Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (3 page)

I’d expected them to enhance her beauty. But I wasn’t prepared for just how stunning they actually were, even with the discoloration from a recent black eye not completely faded away, even with copious makeup in that area doing little to cover up her lover’s cruelty and disregard for her worth. Nothing could ever diminish her eyes. They called to mind flower petals, the ocean, and the sun at varying times of the day. They completely shifted the balance in our exchange. Even now, recounting it all, I’m not ashamed to admit it.

I managed to ask, “What color are they?”

“They’ve been confused for blue, green, violet,” she said. “They’re actually gray.”

“Okay.”

“You made me bend. Happy now?”

“I see we have something in common,” I said, glancing at her compromised eye.

“You’re cruel.”

“Your eyes are lovely,” I replied.

“
Lovely
?” She snickered. “You are just full of surprises. Do you bake and garden, too?”

“My chicken francaise would call up emotions in you that you didn’t even know existed. And I wouldn’t disrespect someone of your magnitude with a bouquet of roses.” I smirked and shook my head. “Totally lacking in creativity. Rather an arrangement of calla lilies or orchids.”

She literally swallowed my words.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen shoulders so wide. You’re big.”

“I’ve seen bigger.”

“How tall are you?”

“Tall enough,” I said.

Her head-to-toe appraisal wasn’t subtle. I noticed the rise and fall of her chest.

“I have to be very careful,” she explained to me, and by reflex, I would guess, she squinted her damaged eye.

That gesture saddened me and endeared me to her all in the same breath.

I said, “Careful is good. You should take your time to learn someone.”

“Why do you want to
learn
me?” she asked.

That was hard to answer. In a matter of minutes it had changed.

“At first I thought you might help me,” I said.

“At first?”

I nodded. “But now I realize I might be able to help you, too.”

“I scratch your back and you scratch mine?”

“Exactly.”

“Sounds dangerous,” she said.

An understatement.

Two women who’d helped me were dead now. Brutal deaths, too. Decapitated.

“What’s your name?” I asked to redirect my thoughts.

She shook her head, touched her neck.

I continued watching her. My glare had shrunk men twice her size, made their lips tremble and their bladders weaken. I had no plans of backing down. Probably the wrong tact but my nature was ignorant of any other approach. I wanted her name. Needed it.

“Carmen,” she finally muttered.

“Carmen,” I repeated, trying it out on my tongue. “I think I like that.”

“My mother was big on Dorothy Dandridge,” she offered.

“Carmen Jones.
Movie adapted from the George Bizet opera. Otto Preminger directed.”

“Every fool with an Internet connection and Wikipedia saved in their Favorites thinks they’re a genius.”

“Don’t be cruel, Carmen,” I said. “I mean you no harm. Dorothy Dandridge was lovely. Your mother was wise to name you after her. The name suits you perfectly.”

“My mother
was
wise. Very. Wiser than I’ve ever been. Always could sniff out a problem before it became one.” A slight chill only she could feel shook her frame. “She was right about every man I ever dated. ‘That one’s no good for you…Carmen.’ ‘That one has potential but something’s still off about him.’ I miss her wisdom. Miss
her
.”

I said, “My condolences,” and added, “I’m very sorry.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with it. Ovarian…”

“Still,” I said.

Her gray eyes regarded me differently; they softened. “It’s been almost four years already.”

I nodded empathetically. All I could do. And more than I normally would do.

She took a couple of deep breaths. “They say that time heals all wounds,” she said. “I’d have to say that’s an awfully terrible lie. A very big one. It doesn’t heal. Nope.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, Carmen.”

“Tell me about what happened to you,” she said. “Your eye? Your hand?”

“Less than what happened to the other guy,” I said. “Just collateral damage.”

“Why did you follow me today?”

“Had to,” I said.

“Had to?”

“Yes.”

Refrigerated air kicked around the green odor of vegetables and the orange and red and yellow odors of fruits. The rain outside increased and battered the fogged windows that fronted the Farmer’s Market. Lightning barked. Bone-colored slashes of it punctured the sky turned cobalt by the storm. Terrible weather made for a terrible mood.

Usually.

“What’s your name?” Carmen asked me.

A Mexican family of four squabbled in soft Spanish by a stand of yams priced three for three dollars. The Farmer’s Market had a simple layout, comprised of just five somewhat narrow aisles. And signs similar to the one by the yams, constructed of cardboard with prices handwritten on them in black Magic Marker, were situated up and down each aisle by the other fruits and vegetables. Dead bulbs were in several overhead lighting fixtures. The market was darker than it needed to be. I fought against the natural urge of my mood to inch toward a similar darkness. The weather and the market were conspiring against me, but for the first time in a long while I had an ally. Carmen’s voice delighted my ears.

“Not nice for you to force me to share,” she was saying, “while you go on keeping secrets.”

I looked down at the fine-looking woman with skin the color of beef gravy and unexpected gray eyes. Some things you couldn’t run from no matter how hard you tried. Experience had taught me this very hard lesson. “Shell,” I said, struggling to swallow the syllable while wondering if she knew Henry Heimlich’s Maneuver.

“You have a last name, Shell?”

“I do,” I admitted.

“Care to share?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Shell, man of a million secrets.” Her voice eased me from the dark days gone by.

I looked at her, saw confusion and fear and sadness in her eyes. A gumbo of emotions spooned out for me to digest. I hardened my heart for her next response. Experience had taught me what it would be: a tight smile, then a hasty retreat, frantic looks over her shoulder to see if I were pursuing her. That was the typical response. Apparently Carmen wasn’t typical, though. She didn’t move in any discernible way.

“I imagine being with you would be…difficult,” she said.

Difficult.
Nice way to put it.

“That’s true,” I said without feeling.

“You plan to harm me?” she asked, her gray eyes showing concern.

“No,” I said with even less feeling.

“This is all so very crazy. You promise?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“You need medical attention, Shell.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, either way, you’re not.”

I thought about my eye, my right hand, my waterlogged feet. I didn’t sigh but I did frown as she dished out a slight smile. I rubbed the arm she would’ve touched then if this were a scene in a movie or a novel. The muscle in the forearm throbbed. “No, I guess I’m not okay. But I can be.”

She realized the implication of my words. “I’m not the answer to anyone’s problems, Shell. Too many of my own. I’m more trouble than I’m worth. Trust me.”

“Don’t underestimate your medicinal capabilities.”

“Canabis is medicinal. I’m just a woman with a boat-load of issues.”

“I want to know all about you,” I said.

“You need medical attention, Shell.”

“I need you.”

She sighed. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“What you said earlier…’bout my mother…that was very nice of you. I want you to know it means something.”

I nodded bravely, tried not to think of the dreams that haunted me, awake as well as asleep. “I’m glad.”

“You’re very tender. I bet most people never get to realize that.”

What found my face wasn’t a smile per se, my mood was too dark for that, but it came from the same place.

Carmen flipped her long black hair, rolled tension out of her neck.

“Looks like you’ve got some stress,” I said.

“Loads.”

“Massage would take care of that.”

“Are you offering, Shell-no-last-name-given?”

My name was Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
on her lips.

I held up my gloved left hand, flexed the fingers in the leather, the gesture the A to her Q.

“Don’t tease me,” she said. “I’d do naked cartwheels in Times Square for a massage.”

“I don’t tease, Carmen. And New York’s less than an hour drive.”

She eyed me. After a moment of reflection she said, “You seem to be very intense.”

Intense
. The kindest description ever attributed to me. I wished I deserved it.

“Very,” I said.

She nodded, bit her lip. “That’s fine. That’s okay. I don’t mind intensity.”

Doing her best to convince herself. I didn’t have a suitable reply. My
intensity
could only look attractive from a distance.

“What’s happening here?” she said.

I knew what she meant. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’d like to find out.”

“I need to walk away, Shell. That’d be the wise thing.”

“Probably would.”

“Yet I’m not moving.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“This is crazy.”

“What is?”

“This,” she said. “This.”

“Somebody have a claim on you?”

“Claim?” She said it in a tone that backed me up.

“Are you involved with anyone?” I rephrased even though
claim
was the appropriate word.

“Am I involved with anyone?”

“Are you?”

“It’s complicated.” Her gaze wavered, and then fell on the digital screen of her cell phone again. This time she didn’t frown. She sighed instead. “Very complicated.”

“Carmen?”

She bit her lip, twirled the phone in her hand.

“Carmen?”

When she didn’t answer I reached forward. The hands I’d been told weren’t gentle enough for a woman touched the sleeve of her jacket. She flinched, as I thought she might, but didn’t move away from my touch. I eased the sleeve up to her elbow. If I were a more expressive man I would’ve cried on the spot. Fell to the floor and pounded the tile. The bruises on her arms were the color of overripe plums. Bruises. Plural.

“Timing is everything,” she said. I spotted moisture at the corners of her eyes.

“You’re obviously in an oppressive situation. Let’s make the timing right. Help each other.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said, shaking her head. “Your eye? Your hand? What did you get into, Shell?”

I attempted to flex the fingers of my swollen right hand, couldn’t.

“Did you hurt someone?” she asked.

“Yes,” I admitted. “But this isn’t about me. It shouldn’t be, at least. Let’s focus on you.” I cleared angst that stung like ragged pieces of glass from my throat. “Tell me his name. The guy that did that to you.”
Did that
. Bruised her.

“He’s no less violent than you.”

I nodded. “But I’d never hurt you like that.”

“How do I know that?” she asked as though she really wanted to know.

“You don’t.”

“So persuasive.”

Déjà vu. It felt like the first moments with Taj all over again.

I cleared my throat, said, “There’s a park nearby here, Carmen. I go there every night to relax…feel the breeze, look at the sky, lose myself in my thoughts. I’d like to share it with you. Couples lay blankets on the hill and snuggle and look at the sun recede. There’s a gazebo with a swing. I’d like to push you on the swing and get lost in the sound of your laughter.”

“Sounds like a fantasy,” she said. “I’ve moved on from Harry Potter.”

“How about
Twilight
?
The Hunger Games
?”

Her smile added an inch to my height.

“Close your eyes and imagine it, Carmen.”

She did.

I heard bell chimes then. Someone entered the market. Carmen’s eyes snapped open like Venetian blinds; her body shrank to half its size immediately; she gripped the cell phone in her hand, held it against her chest. Under her breath she muttered, “Please. No trouble. Ignore this. Please. Just go.” I turned slowly, already knowing what I’d find.

He wore a long tan trench coat. Of average height, and an even more average build. Light brown hair cut close, graying a bit at the temples. Despite the gray I put him just past thirty. His blue eyes lighted on Carmen and he headed in her direction, his jaw tense.

I eased by her, picked up a peach. It was bruised. I didn’t sit it back in the bin.

Carmen didn’t move, a foot from my back.

“Where is he?” I heard in a voice refined at Harvard or somewhere similar.

The man in the tan trench coat.

“My paranoia,” Carmen said. “He drove on by when I came in here.”

“You texted and said he was watching you outside. You got me out here for…”

“I’m sorry,” I heard Carmen say.

“This is so typical, Nevada.”

Nevada. Inside I laughed at my naïveté. I shook my head. She’d lied to me.

“Can we just go?” she said so softly I could barely make out the words.

“I don’t mean to be hard on you,” he said.

“Yes you do.”

“Let’s not have one of our scenes, Nevada.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she said.

“This is just…I’m really sorry for earlier…I love you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I heard the brush of material, tan trench coat and
navy
jacket coming together.

Them hugging.

It didn’t sound as though she’d resisted or hesitated.

After they broke the embrace, I heard him whisper, “That guy’s not wearing shoes.”

And Nevada’s labored reply, “Let’s go, Daniel.”