Deacon
She’s here, in Johan’s room. Miss Matthews. I’d almost forgotten about her. Almost. Even through the mud, and the rain, and the threat of armed enemies, she’s not an easy one to forget. Her full lips part as she begins to speak then press back together when she changes her mind. She wants to defy me. The way she did her driver when he tried to take her bags. The way she did Johan when he tried pulling up his shorts. But she can’t. I see the words forming behind her rich brown eyes, fighting to tumble off the tip of her tongue. Yet she stays silent either out of etiquette or intimidation. I can’t tell. But I like it. I like that her eyes fell the moment they met mine. I like that I’ve rendered her silent with a simple sentence. I like it all a hell of a lot more than I should.
“Make sure you get that cleaned and covered,” she tells Johan before walking past me to the door. Her shoulder brushes the top of my arm, drawing a gasp from her lips, and I like that too. Goddammit.
“Did this happen at the ambush?” I ask Johan once the doctor’s gone, ignoring my irritation at my unintentional reaction to her presence.
“She isn’t going to say anything,” he explains, even though I don’t need him to. The sincere conviction in her eyes is hard to miss.
“I know.”
Whoever she was, she was more concerned with his injury than with how he got it. How he found her or what she was doing in his room isn’t my business. So, why do I suddenly want to ask a hundred questions? There’s plenty of time for that later. Johan is bleeding, and he’s about to get that shit all over the comforter.
“Pull those back down. Let me see what you two were up to.”
Johan tugs on the waistband of his shorts, revealing a small wound at the top of his thigh just below his groin. It’s bleeding but not at a life-threatening speed. I press my finger against the tender flesh surrounding the hole, and he winces. I’m not a doctor, but I know enough to know she’s right. It needs to be cleaned and covered if he’s going to avoid infection. A soft knock on the door interrupts me from going to grab the first aid kit from my room.
It’s her. Before I even speak, she hands me a small white bottle and some gauze along with a roll of surgical tape.
“Back so soon?” I ask, accepting her offering.
“Most people don’t have a bottle of saline solution hanging around with their toiletries,” she says. If she only knew. Her eyes meet mine. She’s nervous. It took a lot for her to come back here, but I’m glad she did. “If you insist on doing it yourself, I want to at least make sure you do it right.”
If I insist. She’s speaking the way a parent would talk to a stubborn child arguing about fixing his own breakfast. She’s reserved, yet feisty. An enigma. And I’m light years past intrigued. “Thank you.”
She takes in a deep breath and squares her shoulders. “The day I walk away from a wounded man without looking back is the day I can stop calling myself a doctor.” She’s defending her actions before I even accuse them of being wrong. I’d guess she prepared her response before I ever opened the door, had the argument perfectly scripted as she walked down the hall. I have to stifle a laugh at the vision. She stops short, narrowing her eyes in confusion. “Wait. Did you say thank you?” Her mouth falls with the realization. “Oh, God. You did.”
The smile I’d been fighting to keep hidden works its way to the surface. “Yes. I believe I did.”
Her cheeks pink as embarrassed heat rises. And I like it. More than I care to admit. “Well… Then, you’re welcome,” she says, her tone falling on the reserved side of the fence. She points at an invisible something to her right. “I’m gonna go now. If you need me, I’m two doors down.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She swallows hard then clears her throat as if there were a double meaning in my words. At another time, there may have been. But not now. I don’t have room for distractions now. And I’m starting to worry that’s exactly what she’s going to be, a serious fucking distraction.
***
“She saw me limping by the pool. I didn’t think anyone was around,” Johan says, answering a question I didn’t ask.
“Hold still.” I choose to ignore his explanation. She’s gone now. I’m having a hard enough time trying not to think about her full lips or the way her skin flushes a beautiful pink without him talking about her. I clean his wound then bandage him up. “The consulate is useless. You’re hurt. I’ve spent the past eleven hours trapped in an empty grave. There has to be another way to help David.” I pull the contents from the envelope and show them to Johan.
David is tied to a chair, his face bloody and beaten to the point his left eye is swollen shut. And he’s holding a note that reads, “An eye for an eye. Isn’t that what the Good Book says?”
Along with the photo, there’s a note: You want to help us stop the killing? Do something other than take pictures of it all. Next time, we’ll do more than just bloody his eye. We’ll send it to you in another envelope.
Johan reads and re-reads the note, then takes another look at the picture. “Holy shit.”
“I won’t let them send another envelope.”
I mean every word. Their people are dying. Murdered. I get it. They want it to stop. So do I. It’s why I do what I do. Because I want to help. But taking one of my men and torturing and maiming him is where they fucked up. This ends now.
***
I left Johan sleeping in his room after we talked about a strategy. The white paneled door down the hall calls to me, a quiet whisper threatening to drown out the voices of doubt. Do the smart thing. Ignore the pull and feed your belly. The rumble in the pit of my stomach reminds me it’s been too long since I’ve eaten anything, and I’m starving.
To the left of the indoor dining area is a veranda overlooking the courtyard. White rattan chairs and white cloth-covered tables underneath soft gray umbrellas line up along the white painted rails of the porch. It’s almost 9:00. They’ll be closing soon. I glance at the chalkboard easel display of today’s special, then my eyes are drawn to the dark-haired beauty at the table behind it.
She mindlessly jabs her fork at the leaves of her salad while a single finger traces circles around the rim of a glass of water. It’s thoughtless, effortless, and innocently seductive. She’s too lost in thought to take a bite of the food she’s playing with. I prop a shoulder against the doorway, crossing one ankle over the other as I watch her. I don’t even try to hide the fact that I’m staring. I want her to see. I will her to look up at me. And when she does, I forget why I came here. I forget that I don’t need to walk up to her table, pull out a chair, and sit down right in front of her. I forget the feelings I’ve held sacred for so long. And I forget that I’m trying to forget them.