Out of the Storm (32 page)

Eric held his place as Ashley opened her eyes. He thought she was trying to smile.

“Oh and that small tracking device…” He looked at his watch.

Suddenly an explosion cracked through the damp morning air as it lit up the sky. “I think Mr. Carson’s men just found it.”

Chapter Forty-Six

Eric looked down at the weapons lying on the ground five feet in front of him.

The man holding the gun shook his head slowly. “Don’t even think about it. One twitch and I press this button.”

“I don’t think so.” Eric called his bluff. “You’re after something. Revenge, justice, glory? I haven’t figured it out yet but if you just wanted Ashley dead, why all the theatrics?”

“You really haven’t figured it out?” The man looked amused. “I’m surprised. You may run a marina now, but you’re a warrior, Eric. Always have been. I’ve done my homework.”

“I suppose that’s your idea of a compliment.” Eric was trying to think of some alternative, a way to gain leverage. He saw none. He could charge the man having no idea of his self-defense skills or his agility. He could try surprise: dive for the Glock, hope to catch the man off-guard enough to give himself some chance…even a slim one.

“Yes, it is.” The man answered. “You see, I needed to get Ashley and gain the advantage to get the evidence she had.”

“You mean the flash drive?”

“Yes. It’s the only thing that can tie me to Firestorm. Her daughter and your mother-in-law provided me with the leverage I needed to get that.”

“So you took it when you were at my house?” Eric asked. The longer he kept the man talking the more relaxed he’d become. It also meant that maybe, just maybe Carson would find them.

The man nodded. “But don’t you see? If I simply kidnapped and killed your lady friend here—” He thrust the large handgun into Ashley’s side. “I’d never be rid of you. And you, Eric, you’re a man to be reckoned with. Between you and that old bastard Carson I could never draw an easy breath, so I lured you here and now, as part of her punishment before I take Ashley back to die with the other two…” He raised the weapon and pointed at Eric’s chest. Ashley squealed from under her gag and closed her eyes.

“You’ve got ten seconds to put that weapon down and back away from the girl,” a voice called from a small grove of trees twenty yards away. It was a voice Eric knew well. A mixture of relief and amazement swept over him as he found Ashley’s eyes. His friend Ron Lipton hadn’t deserted him.

“You heard him,” said another voice that had a familiar ring. Ralph? It came from behind the wall of the shed nearest to the kidnapper.

The man was caught completely off-guard. He’d never expected this. As he turned in surprise toward the voices, Eric saw his chance. He lunged for the Glock. As the man spun, facing him again, finger poised on the detonator, Eric took quick aim and shot him in the chest three times. Two more rounds caught the hand with the detonator. High caliber hollow points, Eric thought since they blew his hand and device into splinters. Eric braced himself for the explosion, pushing Ashley to the ground and shielding her. It never came.

He stood and pulled Ashley up, gently pulling the tape from her mouth. “Oh, Eric,” was all she could say as she fell into him. Lip ran up to them and fished through the man’s pockets, producing the keys for the handcuffs.

Suddenly, Eric heard a groan. A loud noise was followed by a warm feeling in his back. Ashley cried out as she pulled her hands away. They were bloody.

“Bastard,” Eric heard his brother say as his weapon fired three times into the bad guy.

Eric felt no pain but was light-headed as he found Ashley’s enormous eyes. They were soft and filled with tears. “
Eric…
” she whispered, reaching for him in slow motion as he lost consciousness.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Eric had vague memories of voices…Lu’s and Bobby’s, Carson’s he thought, but Ashley’s was the voice that filled his thoughts as he drifted in and out of consciousness. Its gentle drawl kept him grounded, her hand would find his, connecting Eric with the outside world. Her musky fragrance tempted him, leading him toward dreams of pleasant things that lay ahead.

Daylight would come and go in fits and starts, accompanied by the constant, ever vigilant beeping of electronic monitors. He recalled being moved and jostled, the confinement of some device or another, an MRI or CT scan, perhaps. Once in a while he would open his eyes to find her asleep in a chair touching his hand. He would dream of her eyes, her smile, the feel of her lips on his. The thought occurred more than once that if death was going to come he would welcome it if she was with him and her hand was in his…

****

“Well, Mr. Montgomery. Welcome back.” The man smiled down at him. His nametag read
Head of Internal Medicine
. He was surprisingly young, had a shock of red hair, and a sparkling smile. “For a while we thought you might be leaving us.”

Eric licked his lips.

One of the younger doctors standing nearby smiled at him and offered him a spoonful of ice chips.

“Thanks,” Eric acknowledged and tried to move. Pain shot through his right side while the array of tubes and sensors attached to his chest and arms held him prisoner.

“Please, just lie still,” the doctor in charge said kindly and touched his arm. “We want you to get better as quickly as possible. But you’ve given us quite a time, and it’s going to take a while.”

The man whose nametag described him as Chief of Internal Medicine explained Eric’s condition to those surrounding him. Eric assumed he was a case on rounds for the medical students and interns, all of whom looked like high school students.

“Mr. Montgomery sustained a serious gunshot wound. He was very fortunate. The high caliber bullet found its way around his vital organs.” The man squeezed Eric’s shoulder as he continued with more doctor-speak. Some simple tests of his reflexes and cognitive skills brought the session to an end.

The doctor nodded toward the door. “I think”—a broad smile showed on his freckled face—“there’s a young lady who’s going to be very glad to see you awake and alert.” The smile grew into a grin. “I’ll be back later with a team from physical therapy so we can begin the discussion of your recovery. There’s a very influential gentleman who seems intent on seeing to it that you get absolutely top-notch care. But I explained to him that’s the way we treat all our patients.”

The doctor chuckled and gave Eric a tap on the leg. Turning, he and his entourage headed to the door. Some engaged in casual conversation while other typed notes into their tablets and smart phones. As soon as they opened the door, Ashley pushed past them. She stood staring at him.

“Please, Ms. Fitzhugh. Now just a few minutes. He still needs plenty of rest,” the doctor cautioned.

Ashley stopped, apparently glued to the floor. Eric wanted so much to touch her, hold her close, inhale her scent but she stared, unable to move.

He did his best to hold out his arms. “Please, come here,” he whispered.

Suddenly, like a projectile shot from an artillery piece, she exploded across the final five feet bending as she got to the bed so she could embrace him gently.

“Oh…Eric.” She broke into sobs. Mammoth tears washed over and flooded her cheeks. “I was afraid—so afraid you’d never wake up.” Ashley swallowed loudly and backed away. “Don’t you ever do this to me again!” she scolded in a hoarse whisper.

Suddenly she was next to him again. Her full, soft lips found his forehead, his eyes, his mouth. He groaned as he did his best, lifting himself to meet her.

Ashley backed away wearing a frustrated look. “Are you okay?”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry. But I can’t help it! I just can’t bear being away from you.”

He took her hand. “I’m fine—now,” he said, reaching for her hand. “And I don’t want you to stay away from me. Not now, not ever.”

****

Eric waited impatiently for Ashley’s daily visits. She’d come after lunch and stay late into the evening. It was like a shot of adrenaline laced with morphine when he saw her come through the door—excitement laced with intense pleasure.

But the most emotional moment of his hospital stay came when Ralph appeared at noon two days after Eric had awakened.

“Hey, bro. How you doing?” Ralph asked quietly. He stood in the doorway studying Eric. He looked scruffy, unshaven, uncomfortable, and older than Eric remembered. Much older.

Eric stared back unsure what to say. His entire adult life had been spent vilifying the man who leaned casually in his doorway. Suddenly his world had been turned upside down. Ralph had been thrust into the unlikely role of hero. Eric had spent long hours thinking about what to say when they met. How should he handle this predictably awkward moment—grab Ralph, hug him, and offer profuse apologies for degrading him?

No, that made no sense. Eric knew next to nothing about Ralph or his life. He had no way of knowing his real story and that, apparently, fit Ralph’s cover to perfection. Whatever transpired in the future, Eric gave himself a pass. There was no conceivable way he could have called this one.

“I…I don’t know…” Eric offered softly in answer to his brother’s inquiry.

Ralph held up his hand. Eric could see it in his eyes. His brother was experiencing the same uncomfortable loss of words after spending a lifetime built on fabrication.

“Don’t worry. You don’t owe me anything, kid,” Ralph assured him.

Eric thought his brother’s eyes were filling up. The emotion passed quickly.

“But so much has happened. Ashley, Kylie, Carson…and you.” Eric picked at the bedclothes then found his brother’s hard blue eyes again. “If I’d known. If you’d have given me the slightest tipoff, a hint…”

“Look, Eric. I knew what I was getting into when I signed on for this.” Ralph shook his head. “Funny. I was always trying to hustle someone. It was Melissa. When I met her, the hustle lost its magic. It made no sense any more. I decided to try the good guys for a while. Sounds like a cliché but it’s true.”

“Did Melissa know? I mean about the deep cover…what you were doing?”

Ralph sat down next to the bed. He looked out the window to the leaves, now fully green and open. Then he cleared his throat. “Yeah. There’s a little kid in all of us, Eric. You know, the need for recognition—to have someone you really care about know you’re doing the right thing.” Ralph’s face grew dark; his eyes wore a distant look. “Someone like her…so special, so kind, and so sweet. I told her. Guess I had to.” He sighed deeply. “It was worth seeing the glow in her eyes, the look of pride on her face until she...” His words trailed into silence.

Eric stretched out his hand. Ralph took it and squeezed it tightly. “Gotta go, kid.”

“You just got here,” Eric protested. “You’ve been MIA for years. And now…there’s so much more I want to…”

“Don’t worry, kid. I promise. I won’t be a stranger.”

Ralph stood, let Eric’s hand go, and gave him a confident nod. Then he was gone. Eric wondered if Ralph would keep his word. Suddenly he wanted to have his older brother in his life. Wanted it badly.

****

It was Lip’s turn the next afternoon.

“How are you doing, buddy?” he asked.

He had to ask, to hear the answer to the question that had haunted Eric since he’d returned to the world. “How did you and Ralph end up at the park the night Ashley and I were there?”

“Simple,” his friend said as he sat down. “We both work for the same man. Your ole buddy, Mr. Carson.” Ron Lipton allowed himself a smile.

“What?” Eric couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Is there anyone who doesn’t work for him?” he asked with a mixture of amusement and cynicism.

Ron Lipton looked toward the window, then back at Eric. “I know this must be hard for you to take. It didn’t go exactly the way we expected.”

Eric swallowed. Carson had given him an answer but he no longer knew what was true and what wasn’t. So much of this adventure had been theater or it seemed that way. “Did Ashley know anything about this?”

“No. Sometimes you just get lucky.”

“Lucky?” he said with incredulity. Ashley, Kylie, and Lu had been kidnapped,
he’d
almost been killed. Others had. His mind pictured Rocco, that poor college kid just doing a summer job. Eric had no idea how many others. Were there other innocent bystanders, what the spook world euphemistically referred to as collateral damage? He wondered what Carson and company defined as
lucky
.

“Yeah.” Lip gave him a wry smile. “I mean the whole thing with Ashley. Ralph said she’d had a schoolgirl crush on you for years. Sending her up here. How perfect was that?”

“Sending her up here? As a decoy?”

“C’mon, buddy. You must have seen that one coming.” Lip watched him. His smile faded. “Ricky. We live in a complex world. None of us like the things we’re forced to do. We all make tough choices. Sometimes downright ugly ones. After what we’ve been through. Don’t go high-handed on me. You spent five years in the Middle East. Can you sit here, putting on this smug, self-righteous act and tell me you never had to make a no-win choice, a choice you knew could lead to some people dying so you could save others?”

Eric sighed and stared at the freshly painted ceiling, listening to the low drone of the AC as it pushed cool air through the ductwork. “No,” he admitted in a reluctant whisper.

“The difference is that you didn’t love your team in the all-consuming way you love Ashley and her daughter. I know. You thought you could find a pure, pristine place where you and Elaine could build Utopia.”

“Yep. Least I hoped I could.”

“Well, this is the real world. This time it was a powerful man gone over the edge. A paranoid who’d suffered a mind-numbing tragedy. He’d lost his whole family—wife, two sons, and two daughters on 9/11. They were at Windows on the World waiting for him when the first plane struck. He was a top-level guy, a genius who worked for NSA. He snapped. He wanted to terrorize us into submission. To offer some sort of fear-based anarchy as an alternative.” Lip shook his head violently. “Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat, knowing that for every Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein there may be a hundred of these self-righteous maniacs. They frighten me a lot more. And they usually have powerful friends, alliances, and the kind of resources most of these third-world overseas types can only dream of.”