Half Blind (The Technicians #13)

Chapter 7- Temptation

T en Days Later- Salem , Oregon

The temptation to call Helen was so strong, it reverberated in his trigger finger. The past ten days had been nothing short of insane. His cash offer on the property was settled for an offer of ten thousand under the asking price, which left Jarius Neary the proud owner of a very large piece of raggedy nothing in Indiana. The outbuildings direly needed repair, the primary home structure proved to be too tiny to hold a thought, and the barns needed to be razed to the ground. All of it made him incredibly excited about this new chapter in his life. The life he was leaving was wedged in a rut, operating on autopilot and making him careless at a couple of stops on the back roads he'd been assigned.

There were no ruts with Helen. Each day as he prepared the items for the movers who would be coming shortly to relocate his life from here to there, he followed the clues she'd left him to end their day together even though physically, Helen was in Ohio. In the back of the cupboard, located in a coffee mug, was the latest note. Mustang didn't want to wait for tonight to read it. He wanted to talk to her; he wanted this moment alone with his woman.

He found the envelope and opened it slowly. She said she'd left sixteen notes to cover the sixteen days it would take him to shut down his life in Oregon and shift it to Indiana where she would take over as the Technician for the state if she completed the training. Mustang was worried about Helen's progress as a Forbidden Fruit because Lemon was a tough cookie. She didn't play around and the woman created some nasty shit in her home lab to end a person's life without the person knowing they were, in fact, dying slowly.

Helen was giving him a new life. He leaned against the counter as he opened the envelope, slightly scented with the oil she used on her skin. Mustang inhaled slowly, thinking warmly of her before extracting the contents of the envelope. From the inside, he removed the sixteenth reason Helen McDaniel had written that she was looking forward to sharing a life with him. He read it twice, thinking he didn't understand, but when he allowed the words to sink it, a smile covered his entire soul. The note read:

Jay, I love the mugs in your cupboard. Reason 16 I'm looking forward to our life together is that you and I get to go antiquing. Stop scowling; you're going to enjoy the outing for the day. One, we shall find me a reading chair so I can place it next to the first table we created together, which shall hold my afternoon cup of tea. Second, we need to find china and a place setting for eight for the immediate family, a setting for twenty if you count Joe and Mary plus your cousins. Imagine setting up the dining room as we host the family for a holiday or special dinner atyourtable. Of course, you'll be on the grill giving Mark a few lessons on how not to singe the meat. Until the next time we share ideas, yours, - Helen.

“I can see that shit,” he said smiling as his personal phone rang and he answered, “This is Jay.”

“How's it going?” the voice on the other end asked.

“Movers are coming today,” he replied. “I turned the keys and my shop over to Belial, my handler, a couple of days ago. I'm shipping my Mustang, flying in, and then renting something until it arrives. Thinking I may buy a little pickup for getting back and forth to the academy when I get into Indiana.”

“Are you giving up being a Technician or planning on starting a conversation with Azreal?”

“Honestly, I need a break from all the death,” he said. “Finding the holes these creeps are stashing their toys in has soured my stomach. I need the change.”

“The change includes her?”

“She's part of the reason for the change in me, how I see myself and my purpose in this world,” he said, sniffing the note again. “But I am making the change for myself.”

“Interesting,” the voice said. “I found the triple wide you wanted, and it was delivered this morning to the property. The workers started yesterday putting in the privacy fence. They are setting it up and putting in the septic, propane, and solar panel system. It will be tied into the city grid; however, that place is going to need some work.”

“I'll have the time to do it. My hours are so normal that it is going to be really nice to end the day at five and be home by half after,” he said. “No late-night stops on dark roads taking chances. I get to have some normalcy, and I am pretty damned eager to get started.”

“Hmph,” the voice said. “Proceed with caution. She's still healing.”

“Hell, aren't we all? This life is traumatic in itself, and the best we can hope for at the end of the day is to come home to another human who is happy you're still in this world. I want some of that, and I'm going to get it.”

The sound of the doorbell ringing announced the movers, who had arrived early. He'd had ten days to prepare the items for shipping and all the possessions of value were secured and triple wrapped in cellophane, like the suitcases in the airport. He had spent a small fortune on tools, and he wasn't going to lose any of them to some pimply-faced kid with sticky fingers.

“The movers have arrived,” he said into the line. “Time to move my life forward. Hey, can I ask, did you have anything to do with this job offer and Indiana of all places?”

“Wouldn't admit it if I did. Talk soon,” the voice said, ending the call.

Mustang held the phone. The silhouette of the mover shadowed the door. A twinge of anger surged through him at the Archangel hanging up on him. “Cousin or not, he's creepy as hell sometimes.”

To the ringer of the doorbell, he called out, “Coming!”

The 26-foot moving truck was parked in his driveway, along with a flatbed that had also arrived. This was it. His Mustang would go on the flatbed to head out. The furniture would be loaded and rolling East by the evening, and in three days, his life in Oregon will have relocated to Indiana where a triple wide instant home waited for him to reset the items in their proper spaces.

“Then the little woman can come frilly up shit,” he said aloud. “Who am I thinking about? Helen doesn't do frills.”

****

O XFORD, OHIO

Jared sat on the old John Deere, surprised it still ran as well as it did, and he made pathways in the soil for planting a small garden. It was a no-frills piece of equipment that did the basics. He thought it would be the perfect patch for the girls to grow tomatoes and possibly some other garden items. No one had asked him to do it, but those girls needed to focus on something other than boys and trying to look cute. The entire interaction with the Delgado kid had the girls in a tizzy, attempting to look older.

“They are just fast,” he mumbled the term his mother used when his sisters started smelling themselves, as she often mumbled to herself while she was baking. If he were honest, the girls were simply testing the waters. However, he didn't understand the relationship between the girls and Myrtle or even why the woman Helen was here. He also didn't understand why it was taking so long for three parts to come in for his truck or the Sheriff doing a daily drive by, which was currently occurring. He waved at the officer as he rode the tractor.

Thus far, he had kept a wide berth of Doc Myrtle, but he was drawn to her. Evidently, the same applied to her as she found him in the barn, covered in sweat from his efforts. She watched him wipe the moisture from his brow.

“Not sure why you're planting a garden. I have a greenhouse. They don't even go in there, and you think they're going to pull weeds on 'maters from the vine?” Lemon asked him.

“Doc Myrtle, I'm not understanding anything that goes on around here, especially the Sheriff doing a daily drive by. Is he your man or something?”

Lemon actually smiled at him, a warm, lovely smile which came from her center. It shocked Jared how impactful the gesture was to him at this peculiar juncture between them and their arrangement.

“I dated one of his deputies, and it turned bizarre really quick,” she said.

“Sorry, but I see a lot of nasty things in my line of work, and my mind went to the darkness,” he said, testing the air. She didn't respond; therefore, he pressed forward. “I work with women, and I hear the horror stories of a date night, then date blabs to his buddies, and of course the buddies want to try their hand to see if they can score a ride.”

“A ride?” Lemon asked. “Neither the Sheriff nor his Deputy took a ride on the Lemon. As I said, I dated. Two dates to be specific, but that man had too many bitches in his life.”

Jared arched his brows. “Wow, I never expected to hear a term like that from you about other women.”

“What do you call the female of the species used for breeding?”

“A bitch,” he said, cocking his head, wanting the term fully explained from her perspective.

“As I said, him and his bitches,” she said. “Clarifying. On the second date with Officer Nasty, we took a walk down by the lake at the park. There were kids by the playground, and we heard a kid yell Daddy.”

“Oh no!”

“Understatement,” she replied. “Officer Nasty turned around to see the child. A child that happened to be his. That one and nine others who all ran over calling him Daddy. The kids looked like a Benetton ad. He even had a Blasian kid.”

“Blasian. What's that?”

“He made a kid with Mae Lun, a Vietnamese chick,” she said.

“Isn't that racist?”

“No, her actual name is Mae Lun, and she’s a nail tech who works at a salon over on Muldoon down by the campus,” she said. “Officer Nasty went for the low hanging fruit, and all of those baby Mamas came over, ready to welcome me into the fold of his sister wives hive. It was like I was at the epicenter of Old McDonald's Breeding Farm, here a bitch, there a bitch, everywhere a bitch, bitch.”

Jared tried not to laugh. “He actually asked you to be a part of his growing family?”

“Yes. He intentionally brought me to the park to meet his hoard,” she said. “The joker actually had the audacity to say to me, you and me'll make pretty babies. They'd be smart too, and we can raise all of the kids in our big family on your farm.”

It made Jared laugh. “He had a set on him.”

“A set I nearly broke. I called me an Uber and went home, leaving him and the Shady Bunch at the jungle gym,” she told “I blocked him from calling me, but he would put on his uniform and show up at my job. I had to call the Sheriff on that fool to stop his stalking.”

“So, he stopped?”

“He's an asshole with a badge, so no he didn't,” she said, “I stopped him.”

“Should I ask?”

“A bit of Larry's spit in his coffee slowed him down,” Lemon added. “Ingesting venom is not deadly, but in the right amount, it can make the person seem intoxicated. He ran off the road, hit another car, and totaled the squad car. The Sheriff transferred him to Cleveland.”

“And now the Sheriff is enamored of you,” he stated.

“No. What they see is an independent bird flying free with property and a job title,” she told him. “The temptation is to capture the bird, cage it, and make it behave. Next, they will take over all the bird’s possessions, say it's theirs, and clip the wings. Once the bird can no longer fly and sits in the cage molting, they find another bird and tell it lies about love, all the while creating a second prison for the other bird.”

“Harsh.”

“Truth.”

“And you? Are you the bird hunter or the collector of pretty things?”

“I am the cage,” Jared said, watching her face.

“Oh, you're the prison guard for the bird?”

“No ma’am. I am the protective housing,” he said. “A cage can be considered a prison, or it can be protection from prey. True, you can't get out immediately, but nothing big can ease in to get you. It wouldn't take much effort for the pretty bird to use its beak to flip the latch or even a talon to raise the hasp. Depends on how you look at a situation.”

“Hmmph,” Lemon replied.

“Doc Myrtle, was there some reason you came to the barn to see me?” He asked, looking over her shoulder as the Sheriff's car circled back once more. It made him uncomfortable, the constant surveillance, as well as her failure to react to the hunter stalking the bird.

“Yes; a cold snap is coming through tonight, and the temp will drop to a negative. Grab your things and shower inside,” Lemon said. “Tonight, you're on the couch.”

Jared arched an eyebrow. “So, the mutt gets to come inside and warm himself by the fire?”