Page 20 of Night Blind

He took a pause, measuring his words before speaking. “I got a call that you were down. I had to put all of my emotions to the side to get here and not shake the shit out of you for being careless,” he told her. “Yes, your man. I am also your husband and the father to our child, and the idea of you no longer breathing when I arrived or being near death is fucking with my calm, so sit over there and please shut the hell up. My heart is about to burst out of my chest with joy at seeing it’s just a brokenfoot. If…I can’t think about the rest. I can’t think about waking up tomorrow and you no longer being at my side. So, give me a moment to deal with what I’m feeling, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, looking at the profile. Then she felt it. All of the pain, the anguish, the emotions she couldn’t express before living a life that didn’t appreciate her talents and ability, hit her in the guts. An entire life of being strong for herself, for Helen, for Naomi, never left her room to cry or be vulnerable. The sob left her throat in a wail, and she cried out in sheer relief at not having to spend the next month trying to figure out how to live. He came for her. She didn’t have to call him, beg, or even explain what happened, her husband had shown up.

“I have never been happier to see anyone in my life, Michael. Thank you for coming for me.”

“I will come for you every time, Abigail. I love you,” he said, aiming the vehicle towards home.

****

Cheboygan, Michigan

The darkness of the garage is what made him notice the green glow on the ground. He’d barely gotten out of the truck when he noticed the light. Moving with haste, he dropped to the ground, looking underneath the truck to spot the device. It was a tracker. The big bastard had placed a tracker on his vehicle.

“Don’t panic. Don’t panic,” he said, getting inside the vehicle, cranking it, and opening the garage door. “This is an easy fix.”

He drove towards the Mackinac Bridge going through the Hiawatha National Forest to the Village of Newberry, a quaint little place where the biggest employer was the Department of Corrections. The Village Council was going to be shocked when the FBI and others descended upon the town. He smiled a wicked smile as he dropped the tracker just outside of the prison gate and headed home.

“You have to get up earlier than that, you muscle-bound moron, to get one over on

me. I am The Collector! You don’t collect me, you knot-headed bastard,” he screamed at the rear-view mirror.

He was emotional.

He didn’t do emotional.

She was making him emotional and why? He only had her for a week, and this is what she’d done to him. She didn’t understand love and didn’t deserve a man like him as her own.

“By why do I want you so much, Shenita?”

Now, it wasn’t about simply finding his Chocolate Queen to punish her for causing him so much dismay, but it had become a matter of artistic pride. He could no longer shop for pretty dolls with Kurtzwilde’s Company. He was going to find her, or maybe let her come to him and set a trap.

“I like that, let her come to me…,” he said smiling into the same rear-view mirror. “I shall return home to prepare your new room. A place for us to love. A place for us to call home.”

Chapter 8 - Drill

Home. They arrived home a little after one a.m. and he, in all honesty, was more tired than he’d ever been in his life. It truly had been a hell of a long day that started on a high note with the family playing a bit of paintball, which would lead to a cookout of burgers and sausage dogs on the grill. His mother was making her yummy sour cream pound cake and Rebecca his sister made the most killer baked beans with green peppers, sausage, and ground beef. The saliva in his mouth began to water as he sat in his shop staring at the place they called home.

In the yard were still the vehicle his parents had driven over earlier in the day, or rather yesterday, with his sister in the back seat. His cousin Zeke, his pregnant wife Tameka, and hisdaughter Michelle were also inside the home. However, in his driveway were three additional vehicles, the first an unmarked white cargo van. The vehicle belonged to Doctor Elden Thomas, the medical professional assigned to the Southeast Directions. He must have been in the area to make it to Louisville so quickly.

The second vehicle he also recognized. The black Ford F-150 was similar to his own and the one driven by his wife, but this truck had one major difference. On the tailgate were iridescent angel wings, open and spanning the width of the tailgate. It was a symbol for law enforcement that the driver of said vehicle was an Archangel. The iridescent wings of this angel were green, meaning the vehicle belonged to Azreal, the Archangel who oversaw the group of Technicians called the Fruits of the Great Lakes of which his wife was a member.

When an agent was compromised, as Cherry had been on her last assignment, the rule was to maintain radio silence and go to ground. The rally point was where aid would converge to determine the next steps. In this situation, the ground point for convergence was his home, previously a secretive place that very few people were aware of, well, at least until now.

The final car he didn’t know, but he had an idea who it was based on the style of vehicle and the person knowing where he lived. Slow sat still in the truck, saying nothing, knowing he needed to get Cherry inside to have the Doc assess her, but he was just plumb tired. The past week had been a great deal with his job and his daughter wanting to have conversations about her vagina, in conjunction with having to train an onboarding Technician whom he feared was entirely too perfect for the job and would end up enjoying the work. In his professional assessment as a criminologist, no one should enjoy the work they did, no matter how much of a necessity it was in the overall scheme of the universe.

Cherry was also quiet, sitting and staring at the home. Her foot throbbed like a son of a bitch in heat, her wrist panged her, and the tummy which growled loudly reminded her of the need for food, plus, she had to poop. She noticed the extra vehicles in the yard and absently turned to Slow. “I don’t think we have enough toilet paper,” she announced.

Slow turned his head slowly to look at her. “That’s where your mind went?”

“Well, yeah. I bought a twelve-pack of family-sized rolls, but then I gave four rolls to Helen, but that’s a lot of butts. I don’t think we have enough if they are planning to stay another day,” she told him. “Why, what are you thinking?”

“Pound cake,” he said. “I was thinking when we left to go to work, Ma was pulling out that yummy pound cake, and I hope they saved me some. Also, I didn’t eat a lot before we left, you know, didn’t want to be sluggish, so I’m hungry. I hope there are some burgers left or even a sausage dog.”

“You are a sociopath, you know that?”

“Says the woman who fell out of a tree, broke her ankle, left her weapon in the same tree, and is now worried about the amount of shit paper in the house,” he said, cutting the engine. “There is a stash of paper products in the shed, along with soaps, canned goods, and other end-of-the-world supply shit.”

She sighed deeply as he opened the door to his shop. On the ride home, they had both remained silent, not talking but needing to say more. One of the things she loved about him was lots of words were not needed for an understanding. Currently, they have an understanding. Her boss was in the house to assess her status, determine the next steps for the assignment she’d failed, and possibly fire her as a failed Technician.

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