A Family Affair
Disclaimer: I don't own the Witchblade characters. I'm merely appropriating them for a while. It's all in the spirit of good fun, so, please, don't sue me. Enjoy!
Chapter 38.
Nearly apoplectic with rage, Kenneth Irons hung up the phone. It started to ring again almost immediately, and without even bothering to glance at the caller ID display, he ripped the cord from the wall, and then threw the entire device across the library. It infuriated him that Sara Pezzini had had the nerve to try to order him around. As he had listened to the green-eyed bitch berate him and then demand that he give Ian Nottingham the antidote, he'd felt his blood pressure begin to rise.
Things were fast spinning out of his control, and Irons found this intolerable. How could he not have foreseen the fact that the Wielder would come to Ian Nottingham's aid? When he had sensed the rise of the bloodlust through his bond with the Witchblade, he'd been pleased, thinking she was fighting the drug lords that had threatened her nephew. Little did he know that she was battling the Russians on Ian's behalf, with no apparent regard for her own safety. There could be only one explanation for this behavior: Sara Pezzini had accepted the assassin as her Protector. This revelation made Kenneth want to shout with anger and frustration. How could this be? How could the socially inept, emotionally retarded younger man have succeeded where he had failed? Somehow, over the past few days, Nottingham had managed to befriend the sharp-tongued harpy of a woman, thereby gaining her trust.
Initially, Irons had blamed his wayward servant's insolence and evasiveness regarding his whereabouts on his high fever, but then Sara had taken the phone from Nottingham, divulging the fact that not only were they together, but that she was aiding him. This had come as quite a shock to Kenneth. Based on what Ian had told him the night before about the Wielder feeling sympathy for him because of his ill health, Irons had suspected that she was slowly warming toward his bodyguard and henchman, but he never would have guessed that she would so readily come to his defense, risking not only her life but her beloved job as a homicide detective in the process. And it had become painfully obvious that Irons had been cast in the role of villain, for not only sickening young Nottingham, but for setting him up to be ambushed by the Russians.
Ian's disloyalty bothered Kenneth more than he cared to admit. He had come to take the former Black Dragon's unswerving obedience and allegiance to him for granted, even when it had become apparent that he was infatuated with the Wielder. Never for one moment had Irons allowed himself to even remotely consider the possibility that Nottingham would abandon him for her. In fact, he still could not fully accept that this was so. He decided that once Dr. Immo administered the antidote and the young man's fever broke, he would come to his senses, and that his lifelong conditioning toward subservience to Kenneth would reassert itself.
He reached for the phone to call Dr. Immo, swearing aloud as he remembered why it was no longer on the small table next to his chair. Stomping from the room, he snatched up the phone in the hallway and called down to the lab.
"Yes, Mr. Irons?" the doctor answered on the first ring.
"Prepare to leave the estate immediately. I have arranged for you to go fetch young Nottingham from the city via helicopter. You are supposed to meet him at the 33rd Street heliport in one hour. Administer the antidote as soon as he boards the aircraft," Irons told him.
"Very well, sir." Immo hung up.
Kenneth dialed another number. "Security. Hopkins speaking," a man's voice answered with pleasing alacrity.
"Mr. Hopkins, I want you to meet me in the communications room right away. I have a task for a small team of your best men. Also, tell the pilot to prepare the helicopter for takeoff at once."
"Yes, sir. I'll be there momentarily."
Irons did not trust Sara Pezzini to simply hand over Nottingham. He now knew that her distrust of him was complete, and that she would in all likelihood attempt to liberate the antidote from the good doctor so that she could administer it to her Protector herself at a place of her choosing. Kenneth decided that he would locate their whereabouts using the tracking device that he'd had installed in all of the estate's vehicles. His plan was to send a task force to capture the injured and ailing assassin and forcibly return him to the estate. If, in the process, the Wielder was killed, so be it. The Witchblade would once again be in his possession, and his beloved Elizabeth Bronte would have some company in her frozen crypt.
Feeling much calmer, he swept into the communications room, noting with approval the way the two technicians whose job it was to monitor the equipment snapped to attention.
"Please bring up the tracking device on the vehicle that Ian Nottingham is driving," he requested, moving to stand in front of the screen that would show the location of his bodyguard's car.
The two young men looked at each other nervously and then stared wide- eyed at him.
"Well?" Irons snapped. "Why aren't you doing as I asked?"
"Uh, M-Mr. Nottingham is driving the n-new X5, sir," one of them finally stammered.
"So? What does that have to do with activating the tracking device?" Kenneth demanded impatiently.
"Um, that SUV was only delivered on Tuesday, sir," the other technician said, as if this explained everything.
With some difficulty, Kenneth resisted the urge to kill them both. "Again, I must ask what does that have to do with activating the device and tracking the vehicle?"
"Well, you see, sir, Mr. Nottingham took the new Beamer, uh, the X5 out before we, um, had a chance to install the, uh, tracking device, sir," the first tech said hesitantly. "He didn't bring it back until after midnight last night, and then he took off with it again early this morning."
Kenneth stared at him, his brain momentarily unable, or unwilling, to process what the younger man had just said. "Do you mean to say there is no way to track Nottingham's movements?" he finally asked, feeling his blood pressure start to escalate once again.
"Not in that car, no. Sorry, sir."
"However, we can get a fix on his position through his cell phone, provided you can keep him talking for at least a minute, preferably two," the other technician said quickly, perhaps recognizing the signs of an impending eruption.
"You had both better hope that you are successful in locating him in this manner," Irons said softly. He snatched up the receiver of a nearby phone and started to dial Nottingham's number, but suddenly the lights flickered and then went out, and the phone line went dead. Moments later, the backup generator kicked in and the lights came back on, but the phone remained inoperative.
"What the hell?" one of the techs muttered uneasily, looking at the security monitors that showed the grounds.
A man came hurrying into the communications room. "Mr. Irons, sir, we have to move you to a secure location immediately. We have reason to believe the estate is about to come under attack."
"No, really? What clued you in to that?" Irons asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Hopkins, is it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is the perimeter secure?"
"There may be a breach in the northeast quadrant, sir. I have men checking --"
The distant sound of a large explosion interrupted him. To his credit, the man's calm demeanor did not change. "Excuse me for a moment, sir," he said, listening as someone reported to him via the earpiece in his ear.
"It's confirmed, sir: we are under attack by hostile forces," he informed Irons. "A surface-to-air missile was just fired at the helicopter, destroying it as it sat on the landing pad. Apparently, the perimeter has been compromised."
"Casualties?" Kenneth asked, thinking of Dr. Immo and, more importantly, Ian's antidote.
"Still checking, sir. We need to get you to a secure area, Mr. Irons," the man said again.
"Very well. Have someone find Dr. Immo and bring him to me," he told Hopkins as the man escorted him toward the elevator that would take him to a bunker-like structure located in the deepest sublevel of the estate.
And although Kenneth Irons did not betray the slightest hint of fear by deed or word, inwardly he was nervous and upset, and he found himself wishing that Ian Nottingham were by his side instead of a stranger.
****
"So," Vicky Po said, setting her apple juice down on the countertop next to the first-aid kit, "how long have you known Sara, Ian?"
'Our souls have been linked throughout eternity,' Ian thought. But then he noticed that the petite, dark-haired woman was staring at him strangely, and he realized that he had spoken aloud. "At least, that is what it sometimes feels like," he added quickly, face reddening.
"A romantic, eh?" she said. "I didn't think there were any of you left."
"It would appear that we are a dying breed," Ian told her, smiling. 'Some sooner than others,' he thought wryly.
"Don't I know it," Vicky murmured, her heart skipping a beat at that devastating smile. 'There's definitely not enough men who look like him to go around,' she thought enviously. 'He's drop-dead gorgeous, even if he does look a little worse for the wear right now. And, from what I can see, he's built to last, too! Oh, I am soooo jealous, Sara!' "Let's leave the ribs for last, okay?" Vicky said, pulling a wry face. "I'm so used to working on people without a pulse I sometimes forget that stopping blood loss is always the first priority! Now, I know we hardly know each other, but drop your pants, mister!" she ordered him.
"Yes, Ma'am." One-handed, Ian unbuckled his belt and then unbuttoned and unzipped his black wool pants. His right pants leg was soaked with blood and torn where the bullet had ripped through the loose material. Underneath the pants, he wore black thermal long johns, and beneath those, briefs, which were also black.
"That doesn't look too bad," Vicky murmured as he finally bared the shallow, bloody crease that marred his quadriceps muscle about eight inches above his right knee. 'Not bad at all! Nice legs. Not too muscular and not too skinny. And, ah, yes, a nice package, too. Damn you, Sara!'
She angled a gooseneck lamp on the countertop so that she could see the wound better. "It's hardly even bleeding anymore. I'm just going to clean it and then bandage it," she said, straightening and pulling on a pair of latex gloves before taking a bottle of disinfectant and some gauze pads from the first-aid kit.
Vicky soaked the pads with the disinfectant. "This may sting a bit," she warned him before gently beginning to cleanse the wound. "So, how did you and Sara meet?" she asked him as she worked.
"We met at the Midtown Museum. Sara was working on a case and I was working security detail that day," he told her, his voice only slightly roughened by pain.
"Security detail?" Vicky frowned as she spotted a tiny piece of black cloth embedded in the wound. She grabbed a tweezer from the first-aid kit, disinfected it, then carefully used it to remove the bit of material.
"Yes, my employer had several extremely valuable items on display in an exhibit, and I was tasked with guarding them."
"Huh. Every museum I've ever been to has its own guards. Where were they?"
"One item in particular was priceless, and my employer wanted to make certain it was not stolen, so he obtained permission from the museum for me to work security for the exhibit."
"Wait a sec, I think I remember that case. Sara chased an armed suspect into the museum and there was shootout, followed by an explosion. It's a miracle she made it out of there alive. As I recall, all that was left of the gunman were a couple of molars and bone fragments. I'm pretty sure I also read that the exhibit was a complete loss. You were there that day?"
"Yes. Sara and I exchanged no more than a few words, given the circumstances, but I instantly felt drawn to her."
"Okay, the wound is clean," Vicky told him, straightening. "I'm gonna put some antibiotic ointment on it and then bandage it. I noticed that you have Demerol and Tylenol with Codeine in here. I suggest you take a couple of pills now so that they'll kick in shortly after I tape your ribs. Believe me, you're gonna need it."
"No, thank you. I cannot risk taking something that will make me drowsy. I must stay alert until we reach safety," he refused.
"Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you," Vicky said, shaking her head. 'Men! Why do they always think they have to act brave? If I had dislocated my shoulder and busted a couple of ribs, I'd have popped those pills so fast I'd already be doped up. He must have an incredibly high tolerance for pain. Or maybe he's just a masochist! Ugh, I hope not. That'd really be a shame.'
"You can put your pants back on now," she told him a few minutes later.
Ian took a moment to admire her neat bandage before pulling up his thermal underwear and pants. With considerably more difficulty than it had taken to do the opposite, he zipped up and buttoned his pants and then buckled his belt. But, thankfully, Vicky Po didn't offer to help him with these tasks. Ian had barely worked up the nerve to drop his pants and pull down his thermal underwear so that she could tend his wound. He was grateful that she'd attempted to distract him from the discomfort caused by her ministrations by talking to him because it also had the added effect of making him feel less vulnerable standing there half-dressed in front of a stranger -- and a woman no less.
"Okay. Last chance to pop a couple of pain pills before I tackle those ribs," she said when he finally finished. "No? All right, then let's get you out of this sling first."
Vicky helped Ian remove his overcoat, which came off relatively easily owing to the fact that it opened in the front, then froze, staring at the harnesses that his coat had concealed. But she only hesitated for a moment before starting to unbuckle them. Ian found it odd that, aside from using extreme caution when laying aside the leather harness containing his guns, throwing knives, tear gas canisters, smoke bombs, and grenades, she did not comment on the fact that he'd been carrying enough weapons to supply a small army. However, over the next hour, he came to realize that the 11th Precinct's ME possessed a worldview that was more than slightly off-kilter.
Beneath his coat, Ian wore three more layers -- all pullovers -- which took nearly 15 minutes to remove because even the slightest movement of his left arm caused him agonizing pain. By the time the first two shirts had been taken off, the nerve-endings in his mangled shoulder were screaming, and it was only by sheer force of will that he wasn't, too.
"Oh, no wonder you're hurting so bad! On top of the strained muscles and ligaments from the dislocated shoulder, you've got a broken collarbone," Vicky identified when they finally got down to the final layer, a black cotton tank top. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"What difference would it have made if I had? It still would have 'hurt like the dickens' to remove my clothing," Ian said through gritted teeth. "Do not take it personally, Ms. Po. I was taught never to divulge any weakness when in enemy territory. Sara assured me that you could be trusted, but old habits die hard."
"You were in the military?" Vicky asked him as she lifted up the tank top to get a look at his injured ribs. She winced as she saw the extensive bruising that was already visible against his pale skin.
"Yes, Special Forces."
"What was your unit called? The Black Berets, or something? I couldn't help but notice that you have a predilection for the color black." She slowly eased the tank top up over his head and raised right arm and then down around his injured shoulder and left arm, throwing it atop the pile of clothing on the nearby sofa. 'Well, damn!' she thought, trying her best not to stare at what all those layers of clothing had hidden because she clearly sensed how uncomfortable her scrutiny made him.
"Close. We were called the Black Dragons." He flinched, wincing, as she probed his ribs.
"Sorry about that. I'm being as gentle as possible," Vicky said apologetically. "So, that's what the dragon tattoo signifies, hunh?" She nodded toward his right forearm, which was supporting his left arm.
"Yes. All of us had the same tattoo."
"Well, Ian, from what I can tell, you've got three cracked and two fractured ribs, but you really should have an x-ray done just to be sure," she told him a few minutes later.
"I am afraid taping them will have to do for now."
"Feel free to tell me to mind my own business, but I just gotta ask: Why the heck did those men, whoever they were, attack you? From what I heard on the news, you're extremely lucky to be alive," she said, taking a scissors, a couple of ace bandages, and a roll of tape from the first-aid kit. Quickly and efficiently, she began binding his injured ribs.
Ian was surprised she had waited as long as she had to ask this question. "Those men were Russians. My employer aroused their ire by essentially selling them damaged goods, and now I am paying the price," he told her.
"So, they're out for revenge and you just happened to be a convenient target?" Vicky surmised.
"Something like that," he murmured, biting back a groan as she taped his chest tightly. He was finding it harder and harder to keep the pain of his injuries at bay. His hellish fever only added to his misery, and he could feel his grip on reality slowly slipping away.
"Almost done," Vicky told him, perhaps sensing his eroding control. "You have an amazing tolerance for pain, Ian. Most people -- and by that I mean grown men who think they're real tough guys -- would have been screaming by now, if they hadn't up and passed out."
'Hmmm. Pass out. Now, there's an idea,' Ian thought longingly. Aloud, he said "While still very young, I began to learn techniques that allow me to control my pain until I can defeat my enemy or reach safety. It took years for me to master them."
"Well, still, I think you should just skip a couple of layers when you put your clothing back on, don't you agree?"
"Most emphatically, yes." 'Or how about I just pass out now and save myself the agony?'
"Okay! All done. How do the ribs feel?" Vicky inquired, admiring her handiwork as well as the sculpted musculature of his shoulders, chest, arms, and abs. Even bruised, battered, and covered with bandages, Ian Nottingham was one fine specimen of a man, she thought, practically salivating over him. 'You are one very lucky woman, Sara Pezzini! If he was mine, I'd tear his clothes off every night, drag him into the bedroom, and --' But she never finished her thought, because suddenly Nottingham's head snapped up, as if he'd heard something outside the apartment. "What's wrong?" she asked him anxiously, wondering if a bunch of angry Russians were about to bust down her door.
"It is Sara. She is very upset," he told her, cocking his dark head slightly as though listening to something only he could hear, eyes becoming unfocused.
"Uh, okay. And you know this how?"
"Through my bond with her. She is distraught and weeping. I must go to her." He grabbed the heavy knit sweater that had been his topmost layer of clothing under his overcoat, and began struggling to put it on.
"Um, you're supposed to wait here for her to get back," Vicky said, eyeing his flushed face, and wondering if he'd begun to hallucinate owing to the dangerously high fever she'd realized that he was suffering from a few minutes after he had walked in her door.
"Help me put this on!" he said urgently, frustrated by his inability to maneuver his useless left arm into the sleeve of the garment.
"All right, all right! Now what?" Vicky asked when he froze.
She saw that he was staring past her at the small television set that sat on her kitchen countertop.
"Could you turn the volume up, please?" he whispered.
"Yeah, sure."
A blond female reporter was standing on the front lawn of a home that looked like it was located somewhere in the suburbs. Beyond her, in the distance, a fire could be seen burning in the foreground of a large, palatial estate. Vicky raised the volume, catching the reporter in mid- sentence.
" -- about a mile from the site of furious battle between an unidentified, heavily armed attack force and the security team of the man who owns the estate you can see beyond me. We may not know who these attackers are, but we do know that they are armed with what appears to be missile launchers and surface-to-air missiles. Witnesses claim to have seen a missile shoot down a helicopter that had either just taken off from the estate's helipad or was attempting a landing. We believe that the object that you can see burning is that helicopter. At this time, we have no word on who was aboard the aircraft when it was brought down. We do not think the mansion is on fire, but it is difficult to tell from this distance. There's a lot of smoke and flames from the helicopter's fuel tanks, and it is obscuring the building. This is Allison Connors, VCN News, reporting live from Kenneth Irons' Westchester estate, which is currently under attack by an unidentified force of heavily armed men."
"Wow! Kenneth Irons! He's that billionaire who owns Vorschlag Industries as well as half of New York City, isn't he?" Vicky murmured.
"Yes," Ian said. "He is also my employer."
More to come. Thanks for all of your feedback. I am not torturing you people intentionally. Okay, so maybe I am. But please persevere! All will be revealed in due time! And, please, please, please, keep your feedback coming! I love reading it and it truly inspires my muse!
Disclaimer: I don't own the Witchblade characters. I'm merely appropriating them for a while. It's all in the spirit of good fun, so, please, don't sue me. Enjoy!
Chapter 38.
Nearly apoplectic with rage, Kenneth Irons hung up the phone. It started to ring again almost immediately, and without even bothering to glance at the caller ID display, he ripped the cord from the wall, and then threw the entire device across the library. It infuriated him that Sara Pezzini had had the nerve to try to order him around. As he had listened to the green-eyed bitch berate him and then demand that he give Ian Nottingham the antidote, he'd felt his blood pressure begin to rise.
Things were fast spinning out of his control, and Irons found this intolerable. How could he not have foreseen the fact that the Wielder would come to Ian Nottingham's aid? When he had sensed the rise of the bloodlust through his bond with the Witchblade, he'd been pleased, thinking she was fighting the drug lords that had threatened her nephew. Little did he know that she was battling the Russians on Ian's behalf, with no apparent regard for her own safety. There could be only one explanation for this behavior: Sara Pezzini had accepted the assassin as her Protector. This revelation made Kenneth want to shout with anger and frustration. How could this be? How could the socially inept, emotionally retarded younger man have succeeded where he had failed? Somehow, over the past few days, Nottingham had managed to befriend the sharp-tongued harpy of a woman, thereby gaining her trust.
Initially, Irons had blamed his wayward servant's insolence and evasiveness regarding his whereabouts on his high fever, but then Sara had taken the phone from Nottingham, divulging the fact that not only were they together, but that she was aiding him. This had come as quite a shock to Kenneth. Based on what Ian had told him the night before about the Wielder feeling sympathy for him because of his ill health, Irons had suspected that she was slowly warming toward his bodyguard and henchman, but he never would have guessed that she would so readily come to his defense, risking not only her life but her beloved job as a homicide detective in the process. And it had become painfully obvious that Irons had been cast in the role of villain, for not only sickening young Nottingham, but for setting him up to be ambushed by the Russians.
Ian's disloyalty bothered Kenneth more than he cared to admit. He had come to take the former Black Dragon's unswerving obedience and allegiance to him for granted, even when it had become apparent that he was infatuated with the Wielder. Never for one moment had Irons allowed himself to even remotely consider the possibility that Nottingham would abandon him for her. In fact, he still could not fully accept that this was so. He decided that once Dr. Immo administered the antidote and the young man's fever broke, he would come to his senses, and that his lifelong conditioning toward subservience to Kenneth would reassert itself.
He reached for the phone to call Dr. Immo, swearing aloud as he remembered why it was no longer on the small table next to his chair. Stomping from the room, he snatched up the phone in the hallway and called down to the lab.
"Yes, Mr. Irons?" the doctor answered on the first ring.
"Prepare to leave the estate immediately. I have arranged for you to go fetch young Nottingham from the city via helicopter. You are supposed to meet him at the 33rd Street heliport in one hour. Administer the antidote as soon as he boards the aircraft," Irons told him.
"Very well, sir." Immo hung up.
Kenneth dialed another number. "Security. Hopkins speaking," a man's voice answered with pleasing alacrity.
"Mr. Hopkins, I want you to meet me in the communications room right away. I have a task for a small team of your best men. Also, tell the pilot to prepare the helicopter for takeoff at once."
"Yes, sir. I'll be there momentarily."
Irons did not trust Sara Pezzini to simply hand over Nottingham. He now knew that her distrust of him was complete, and that she would in all likelihood attempt to liberate the antidote from the good doctor so that she could administer it to her Protector herself at a place of her choosing. Kenneth decided that he would locate their whereabouts using the tracking device that he'd had installed in all of the estate's vehicles. His plan was to send a task force to capture the injured and ailing assassin and forcibly return him to the estate. If, in the process, the Wielder was killed, so be it. The Witchblade would once again be in his possession, and his beloved Elizabeth Bronte would have some company in her frozen crypt.
Feeling much calmer, he swept into the communications room, noting with approval the way the two technicians whose job it was to monitor the equipment snapped to attention.
"Please bring up the tracking device on the vehicle that Ian Nottingham is driving," he requested, moving to stand in front of the screen that would show the location of his bodyguard's car.
The two young men looked at each other nervously and then stared wide- eyed at him.
"Well?" Irons snapped. "Why aren't you doing as I asked?"
"Uh, M-Mr. Nottingham is driving the n-new X5, sir," one of them finally stammered.
"So? What does that have to do with activating the tracking device?" Kenneth demanded impatiently.
"Um, that SUV was only delivered on Tuesday, sir," the other technician said, as if this explained everything.
With some difficulty, Kenneth resisted the urge to kill them both. "Again, I must ask what does that have to do with activating the device and tracking the vehicle?"
"Well, you see, sir, Mr. Nottingham took the new Beamer, uh, the X5 out before we, um, had a chance to install the, uh, tracking device, sir," the first tech said hesitantly. "He didn't bring it back until after midnight last night, and then he took off with it again early this morning."
Kenneth stared at him, his brain momentarily unable, or unwilling, to process what the younger man had just said. "Do you mean to say there is no way to track Nottingham's movements?" he finally asked, feeling his blood pressure start to escalate once again.
"Not in that car, no. Sorry, sir."
"However, we can get a fix on his position through his cell phone, provided you can keep him talking for at least a minute, preferably two," the other technician said quickly, perhaps recognizing the signs of an impending eruption.
"You had both better hope that you are successful in locating him in this manner," Irons said softly. He snatched up the receiver of a nearby phone and started to dial Nottingham's number, but suddenly the lights flickered and then went out, and the phone line went dead. Moments later, the backup generator kicked in and the lights came back on, but the phone remained inoperative.
"What the hell?" one of the techs muttered uneasily, looking at the security monitors that showed the grounds.
A man came hurrying into the communications room. "Mr. Irons, sir, we have to move you to a secure location immediately. We have reason to believe the estate is about to come under attack."
"No, really? What clued you in to that?" Irons asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Hopkins, is it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is the perimeter secure?"
"There may be a breach in the northeast quadrant, sir. I have men checking --"
The distant sound of a large explosion interrupted him. To his credit, the man's calm demeanor did not change. "Excuse me for a moment, sir," he said, listening as someone reported to him via the earpiece in his ear.
"It's confirmed, sir: we are under attack by hostile forces," he informed Irons. "A surface-to-air missile was just fired at the helicopter, destroying it as it sat on the landing pad. Apparently, the perimeter has been compromised."
"Casualties?" Kenneth asked, thinking of Dr. Immo and, more importantly, Ian's antidote.
"Still checking, sir. We need to get you to a secure area, Mr. Irons," the man said again.
"Very well. Have someone find Dr. Immo and bring him to me," he told Hopkins as the man escorted him toward the elevator that would take him to a bunker-like structure located in the deepest sublevel of the estate.
And although Kenneth Irons did not betray the slightest hint of fear by deed or word, inwardly he was nervous and upset, and he found himself wishing that Ian Nottingham were by his side instead of a stranger.
****
"So," Vicky Po said, setting her apple juice down on the countertop next to the first-aid kit, "how long have you known Sara, Ian?"
'Our souls have been linked throughout eternity,' Ian thought. But then he noticed that the petite, dark-haired woman was staring at him strangely, and he realized that he had spoken aloud. "At least, that is what it sometimes feels like," he added quickly, face reddening.
"A romantic, eh?" she said. "I didn't think there were any of you left."
"It would appear that we are a dying breed," Ian told her, smiling. 'Some sooner than others,' he thought wryly.
"Don't I know it," Vicky murmured, her heart skipping a beat at that devastating smile. 'There's definitely not enough men who look like him to go around,' she thought enviously. 'He's drop-dead gorgeous, even if he does look a little worse for the wear right now. And, from what I can see, he's built to last, too! Oh, I am soooo jealous, Sara!' "Let's leave the ribs for last, okay?" Vicky said, pulling a wry face. "I'm so used to working on people without a pulse I sometimes forget that stopping blood loss is always the first priority! Now, I know we hardly know each other, but drop your pants, mister!" she ordered him.
"Yes, Ma'am." One-handed, Ian unbuckled his belt and then unbuttoned and unzipped his black wool pants. His right pants leg was soaked with blood and torn where the bullet had ripped through the loose material. Underneath the pants, he wore black thermal long johns, and beneath those, briefs, which were also black.
"That doesn't look too bad," Vicky murmured as he finally bared the shallow, bloody crease that marred his quadriceps muscle about eight inches above his right knee. 'Not bad at all! Nice legs. Not too muscular and not too skinny. And, ah, yes, a nice package, too. Damn you, Sara!'
She angled a gooseneck lamp on the countertop so that she could see the wound better. "It's hardly even bleeding anymore. I'm just going to clean it and then bandage it," she said, straightening and pulling on a pair of latex gloves before taking a bottle of disinfectant and some gauze pads from the first-aid kit.
Vicky soaked the pads with the disinfectant. "This may sting a bit," she warned him before gently beginning to cleanse the wound. "So, how did you and Sara meet?" she asked him as she worked.
"We met at the Midtown Museum. Sara was working on a case and I was working security detail that day," he told her, his voice only slightly roughened by pain.
"Security detail?" Vicky frowned as she spotted a tiny piece of black cloth embedded in the wound. She grabbed a tweezer from the first-aid kit, disinfected it, then carefully used it to remove the bit of material.
"Yes, my employer had several extremely valuable items on display in an exhibit, and I was tasked with guarding them."
"Huh. Every museum I've ever been to has its own guards. Where were they?"
"One item in particular was priceless, and my employer wanted to make certain it was not stolen, so he obtained permission from the museum for me to work security for the exhibit."
"Wait a sec, I think I remember that case. Sara chased an armed suspect into the museum and there was shootout, followed by an explosion. It's a miracle she made it out of there alive. As I recall, all that was left of the gunman were a couple of molars and bone fragments. I'm pretty sure I also read that the exhibit was a complete loss. You were there that day?"
"Yes. Sara and I exchanged no more than a few words, given the circumstances, but I instantly felt drawn to her."
"Okay, the wound is clean," Vicky told him, straightening. "I'm gonna put some antibiotic ointment on it and then bandage it. I noticed that you have Demerol and Tylenol with Codeine in here. I suggest you take a couple of pills now so that they'll kick in shortly after I tape your ribs. Believe me, you're gonna need it."
"No, thank you. I cannot risk taking something that will make me drowsy. I must stay alert until we reach safety," he refused.
"Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you," Vicky said, shaking her head. 'Men! Why do they always think they have to act brave? If I had dislocated my shoulder and busted a couple of ribs, I'd have popped those pills so fast I'd already be doped up. He must have an incredibly high tolerance for pain. Or maybe he's just a masochist! Ugh, I hope not. That'd really be a shame.'
"You can put your pants back on now," she told him a few minutes later.
Ian took a moment to admire her neat bandage before pulling up his thermal underwear and pants. With considerably more difficulty than it had taken to do the opposite, he zipped up and buttoned his pants and then buckled his belt. But, thankfully, Vicky Po didn't offer to help him with these tasks. Ian had barely worked up the nerve to drop his pants and pull down his thermal underwear so that she could tend his wound. He was grateful that she'd attempted to distract him from the discomfort caused by her ministrations by talking to him because it also had the added effect of making him feel less vulnerable standing there half-dressed in front of a stranger -- and a woman no less.
"Okay. Last chance to pop a couple of pain pills before I tackle those ribs," she said when he finally finished. "No? All right, then let's get you out of this sling first."
Vicky helped Ian remove his overcoat, which came off relatively easily owing to the fact that it opened in the front, then froze, staring at the harnesses that his coat had concealed. But she only hesitated for a moment before starting to unbuckle them. Ian found it odd that, aside from using extreme caution when laying aside the leather harness containing his guns, throwing knives, tear gas canisters, smoke bombs, and grenades, she did not comment on the fact that he'd been carrying enough weapons to supply a small army. However, over the next hour, he came to realize that the 11th Precinct's ME possessed a worldview that was more than slightly off-kilter.
Beneath his coat, Ian wore three more layers -- all pullovers -- which took nearly 15 minutes to remove because even the slightest movement of his left arm caused him agonizing pain. By the time the first two shirts had been taken off, the nerve-endings in his mangled shoulder were screaming, and it was only by sheer force of will that he wasn't, too.
"Oh, no wonder you're hurting so bad! On top of the strained muscles and ligaments from the dislocated shoulder, you've got a broken collarbone," Vicky identified when they finally got down to the final layer, a black cotton tank top. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"What difference would it have made if I had? It still would have 'hurt like the dickens' to remove my clothing," Ian said through gritted teeth. "Do not take it personally, Ms. Po. I was taught never to divulge any weakness when in enemy territory. Sara assured me that you could be trusted, but old habits die hard."
"You were in the military?" Vicky asked him as she lifted up the tank top to get a look at his injured ribs. She winced as she saw the extensive bruising that was already visible against his pale skin.
"Yes, Special Forces."
"What was your unit called? The Black Berets, or something? I couldn't help but notice that you have a predilection for the color black." She slowly eased the tank top up over his head and raised right arm and then down around his injured shoulder and left arm, throwing it atop the pile of clothing on the nearby sofa. 'Well, damn!' she thought, trying her best not to stare at what all those layers of clothing had hidden because she clearly sensed how uncomfortable her scrutiny made him.
"Close. We were called the Black Dragons." He flinched, wincing, as she probed his ribs.
"Sorry about that. I'm being as gentle as possible," Vicky said apologetically. "So, that's what the dragon tattoo signifies, hunh?" She nodded toward his right forearm, which was supporting his left arm.
"Yes. All of us had the same tattoo."
"Well, Ian, from what I can tell, you've got three cracked and two fractured ribs, but you really should have an x-ray done just to be sure," she told him a few minutes later.
"I am afraid taping them will have to do for now."
"Feel free to tell me to mind my own business, but I just gotta ask: Why the heck did those men, whoever they were, attack you? From what I heard on the news, you're extremely lucky to be alive," she said, taking a scissors, a couple of ace bandages, and a roll of tape from the first-aid kit. Quickly and efficiently, she began binding his injured ribs.
Ian was surprised she had waited as long as she had to ask this question. "Those men were Russians. My employer aroused their ire by essentially selling them damaged goods, and now I am paying the price," he told her.
"So, they're out for revenge and you just happened to be a convenient target?" Vicky surmised.
"Something like that," he murmured, biting back a groan as she taped his chest tightly. He was finding it harder and harder to keep the pain of his injuries at bay. His hellish fever only added to his misery, and he could feel his grip on reality slowly slipping away.
"Almost done," Vicky told him, perhaps sensing his eroding control. "You have an amazing tolerance for pain, Ian. Most people -- and by that I mean grown men who think they're real tough guys -- would have been screaming by now, if they hadn't up and passed out."
'Hmmm. Pass out. Now, there's an idea,' Ian thought longingly. Aloud, he said "While still very young, I began to learn techniques that allow me to control my pain until I can defeat my enemy or reach safety. It took years for me to master them."
"Well, still, I think you should just skip a couple of layers when you put your clothing back on, don't you agree?"
"Most emphatically, yes." 'Or how about I just pass out now and save myself the agony?'
"Okay! All done. How do the ribs feel?" Vicky inquired, admiring her handiwork as well as the sculpted musculature of his shoulders, chest, arms, and abs. Even bruised, battered, and covered with bandages, Ian Nottingham was one fine specimen of a man, she thought, practically salivating over him. 'You are one very lucky woman, Sara Pezzini! If he was mine, I'd tear his clothes off every night, drag him into the bedroom, and --' But she never finished her thought, because suddenly Nottingham's head snapped up, as if he'd heard something outside the apartment. "What's wrong?" she asked him anxiously, wondering if a bunch of angry Russians were about to bust down her door.
"It is Sara. She is very upset," he told her, cocking his dark head slightly as though listening to something only he could hear, eyes becoming unfocused.
"Uh, okay. And you know this how?"
"Through my bond with her. She is distraught and weeping. I must go to her." He grabbed the heavy knit sweater that had been his topmost layer of clothing under his overcoat, and began struggling to put it on.
"Um, you're supposed to wait here for her to get back," Vicky said, eyeing his flushed face, and wondering if he'd begun to hallucinate owing to the dangerously high fever she'd realized that he was suffering from a few minutes after he had walked in her door.
"Help me put this on!" he said urgently, frustrated by his inability to maneuver his useless left arm into the sleeve of the garment.
"All right, all right! Now what?" Vicky asked when he froze.
She saw that he was staring past her at the small television set that sat on her kitchen countertop.
"Could you turn the volume up, please?" he whispered.
"Yeah, sure."
A blond female reporter was standing on the front lawn of a home that looked like it was located somewhere in the suburbs. Beyond her, in the distance, a fire could be seen burning in the foreground of a large, palatial estate. Vicky raised the volume, catching the reporter in mid- sentence.
" -- about a mile from the site of furious battle between an unidentified, heavily armed attack force and the security team of the man who owns the estate you can see beyond me. We may not know who these attackers are, but we do know that they are armed with what appears to be missile launchers and surface-to-air missiles. Witnesses claim to have seen a missile shoot down a helicopter that had either just taken off from the estate's helipad or was attempting a landing. We believe that the object that you can see burning is that helicopter. At this time, we have no word on who was aboard the aircraft when it was brought down. We do not think the mansion is on fire, but it is difficult to tell from this distance. There's a lot of smoke and flames from the helicopter's fuel tanks, and it is obscuring the building. This is Allison Connors, VCN News, reporting live from Kenneth Irons' Westchester estate, which is currently under attack by an unidentified force of heavily armed men."
"Wow! Kenneth Irons! He's that billionaire who owns Vorschlag Industries as well as half of New York City, isn't he?" Vicky murmured.
"Yes," Ian said. "He is also my employer."
More to come. Thanks for all of your feedback. I am not torturing you people intentionally. Okay, so maybe I am. But please persevere! All will be revealed in due time! And, please, please, please, keep your feedback coming! I love reading it and it truly inspires my muse!