This story contains graphic sexual scenes between males. If material of this nature offends you then you should not read this story. Additionally, if you are under 18 years of age in most states you are not allowed to read this story by law.
This story is purely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to person's living or dead, or to events that may have occurred, is purely coincidental.
The author claims all copyrights to this story and no duplication or publication of this story is allowed, except by the web sites to which it has been posted, without the consent of the author.
Mark Stevens
Nurse and the Patient, Part 16
Jonathan was greeted at the door by the ever present Sarah. She actually seemed happy to see him.
"Won't you come inside, Mr. Watkins?" she greeted.
It was the first time Jonathan had ever seen her smile.
He explained about his meeting with Agnes Doughty.
"Yes, she called and told me you were dropping by. She's running a little late. You're to go on down to the store room."
Jonathan thanked her and walked down the hall. On the way he marveled at her disposition. It was almost pleasant, he thought, and he wondered just what the hell had brought about the change.
At the end of the hall he stopped and pulled the key out of his pocket. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. Closing it behind him, he didn't bother to lock it back. If Agnes was coming shortly he didn't see the need. He hurried down the steps and unlocked the second door. He reached around, his fingers searching for the light switch.
The darkness of the room suddenly disappeared as the lights came to life, causing him to blink his eyes. He left the door open and walked into the brightly lighted area. As he looked around the room, something looked different, and at first he couldn't decide what it was.
Then he knew.
Jonathan walked across the room and stood in front of the file boxes, the ones he had searched through on his earlier visit. They were just as he had left them, nicely stacked and all in order.
What caught his attention, however, was one particular box. It had a number in the upper right hand corner; the number he had written when he was searching through the boxes the first time. This was the box he would have searched his very next visit, only when he had returned, the box, this box, had been missing. Now it was on the very top of the stack.
Jonathan reached out and picked the box of files up. He carried it over to the table and sat down. He pulled the lid off and reached in for the first file.
As he searched through the first file, he could hardly believe his eyes. "Oh, my God," he whispered. He read on. "This is crazy," he thought.
Jonathan was reaching for the second file in the box when it suddenly hit him. This box contained the very information he needed all along. He realized too late that it had been meant for him to find this particular box that it had been intentionally removed from the room, and now, today, had been intentionally returned, added with the rest of the files. It had been a trap.
"Hello, Mr. Watkins. I see you found what you were looking for."
Jonathan looked up and discovered Agnes Doughty standing in the doorway. Forcing a smile, he said, "Good afternoon, Miss Doughty. It's good to see you again."
"The pleasure is all mine."
Her words had a definite icy tone to them.
She stepped inside the room, closing the door behind her. Then pulling a key from her purse, she inserted it into the lock and gave her wrist a sharp twist.
Jonathan heard the click and realized the seriousness of the situation. He was buried under Sam Thompson's home, and he knew how foolish it had been to agree to meet the woman alone.
Agnes walked over and pulled out a chair. She joined him at the table. "I see you found the files I was talking about. Do you think they will be useful to you?"
Choosing his words carefully, Jonathan said, "I'm not certain. I just opened the box."
Agnes slammed her purse down on the table. It made a loud thump. "Don't lie, Mr. Watkins. You're not very good at it." She reached for her purse and placed it in her lap.
Jonathan had no idea how he should handle the situation. Part of him was hoping that Agnes was just a nobody working for a large company, someone that was trying to grasp all she could for herself, and other than that, hoped was a fairly peaceful woman. A small part of him, that is. A bigger part was pretty sure she was a very dangerous individual and was capable of doing whatever it took to protect her interests.
Perhaps it wasn't the wisest thing to do, but Jonathan decided to see if he could shake the woman up a bit. Looking at her across the box of files, he said, "I detest lying in any form. I could never be good at it; not like some people are."
"You've certainly lied about your name, have you not? And the company who employees you," she added.
"Truth be known, I am working up an audit for Smyth Oil," he defended himself.
"Of course you are. I suppose you wouldn't mind if I contacted Cox and Wade. Oh, wait, I did speak with them. Guess what? They have never heard of either you or the company of Barnes, Taylor & Watkins."
"Well, to repeat myself, I was hired to conduct this audit."
"Oh, I have not doubt about that," she agreed with him. "I just don't think you were hired by Mr. Thompson or anyone from our own company. Let me put it a different way. You weren't hired by anyone that had authority to do so."
"You've had what, almost forty years experience of lying and stretching the truth? Do you really love Sam that much? So much you're willing to risk losing everything?"
"There has never been any risk of me losing anything at all, Mr. Davis."
Jonathan felt his body turn cold when he heard her say his real name.
"At least there wasn't until you started snooping around."
Jonathan was holding a file in his hand. There was something in the tone of her voice that made him look. She was holding a gun with the barrel pointed directly at him.
An evil smile formed on her lips. "You should have never left your nursing career, Mr. Davis. Bed pans and enemas were much safer for you."
Jonathan tried to speak in a normal tone. "Is it worth it? Sam has done so many bad things, but you don't have to stoop as low. You are a much better person, Agnes."
"Bull shit! Who do you think put all of this into action?" she asked. "You think Sam did?" She gave a wicked laugh. "I'm the one who set this all into motion. Forty years ago, as you said a moment ago," she added.
Jonathan remained silent, waiting to see what she would say next.
"Sam Thompson's a weak bastard. He didn't have the balls to put something like this together."
"So you came up with the idea of the Jordan Company?"
"I did. Who do you think set everything up? It certainly wasn't Sam."
"He just provided the money and all of the opportunities, I suppose. Without that, you had nothing to work with, I assume?"
"Oh, it was the perfect plan," she agreed. "He had access to the capital, and I had the knowledge how to put it all together."
Jonathan looked at her for a time in silence. "Everything was great until Sam lost half of those funds."
A scowl came over Agnes' face. "It wasn't supposed to be that way. When his wife died, Sam was supposed to have inherited her half. That's the way he thought it had been set up."
"I guess Kathleen Thompson thought differently. After all, it was her company. Sam had merely been an employee, same as you."
"Oh, we were never mere employees," she disagreed. "Kathleen Smyth was distraught. She was going through a rough time. Both her father and a good friend had been killed in an accident. She didn't know where to turn. Sam was just being kind and offered her a shoulder not only to cry on, but lean on as well."
"He was too kind. Let's see, because of him, she had lost her father as well as the man she loved. Oh, yeah, Sam was so damned good hearted, wasn't he?"
"Sam had nothing to do with her father and the young man getting hurt. It was an accident."
"Like hell it was."
"Do tell? Let's hear what you've concocted in your head, shall we?"
Jonathan suddenly realized he might be in deep shit. If she wanted to listen to him spill his guts, she must have plans for him that didn't look in his favor. He looked at his watch. He still had more than half an hour before he expected Tony to show up. Hopefully he could slow things down, could stall her.
"I'm sorry, am I keeping you from another appointment? I saw you looking at your watch."
"Actually, I do have a three-thirty meeting."
"We still have a lot of business to discuss. Will it matter if you are a little late?"
All he could say was, "Shouldn't be a problem."
She nodded and said, "Good, I `m glad to hear that." Holding the gun a little tighter in her hand, she said, "Now, let's hear what else you have to say about this so called audit you've been conducting."
He decided to just "screw it" and tell her all he knew. If he could talk long enough, it might save him.
"For starters, Carter Wilson was not just another employee, nor was he just a `good friend' of Miss Smyth's. They were in love with each other, and in fact, she was going to have his baby. Actually, she did have his baby," he added, "About eight months after she and Sam were married."
He went on, saying, "How did that work for you, Agnes? I mean how could you stand to be in love with a man and share him with another woman?"
She laughed bitterly. "She never had him. He may have married her, but it was out of necessity; all according to the plan. My plan," she added.
"That's right because Sam had nothing, not a red cent."
"He may have started out poor as a church mouse, but let me tell you, he has plenty now. I've seen to that, made sure he was taken care of. It was only right. He deserved to have it, and all of it. That bastard had no right to take half of it away."
"Oh, I think you're damned wrong, Agnes," Jonathan said in a smooth even tone. "If anyone deserved it, Lance did. He was robbed of his real father, of a grandfather he would have grown to love very much, and he lost his mother, the one person left on this earth who truly loved him."
For whatever reason, Jonathan suddenly felt a calm settle throughout his body. He was no longer afraid. "He had no one to love him until he had his accident, and I came along."
At first his words brought a look of shock on the woman's face. Then it went from shock to one of disgust. "So, you're a fag, same as junior. How disgusting!" she said, spitting out the words.
"Lance is definitely not a `junior'. Thank God he is no relation to Samuel. I'm so grateful he has none of Sam's blood running through his veins. As for being a fag, I think not you whore. That's what you are, a whore. For forty years you've sold not only your soul, but your body to get what you wanted."
Agnes stood to her feet. Standing behind her chair she said, "You're right, of course. In some ways, I suppose I have been like a whore. I've certainly done things in order to get what I needed, what I wanted, that, yes, I guess you could say I could be called a whore."
She went on. "You are correct, and I want you to know it. You should give up your nursing career and become a Private Eye. However, if you are as sloppy with your nursing as you have been with this audit, well, I pity your patients.
"Yes, Ronald Smyth had to be taken out of the equation, and for that to happen, something had to change between his daughter and Carter Wilson. So Sam suggested a weekend hunting trip for the three of them. Ronald loved the sport and every year went deer hunting. He went to the same place, so it was easy to arrange a little mishap. How was anyone to know that part of the frame supporting the deer blind had rotted out during the past year? Such a shame, and to lose the head of a large oil company and his most valued employee", she said.
"And with Carter in the picture there wasn't room for Sam to advance, I'm sure."
"True, Mr. Davis, quite true. And even if Sam made it to the inside circle and won over Ronald's daughter, well, it would never have worked out with that woman still in the middle of the company."
"You're speaking of Edith Baxter, I assume?"
"I am. It would have been better for everyone if she had just taken her baby and left town, but no, she had to hang around and mess up everyone's lives, including her own child's."
"Was a shame," Jonathan said.
For a moment Agnes seemed to drift back in time. Then coming back to the present, her eyes settled sharply on Jonathan's face, and she said, "Yes, it is truly a shame, for everyone, but especially for you. You are actually quite innocent here, and yet it's going to cost you the most."
"What are you saying?"
As Jonathan spoke the words, he took a deep breath. Was that smoke he smelled?
Agnes stepped away from the chair. "Let's go, Mr. Davis. There's something I want you to see up stairs in the office."
At least he was going to get out of the basement alive, Jonathan thought.
"Walk to the door, please," she told him. "You have a key to the door, I take it? Please let us out."
Pointing the gun at him, she stepped to the side and watched as Jonathan stopped in front of the locked door.
He removed the key from his pocket, and in another second had the door opened. He was thinking about the door, wondering if he had time to pull it shut behind him and lock it before she could shoot.
Holding the key in his hand he walked through the door. As he turned back, he said, "Oh, I do have one more question for you."
"We can talk up"
Before she could finish Jonathan slammed the door shut in her face. Holding the door as tightly as he could with one hand, he pushed the key back in the lock with the other and quickly turned the key. He heard the lock click in place.
Then the dim light in the stairwell went out, and blackness surrounded Jonathan Davis.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Jonathan came to with a start. He had no idea where he was, only that his head hurt like hell and his eyes were burning. When he rubbed the back of his head, he discovered a bump the size of a tennis ball. He quickly pulled his hand away.
"Shit," he cried out. The pain was intensified when he touched the spot.
Where he was, Jonathan had no idea. It was so dark that the only thing he could tell was that he was still inside a building.
He took a deep breath. He could smell smoke, and suddenly he remembered where he was. He must still be in Sam Thompson's house. Agnes had told him she had something for him to see upstairs in the office.
Jonathan was sitting down. He stood to his feet, and when did, he struck something hard in front of him. Reaching out with his hands, he touched something smooth. Running his hands across the surface, he realized it must be the Samuel Thompson's desk. He was in the office.
Between the uncanny blackness and the room quickly filling with smoke, he could see nothing. He tried to remember how the room was laid out. If he was sitting behind Sam's desk, then he knew the door leading out into the hall was directly in front of him.
Jonathan carefully made his way around the desk and walked slowly across the room. He tried to gauge his distance but ran into the wall anyway. He reached out with his hands and slowly felt his way along the wall. He came to the light switch and gave it a flip.
Nothing happened. Agnes must have switched the breaker off.
Next he felt for the door. When he found it, he gave the knob a twist. Again, nothing happened. He tired shaking the door with all his might, but he couldn't budge it.
Jonathan leaned against the door trying to think. He coughed. The smoke was definitely getting stronger inside the room. He made himself remain calm as he thought over his options. He tried to remember if there were any windows in the room, and if so, where they were located. He forced his brain to remember how the office looked and what he had seen the few times he had been inside searching the files.
He thought he remembered two windows along the outside wall of the room, one at each end. As he made his way back across the room, he realized the smoke was getting stronger, making it harder for him to breathe. When he found the wall, he reached out his right hand. Placing it along the wall, he walked sideways until he felt some heavy material touch his fingers. He felt instant relief knowing it had to be curtains he had found.
Jonathan pushed the material away and discovered a window. Elated, he reached to raise the glass. When he did, he discovered something he hadn't noticed before. There were bars on the window.
"Fuck," he cursed.
Of course Sam wanted to keep anyone from getting in and finding out what he had been up to for all those years.
His heart sinking, Jonathan made his way to the other side of the room. When his fingers touched material once again, he quickly pulled it back. This time he didn't have to raise the window to see the bars. As with the other window, the reinforced steel was there to remind him it was impossible to escape.
Jonathan raised the window. Even if he couldn't escape he could at least get a little fresh air inside the room to help him breath.
He stuck his head out as far as he could to see if anybody at all had seen the smoke. Unfortunately the Thompson home was off the main roadway and could not even be seen by the drivers that made their way up and down the street each day.
Suddenly there was a loud popping sound, causing Jonathan to cock his head and listen. He knew there was a fire in the house. He just didn't know where it was located. As he stood there listening, he thought he heard the sound of flames as they licked at wood.
There was a sudden thud and it sounded as if a wall had crumbled somewhere inside the house. He heard a puffing sound come into the room, and Jonathan realized the smoke was heavier. Wherever that wall had crumbled, it was allowing smoke to come into the room, probably through the heating vents.
He searched his way back to the desk, hoping against hope the telephone would still be in operation. When he found it, he placed the receiver to his ear, and wasn't surprised to discover he was holding a dead instrument.
Evidentially Agnes Doughty had left no stone unturned. The woman had thought of everything.
Another loud crash sounded somewhere inside the house, and the smoke became heavier.
Jonathan made his way to one of the opened windows. He pressed his nose against the screen, his skin touching the hard bars on the other side. He took in a deep breath.
"Help!" he called out. "Please help me."
He listened, but there wasn't a sign that anybody was around, let alone could hear him calling.
"Help me," he called out again.
Suddenly his head became really light headed, and breathing didn't seem like an effort any longer. Jonathan slowly slide down the wall and lay on the floor. He suddenly saw Lance's face.
"God, I'm so sorry, Babe," he said. "I tried to help you. I tried," he repeated.
The last thing Jonathan remembered was telling Lance he loved him.
End Part 16