheaded.
"So..." Maria said. "Was there something you needed?"
"Just wanted to make sure you're all right." Eric told her. He forced himself to think about something besides what had happened between them earlier in the day. He was here to check up on her, not jump her. He turned his attention to a large photograph on a bedside table. It had to be Maria's family, he instantly recognized the smile on the blonde haired girl in the center. Only Maria and the tall teenage boy whose lap she was sitting on had light skin and hair, the other three children had the same tan skin and dark hair as the two adults in the picture.
"That was taken when I was eleven." Maria said. "My mom left when I was two, and Dad met Yolanda while we were stationed in Louisiana two years later. Anton and I always felt so out of place, especially after Estefan and Lara were born. People were constantly asking us if we were adopted. Mom sent birthday cards and called once in a while at first, but we haven't heard from her in years."
"I'm sorry." Eric said.
"I'm not." Maria replied, sitting down on the foot of the bed. "I'm not like her, at all. If I didn't look like her, I wouldn't even believe that we share the same blood." She paused and looked up at Eric. "It's weird, isn't it? How blood is one of the only things we all have in common, and yet it's one of the things that makes us all the most different. My mother--God, it feels wrong calling her that- she could just walk away from us all so easily. I...I can never let go, never give anything up."
Sensing that there was more she needed to say, Eric sat down beside her and gently placed his arm around her shoulders.
"I always pushed myself as a kid." Maria began. "I was a classic overachiever, I finished high school when I was seventeen, graduated from college when I was twenty-one. I enlisted in the Army the next day, that was all I'd ever wanted to do with my life. In basic training, I drove everyone insane. Any time someone said I didn't have to do something, or couldn't, because I'm a girl, I had to prove them wrong. And then...three weeks after I was done with basic...I was at Fort Benning, in a Jeep with my friend Blake, he was driving, it...it had been raining, the road was muddy...I don't remember anything until I woke up in the hospital on the base, and they said we'd gone right off the road. Blake was dead, and I had been pinned under the vehicle for almost an hour, the doctors barely managed to save my legs."
Eric cringed, he'd seen the scars on Maria's thighs, but hadn't asked how she'd gotten them, not wanting to pry.
Maria drew a deep, shaky breath before continuing. "They said it would be a long time before I'd walk again, and I'd need to stay in the hospital for months. Of course, after that I would be medically discharged, and completely adrift. And then Adam Grant, this guy I'd dated in high school, came to visit me. I'd broken up with him because he was too possessive, but he swore he had changed, and he promised to take care of me. And, like an idiot, I believed him. And then, like a bigger idiot, I married him. At first, everything was great. Throughout all the operations, the months of physical therapy, he was so loving and supportive..."
Dreading whatever was next, Eric tightened his arm around her. "But it didn't last."
"No." Maria sighed. "The stronger I got, the less sweet he got. If I tried to do something on my own, or went out without him, or anything, he'd go completely psycho."
"You mean he..." Eric didn't want to say the words. He didn't want to even think about anything like that happening to her.
"He didn't hit me." Maria stated. "Not once. I think he was afraid of what my family would do to him if he did, and for good reason. No, his way of keeping me in line was to run me down verbally, emotionally. It was psychological abuse, no other way to put it. He told me that he was the only person who could ever love me, and that I'd never survive without him. And...I guess I believed him. I didn't think I had anywhere else to go, all my life had been about being in the Army, and that was gone. So, I stayed with him for almost two years. I let him fuck with my mind for much longer than I should have. And, finally, I woke up one morning, and I was thinking it would be so easy, just to go into the bathroom and slice my wrists, or swallow a whole bottle of aspirin, or whatever...and then I realized what I was thinking, and it scared me, more than anything else ever had...he wasn't there, so I packed everything I couldn't bear to leave, and took off for my parents' house. Three months later, we were divorced, and I haven't seen him since."
"Jesus Christ." Eric muttered under his breath. "If I ever met that son of a bitch..."
Maria placed her fingertips on his lips to silence him. "You wouldn't do a damn thing. Because that's not who you are. Ever since Adam, my intuition is a lot stronger. And if you were that kind of person, I never would have given you a second look."
"I just don't understand how he could treat you like that." Eric said, running one hand through her hair. "And I don't think I want to understand it, either." He pulled her against him. "Now I get why you were hit so hard by this case."
"There but for the grace of God..." Maria sighed. "I just wanted so much to protect those girls. But you guys are right. I did what I could. Truth is, if it'd been me...I probably would have made the same choice they did." She laid her head against his chest and was silent for a moment. "Horatio said I'm going to be 'amazing' as a CSI. What do you think?"
Eric chuckled. "Well, to tell you the truth, I usually try not to
disagree with H when he's right."
Then she was kissing him. Or he was kissing her. It didn't matter. As she deepened the kiss, wrapping her arms around him, he gently lay her back on the bed, slowly moving on top of her.
A minute later, Maria pulled away suddenly. "Shouldn't you get back?" She mentally kicked herself for having any sort of work ethic.
"No, I told H I was going to make sure that you were okay." Eric replied, he leaned in to capture her lips again, but she turned her head and his kiss landed on her cheek.
"Nuh-uh." Maria said. She forced herself to concentrate, even as his lips moved down her throat, and one hand slid under her blouse. "You're not using me as an excuse to slack off." She shoved him playfully, and he finally relented and moved off of her.
"You sure you're all right?" He asked.
She smiled and nodded. "Yeah. I'll be fine. But then again, if you wanted to come by later, just to make sure..." She ran her hand down his arm lazily.
Eric grinned. "I'll do that." He wanted to kiss her once more, but he knew that if he did, he wouldn't be able to leave the room for a while, and she was right, he did need to get back to the lab. "I'll see you later." He said as he stood up and headed for the door.
"Bye." Maria replied. As soon as he was gone, she collapsed back onto the bed, physically and mentally exhausted from the day's events. But as she drifted off to sleep, she had a smile on her face.
_________________________
Next time:
"We're not a couple. We're just having fun, that's the whole point."
*****
"Get out! Get her the hell out of here, quick!"
*****
"You're fine now, in half an hour you could drop dead. Don't you get
that? Is it really worth your life?"
*****
"I shouldn't have sent them in there. If either of them dies, it will
be because I made the wrong call."
Stay tuned...
Disclaimer: Don't own anything to do with CSI: Miami, and all you'd get if you sued me is a laptop and a couple pairs of really nice shoes. Hardly seems worth it, right?
Rating: Plain old PG-13, for language and whatnot.
Pairing: Eric/Maria (OC)
Feedback: Yes please, yeah, yep, uh-huh, yup, si, oui, etc.
Note: Yep, that's right, this is the end...end of the beginning, anyway. Wait...end...beginning. Crap! That's not right...(supportive inner voice: "Quick, Chesty, move on and they won't notice...") Eh, anyway, I'll try to have the first part of the next story in this series up as soon as possible. Cause that's what I do. I give. I love you all. Send money. (Or just feedback. I'd settle for feedback.)
___________________________________________
Eric closed his eyes for a moment as he turned away from the bloodied girl lying on the floor. He turned his attention to the paramedics who were working frantically on the other girl, who was barely alive.
The voices and hurried footsteps outside the dorm room were a welcome distraction. He had almost reached the door when Maria and Calleigh burst in, followed a moment later by Tim.
"Oh my God." Calleigh gasped. Abby was dead, with a single bullet hole in her forehead. A few feet away, Lisa was spread out on a stretcher, shot in the chest. A handgun lay a few inches from Abby's outstretched hand. "Please tell me you got the son of a bitch."
"They took him out of here a minute ago." Eric replied.
Calleigh leaned against the wall and buried her face in her hands. No one needed to tell her what had happened. "So, Matt was waiting for the girls when they got here, he shot Lisa, then shot Abby, and put the gun next to her to make it look like she'd killed herself. Am I right?"
"Yeah." Eric confirmed. "Looks like he was trying to plant evidence, too, when Hagen came in and caught him. He was trying to frame Abby, to make it look like she had framed him." He noticed Maria was still in the doorway, staring at the puddles of blood on the carpet and rocking back and forth slightly. He approached her and placed his hand on her shoulder.
"Where were they taking him?" She asked hoarsely.
"Back to the lab." Eric said. "Look, you did everyth-"
Maria put up her hand to stop him. "I'm going back. Calleigh, are you coming? Looks like they don't need us here."
"Yeah." Calleigh replied, taking one last look at the body before she turned around and followed Maria out.
"I'd better go with them." Tim stated. He'd seen the rage in Calleigh's eyes, and the pain in Maria's. There was no telling what could happen if the two women were left alone.
_______________________
"I drugged Lisa, and left the hotel room as soon as she was out, so she'd think I'd been asleep next to her all night. I had to do something about Jessica and Kyle." Matt was saying. "I didn't want to hurt Jessie. But I couldn't stand seeing her with him anymore. He wasn't good enough for her."
Maria leaned against the wall, glaring at the young man she had felt so much sympathy for just twenty-four hours earlier. Calleigh was seated across the table from Matt, trying to look unaffected as he rambled on. Hagen was at the back of the room, and whether he was there to protect the CSIs from the suspect, or the suspect from the CSIs, he wasn't quite sure.
"When Lisa had told me that Jessie might be pregnant..." Matt continued. "I lost it...I couldn't let her have a baby with him. And they weren't married, don't you know how bad that would look?"
"So instead, you murdered own sister and your friend?" Calleigh asked bitterly. "And then tried to frame an innocent girl, and then killed her and attempted to kill your girlfriend? You think that looks any better?" She turned to Hagen. "Get him out of here."
As Hagen led Matt out of the room, Calleigh turned her attention to Maria, who had barely said a word since they'd left Abby's dorm. Her eyes were downcast, and her face was practically white. She had her arms crossed tightly across her chest, almost as if she was trying to shield herself. It was painful for Calleigh to see her like that. As torn up as she was over Abby's death and Lisa's injury, she had dealt with situations like this before. It didn't make it any easier to accept, but did make it easier for her to accept that there was nothing she could have done. Maria, on the other hand, looked like she had been slapped repeatedly across the face.
"Hey." Calleigh said softly. "We did everything we could. I know you don't believe that now, but-"
"You're right, I don't." Maria interrupted. Before Calleigh could say anything else, she rushed out of the room, fighting back tears.
________________________
"Maria?" Horatio approached the young woman in the break room, as she poured what had to be her tenth cup of coffee of the day. "I thought you would want to know, I just heard from the hospital, Lisa Denton is going to be just fine."
Maria didn't answer, didn't give any indication that she'd even heard him.
"I understand that you're upset." Horatio continued. "It's okay."
"It's not okay!" Maria sobbed, turning suddenly to face her boss. "It's not, she shouldn't have been shot in the first place! Abby shouldn't have died, we should have been protecting them!" Her coffee cup slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor. Cursing, she knelt down and started picking up the pieces.
Horatio crouched down beside her and helped her clean up the mess. "Well, you're right, none of it should have happened. But it did. Maria, you put the pieces together, you did a good job."
"Not good enough." Maria insisted, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Yes, you did." Horatio assured her. "You're going to be amazing at this job, I can tell. But right now, I think you should take the rest of the day off. Go home, get some rest."
Maria thought about it for a moment, then nodded. "Okay." She said, taking a deep breath and wiping away another tear.
___________________________
"I just saw Maria leaving." Eric said. "Where's she headed?"
"I gave her the rest of the day off." Horatio replied. He frowned and shook his head. "Something about this case really got under her skin, I'm afraid Abby and Lisa being shot only made it that much worse."
Eric had seen Maria's face as she'd left, the sorrow he had seen in her eyes had been unbearable. "H, I'd like to go after her, to make sure she's all right."
"That's fine, Eric." Horatio said, not seeming at all surprised by the request.
___________________________
Maria shut the hotel room door behind her and leaned against it for a moment. Then she kicked off her shoes and opened a drawer in the table, searching for the bottle of migraine pills she kept in there.
When there was a knock on the door, she simply opened it and went back to what she was doing, expecting a cleaning lady or the manager.
"Hey." Eric's voice startled her.
"Hey." She replied, turning around quickly. "Did you follow me here?"
"Yeah." Eric admitted, hoping she wouldn't get mad.
Maria smiled. "I knew there was a reason I liked you. Come on in." She stepped aside to let him in, and closed the door behind him.
Looking around, Eric saw an entire life crammed into one small hotel room. The room smelled like Maria's perfume, and evidence of her was everywhere, brightening the dull, sterile hotel decor. Framed pictures and old magazines covered every surface in the room. The sheets on the bed obviously weren't provided by the hotel. They were satin, a deep shade of red. Similar to the bra that Eric knew Maria was still wearing under her fitted white blouse. Just thinking about it made him feel lightheaded.
"So..." Maria said. "Was there something you needed?"
"Just wanted to make sure you're all right." Eric told her. He forced himself to think about something besides what had happened between them earlier in the day. He was here to check up on her, not jump her. He turned his attention to a large photograph on a bedside table. It had to be Maria's family, he instantly recognized the smile on the blonde haired girl in the center. Only Maria and the tall teenage boy whose lap she was sitting on had light skin and hair, the other three children had the same tan skin and dark hair as the two adults in the picture.
"That was taken when I was eleven." Maria said. "My mom left when I was two, and Dad met Yolanda while we were stationed in Louisiana two years later. Anton and I always felt so out of place, especially after Estefan and Lara were born. People were constantly asking us if we were adopted. Mom sent birthday cards and called once in a while at first, but we haven't heard from her in years."
"I'm sorry." Eric said.
"I'm not." Maria replied, sitting down on the foot of the bed. "I'm not like her, at all. If I didn't look like her, I wouldn't even believe that we share the same blood." She paused and looked up at Eric. "It's weird, isn't it? How blood is one of the only things we all have in common, and yet it's one of the things that makes us all the most different. My mother--God, it feels wrong calling her that- she could just walk away from us all so easily. I...I can never let go, never give anything up."
Sensing that there was more she needed to say, Eric sat down beside her and gently placed his arm around her shoulders.
"I always pushed myself as a kid." Maria began. "I was a classic overachiever, I finished high school when I was seventeen, graduated from college when I was twenty-one. I enlisted in the Army the next day, that was all I'd ever wanted to do with my life. In basic training, I drove everyone insane. Any time someone said I didn't have to do something, or couldn't, because I'm a girl, I had to prove them wrong. And then...three weeks after I was done with basic...I was at Fort Benning, in a Jeep with my friend Blake, he was driving, it...it had been raining, the road was muddy...I don't remember anything until I woke up in the hospital on the base, and they said we'd gone right off the road. Blake was dead, and I had been pinned under the vehicle for almost an hour, the doctors barely managed to save my legs."
Eric cringed, he'd seen the scars on Maria's thighs, but hadn't asked how she'd gotten them, not wanting to pry.
Maria drew a deep, shaky breath before continuing. "They said it would be a long time before I'd walk again, and I'd need to stay in the hospital for months. Of course, after that I would be medically discharged, and completely adrift. And then Adam Grant, this guy I'd dated in high school, came to visit me. I'd broken up with him because he was too possessive, but he swore he had changed, and he promised to take care of me. And, like an idiot, I believed him. And then, like a bigger idiot, I married him. At first, everything was great. Throughout all the operations, the months of physical therapy, he was so loving and supportive..."
Dreading whatever was next, Eric tightened his arm around her. "But it didn't last."
"No." Maria sighed. "The stronger I got, the less sweet he got. If I tried to do something on my own, or went out without him, or anything, he'd go completely psycho."
"You mean he..." Eric didn't want to say the words. He didn't want to even think about anything like that happening to her.
"He didn't hit me." Maria stated. "Not once. I think he was afraid of what my family would do to him if he did, and for good reason. No, his way of keeping me in line was to run me down verbally, emotionally. It was psychological abuse, no other way to put it. He told me that he was the only person who could ever love me, and that I'd never survive without him. And...I guess I believed him. I didn't think I had anywhere else to go, all my life had been about being in the Army, and that was gone. So, I stayed with him for almost two years. I let him fuck with my mind for much longer than I should have. And, finally, I woke up one morning, and I was thinking it would be so easy, just to go into the bathroom and slice my wrists, or swallow a whole bottle of aspirin, or whatever...and then I realized what I was thinking, and it scared me, more than anything else ever had...he wasn't there, so I packed everything I couldn't bear to leave, and took off for my parents' house. Three months later, we were divorced, and I haven't seen him since."
"Jesus Christ." Eric muttered under his breath. "If I ever met that son of a bitch..."
Maria placed her fingertips on his lips to silence him. "You wouldn't do a damn thing. Because that's not who you are. Ever since Adam, my intuition is a lot stronger. And if you were that kind of person, I never would have given you a second look."
"I just don't understand how he could treat you like that." Eric said, running one hand through her hair. "And I don't think I want to understand it, either." He pulled her against him. "Now I get why you were hit so hard by this case."
"There but for the grace of God..." Maria sighed. "I just wanted so much to protect those girls. But you guys are right. I did what I could. Truth is, if it'd been me...I probably would have made the same choice they did." She laid her head against his chest and was silent for a moment. "Horatio said I'm going to be 'amazing' as a CSI. What do you think?"
Eric chuckled. "Well, to tell you the truth, I usually try not to
disagree with H when he's right."
Then she was kissing him. Or he was kissing her. It didn't matter. As she deepened the kiss, wrapping her arms around him, he gently lay her back on the bed, slowly moving on top of her.
A minute later, Maria pulled away suddenly. "Shouldn't you get back?" She mentally kicked herself for having any sort of work ethic.
"No, I told H I was going to make sure that you were okay." Eric replied, he leaned in to capture her lips again, but she turned her head and his kiss landed on her cheek.
"Nuh-uh." Maria said. She forced herself to concentrate, even as his lips moved down her throat, and one hand slid under her blouse. "You're not using me as an excuse to slack off." She shoved him playfully, and he finally relented and moved off of her.
"You sure you're all right?" He asked.
She smiled and nodded. "Yeah. I'll be fine. But then again, if you wanted to come by later, just to make sure..." She ran her hand down his arm lazily.
Eric grinned. "I'll do that." He wanted to kiss her once more, but he knew that if he did, he wouldn't be able to leave the room for a while, and she was right, he did need to get back to the lab. "I'll see you later." He said as he stood up and headed for the door.
"Bye." Maria replied. As soon as he was gone, she collapsed back onto the bed, physically and mentally exhausted from the day's events. But as she drifted off to sleep, she had a smile on her face.
_________________________
Next time:
"We're not a couple. We're just having fun, that's the whole point."
*****
"Get out! Get her the hell out of here, quick!"
*****
"You're fine now, in half an hour you could drop dead. Don't you get
that? Is it really worth your life?"
*****
"I shouldn't have sent them in there. If either of them dies, it will
be because I made the wrong call."
Stay tuned...
