I graciously accepted the ride, but there was no way I was going back to that crappy apartment to sleep. Nope. I was treating myself to a nice hotel, and since we didn’t have to be back for detailed statements for another eight hours, I was going to make the most of that time by sleeping the sleep of the dead in a comfortable bed without the ring of gunshots nearby.
I had found some hydrogen peroxide, cotton balls, and large bandages in the supply room, and have them all laid out on the bench that sits in front of the lockers. I take a moment to dry off my body. I didn’t wash my hair because I didn’t have anything to dry it with here, but rather pulled it up into a messy knot at the top of my head.
I slip on a pair of panties, careful to pull the elastic out and away from the scrape on my hip, and then sit down on the bench to tend to my elbow first. That cut is actually small and looks pretty clean from the shower, so I skip straight toward bandaging. One regular size Band-Aid later, that wound is handled.
Turning my attention to my hip, that one is a little bigger, a little deeper, and I figure that needs a good splash of peroxide. Holding the towel under the wound, I douse it good with the foaming liquid and grit my teeth through the burn. I pat it dry as best I can but the towel hurts too much, so I settle for blowing air over my sensitive skin for a bit.
A knock sounds at the locker room door, and there’s only one person it can be.
The field office is cleared for the night except for the agent on duty, so I call out. “Just a minute, Wyatt.”
Grabbing a white, button-down shirt—an important piece to any basic, FBI ensemble—I slip it on over my shoulders and button it up. I don’t bother with pants… because, well… I can’t put them on until I bandage my wound, and besides… Wyatt’s seen way more of my body than is showing right now.
“Alright… I’m decent,” I call out, and Wyatt is immediately striding through the door.
He looks around in interest… cream-colored walls and shiny tiled flooring, one row of wooden lockers, stained and polished a nice walnut coloring, and a long, padded bench.
“Damn… your digs are much nicer than our police department back home,” he says as he looks at me.
I bend over, pick up a large bandage and some tape, and walk to the end of the locker where a full-length mirror is mounted. “Yeah, that’s federal dollars hard at work for you,” I quip.
Turning to face the mirror, I pull up the hem of my shirt so I can see my hip clearly, which also exposes my panties. They aren’t sexy by any means… plain white cotton, but they sit high on my hips and low on my belly, so they aren’t horrible by any means.
“Damn… that looks like it hurts,” Wyatt says, and I give him a brief glance while I tuck the bandage under my arm and attempt to pull off a strip of medical tape. His eyes are on my hip, and they are warm with sympathy.
“Not so bad,” I say, and his eyes come to mine. I smile and then turn my attention to my wound. Holding the bandage out in front of me, I apply the strip of tape along the top. Stepping closer to the mirror, I turn slightly so I can get a better angle on what I’m doing.
There’s not an ounce of self-conscious feeling that Wyatt is standing here while I’m half dressed, staring at me. In fact, he leans lazily against the corner of the wooden locker with his arms crossed over his chest.
The hem of my shirt starts sliding down so I make haste to get the wound dressed. Lining the bandage up with the scrape, I start to press it on when Wyatt says, “You did an amazing job tonight, Andrea. You are one hell of a partner.”
I make the mistake of looking up at him in surprise, while trying to press the bandage on my wound, and miss by about a mile. The tape goes right onto my raw flesh, and I curse, “Fuck… fuck… fuck.”
Wyatt grins and pushes off the locker. “Here… let me do that for you.”
My hand falls away from the bandage, and I breathe out. “Okay… sure, that would be good.”
Kneeling on the floor, Wyatt crouches a bit lower to bring his face eye level with my hip. He pushes the hem of my shirt up again. His knuckles drag against my skin until he reaches the bottom of my rib cage, and he says gruffly. “Here… hold your shirt up.”
My hand clutches onto the material, and I look down at him while he carefully pulls the tape off me. I grit my teeth but don’t say a word.
Wyatt efficiently pulls the tape away from the gauze, balls it up, and drops it to the floor. “You should have put the bandage on first, then the tape,” he says idly, and then does just that.
From above him, I watch as he works… gently pressing the gauze back to the actual wound, which sticks because it’s still weeping with a little blood. He pulls off strip after strip of tape, pressing it to bandage and skin, and then runs his forefinger along the edge to make sure it sticks.