Kathleen Creighton - The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes

He made a wordless sound of denial, of rejection, not of her but of the pain that overwhelmed him when he looked at her, trying to pull himself away, turn away from that piercing golden glare.

“You don’t-” he began.

She stretched up and pressed her lips against his, stopping him there. “I do,” she insisted in her funny, raspy little growl. “I know who you are, Quinn McCall. I know what you are. It took me a while to realize it, I know, but I do. You’re kind-” embarrassed, he made a sound of denial, which she silenced in her usual way “-and decent and honorable. Honest. And caring. You’re brave and clever and resourceful…” She paused, finally, eyes glowing, her lips bringing her smile close enough for him to taste it. “And…you’re one damn fine kisser, McCall.”

He laughed with her, then, but reluctantly, opening the purse strings that held his happiness and letting a small measure trickle into his heart like a miser relinquishing his gold. Let this be enough, he thought, filling his arms and hands and senses with her, trying to drink in the very essence of her the way he once had the orange blossoms of his childhood.

Thinking that maybe, if he could somehow make her a part of himself, he wouldn’t have to let her go.

Ellie dreamed that she and McCall were riding horseback on her parents’ farm back in Iowa. She was riding Belle, her first gentle mare, and McCall was riding Rocky, Belle’s far more rambunctious colt. They were happy, carefree, laughing like children as they galloped down the dirt lane between lush green fields, with the sunshine hot on their shoulders and a sweet summer wind lifting their hair and rustling through the leaves and stalks of corn.

Then suddenly, in her dream the world darkened. The wind turned fierce and gusty, and carried with it a strange, evil smell. Looking over her shoulder, Ellie saw the sky had turned that terrible color all midwesterners know and dread-the thick yellowish-purple of old bruises. The very air around her felt heavy and menacing.

“Tornado!” she screamed. She couldn’t see it in the gathering darkness, but she could feel it, feel it like a massive and evil presence, coming deliberately and with purpose, straight for them. “Run!”

Then somehow the horses were gone and she and McCall were running, running hand-in-hand through the cornfields, chests straining and breath like fire in their lungs, afraid to look back, but knowing the tornado was there, coming after them, gaining on them, that strange, evil smell growing stronger and stronger, the aura of menace becoming thicker and heavier, suffocating her…

She woke up in cold vibrating terror. The strange evil smell was still with her, only now she knew what it was. Cigars. And she knew, too, that the menace was real, and that it was there in the room with her.

“Do not move. Do not make a sound…” So close to Ellie’s ear, General Reyes’s whisper seemed tender, almost like a lover’s. Which made his next words seem all the more obscene. “…if you do not wish to feel your lover’s blood and brains splattered all over your pretty face.”

She was lying on her stomach with the pillow bunched in her arms, and it was the general’s weight that was bearing down on her. She could feel his knee pressing into the small of her back, his hand between her shoulder blades, compressing her chest so it was hard to breathe. Without moving her head, in the soft light of the lamp they’d left burning above the bed, she could see the blurred shape of McCall’s head on the pillow beside her, and just beyond that the slender dark shape of a rifle barrel. She didn’t have to look further to recognize the man who held it-the general’s lieutenant, the smuggler they’d nicknamed Smoker-she couldn’t recall his name. Behind him and toward the foot of the bed, a third form hovered, a faceless backup presence.

“Understand?” The pressure on her spine increased until she feared it would break.

“I…understand,” she gasped. Her mind was racing at lightning speed. She stalled desperately for time, knowing she hadn’t much. “I won’t…make a sound. Please-I can’t…breathe.”

There was a soft chuckle. “I’m glad we understand each other.” The weight on her back lifted, first from her shoulders, then her lower back. She felt rather than saw General Reyes straighten up beside the bed.

“Can I…turn over now?” She could hear McCall’s breathing, raspy and strained. Please be still, she telegraphed silently, desperately. Don’t try anything!

“Go ahead.” The general took one step back. On the outer edges of her peripheral vision she could see him make an impatient motion with his hand. Was there a gun in it? She couldn’t tell. “Slowly.”

Slowly, Ellie raised herself up on her elbows, keeping her head bowed and one hand still hidden under the pillow. She coughed, hard and convulsively, to cover any movement when the searching hand found and closed around the hard, cold shape of the Beretta. She coughed again to cover the sounds she might have made when she thumbed the safety. She counted slowly to three, rehearsing the sequence of her next actions in her mind. Visualizing…preparing.

Then, in a single swift motion she rolled to her side, drew the pistol from under the pillow and fired.

The Smoker dropped backward without a sound; his rifle fell across McCall’s chest. Ellie was dimly aware that McCall had snatched it up and was on his feet, swinging it by the barrel like a club at the other thug, but long before that she had already turned her own gun on the general. Still only half upright, braced on one elbow, she fired once. The general gave a terrible snarl, like a wounded tiger, and lunged. She fired again, just as he fell heavily across her, pinning her to the mattress. Helpless under the deadweight of his body, she could only listen to the sounds of desperate struggle. Grunts…scuffles…a sickening thud. And then silence.

It seemed an eternity-an eternity during which she dared not hope, or think, or feel-before she heard harsh and labored breathing. The suffocating weight on top of her was dragged roughly aside and McCall was staring down at her, teeth bared, his hair sticking out like a wild man’s, eyes burning in his gaunt and ravaged face. She thought she’d never beheld a face so terrible before. Or so beautiful.

“Ellie-oh God, Ellie…” And now his face was a mask of sheer horror as his gaze swept down over her body.

She followed his gaze and found herself fighting an urge to throw up. She caught at his hand as he reached for her. “It’s not mine. It’s not mine. McCall-he didn’t shoot me. I’m okay-I’m okay, I swear. But we have to get out of here. There might be more-McCall, do you hear me? McCall?”

He was staring at her, like a man frozen in mid-scream. She squeezed his hand, shook it urgently, and he finally gave himself a single violent shake and wheezed, “You’re okay…you’re not-”

“I’m fine. It’s the general’s blood.” McCall heard her quivering voice as the roaring in his own ears faded away. He saw her throat convulse as she swallowed hard. “I sh-shot him. What about the other one? Is he d-dead?” She kept staring at him, as though she couldn’t bring herself to look at the three men lying helter-skelter on the hotel-room floor. Reaction was setting in, he realized; in another minute she’d be shaking too hard to walk. And he didn’t think he was in any shape to carry her.

“Don’t know,” McCall said. “And I don’t think we ought to waste time finding out, do you?” He was pretty sure the guy he’d clobbered with the rifle butt was only out cold-no way of telling for how long. No way of telling how many more of the general’s men might be waiting for them outside, either. Or who else might have heard the gunshots, and how long it would take for someone to decide to call the cops-or get brave enough and come to investigate themselves. “Like you said-we’d best get the hell out of here.”