American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory by Kathryn Le Veque Page B

was going to react.
    All of their hostility would be
directed at Elliot, and down here in the bayous, the attitude was very much an
eye for an eye. People still believed in vengeance. That worried Nash a great
deal but he wouldn’t let on, at least not now.  Elliot had enough to worry
about with Alec’s injury. 
    He could hear the ambulance
pulling out of the driveway, the siren beginning to wail, and he made a dash
for the front of the house in time to see the ambulance driving away with
Penelope’s white Nissan following it. Elliot wasn’t anywhere to be found and he
rightly assumed she was in the ambulance with her son.  A Sorrento officer was
standing a few feet away, writing in his notebook.
    “Where is the ambulance going?”
Nash asked him.
    The man looked up from his paper.
“St. Elizabeth’s.”
    Nash thanked him for the information
and headed back into the house to find his brother to tell him where he was
going. He also corralled Steve and told the man to stick close to the house in
case the Loreaus came around looking for their pappy. Steve knew, as Nash did,
that there was going to be a heaping load of trouble once word got out about
the killing. Sorrento P.D. already had an I.D. on the body and chatter was
taking it out over the airways. Now, it was only a matter of time until the
knowledge became public.
    Nash made a call to the private
security company he had used in the past and set up round the clock patrols on
the property. He wandered through the house, talking to the security company’s
owner, finally bumping into his brother in the kitchen. He finalized the
security arrangements for the property before hanging up the phone.
    Beau was inspecting the propane
pipes that led into the stove area, which was really the original fireplace
that had been converted to fit the stove. Most older homes used the kitchen
fireplaces as stove receptacles.
    Beau was positive that the pipes
were bad but made a brilliant suggestion on how to temporarily bring propane
from a new unit into the house that would suffice until they were able to do
something more permanent. He also already had suggestions about bringing more
power into the house from a new set of lines he intended to bring down from the
overhead power line that ran adjacent to the structure.
    Nash listened to the ideas, liked
them, and gave his brother his blessing. It wasn’t even his house, but he told
his brother to do it anyway.
    By the time Nash pulled out of
the driveway, Beau had an entire collection of contractors heading for the
house in an attempt to make the old beauty at least marginally livable again.
Nash figured it was the least they could do considering the trouble Elliot had
since setting foot on the property.
    But given recent events, he knew
the trouble was not going to end there.
     
    ***
     
    St. Elizabeth Hospital was the
biggest hospital in Ascension Parish, about fifteen miles south of Baton Rouge.
Both of Nash’s boys had been born here and his ex-wife was a hospital
administrator, so he knew the hospital well. He pulled into the parking lot of
the emergency room entrance, having arrived less than an hour behind the ambulance.
    Entering the emergency room, most
of the veteran personnel already knew him on sight. Nash Aury was rather famous
around the place, even more famous with the female personnel when he and his
wife divorced. He went to the Admissions counter and asked where Alec Jentry
was. The Admissions nurse pointed him towards the emergency facilities behind a
locked door and he headed in that direction as the woman buzzed the door to
unlock it.
    “Sheriff Aury!”
    He heard his name, turning to see
Penelope walking towards him through the crowded waiting room. She was
clutching her purse, her mother’s purse, and looked pale and frightened. Nash
instinctively put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. She looked badly
in need of it.
    “Why are you waiting out here all
by yourself?” he asked kindly.
    Penelope