Page 3 of Night Blind

“You’re going to be my trainer?” she asked as if it were unbelievable, and the one leaf clogging the drain would finally get noticed. “Well, this should be interesting.”

He sipped the coffee, taking his time as if he were collecting words for an anagram solver. He swallowed, then sipped again while looking at his home across the walk path. This would be a change for them all, a change that required him and Helen to spend a great deal of time together, and he knew in his heart,that she didn’t trust him. For the training to work and stick, that also needed to change.

Slow said, “First, I have to gain your trust.”

“What makes you think I don’t trust you?”

“Helen, you don’t trust any man,” he said softly. “However, for this to work, you need to trust me implicitly.”

“Hell, I don’t trust myself implicitly. I have four sweet rolls left in that pan on my counter. I don’t trust myself to not eat all four of them today with the excuse that tomorrow they may be stale. This is life, and we live it where we can,” she stated.

He said nothing. Slow simply sat sipping coffee as if he had all the time in the world to cross this bridge with her and stick a gun in her hand. Suddenly she thought of a knife, then an axe, or maybe even a Katana; a Katana would be kick-ass and she could use it to cut off dicks. Her eyebrows arched as she looked over at him with her eyes dancing.

“Too dark,” he told her and squinted his eyes.

“What? I didn’t say anything!”

“Your eyes said a lot,” he told her, then sipped again from the mug. He paused briefly, then continued. “When Rebecca went missing, I felt it before my mother called me and said go find her. I knew my sister would fight with everything she had until I arrived because she knew I was coming. When Cherry called and said you were missing, I made calls to ensure she had the resources to find you, and she did. I don’t let down the women in my life and I don’t let down the women I love.”

She arched her eyebrows, inching her body away from him as if he’d farted and it was stinking up the air. “You love me?”

“Naomi loves you. Cherry loves you and you are a member of this family. You are a member of my family, and you took care of them until I could arrive. Therefore, yes,” he said. “I will not let you down.”

She turned in the seat to look him in the face. “Okay, but are you going to, at some point, try to fuck me?”

“You’re an attractive woman and any man would be interested in an evening in your arms, but you’re not for me,” he said, not hesitating on his answer, “and to be clear, no, I’m not. Cherry sees you as her sister, and by marriage, you have become my sister as well. My role in your life is to be the voice on the other side of this phone.”

He handed her a new device. The plastic was off the box as he passed it over. From his other pocket, he pulled out an additional phone, passing it to Helen as well.

“The first box is a work phone, pre-programmed with the needed phone numbers. Don’t use it until instructed to do so,” he said. “The second phone is an upgrade and you’ve been added to my family plan. We will begin tomorrow.”

“Oh, already?”

“Yes, the on-campus classes start next week, and you and I start tomorrow,” he said. “Keep in mind, this is a private life. No one knows, and it must stay that way. The ledger is large, we work in sections, and work is plenty. There are a lot of monsters hiding under beds and in closets. We root them out and vanquish the fiends.”

“Okay, but what is to stop me from becoming the monster I am hunting?”

“Me,” he said with no emotion in his voice. “As your mentor, my job is to monitor and guide you. If you become a problem, it will also be my job to put you down.”

“You could do that, Michael Isaac Neary? You could do that and sleep at night?”

His eyes bore into hers and the shiver of cold returned, making her physically shake. Mr. Slow didn’t hesitate with his wording as he maintained eye contact with Helen. The lastshards of coffee in his mug had grown cold and he tossed the liquid onto the leaves.

“Without hesitation, and I will sleep well after,” he said with a nod, then left the porch.

Chapter 2 - Focus

The sound of the fax machine going off in the office made them all jump. It had been weeks since either Cherry or Slow had to go to work. The real question for all at the dinner table is who the fax was for and which machine was printing out an assignment. Cherry swallowed hard as she rose from the table.

“I will check it,” she said softly, leaning down to kiss the daughter she shared with Slow.

Naomi Ruth Neary, a precocious five-year-old, had recently celebrated her birthday. For now, her childcare was onsite at her father’s place of employment, but in the fall, she would enter Pre-K at a regular school. Unfortunately, Naomi didn’t do well with change. The sound of the machine in the other room meant change was coming, and one of her parents would leave in the middle of the night with a heavy sack and return looking very unhappy. She’d seen it with her Mommy, who would leave for days at a time, and she had seen it with her father as well, who returned looking sad around his eyes. She didn’t like the sound. The sound meant something bad her Mommy or Daddy had to go and do.

“Honeymoon is over,” Slow said, looking down at the meatloaf Helen had offered to cook. He’d decided once he tasted the meat that Helen’s cooking privileges would be revoked, and she could make her slop for some other unsuspecting sap. He wasn’t ever eating her cooking again. The fax machine was a saving grace. “No, let me.”

He volunteered, using the departure as an excuse to toss out the meatloaf and later grab an apple or prunes to rid his body of the greasy meat covered in thick, floating tomato sauce, which also tasted greasy. Second thoughts entered his head as he put down the apple, thinking maybe too much of a good thing wouldwork in the opposite direction, clearing his body of everything in his system.

In the office, he checked his fax. It was empty, meaning the work order on the line was for his wife. He sighed deeply, touching his chest and trying to get a grip on his emotions before returning to the other room. In his head, he wanted to ask her to quit, but in reality, he’d fought for her to maintain her position as she now resided in Kentucky with him but covered the state of Indiana as their Technician. Cherry’s role as a sniper meant she did her job from a distance. It wasn’t often she needed to get up close and personal, and in his mind, it was also a saving grace that his wife was very good at her job. Bragging wasn’t his thing, but he knew she could pluck the brain stem from a body at 1,500 yards without blinking an eye. Sighing again, he called out.

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