Page 3 of Snow Blind (The Technicians #14)

E lliot Parker needed to clear his head. Pieces of the puzzle were coming together faster than his mind could process the results. If the person he thought was in charge of one of the largest trafficking operations in the Great Lakes was whom he believed it to be, then shit was going to hit the fan. He was no whistle-blower, but there came a time when a man needed to take a stand for the little guy. The courage required to make such a statement needed support. At this point, he needed his head examined, which was why he wanted the weekend away- to put things in perspective.

He wanted to hike a few trails at Burgess Falls and camp out over the weekend, and then on Monday, a decision would be made. The idea to save on fuel by riding his motorcycle and towing his compact trailer. The trailer was large enough for him to sleep inside and big enough to carry the necessary camping supplies. He'd made it to the campsite, securing his spot for the weekend and feeling better about his decision to get away. Once he settled in, he planned to hike the 1.5-mile strenuous trail to see the waterfall. The gorge, he'd heard, was closed indefinitely, and he had no plans to venture in that direction, but a few photos would work nicely for his album.

Arriving at the spot where he planned to camp for the weekend, he began to search for stones to make a small fire pit. He'd only brought four wooden logs with him so he’d have to find more wood if he planned to stay warm. Content with the progress, he wanted to stretch his legs after the ride out on the bike. All he took with him were a bottle of water and his camera, since it was only a mile.

Midway up the trail, he noticed no one else was out hiking or walking. An uneasy feeling came over him, making him look around to see if he was being followed or hunted by something with four legs. As far as he knew, there were no large predators in this part of the country. He nearly made it to the waterfall when he noticed pilings of brush over the path.

"Going back," he said, looking over the edge of the cliff.

As he turned, a sound startled him. His body was hit with a thud and he stumbled, grabbing his shoulder at the delayed pain reaching his brain telling him there was an injury to his person. The sight of the blood had him turn in the direction the bullet came from, causing him to lose his footing and go over the edge. Pain was all he remembered as he hit rocks on his way down the cliff. A snap came from his leg, indicating a broken bone, but when he landed, the wind was knocked out of him and he lost consciousness.

His eyelids fluttered. He groaned from the pain radiating through his body. Trying to move, he realized he was no longer on the ground, nor in the woods. He was in a home. It wasn't his home. He made an attempt to move his leg, discovering it to be in a cast. He wanted to sit up, but his belly ached, his ribs hurt, and his face was in pain.

A shaky hand went to his face, feeling the gauze over his nose, chin, and forehead.

"Are these staples?" he whispered as his hand ran along his cheek.

Curiosity sent his good hand under the covers. His underwear was on, but a catheter was inserted into his junk. Fear set in. He wasn't in a hospital. Where am I? A new fear was unlocked when he felt his shoulder and realized he wasn't imagining things; he'd been shot.

"Where am I?" he said softly.

"You're here with us," a voice replied.

"Who is us?"

"Your guardian angels, I guess," the voice said. "You have a lot of recovery ahead of you, and you're hidden for now."

"I was shot," he said, swallowing hard. He felt dehydrated in his mouth, but his eyes saw the IV in his arm. "Am I in a hospital?"

"Someone tried to kill you," the lady said. "Before you do anything or say anything more, we need to give you time to wrap your head around what has happened before you start talking."

He didn't know who tried to kill him. He didn't know the voice of the woman who was his supposed guardian angel, but life had taught him to trust few, say less, and shut up. He'd seen this movie, telling the person everything they needed to know, not knowing that perhaps the person being his savior could also be his captor.

She asked, "What is your name?"

"I go by Bryan," he replied, uncertain if she had his wallet and ID. "My mind is fuzzy. Where am I please?"

"Bryan, you're with me," the feminine voice repeated.

"Yeah, but are you my savior or my captor?" he asked before blacking out.

Passion Fruit couldn't answer the question because she honestly didn't know herself. The fax machine had gone off in her office on Saturday issuing a work order for the same area where the man was camping. In the world where she existed, no one believed in coincidences. The perplexing portion of the day occurred when a body came tumbling over the rock face where she was staging a scene for the accident of a man who would come tumbling over the same rock face. However, in her scenario, the man didn't have a bullet in him.

She had more than one problem. One, the work order she received had not been executed and she had no results for her boss Azrael. Two, the likelihood that her target and this man were connected held a high probability of what the fucks. And last but not least, her target could still be out there, so she went and looked this morning.

In her hunt to find clues of the person for whom she had been staging the accident, the only things she found at the campsite were the motorcycle, an extra pair of boots, and a backpack. Any identification for the man had been removed. When the Cranberry had cut away his pants, there was no wallet to be found in those either. She could only go by the name he gave her, which was Bryan. She would keep her eye on the news for a missing man whose last known location was Burgess Falls.

Passion Fruit exited the room, carrying the collected bag of urine. There was a pink tint to it, but it wasn't a cloudy deep pink. She concluded the internal injuries weren't severe enough to warrant opening him up to search for damaged organs. Cranberry waited for her in the living room.

"I want to ask questions, but I’m not sure if I should," Helen said to her. "However, if whoever shot him is looking for proof, they are going to come tracking. I thought the guest this morning was tracking him."

She walked past Cranberry to the makeshift surgical room off the kitchen, "You weren't expecting him?"

"No, he was the last person I would ever expect to see," Helen admitted remorsefully.

"Then why was he here?" she asked as she donned gloves before emptying the waste down a drain.

"A concerned father trying to understand a son who is more than likely so much like him that it is unnerving to them both," she replied.

"And why, pray tell, is this man coming to see you about his son? Are you in a relationship with a younger man because he...Cranberry who was that? Was that the Fer de Lance?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Helen said, "but he did take your coffee mug. It was the only thing I saw him physically touch outside of taking the bacon from the fridge."

"Shit, I don't want to know," she said, looking at Helen. "Honestly, I have no idea what to do with you or how to train you to stage accidents. We have three months together, and right now, I am at a loss."

"Well, I learned how to install a catheter yesterday against my will," Helen said, trying not to laugh. "I don't know if I will be able to make eye contact with him once he gets on his feet."

"Against your will?"

"Yes! I would not have voluntarily chosen to witness that process ever! I also learned how to do a basic debridement of a wound and put on a plaster cast," Helen said. "You ran an IV line, pushing two pints of O-Neg, which you happen to have in the medical fridge as well as a gurney in your home. I swapped out the blood bags for a saline solution for hydration for the patient. I assisted in the removal of a bullet and cauterized a wound with a hot poker. I did a physical examination of a man's injuries, tending to the most critical. And that was my first day with you."

"Well, yeah, there was that," Passion Fruit said. "Can we go back to the Fer de Lance being in my home? How did he get in and why is that chair over in the corner?"

"He moved it there to be all dramatic and shit," Helen said. "He tracked me here. Evidently, I have a tracker on my vehicle."

"Cranberry, we need to remove it."

"I think I might be safer with it there for now," she said. "It is how he found me, and until I get a transponder, let it be under his watchful eye."

Passion Fruit watched her face. "Do you want to discuss why he was here to talk to you about his son?"

"Nope; do you want to discuss why you brought that man into your home to mend and repair? Is a bitch lonely for some company that talks back, unlike the dog?"

Passion Fruit stared at her. She wanted to open up and talk. She needed to talk to someone, but it was too soon in the mentorship to be that candid with anybody, especially an untrained Technician.

Helen picked up on it. "Hey, I get it. I do. You don't know me or anything about me. I was sent here to train, yet you have no idea what I know, but you have learned in the past twelve hours that I am teachable."

"True."

"You also learned that I walked up and saw you dragging a body. I asked no questions, but jumped in to help," Helen said, "so you can count on me."

"Also, true."

"I didn't freak out at the sight of blood, nor to walking out and finding a stranger inside the home," she said. "I think we will figure it out as we go along. My name is Helen."

"Lashonda," she replied.

"Okay, you don't look like a Lashonda," Helen said, eyeing the woman with Hispanic features but Albino looking skin.

"My daddy named me after his favorite stripper," she confessed.

"Shenita is my birth name, so my daddy must have wanted me to become one, so we have that in common," Helen said.

"You father in your life?"

"Yes, but not like he wants to be," she replied. "Partially my fault. Primarily my wish."

"Same," Lashonda said, "my father is a bad man."

"My father ran off with my mother's sister," she replied.

"Well, mine picked my mother out of the women he trafficked from Central America, took her home to his family, made her his housekeeper and then his whore," she said.

Helen watched the anger in the woman, an anger which still needed a home to flourish and infest every living organism around the open sore. However, she saw another flicker of an idea in her eyes, leading her to ask, "So he paid for you to attend medical school?"

"How did you guess that?" Lashonda asked.

"You hate and respect him at the same time," Helen said. "Fathers can do that to people, but what I have come to understand in the past few months is that men are also fragile. The right male figures in their lives to guide them can either make them into wonderful, loving fathers or assholes."

She said it with honesty, thinking of Mark Neary and how he had raised his son Michael, who was known as Mr. Slow. Michael had married Helen’s cousin Abigail and was a wonderful father to his daughter Naomi and became a friend to Helen. His brother, whom she was involved in a relationship with, was raised by the same man and was also a good guy.

"And what does that mean to me, Helen?"

"It means, Lashonda, that your anger needs a new direction and focus," she said. "You're fixated on who he is now. The real way to get to a man like that is to understand where he came from and how he was made into the monster he is. You get those answers and you understand the man."

Lashonda scowled at her. "You're smarter than you look."

"Why do people keep saying that? Do I look like a dumbass or if I am mentally dull? You know the Fer de Lance asked me if I was unwell or on the medication ," she said, frowning imitating his accent.

It was then that Lashonda Temple actually laughed. She laughed loudly, holding her belly. Each time the laughter eased off, she looked at Helen and laughed harder.

"I don't think it's that funny," Helen said, poking out her lip.

"Honey, when the baddest mutherfucker on two continents asks if you're unwell or on medication, you know that your radar is left of center," she said, laughing again. "I changed my mind; you are going to be so much fun to train."

Helen didn't appreciate Lashonda's sense of humor, especially at her expense. "And the dude in the other room?"

"He lied to me and said his name was Bryan," Lashonda said, picking up on the change in Helen's tone. "Let's get his fingerprints, run them through the database, and find out who he really is."

"Roger that," Helen said. "Question. Why were you in the same spot where he was shot, or why were you in the same spot where he fell?"

"I was there to stage an accident for a contract, which I didn't fulfill," she said. "Azrael is not going to be pleased with me."

Helen stated, "So we need to reacquire your target and restage the set up. Let me get my computer and get an update on where the target's next move is to help you get in place. Will that help?"

"Naw, I got it," she said looking down the hall. "Helen, this feels weird. I think I fucked up in a way that is going to change a few things. Coincidences and me aren't good friends. That dude being in the same location I was staging an accident is just too weird."

"You got an image of the target...but wait...yeah, the dude in the other room is missing his face. I mean, it's there, but in a Phantom of the Opera kind of way," Helen replied, turning down her lips.

"Again, too coincidental. If the universe is his silent ally, I'm supposed to help him," Lashonda said.

"Let's just make sure we help ourselves first," Helen said, going for her Technician kit to remove her finger printing set.

Today they would find out who he was, or at least she thought they would. In the room where the man's bandaged hands were, she looked at his fingers, ready to ink them for fingerprinting, only to discover the man had none.

Helen was taken aback. She whispered into the void, "What in the fresh hell did this accident-prone cat drag home?"