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"I love you too; be safe."
"If not safe, careful," she said with a wink, backing out and pointing the nose of the pickup toward Illinois. Three weeks. Three weeks to get the training complete. For a moment, she felt as if she'd seen too much and experienced her own form of being snow blind, being exposed to too much ultraviolet bullshit, but she was ready.
"I am Helen McDaniel Neary. I am the Cranberry. I am the Technician for the great state of Indiana. My watch is beginning," she said aloud as she hit the interstate. She repeated it once more to remind herself of what tasks lie ahead.
Epilogue
The moment Helen reachedthe Antioch city limit, her Technician phone rang. She knew who it was. The earpiece wasn’t in her ear, making her pull over to an empty spot to connect the call.
“Go for Cranberry.”
“I see you’re headed back,” the voice said. “I hope the break helped. There are three hard weeks ahead and jobs to get done.”
“Not afraid of a little hard work,” she said.
“It seems you gave holiday gifts to Pear, Lemon, Apple, and those kids. You even sent presents for Lemon’s girls and the Seraphim. I don’t see anything for me,” the voice said.
“To do so would mean I would need to track your location in Michigan, and since you’re so far out, near that fingertip, getting a package to you would be difficult,” she told the voice. “I sent it to your PO Box. Evidently, you haven’t checked it in a while.”
“So, you did think about me,” the voice said.
“We are a team. One finger can’t function on a hand without backup and support, especially from the thumb,” she said. “My years of supporting Cherry gives me a unique insight into the loneliness of this job. It’s important to know people care about you.”
“You get on my fucking nerves,” the voice said. “I need to provide you with an update.”
“Listening.”
“The visitor you had coffee with has made it clear that if one hair on your head is touched, they will have the full wrath of his vengeance,” the voice said. “Cranberry, what did you do?”
“I made him breakfast and had a conversation.”
“What...how in the hell? He just showed up on your doorstep and you let him inside. Cranberry, please explain it to me as if I were a first grader,” Azrael said.
“Boss, I woke up, and he was in her house,” she said. “Passion Fruit was gone, and when I realized who he was, I made coffee and breakfast so we could have a talk. He assumed that I had seduced his son, when he delivered the product to Lemon. The Bushmaster, that’s his son, put a tracker on my vehicle, and each time the tracker went to Indiana, his son got mopey, mewling that his heart was broken. Daddy came to see what was up.”
“You have a tracker on your vehicle you failed to mention to me?”