Free The Gorgeous Naked Man in my Storm Shelter (Erotic Suspense) by Aphrodite Hunt Page B

makes us some coffee, Don pores over the photos. There are pictures of John Simmons as
a child, doing the usual childhood things people snap photos of.
He’s a very beautiful kid, and I can well see what Don himself must
have been as a boy. Birthdays roll one after the other, with the
candles on the cake getting progressively more numerous. There’s
one of John with an arm sling, grinning at the camera.
    “ He was twelve
at the time,” Martha says, tears misting her eyes. “Fell off a cherry tree. Broke his
arm in three places.”
    Don glances
down at his own right arm. A memory seems to stir within.
    “What is it?” I
persist.
    He shakes his head
as if to dispel the thought. “It’s nothing.”
    A man with a
mustache appears frequently in John’s childhood photos. In several,
he’s teaching John to ride a bike.
    “ That’s my
hu sband, Stuart. He died when
John was nineteen.”
    “Does John have any
brothers or sisters?” I ask.
    “ Just
one. A sister, Mary. She works
in Delaware.” Martha turns the page and points out to a photo of a
girl in pigtails who bears a startling resemblance to the little
girl who led us here. “Susan’s her daughter and I’m taking care of
her.”
    The pages of
the album continue to turn, chronicling a boy’s life. John grows
up into an incredibly handsome
man. John joins the army. Gets his stripes. He’s startlingly
handsome in his uniform.
    “ John was so
proud . . . so proud.” Martha wipes a tear off her eye. “He wanted
to fight for his country so badly even though I knew no good would
come out of it. And I was right.”
    She turns a
page and jabs at a photo of
John with his arms around a pretty curly-haired girl.
    “ That’s Melanie. They were engaged to be
married before John went off to Iraq.”
    Gazing upon
Melanie’s photo, a premonition
begins to unfold within me. I don’t know. This is a man who died
twenty years ago that we are talking about. Melanie’s smiling
photograph stares back at me, showing white teeth. Her hair is
raven-black and shoulder length, and she has dimples in her cheeks.
While not plump, she’s pleasingly proportioned in her face and
arms.
    Call it a
sixth sense or what you will, but I just know I
will meet Melanie. And the circumstances will be bizarre and
unhappy.
    The album comes to
an end.
    “ He died when
he was twenty-seven years old. This was the last letter I got from
him.”
    Martha takes out a folded piece of paper and
smoothens it out. John’s longhand script is almost illegible. Don
stares at it for a long while.
    “May I have a pen
and paper?” he says.
    I produce a
ball pen and notepad from my purse. Don writes ‘My name is
Anonymous’.
    Dread
drops like a lead ball in my
chest when he finishes the sentence.
    He compares
the two scripts. They are
almost similar.
    Martha claps her
hand to her mouth. I feel like doing the same.
    “What does that
mean?” Don implores me out of anxious, frightened eyes.
    I have no
answer because there comes the screeching of car tires and the squeal of brake pads being
applied viciously. We all look up. Outside the window, four black
cars and one black van, similar to the one we stole, crowd upon the
little driveway. The doors open and several men in suits get
out.
    Several men
and one woman.
    Agent Sansky
strides to the front door and pushes it open. She casts a gimlet
stare at Don and me.
    “The two of you are
under arrest,” she says.

10
     
    It’s no use
resisting. There are ten of
them and two of us. I sense that Don doesn’t even try putting up a
fight because he’s frightened and confused. Like me, he wants and
needs answers. And maybe the NPB will be the ones to give them to
him.
    W e are put in the back of
the black van. Our wrists are cuffed before us and a stone-faced
agent sits with us with a gun, trained specifically at Don. There
are no windows in the back of the van for us to peer out from, and
a lone light on the ceiling is our only comfort.
    “I’m sorry I got