Men of Intrgue A Trilogy (2 page)

She flinched visibly, and he knew he had made a mistake. He had to convince her that she was safe, not act like the thug she thought he was.

“Sit down,” he rasped, gesturing with the barrel of the gun toward one of the Breuer chairs surrounding the table. She sat stiffly, her body rigid with apprehension, and he sank gratefully into a deep leather lounge chair. His dizziness subsided, and he studied her more closely. Barefoot, her face washed clean of makeup for the night, she was a slight, porcelain blonde who looked back at him without expression, her hands clasped tensely in her lap.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said again, meaning it, aware of how empty it sounded after his intimidating entrance, but trying anyway. In his debilitated condition he might not be able to control her without harming her if she decided to make a break for it.

He couldn’t tell if she believed him. She kept looking at his arm, and finally he did also, realizing what a gory mess it must seem to her. She didn’t look the type to be familiar with gunshot wounds.

“Can you get me a rag?” he asked. She rose slowly, went to the space age kitchenette on the other side of the oak bar and returned with a dish towel. She handed it to him, and he bound it clumsily around the wound, watching her all the while. She stood unmoving in front of him, obviously afraid to take a step except on his command.

“And a glass of water,” he added. She got it for him and he drank eagerly, feeling a delicious slaking of his fierce thirst.

“Juice would be better,” she said in a light, steady voice, and it was a moment before he realized she had spoken. He blinked, startled.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood; you should have some orange juice. Would you like me to get it?”

He nodded, amazed, hoping that this was not some kind of trick that would force him to take action against her. But she appeared to be in earnest, going to the shiny, stainless steel refrigerator and removing a quart carton of juice. He noticed that the whole place was done up like a designer’s dream: coordinated neutrals, recessed lighting, rich fabrics and heavy, polished woods. Whoever this girl was, she was not poor.

When she gave him the carton he refused the glass and drank straight from the container, wiping his mouth with the back of his good arm. Their eyes met over his sodden sleeve and he said, “What’s your name?”

“Helen. Helen Demarest. What’s yours?”

It almost struck him as funny, the way she sounded so American, like one of the coeds he had gone to school with making chitchat at a frat party. “Matteo,” he answered truthfully, playing along, buying time.

“Did the police shoot you, Matteo?” she inquired evenly.

She was nothing if not direct. He decided to answer her in kind.

“Yes.”

“What you were doing is illegal,” she said. It was not a question.

“It is illegal, but it is not wrong.”

Their attention was distracted by the wail of a siren in the distance, moving closer. Helen’s head turned toward it automatically, and he stood abruptly, the room spinning around him. He rocked back on his heels and his eyes closed as he fought for equilibrium. The threat implicit in the sound seemed to defeat him, and when he opened his eyes again he extended the gun to Helen, butt first.

“No police,” he said huskily, falling heavily against the wall, sliding along it, his lashes fluttering. He was losing consciousness, the gun slipping from his fingers. As he passed out Helen ran to his side, grabbing the gun and easing his descent to the floor. He rolled bonelessly onto his back as she stood up uncertainly, the gun like a living thing in her hand.

Her first impulse was to throw it out the window, but she feared it might be needed later. She tried to think of an unlikely place to hide it and she saw the door of the refrigerator standing slightly ajar. She ran to the kitchen and tossed the gun into the crisper drawer, glad to be rid of it. Then she hurried back to the man sprawled on the rug, knelt next to him and lifted his wrist. His pulse was rapid and thready, his heart working overtime to make up for decreased blood volume. Helen wondered how badly he was hurt; the wound looked awful, but she was no judge of such things. Perhaps he was going into shock. She tried to remember long ago first aid classes and could only recall something about keeping victims warm. She was going for a blanket when she was halted by the echo of screeching tires at the end of the lane. This was followed by the sound of doors slamming. It had to be a squad car; nothing else would be abroad at this time of the night. The people in it were searching for the fugitive at her feet. She glanced at the door; help was just beyond it, a hundred yards away. She looked back at Matteo and, as if in response to her examination, his eyes opened. The lashes stirred, then lifted to reveal onyx eyes that locked with hers.

“No police,” he whispered, then faded out again.

Helen swallowed. There was something pathetic, even touching, about his insistence in the face of his failing strength, and she found she couldn’t deny his request. Making an impulsive and possibly foolish decision, she ran to the wall and snapped off the overhead light. With her heart pounding she listened to the activity outside, waiting until the sounds indicated that the search was over and the police had left. Then, after making sure all the drapes were closed, she picked up the study lamp, extended the cord to its full length and examined her nocturnal intruder more closely.

He was still unconscious but breathing regularly. His face was beaded with sweat, his clothes already drying in the air- conditioned room. The bleeding from his wound seemed to be slowing, but his color was alarming, making his tan seem like a coat of greasepaint. Helen got up to fill a basin with water and then bathed his face, stroking his brow and temples until he revived. When he saw her he tried to sit up, but collapsed.

“It’s all right,” Helen soothed him. “The police have gone and I’ve put your gun away. You can’t stay here on the floor; you need some proper rest. You’ll have to get up now. I’m going to take you to my bed.”

It was clear that despite his dazed state he understood she was going to help him. He looked stunned for a second, then rapidly decided to accept without question the boon that fate had sent him. He draped his good arm over Helen’s shoulders and hoisted himself first to a sitting position, then to his knees. He didn’t wince or cry out, but perspiration broke out afresh on his forehead and his mouth became a grim line.

“It’s just down the hall,” Helen said gently.

He nodded stoically, determined to make it. She put her arms around his waist and hauled him upward, swaying with his weight. His scent overwhelmed her, a combination of musky masculinity and the coppery, heated smell of blood. He was muscular, heavier than he looked, and she had to pause to catch her breath when he was finally on his feet.

“Calmate
,” he murmured, looking into her eyes, lapsing into his native language in his attempt to encourage her. “We can do it together.”

Calmate.
That was Spanish. Helen recognized it from her childhood, when her mother had had a Costa Rican maid. It was the Latin equivalent of “take it easy,” an expression used between friends. She had earlier noticed his slight accent, discernible only with certain words. This, along with his name, confirmed her initial suspicion that he was not American.

It was a short distance to the bedroom, but the walk seemed to go on forever. It had taken everything he had left to get to the house, and Helen almost had to carry him to the bed. She could tell that he was humiliated, frustrated by the frailty of his body, whose instant obedience he had evidently come to expect. By the time they reached their goal one side of Helen’s nightdress was drenched with his blood. When she released him he sank heavily onto the edge of the bed, then fell back on it, passing out almost immediately. Helen did what she could to arrange his limbs comfortably, hoping that she would be able to move him to change the linen. The bed already looked like a murder had taken place on it. She covered him with a light blanket from the closet and then sat on the satin draped chaise next to the bed, trying to collect herself.

She almost couldn’t grasp what had happened. An hour before she had been studying the details of Christopher Marlowe’s death in an Elizabethan barroom brawl, and now she had a wounded outlaw ensconced on her stepmother’s
Oscar de la Renta
bedspread, as if the one event had influenced the other. She had to do something to care for his wound; it could become infected if not dressed, and she didn’t even know if the bullet was still in it. Helen bit her lip thoughtfully, instructing herself not to panic. She was a graduate student in sixteenth century literature, not a nurse, but surely common sense had to play some role in an event like this. Soap and disinfectant, that’s what she needed. She picked up a notepad from the end table next to the bed and began to make a list.

Her life had not prepared her to deal with such a crisis. She was the daughter of a millionaire, but far from being the pampered princess some supposed, she was a postscript to the youth of both her parents. They had gone on to successive remarriages, behaving dutifully but not lovingly toward her. Raised by a socialite mother who had little time for her only child, Helen had been shuttled from boarding schools to expensive European summer camps, always an afterthought, always alone. She grew up seeking solace in the intellectual pursuits that became the butt of jokes and misunderstandings among her family and friends. Occupied with fashion shows, shopping expeditions, tennis and skiing, they could not fathom her interest in books and knowledge. Considered an oddity, almost an outcast, Helen was driven further into her studies, trying to find a meaning in them that seemed absent from the aimless, hedonistic lives of her relatives. She was now pretty much on her own, living on a trust fund, maintaining minimal contact with her imperious, dictatorial mother and a father far more interested in his stockbrokers than he was in her. For the child of generations of money, Helen was singularly idealistic, almost naive, having been raised apart from the financial pursuits of her family in the rarefied atmosphere of strictly run private schools. With money to support her and little interference from the father who supplied it, Helen went on with her studies, absorbed by a rich and timeless past she found much more rewarding than sterile reality. She had been immersed in her work for three weeks, isolated in her father’s vacation house, when the man on the bed had disturbed the quiet, satisfying pattern of her days with his unexpected intrusion.

Helen suddenly threw her pencil on the floor and pressed her palms to the sides of her head. A man could be dying not five feet away from her, and she was making a
list,
for heaven’s sake. She got up hurriedly, realized she was still wearing the stained nightgown, stripped it off impatiently and slipped into a terry robe. She checked on Matteo, who was sweating profusely, muttering to himself. It was clear that his temperature was rising, and Helen wondered if there was alcohol in Adrienne’s medicine cabinet. She left her patient to rummage in her stepmother’s bathroom, looking for supplies. Adrienne was more into fifty dollar an ounce wrinkle cream than gauze bandages, but Helen did manage to find some peroxide and large sterile pads that would have to do until she was able to get out to a pharmacy. What she really needed was an antibiotic. Since Adrienne was something of a hypochondriac, with a coterie of doctors and no shortage of cash to command their attention, she had a separate glass cabinet stocked with little plastic vials of prescription medicines. Helen had never looked in it, but she did so now, passing over the many bottles she was unable to identify until she came to one labeled “erythrocin stearate.” She had taken that once herself for a strep throat, so she set it aside, hoping that its time of potency had not expired and that Matteo was not allergic to it. The date on the label was obscured, but there were ten tablets left, enough to help if he responded to it. Helen also found a half empty container of Percocet, with directions indicating that Adrienne had taken it for an abscessed tooth. It had to be a pretty powerful painkiller because her stepmother raised the roof if she got a hangnail. Helen put the two bottles in the pockets of her robe and rapidly replaced everything else, then went back to the vanity and assembled what she thought she would need to dress the wound.

When she returned to Matteo’s bedside she tried to slip the sleeve off his injured arm, but he fought her hands, twisting away, seemingly slipping further into delirium. Taking an alternative tactic, Helen picked up a pair of shears and began to cut away the sodden material around the wound. But once she uncovered it she wished she hadn’t.

It was a jagged mass of torn flesh, carbon stained and flayed raw, with the reddish streaks that indicated infection already radiating out from the bloody center. Helen stuck her tongue in the corner of her mouth, fingers busy, muttering a prayer under her breath. When she realized she was reciting the Girl Scout oath, she stopped short and began again, encouraged by the familiar words as she washed away the coagulated blood, splashed the gaping wound with antiseptic and covered it with sterile pads. She hadn’t been able to feel anything under the skin, and she could see the bullet had passed clean through the meat of his upper arm, exiting out the back. She finished by tearing ah old pillowcase into strips and tying them around the dressing to hold it in place, securing them just above Matteo’s bicep. Her handiwork, when complete, looked like a neat little package, but the patient did not seem improved.
 

He was still mumbling incoherently, his skin fiery, and she didn’t know how she was going to get him to take the pills in her pocket. Finally she crushed them up in a glass of water and forced the liquid down his throat a little at a time, tilting his head back and dribbling it between his lips. It was a tedious and exhausting process for both of them. When the glass was empty she didn’t feel like struggling with him any further, but she knew that the rest of his damp shirt had to come off. She peeled it from his body by inches, noticing the foreign label inside the collar. She also noticed that his torso was beautiful, the dusky skin flowing silkily over his well developed arms and chest. A spray of dark hair spread over his breast and formed a line down his abdomen to his belt. She paused to wipe his face, heavily beaded with perspiration, studying his long, spiky lashes, the heavy shadow of beard on his upper lip and chin. His thick, wavy hair was damp and matted, and she brushed it back from his forehead, wondering whether it was black or dark brown; in its current state it was impossible to tell. When she was finished she tidied the bed and got up to wash the instruments she had used. On her way out the bedroom door the telephone rang, and Helen glanced at the clock on the dresser as she went to answer it. The night had passed and it was morning. As she picked up the receiver Helen thought that it had to be one of her parents, since they alone knew she was at the beach house.