Page 31 of Stone Blind

“Bad Apple,” he said into the line.

“Can we talk?” Azrael said.

“Not much to say.”

“The report from Yield?”

“Your report from Pear?” he asked.

“Odd, but effective. Three warehouses closed and you didn’t have to leave home. What are we dealing with here?” Azrael asked.

“The hell if I know,” Apple said, “but we would be stone blind to assume that placing a weapon in her hand would make her the ideal asset. She has a quality about her that puts people at ease, and she knows how to work it. Her way with words gets past the defenses, and she gets the information needed. She’s a unifier, a doer, and has limited fears. If she does, we never see it.”

“What kind of technician would best suit her skills, based on what you have seen?”

“She hasn’t had a chance to do anything yet but track, do minor set up, and intake children,” Apple said. “Making her a sweeper would be a waste. A cleaner would be distasteful, and tracking may be her thing, but seriously, we need to see what she does with Lemon and chemicals or with Passion Fruit and Accidents.”

“Which one should be next?”

“Move her to chemicals and see how she fares with a tough cookie like Lemon,” Apple said. “I would love to be a fly on the wall for that one.”

“How much longer do you want or need?”

“I’m done; she doesn’t need me. Give her a couple of weeks off then on the next training,” Apple said.

“Good enough,” Azrael said, ending the call.

Chapter 10 - Chase

Helen waited patiently at the kitchen table for the Mr. Yield’s arrival. There were questions she had for the master tracker before he departed for home. She hoped he would be willing to share the information, and to be sure he was in a sharing mood, she had a little something prepared for him. He arrived just at the moment she expected him to, right at the seven a.m. on the dot mark.

“Morning. I prepared you a go bag,” she told him.

“Morning back, and what is in this said go bag you’ve prepared for me?” Yield asked, waiting to find out what the woman wanted.

“I have pancake sticks for breakfast, coffee, hot, black, a tad bit of sugar, but more on the bitter side to keep you awake. There are two sandwiches, one for lunch, the other for a second lunch, along with juice boxes, a pear, an apple, you know for commemorative purposes, and of course, your granola bars,” she said with a smile.

“No cranberries in this go box?”

“I have a bottle of cranberry juice, you know, for nostalgia,” she said, sticking out her tongue at him.

“You’re fucking scary, but thanks. What do you want?”

“Okay, right at it,” she said, lifting her mug of coffee, allowing the air to settle between them. “How do I track a person, just out right? How would I know where to start?”

Yield opened the lunch bag, seeing all the goodies she’d packed for him. He wanted to take a photo of it to show his wifeMillicent how it should be done because the bag was beautiful. The Cranberry had done this before.

“Hmm, if you have their phone number, you can start there,” he said.

“Okay, but what app?”

“Do you have your Technician’s laptop?” he asked, picking up one of the pancake sticks. “What is this?”

“It is a pancake, cooked over a strip of bacon, and laced with maple syrup,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out how to make them into burritos so I can include the scrambled eggs, but not yet. And yes, I have my laptop.”

“Weird, but okay,” he said, biting into the strip of pancake, nodding his approval at the taste. “When you open your computer, look for an app called Bad Habits. Enter the phone number and you can track the person.”

“At one location, or will it provide me the person’s nasty habits, since that is what the app is named?”

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