veranda. There were also a couple of single doors located on either side of the inn.
Stevi picked the side door closest to her room.
After parking his truck as closely as he could, Silvio got out of the cab and went straight to the back. The stranger was still unconscious.
“He is losing blood again,” Silvio noted, shaking his head. He glanced toward her. “This man should be taken to a hospital.”
Silvio wasn’t saying anything she wasn’t already thinking. “But if we take him to the hospital in this condition, the E.R. physician is going to have to report the wound to the police. Hospital personnel are supposed to report every gunshot wound they treat.”
Silvio released the back panel. “It is a good law.”
“But we don’t know what happened to him. What if he was trying to save someone and got shot for his trouble?” she asked with feeling. “That makes him a Good Samaritan and since he can’t speak for himself, the police are going to assume he’s a criminal and handcuff him to the hospital bed until they can get information out of him. You wouldn’t want a hero to be treated like a common criminal, would you?”
Silvio remained unconvinced. “You do not know he is a hero.”
Stevi was quick to take the other side. “You don’t know that he’s not.”
Silvio sighed wearily. “You are making my head hurt, Miss Stevi. Does your father ever complain about arguing with you?”
She grinned. “All the time. C’mon, we have to get him into my room before anyone sees him and starts asking questions I can’t answer yet.”
The gardener looked at her dubiously even as he picked up the unconscious man and once again positioned him over his shoulder.
“As in why are you doing this?” he asked, grunting slightly under the full weight of the unconscious man.
“Something like that,” she answered.
Silvio murmured a few words under his breath in Spanish as Stevi led the way. Entering the inn through the side door, they took the less-traveled, roundabout and longer route to her room.
Stevi felt as if she held her breath the entire way. When they finally reached her room without running into anyone from her family, or any of the inn’s guests, she felt almost giddy.
She immediately shut the door behind Silvio and finally let go of the breath she’d been holding.
“Made it,” she declared triumphantly in a whisper.
“Yes,” Silvio agreed, laying his burden on her bed as best he could. “But what is it that you have made?”
The way Silvio posed it made it sound like a philosophical question. She shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” she said, half to herself. She frowned as she took a closer look at the bedraggled stranger’s chest. “We’re going to have to do something about that wound.” She tried to remember what she had learned in a basic first-aid class she’d impulsively taken because a guy she’d had a crush on had taken it. Nothing had come of the would-be relationship and right now she couldn’t recall anything useful from the class, either.
“Bring me some gauze, some rubbing alcohol and a needle and thread,” Silvio instructed in a no-nonsense voice.
That sounded like something a person with medical training would request. She had never known Silvio as anything other than a gardener.
“Silvio?” She looked at him, puzzled.
“He is bleeding again. That wound must be cleaned and closed up.” There was no emotion in his voice, just a pure statement of fact.
Could you close up a wound if there was a bullet lodged in the body? “But the bullet—”
“Has gone straight through and it looks as if it missed everything important,” he answered. “I saw that when I picked him up. That is also why he is bleeding so much. There is nothing to get in the way of the blood leaving his body. Hurry.”
Getting rubbing alcohol and gauze was not a problem. Each of the inn’s bathrooms, including her own, came equipped with those items.
The needle and thread were trickier, until she remembered that Dorothy, the head housekeeper, took it upon herself to mend the simple tears of the guests’ clothing.
Having had the occasion to look into Dorothy’s rather large sewing basket when the housekeeper had brought it out once, she knew the woman had a wide variety of threads and a full selection of sewing needles to choose from.
She also knew that Dorothy didn’t bother locking her door. It reflected on the kind of atmosphere that the inn prided itself on. Here everyone was treated like a trusted family member.
Knocking first to make sure she wouldn’t be walking in on Dorothy, Stevi gave the housekeeper to the count of twenty before opening the door. That’s when Stevi remembered that the housekeeper had gone for a much-needed rest to visit with friends in Ohio. Stevi slipped in, then quickly closed the door behind her.
Dorothy’s small room would have made a nun’s quarters look almost frivolous. The only visible item that was in the least bit personal was a framed photograph that had been taken a couple of Christmases ago in the reception area by one of the guests. Dorothy and the entire Roman family, including Cris’s son, Ricky, were standing in front of a ten-foot Christmas tree.
The sewing box she was looking for was next to the only upholstered chair in the room. Both faced the window for better light, she guessed.
Opening the sewing box quickly, Stevi picked up a spool of white thread and a needle that looked to be of average thickness and length. Pausing, she wondered if Silvio would rather use a thinner needle. Or a thicker one? Unable to decide, she took three and hoped she wasn’t missing something obvious.
She quickly closed the sewing box, leaving it where she found it.
She opened the door just a crack to make sure no one was passing by. Most people were either still in their rooms or had gone to the dining area for breakfast, which meant she was relatively safe, she reasoned, as she slipped out of Dorothy’s room and hurried back to her own.
“Got it,” she declared, leaning against the door she’d just closed, looking for all the world like a fugitive who had outrun her pursuer.
“Did you have to drive into town to get it?” Silvio asked. His eyes remained on the unconscious patient as he held out his hand to her.
“It wasn’t easy to find,” she answered defensively. Coming forward, she placed the spool of thread in his hand. When he looked at her quizzically, she produced the three needles. He took the midsize one.
Silvio had already used the alcohol and gauze to wash the area around the wound and to try to stem the flow of blood.
As she watched, he measured out a length of thread, snapped it away from the spool and threaded the needle after first dousing it with alcohol.
Then, with a sure hand, he methodically sewed up the man’s wound. With each stitch he took, he spared a glance toward the unconscious
