Chapter 12- Lapse
She didn't know which hurt more, the lip or the wounded pride. She sucked at math and trying to use Passion Fruits calculations for taking down a man twice her size had earned the lady a fat lip. Had she gone with what she knew how to do, she would have taken him down with no issue, and now she had to clean her weapon. Cleaning the weapon would indicate to Mustang that she’d fired it, but one step at a time.
The first step came in sending the photo to Azrael. She didn't know how much this kind of job paid, but hopefully it was enough to pay down her credit card so she could run it back up with some guns and ammo. The photo sent, she aimed the SUV towards home, grimacing at the time.
“This is going to mess with my timing on that pie,” she said, adding in her earpiece. Just as she did the phone rang. It was the Boss.
“Go for Cranberry,” Helen said softly, her speech impacted by the lip.
“You sound funny; is everything okay?”
“Busted lip from a nasty trick,” Helen said. “Put a bullet in him to make him think on his evil ways. He limped away but still alive.”
“Discharged your weapon. I assume it was necessary,” Azrael commented. “Any news for me?”
“Nothing you want to hear, especially finding out Swallowtail is in your backyard,” Helen said. “She also has a thing for girls that she sells and pimps out to women.”
“Excuse me?” Azrael said.
“It gets worse. She starves the girls then when they are near mad with hunger, she covers herself in food and becomes the entrée, enjoying it a bit too much.”
“That is truly disturbing,” Azrael said. “You want first dibs on pulling the trigger?”
Helen held the line.
“Women and people like Swallowtail...,” she said, taking a pause to gather her thoughts. “The Archangel told me that anyone can pull a trigger. Ending her life would be too easy. Let's make her suffer like she's done with those girls.”
Azrael really liked Helen. She was a thinker. A planner. It wasn't a one and done with her, and she had an idea.
“Let's hear it,” she said to Helen.
“Money is her tool of torture and power,” Helen said.
“Let's track the money, then slowly take it in small, medium, and large increments. I want her to check accounts and notice a few thousand here, a few hundred there leaving her pockets. I want to take the property, the vehicles, the boat, and the fur coats I’m sure she wears over her naked ass grandma body. I want the expensive bottles of wine and every damned thing else. I want to take everything she has and then invite her for a sit down.”
“You're scary,” Azrael said, “and what are you going to do at the sit down?”
“Serve the bitch a slice of cake and ask her how it feels to be at the mercy of someone and you feel helpless?” Helen said.
“Yep, scary. Keep me updated,” Azrael said and ended the call.
Helen felt tired. She felt tired in her soul, and these people with their cocoons, pupas and fields of flowers were getting on her fucking nerves.
As she exited the interstate, driving to her home, the Technician phone rang again.
It was the operator with a request to connect from Sour Grapes.
Helen didn't feel like being bothered with this bullshit either, but she took the call.
“Go for Cranberry,” she said.
She asked Helen, “I haven't heard from you. Are we continuing your training?”
“I grabbed a few books, you know stuff like the Dark Web for idiots and cyber hacking for the technologically challenged. I will figure it out,” Helen replied.
“He's gone if you want to come back,” Sour Grapes said.
“Thanks, but I'm okay.”
“Donovan said he called you, and you ended the conversation abruptly,” Sour Grapes said.
“No, I had nothing further to say to him and terminated the call.”
“Cranberry, he tried you once more while I was standing close by and you didn't answer,” she said.
“I couldn't answer it,” Helen replied. “The phone was left in a trash can in Eau Claire at a rest stop.”
The pause was also an unspoken statement in the conversation. “You're interesting.”
“You, the cyber tracker, gave me a device that could be tracked. I ridded myself of it, and the ability for anyone to know where I am,” she said. “Safety is a priority. Take care of yourself. Cranberry out.”
She ended the call and shuddered. The woman rubbed her wrong.
It baffled her that the assignment the woman was given to train an agent was poorly handled because she got some much-needed dick.
Then, Helen shook her head at the audacity of the woman to call her concerned that the Cranberry had hurt the dick's feelings.
“You can't make this shit up,” she said, pulling in to park the SUV.
The next time she rolled out, she would top it off.
Technically, she should have topped it off before she brought it home, but her lip hurt, dinner would possibly be late, and the damned apples had to be sliced for that fucking pie.
****
IN THE HOME, SHE WORKED quickly, still in her work clothes minus the boots but donning her favorite pair of fuzzy slippers. She was bending over, taking the pie out of the oven when Mustang entered through the back door. Since her back was to him, he didn't immediately see the lip.
“That is a delightful sight to see when a man walks through the door,” he said. “Coming up behind you for a hug.”
Helen placed the pie on a trivet, leaning into the strength of his broad chest. She felt his hands slide into the pockets of her skirt, stopping when his fingers went through the holes, feeling the kick ass pants and the top of a knife handle.
He pulled back, and Helen turned to face him. His eyes grew wide at seeing her lip.
“Baby, what happened? Did you fall?”
“I got a fax today. Hungry? We have lamb chops,” Helen said.
“Yeah, let me...okay. I will get settled and prepare for supper,” he replied, walking away.
His nerves were all jangled. She'd gotten a fax today, which meant The Cranberry went to work on an assignment alone.
The Alpha male in him kicked in that she didn't call him to let him know she was going to work or where.
It had to be close by; she was home. The busted lip meant a fight.
Some bastard had hit his wife in the mouth and busted her lovely lip.
Anger bubbled up in him, and he took several deeps breaths to appear calm when he arrived in the kitchen to a beautiful lamb chop with saffron rice, haricot verts, and his momma's biscuits.
“This looks amazing,” he said. “You worked today; we could have gone out. You didn't have to cook.”
“I wanted that apple pie for dessert,” she said, her face tight.
He blessed the food, and they ate in silence. It took him less than two minutes to understand he was sitting at the table having dinner with The Cranberry and not his wife Helen. The husband needed to take a back seat, and the man, who was also a trained Technician, needed to enter the chat.
“Let's reason it out,” he said, cutting into the chop. “Start at the top of the highest thought, find the connectors, and move to the lowest common denominator.”
She looked up, her eyes full of anger and distant. Helen was in there, but so was The Cranberry. He waited to see what the Technician had to say.
“Swallowtail, the third slimy caterpillar in the Chrysalis, is in the Detroit area,” Helen said. “Her thing is young girls for older women. I need to find the tax records for buildings owned by Kurtzwilde that he may share a joint ownership in Michigan, around the Detroit area.”
“How will you cross-reference the accounting?”
“I need to look for patterns, movements, and food purchases in large quantities that are not going to shelters or restaurants,” she said. “It's how I located the warehouses in Wisconsin. The kids need to be healthy. No one wants to fuck a sick kid.”
Mustang's back straightened. This was the woman Yield had met and worked with that night. “Okay, what about the clientele she hosts?”
“I want to find her sommelier,” Helen said. “She has to have good wine, champagne, and spirits. Those deliveries will coincide with her feasts and parties. In order for the business to be lucrative, there needs to be a regular schedule for the parties, maybe monthly.”
“Good,” Mustang said. “Once you locate these items, what next?”
“I find the delivery truck of liquor and go steal it,” she said. “Next, I take the food for the party from the catering service or even burn them out to kill their business for servicing such a sick bitch. Then I go after her property and money and finally her life.”
Mustang didn't know what to say behind any of that.
Helen finished her meal, rose to clean the kitchen, and returned to the table with her 9mm and weapon cleaning kit.
He watched her break down the weapon in less than ten seconds, thinking of how she had timed him, Apple, and Ricky when she was faster than them all.
His man brain shuddered as he began to put the pieces together.
Woman clean gun = Woman fired gun.
The calm was leaving him by the second as he watched her. He could smell the carbon and said, “You fired the weapon today.”
She looked up at him as if he'd said the dumbest shit in the world. She pointed at her lip and lowered her head to continue working.
He needed to bring Helen back to the table. “Honey,” he said softly, “I spoke with Apple about the father-son weekend.”
Helen looked up, the darkness in her eyes dissipating. She was watching his lips as he spoke.
“Apple is going to bring Oscar here,” he said, “And I was thinking that since we need the electrical work done on your office, Apple could stay and work on that while Oscar and I head out for the weekend. I mean, it wouldn't make any sense for him to drive back the five hours and then have to come back and get him, or we’d have to take him to Wisconsin. Would you be okay with Apple being here working on your office that weekend?”
She blinked. “Is that your way of making sure I'm not here alone while you're gone for the weekend?”