Excusing himself from the kitchen, he went to his office, taking the call by answering, “Mr. Yield.”
“Good morning, just calling to check on you,” Beauty said softly into the line. She knew everything already, but wanted to see if the son of a preacher man was going to lie to her or use his fancy college education to misguide her next actions.
“I’m recovering, but it has been a rough couple of days,” he said. “The watch was returned, but I picked up a couple packages in Wentzville. Tried to drop them off with the Archangel, but it was a no-go.”
“Really, how is our Angel doing?”
“He’s good, got himself a legal companion now,” Yield said pausing, waiting for the right way to break the news. “I now have two myself that I brought home with me.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, but...I guess, with my leg needing to heal and all, a couple of weeks I was going to be down, plus the Christmas holidays. My trip to Florida is cancelled while I heal up,” he confessed, taking the slow breather again before he delivered the news.
Beauty Kurtzwilde knew her employees. She understood all ten of them plus their tells. He had more to say. She only needed him to ask for the help she planned to provide anyway.
“I picked up a Bogey with a Badge while down in Wentzville. Crazy, obsessive sort, likes to control people,” he said. “He’s coming for me, but getting into my compound won’t be easy. I don’t plan to make us a moving target. So, if it’s okay, I’m going to take the time to heal this wound and let things cool down a bit.”
“No worries,” Beauty said. “Congratulations. Is it a boy or a girl?”
“A boy. Handsome fellow, smart, and my Mom is going to love him,” Yield said.
“And what about you...do you love them?”
“Yes, enough to risk my life for their safety,” he confessed.
“That’s all I needed to hear. Merry Christmas,” Beauty said. “I’ll be in touch in a few weeks.”
He hung up the phone as a shiver ran down his back. Brody Johnson replayed the conversation over and over in his head even as he sat at the kitchen table eating waffles made by his wife and talking about the area where they lived to his son. There wasn’t a name he’d chosen yet for the boy to call him, so Brody would have to do for now, until they eased further into the relationship.
Officially, he didn’t ask Beauty for help. That − he couldn’t have on his conscience. It wasn’t his job to take the life of a man, he only retrieved stolen items and returned them to their rightful owners, kind of like Indiana Jones. He didn’t hurt people or believe in hurting people.
However, Beauty Kurtzwilde employed people who did those types of the things for a living. The shiver returned when he realized the implications of what he’d told her, but he also knew Beauty. If Gabriel Neary heard his name on the wire, then Beauty had as well. She only needed to see if he would tell her the truth before she took care of the problem.
Beauty was going to take care of Sheriff Mike Colton.
“Brody, is everything okay? You shivered a couple of times,” Millicent said.
Smiling at her, “Yeah, I just have to keep an eye on this wound over the next couple of weeks.”
“Mr. Brody, what are we going to do while we are here?” Chad wanted to know.
“Well, if my leg cooperates, tomorrow you and I will head out onto my land and see if we can find us a Christmas tree to cut down,” Yield said with a smile. “Millicent, there are tons of decorations here that my Mom didn’t want to take with her to Florida. Also, on that note, there is a shed out back loaded with clothes.”
Millicent’s eyes widened in surprise.
“My father, when he was a pastor in Columbus, ran a help center that had a lending closet. For some reason, my mother kept a bunch of kids and women clothing,” he said. “I hold on to some just in case Gabriel needs to outfit those he helps. The boxes are labeled by size if you need a few things to fill in you and Chad’s wardrobe until I can show you the town.”
Her eyes teared up in disbelief. “This is real isn’t it? It’s actually real,” she said sniffling, bringing Chad to her side.
“Don’t cry, Mommy, we are safe,” Chad said rubbing her back.
“You both are safe,” he said to her. “In a few days, Gabriel will have your accounts ready. If you don’t want the used clothes, you’ll be able to buy new ones if you wish. I just want you to have options.”
Through her sniffles, she said, “I like options.”
“Speaking of options, I figured Monday, we can go Christmas shopping, then as a family, decide on a Johnson Christmas meal for the holiday,” he said, sounding more like his father every minute.
“Ooh, can we do fireworks for New Year’s Eve?” Chad asked.
“I don’t see why not, I may even have some around here, left over from the 4th of July,” he said. “My sister will be here in the spring with her kids and you can meet your cousins. I’m sure by then you will have loads of new friends around, too.”
Chad could not stop smiling at the thought of having cousins, but then the frown turned upside down. “Wait, that means that Tim is my cousin, too!”
Yield started to laugh. “Yes, Tim is your cousin as well,” he told Chad.
“I guess, I’m just going to have to go with it, huh?” he asked Yield.
“I guess you’ll just have to,” he replied, looking across the table at Millicent. “Wife, you can get a job, do PTA, volunteer at the high school or one of the theaters as a set designer. You don’t really need to work outside the home unless you just feel like it.”
The tears flowed down her cheeks as she tried to wipe them away. “You did hear me. I thought...you didn’t listen and didn’t see me,” she said through her sobs.
“Lady, I saw all of you when I first sat down and you explained the care you took to make those grits,” he said. “You will have a nice life here with me. Chad will grow up to be a good man. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Brody, I am so overcome with emotions, I just can’t tell you or explain the amount of love I feel for you right now,” she said. “But before I start to do any volunteer work or any work outside the home, I think I want to help you get projects finished inside of here first. There are a lot of improvements started I saw that were incomplete, plus I will get a chance to buck up on skills I haven’t used in years. Will that be okay?”
“Meh, don’t worry about it,” he said with a wink of his good eye. “Just make me some more waffles later and we will call it a draw.”
She was a dynamo when it came to making waffles. Her waffle making skills nearly ripped open the stitches Mr. Stop had neatly sewed in his leg. He had a family. A wife and a son, who would probably need a damned dog.
Maybe he would get the kid a puppy for Christmas. Kids liked that kind of shit. Moms, not so much but Mr. Yield liked her a lot. She was actually glowing even though snot was running down her lip. Even in a blubbery teary mess she was sexy as hell to him. My wife. He started to chuckle.
“What’s so funny? Are you laughing at me crying and being an absolute wreck for being so dang gone happy?” she questioned.
“No, I’m thinking, Holy shit, I have a wife and kid,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas present.”
The other present was happening in Wentzville. Beauty was going to make sure her star retrieval agent didn’t have any major concerns as he healed. There was one more open wound that needed to be closed. She would take care of it with ease. Mr. Yield deserved all the happiness he could get. The Sheriff was a loose canon and she was never one to tempt fate.
TEMPEST FATE WAS IN St. Louis when the call came in from Beauty. Her job with the company was in the role of a cleaner. She didn’t do wet work, just cleaned it up and now she had to clean up behind Mr. Yield. He didn’t do dirty work either, so she didn’t understand the whole clean up aspect of the job, but when Beauty called, ugly had to get to work.
Locating the ramshackle of
an apartment belonging one Jebbie Colton wasn’t a problem. The dead man inside was, but she didn’t need to clean up the scene, just stage it. Adding a few needed clues to the crime scene, she left the apartment and sent a text to Beauty that part one of the plan had been completed.
Tempest made her way down I-70, looking for a gas station in Wentzville. High heels and tight jeans always worked well to get a man’s attention. She filled up the tank then drove towards the Sheriff’s office. If fate were on her side, he would be there, all big and stupid ready to fall for the oldest trick in her handbag of books. She parked her mobile shop, loaded with cleaning supplies and went inside the building.
The heels clicked on the old tiles as she entered the small office building that smelled of pent up aggression and hostility. Three country boy types sat behind old metal desks, watching her walk in, eyeballing her breasts and the sway of her generous ass when she walked.
“I’m looking for the Sheriff,” she said, pressing her lips together to activate the lipstick.
“I’m Sheriff Colton,” Big Mike offered. “How can I help you?”
“My boyfriend, Brody Johnson, is supposed to be somewhere in this town working for the Pennington’s. I was wondering if you could help me locate him, you know, I just don’t want to go around knocking on stranger’s doors,” Tempest told him, offering a smile.
“Come on into my office,” the Sheriff said, stepping aside to let her enter. The soft scent of her perfume filled his nose, triggering the familiar desire of revenge and ownership. The idea of Brody’s girlfriend coming to look for him and having her wander into his web was just too good to be true.
“You say Brody is your man, huh?” Big Mike said. “Well, honey, I got news for you. Your man has run off with the local hash slinger from the Waffle House. Her boy is with them. The kid’s my nephew and I am putting out an ABD for the kidnapping against your man.’
She should have been an actress. In less than five minutes she ran through a gambit of emotions only to end up in the man’s arms as he tried to console her. It took less time than that for the idiot to steal a kiss from the lips that would be the closer of his fate. Pushing at his chest, Tempest stepped back.
“Sheriff, is he coming back? What should I do?” she asked, in perfect timing.
“Honey, you got any family?” he asked in a protective lover sort of way.
“No, and my van is running hot, which worries me about getting home to Jefferson City, where I live,” Tempest said. “Is there a good mechanic here who can help me?”
“Of course. I even have a place you can stay while he works on your van,” the Sheriff said. “It’s a trailer, not much to look at, but it’s clean.”
“A trailer? How long do you think the repair is going to take?” she asked, her eyes wide with concern.
“Well, with the Christmas holidays coming up, it may be a few days,” he said. “No need for you to run up a hotel bill with money you may need to get that van repaired.”
The smile was so genuine, had she not cleaned up crime scenes for a living, seeing the evil in the hearts of her fellow man, she would have believed the Sheriff. She returned the smile to him, hugging him tightly as he showed her where to take the van, and he would be along shortly to give her a ride to the trailer that he planned to make her permanent home.
She was a good kisser and the lipstick she wore tasted sweet but smelled of almonds. Her rubbed his lips really hard to remove the red color, imagining how nice it was going to be to break her spirit and make her his new toy. Hell, now, he wouldn’t even need to go to Ohio to take care of the other bitch, but he planned to anyway because they transgressed him and caused Jebbie to die.
“One step at a time,” he said, leaving the office to go over to the garage where he and old Oscar had an agreement.
Whistling as he walked, Big Mike never noticed the small items she dropped from her purse that landed under his desk. She had left the same items in Jebbie’s apartment for the police to find. In the end, it was the small details that mattered. Especially items like glitter.
That stuff just stuck to everything, including the gun handle in Jebbie’s apartment and the shoes the Sheriff currently wore. He also didn’t realize when he hugged her that the glitter was on the back of her blouse. It didn’t matter much.
He’d be dead by nightfall when the notification came in about his brother. Beauty planned to make sure the FBI was made aware of the Glitter Killer. An assassin of the worst sort, who left a trail of glitter on all of his victims. It would be unclear to the investigators if the Sheriff was the latest victim or the perpetrator, but either way, Big Mike Colton was attempting to mess with the wrong man.
Mr. Yield was her best retrieval agent and in general a good man. She provided services to some of the most important people in America and had several big names on speed dial. Her favorite FBI Agent was one of them. One call to Joe Neary and he would sic the bloodhounds on Big Mike Colton. In this world you could come in and live the right way or a man could live the wrong way.
Big Mike had just kissed Wrong Way. His bloated body would be discovered in a day or so with blue tinged lips. The glitter on his weapon would match the glitter found next to his brothers’ dead body. The news would list it as a case of sibling rivalry. Life was funny that way, and Sheriff’s Colton’s luck had run out.
Fate was about to provide a nasty comeuppance, courtesy of The Company.
A LONE FIGURE STOOD in front of the television in Kansas City, Missouri watching the evening news. Rage gurgled inside his gut as he ogled the wide-eyed reporter as she discussed the similarities between the cases in the Midwest linked to the evidence of the unknown subject known as the Glitter Killer. A loud scream came from his gut as he kicked at the air in a kung-fu styled roundhouse.
“Fucking Glitter Man!” He swore at the bobble head on the black screen. How dare this insipid woman attribute his refined skills to blundering idiot of Sheriff Mike Colton. Steely eyed focus bore into the black flat monitor searching the background images of the panned shot from the cameraman, looking, peering, searching every detail of the scene. The angry man didn’t know if the black bagged bloated body was normally that rotund in the middle or if that was a normal status of “Big Mike” Colton. Fixed eyes never left the screen as he scanned it for minute opportunities to learn of a chance to make those who stole his glory pay.
In the background, flickered an image he nearly missed until it moved. A white van in the wide shot with a black face inside of it. He knew the van as well as its driver.
“Beauty Kurtzwilde!” He yelled, throwing a half full glass of protein shake across the room. The contents splattering against the wall, oozing down in a slow trickle of gooeyness. “Trying to set me up, are you? It’s never that simple.”
The ebony face in the van he’d met several years ago. Tempest the Cleaner had just turned down the wrong way of a street belonging to the Glitter Man. A wicked smile slithered across his lips. The dark silhouette was three hours from Wentzville, but he knew the woman. He new the routes she took and how she worked. Tracking her wouldn’t be difficult.
Making her pay for taking his trademark and applying it to a yahoo Sheriff in Nowhere, Missouri was going to cost her everything. He picked up the phone and made two calls, the first to Beauty Kurtzwilde, the second to a man who lived just outside of Louisville, Kentucky. In between those calls, he would head in that direction to intercept Tempest.
Her fate was now in his hands.
Epilogue – You want me to do what?
Two Months Later
The phone rang in the kitchen, vibrating across the countertop, sliding its way diagonally over the granite ready to hit the floor. In an effort to catch the phone before it dropped to the wooden floor and broke, Chad grabbed for it, accidently pressing the face answering the call. A strong male voice came over the line.
“Is anyone there? Mr. Yield?” the strong voice said.
“Uhmm, hello,” Chad muttered into
the line. He wasn’t supposed to answer Brody’s phone and he didn’t mean to this time. The man was talking and he didn’t want to be rude.
“I need to speak with Mr. Yield,” the voice said.
“Hold on,” the child said as the voice on the other end listened to the small feet running. He heard a few taps on what must have been a door. The caller had forgotten about the time difference, but this was an emergency.
“Daddy, you have a phone call,” the boy said.
The man on the other end, mouthed Daddy, not knowing about the change in Mr. Yield’s status. The employees of the company were single agents. They didn’t have families. A family made Mr. Yield vulnerable and unfocused. This job required a good dog that could hunt, not one worried about the bone he’d left at home. In the background he heard the sound of a man’s voice, chastising the child for answering his phone.
“Daddy, your phone nearly fell, but I caught it. I accidently answered it, then the man started talking. I didn’t want to be rude,” the boy said.
“It’s okay, but next time, let it drop but don’t answer my phone,” Yield said, concerned that the boy had given the person on the other end of the call ammunition against him.
The man on the other end listened closely, understanding being firm with a child but not breaking down the self-esteem in an effort to correct a wrong behavior. What he required was the retrieval agent, not the father. Someone had taken a priceless package which needed to be found and returned, if not all hell would break loose.
“Yield,” Brody said into the line.
“Mr. Yield this is Saxton Blakemore,” the man said to silence on the other end. “Do you know who I am?’
“I do, but that don’t matter much to me,” Yield said. “I don’t do direct hires. All requests must come through The Company.”
“This is a matter that doesn’t need to involve Beauty,” Saxton said. “The less people who know what I need you to find and return the better.”
Blind Luck (The Technicians Series Book 3) Page 9