American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory (20 page)

Alec snorted, looking between his
mother and Nash. “No,” he replied. “Just beef ribs. But they’re huge.”

Penelope came into the room and
went to hug her mother, who handed the bag over to Nash so she could return the
hug.

“I’m tired,” Penelope announced,
rubbing her eyes with a frown. “Alec made me go to some speakeasy and it was
full of smoke. I stink like an ashtray now.”

Alec was grinning.  “It was a
cool place,” he insisted.  “They had these dudes that played customized guitars
and sounded like AC/DC.”

“Where did you go?” Nash asked.

Alec shrugged. “It was called
Mae’s.”

Nash wriggled his eyebrows. “That
can be a rough place. You should probably avoid it in the future.  There are
lots of fights and stabbings there.”

Elliot looked horrified. “You
took your sister there?” she scolded Alec. “Get, both of you. Get to bed.”

“I’m going to watch a movie,”
Alec announced.

“Fine,” Elliot shooed them out of
her room.  “Just get to bed at a reasonable hour.”

“Are you going to New Orleans
tomorrow?” Penelope asked, yawning.

Elliot looked at Nash, who gazed
back at her emotionlessly. “Yes,” she finally replied. “Will you guys be okay
for a couple of days?”

“Only if the Sheriff gives us
hush money,” Alec muttered as he crossed the hall to his room.

Nash scratched his head. “You’ve
got quite a mercenary streak in you, Alec.”

Elliot looked at Nash, arms
crossed reprovingly. “I told you not to give him money,” she scolded. “Now he’s
going to bleed you dry.”

Nash lifted an eyebrow at the
grinning young man across the hall. “Not if I bleed him first.”

Alec laughed and disappeared into
his room, shutting the door behind him.  Penelope went into her own bedroom
down the hall and they heard that door shut also. Elliot turned to Nash,
standing there with a bag of ribs in his hand.

“Hungry?” she nodded her head at
the bag.

With a grin, Nash followed her
down to the kitchen with the new stove and refrigerator.  They stood over the
stove, the only uncluttered flat surface in the room, ate ribs and drank soda,
and had the most wonderful conversation imaginable.

Nash never made it home that
night.

CHAPTER NINE

The kids didn’t say a word when
they woke up on Saturday morning and Nash was sitting outside with their
mother, drinking coffee in jeans and casual shirt and watching the sun rise
over the bayou. For once, the man wasn’t in uniform, especially on a Saturday
morning. More than that, it was perfectly normal for him to be at the house
when they woke up.  They had gotten used to it, like he was one of the
fixtures. But what wasn’t normal was the massive German Shepherd Nash had
brought with him.

Alec was the first to spy the dog
and he raced out onto the porch only to be confronted by a curious black-masked
dog.  For all of Wolfgang’s tremendous size and breeding, he was really just a
big lapdog and he took to Alec immediately. Alec sat down on the scratchy porch
board and let the dog lick all over his face.

“He’s awesome,” Alec said,
stroking the furry black back. “What’s his name?”

“Wolfgang,” Nash replied. “He
spends so much time alone that I thought maybe he could come over here and stay
for awhile. Do you mind?”

“Hell no,” Alec exclaimed. “He
can hang with me.”

Penelope wandered on to the
porch, sleepy until she saw the giant dog.  Then she fell to her knees next to
him and began stroking his head and face.

“He’s so sweet,” she crooned as
the dog licked her chin. “What’s he doing here?”

“Nash brought him over,” Elliot
watched her kids make a fuss over the very happy dog. “He can hang out with you
guys while we’re in New Orleans.”

“Is he an attack dog?” Alec asked
Nash.

Nash nodded. “He’s been police
trained but he’s such a big love bug that he doesn’t respond to commands
anymore. He just wants to lay in your lap.”

Penelope was already in love with
the dog. “Can I take him with me when I go running?”

Nash nodded. “I don’t see why
not, but you need to keep him on a tight leash. He likes to run away and chase
things.”

As the kids fawned over the dog,
Nash looked up at Elliot and winked at her. He had woken up early in the
morning and made the six mile drive home to feed the dog and take a shower. 
Once he was home, however, he felt guilty leaving the sad doggy face behind so
he put Wolfgang into his cruiser and brought him over to Purgatory. 

Wolfgang really was an attack dog
and would provide protection for the kids while they were in New Orleans. At
least, that’s what he told Elliot.  She loved the idea, grinning over the rim
of her coffee mug, watching her children fall in love with the big German
Shepherd. 

“You’ll never get your dog back,”
she said softly.

Nash laughed softly. “Then maybe
I’ll just have to hang around her more than I already do.  Everybody who
matters to me is over here, anyway. My house is just a place to lay my head.”

Elliot sipped at her coffee.
“I’ve never seen your house.”

“Then I’ll have to take you over
there sometime,” he told her. “I bought it about six years ago, right after
Julie and I divorced.  It sits right on the golf course.”

“Do you golf?”

“I do. Do you?”

She nodded. “Rob tried to teach
me,” she said. “I’m not very good, but I like to play.”

He grinned and reached out,
taking her warm hand in his. “I’ll see if I can pick up where he left off.”

She laughed softly as Alec got up
and went inside the house, leaving Penelope to cuddle and stroke the dog.
Wolfgang was in doggie heaven, thrilled with the attention. When Alec emerged
from the house again, it was with a bright green tennis ball, which he showed
to Wolfgang, who perked up and danced all over Penelope sitting on the ground
beside him. Alec threw the ball and the dog went nuts.

“Here we go,” Nash muttered,
watching his dog tear off into the yard. “He’ll play fetch all day.  You’ve
just made a friend, Alec.”

Alec grinned, watching the dog
collect the ball and trot back over to him.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I don’t
have much to do right now except mess around on the computer and play fetch. 
Hey, that reminds me; I ‘googled’ your name last night just to see if you were
really an axe murderer or a drug lord or something. There was an article that
said you were a war hero.”

Elliot turned to Nash with
surprise and curiosity. “War hero?” she repeated.

Nash shrugged casually as he
sipped his coffee. “It’s not as big as all that,” he said. “I was with the
First Marine division during Desert Storm in ’91 during the liberation of
Kuwait.  I was part of the battle for Kuwait City.”

Alec wouldn’t let him get off so
easily. “The article said you led a light infantry battalion into the east side
of the city where the Iraqi Republican Guard was in control because of the oil
reserves in the area.   It said you and your men bombarded the Iraqis for two
days before outmaneuvering them when they tried to escape. You captured an
entire brigade of Republican Guards with the fewest casualty record of any
commander in the liberation of Kuwait City. That makes you a war hero, dude.”

By this time, Elliot was looking
at Nash in astonishment. “You did all that?” she asked.

He looked at her, smiling. “I had
a lot of help.”

Elliot grinned and shook her head
in amazement, trying to wrap her mind around the information. It was very
impressive. “How long were you a Marine?”

“Eight years,” he replied. “I
graduated from Tulane in ’85 and enlisted in the Corps. I was in through ’93
and came home to join the Sheriff’s department.  Then I ran for Sheriff in ’99
and have been the Sheriff ever since.”

Elliot just shook her head again,
impressed with the overall character of the man she had discovered deep in the
backwoods of Louisiana.  She wrapped her arm around his waist and he encircled
her shoulders with his big arm, kissing her temple.

“You’re quite accomplished,” she
said. “I think I’ll keep you around a little longer.”

He laughed softly, watching as
Alec ran Wolfgang into the ground throwing the ball. But the dog was loving
it.  “I think I’ve lost my dog,” he sighed.

 Elliot giggled, letting go of
him and heading in to the house.  “I’m going to get dressed so we can get on
the road,” she called to him as she walked in.  “How long will it take us to
get there?”

“About an hour,” he told her.
“Don’t rush. We’ve got time.”

“That’s good,” she called back to
him, “because your brother is sending a couple of contractors over this morning
and I didn’t want to leave until they got here.”

He turned from the young people
playing with the dog and followed Elliot’s path back into the house. 

“That’s fine,” he said, sipping
the last of his coffee. “While we’re waiting, can I impose upon you for a piece
of toast?”

“Help yourself.”

Just as he put his foot inside
the kitchen door, he heard his police radio go off. He had set it in the big
front parlor along with his keys and cell phone. In fact, the phone was going
off as well and as Elliot took the stairs for the upper floor, he made his way
into the parlor in time to catch the phone on the last ring.

“Aury,” he answered.

“Sheriff, this is dispatch,” a
woman with a heavy Louisiana drawl was on the other end. “We’ve got a situation
out on Brown Road near Darrow. There’s been a shooting at the Marchant
Vocational School. I’ve got all available units rolling from Brittany
substation.”

“I’m on my way,” Nash hung up the
cell phone, picked up the radio, and contacted the watch commander. “Brittany
WC-1 this is S A-1, do you copy?”

He was picking up his keys and
moving for the door as the radio crackled back at him. “Ellie?” he yelled
upstairs to her. “I’ve got to go, honey.”

“What?” Elliot’s voice was faint
and he could hear her running across the upstairs hall, skittering down the
sweeping staircase until she hit the bottom. “Where are you going?”

He went to meet her half-way down
the hall, kissing her swiftly before heading towards the front door. He
strained to listen to the watch commander through the bad connection they had,
but he gathered that at least one of his units was already on scene. There was
apparently a mess.

“Copy that,” he spoke into the
radio as he burst through the front door and flew off the porch. “My ETA is
fifteen.”

The gravel of the driveway
crunched underneath his boots as he made his way to the car. Nash didn’t
realize that Elliot was right behind him until he opened the door of his car
and hit her with it.  She bounced backwards with the force of the blow.

“My God,” he winced because he
had really smacked her in the arm.  He shut the door and grasped her gently as
she rubbed her elbow. “I’m so sorry, darlin’. I didn’t see you.”

She grinned at him. “It’s okay,”
she said. “Where are you going?”

He opened the door carefully this
time. “The call is a shooting at a vocational school in Darrow,” he said,
kissing her quickly.  “I’ll let you know what’s going on when I can.”

“A shooting?” she repeated.

He nodded, already mentally
geared up for the task ahead and oblivious to the tone of her voice. “Yes,” he
said. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be, but I’ll call you.”

Elliot looked at him with an odd
wide-eyed gaze and the tears started coming. She thought she was being clever
by lowering her head and heading back quickly for the house.

“Okay,” she said, not looking at
him as she climbed up the stairs to the porch. “Call me when you can. Be
careful.”

Nash finally caught on to the tone
in her voice, the tightness of it, and it began to occur to him why.  He was
half-way into the car but climbed back out again when he saw how swiftly she
was moving. It wasn’t natural for her to run away from him like that with her
head down.

“Ellie,” he called after her, his
voice soft, deep and gentle.

She came to a halt before she
went inside the door but she couldn’t look at him. She just stood there,
rubbing her elbow, struggling against the tears of fright and grief that were
already starting down her cheeks.

“You’d better get going,” she
said hoarsely. “I’ll talk to you later.”

She took another step towards the
door but one word from him brought her to a halt. “Stop,” he commanded gently.
“Look at me.”

She shook her head and burst into
tears, moving for the door but he was on the porch in a flash, slamming the
door closed before she could get through it. He captured her in his arms,
trapping her against him as she tried to get away. After a couple of seconds of
struggling, she collapsed against him in hot, frightened tears.