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N either Yield nor Helen made a move until they spotted the top of the fire engine coming over the rise of road. In tandem, they exited the F-150, carrying two cans each of smoke and tear gas. As they reached the front door, Yield tested the door with his hand, knocking with the old Shave and a Haircut rap with his knuckles, bringing a Neanderthal with no neck to the door. He caught the man off guard by punching him in the throat and pulling the pin on the tear gas. He stuck the can in the man’s hand as he sputtered.

Helen bent low, rolling into the building a can of smoke followed by a can of tear gas. For good measure, she yelled out, “Going high!” which led Yield to duck as she did a three-point type of toss from an invisible mid-court line into the space. Coughing, sputtering, and crying could be heard as kids ran out, followed by half-dressed adult men.

Police officers arrived, going for the adults first. A van driven by Pear pulled up, collecting frightened children who ran out of the building into her wide embrace. The officers who weren’t making arrests of people coming out of the building stormed inside the structure, stopping at what they saw. Helen didn’t need to see it, she didn’t want to, but she did want to see the woman who answered the door the first time.

“Where’s that Heffah?” Helen said aloud, walking past the playground towards the kitchen. She spotted movement in the pantry and pulled her weapon. “Come on out, sweetheart, time to play a game.”

The woman came forward. Her eyes radiated hatred, and Helen didn’t give two shits. Any woman who peddled child flesh deserved a bullet as far as she was concerned.

“What are you, FBI or some shit?” the woman asked.

“No, a hell of a lot worse,” Helen replied. “Help me, help you. I can make your sentence go a lot easier if you tell me where the other two Fields of Flowers are in town so I don’t have to go hunting.”

“And why the fuck would I do that? These people will kill me,” the woman said.

“Sis I will kill you and not lose a night of sleep. I can pull the trigger right now and end your shitty existence and no one, I mean no one, will call me out for doing it or express concerns about you no longer being alive,” Helen said. “So, easy or dead, your call.”

“You don’t have it in you to shoo....fuck!” the woman screamed as a bullet pierced her upper thigh.

“The next one goes into your head. Talk so I can get home in time for dinner,” Helen said as Yield came into the room along with Pear.

The woman, clutching her leg, offered up the other two warehouses. Helen made note of both and called for medics to come care for the woman. She hoped the information was accurate and not a waste of time.

To Pear, she asked, “Hey, can you do two more today?”

“Two more what?” Pear asked, looking at Helen in shock.

“She gave the location of the other two warehouses, and we can shut down the Fields in greater Milwaukee,” she said.

“Maybe, but we need an idea of size, and hell, I’m at a loss here, Cranberry. How did you find this so fast?”

“I’m working with one of the best trackers in the business, so I can’t take all the credit,” she said, offering Yield a smile.

He once more found himself impressed that she didn’t take all the glory when all he’d done was basically drive her around. Cranberry made the call, she found the clues, she followed her nose, and she located what they sought. She also closed down a Field with minimal loss of life.

He too was curious, “Pear, can we do it?”

“Scout it out, call it in, and let me know,” Pear replied.

Helen needed to do a quick inventory assessment. “Pear, we are down supplies of four canisters, and we need a reload. What do you have in the van we can use?”

“I have snacks and lollipops along with blankets and bandages. I carry no weapons other than the one for my personal safety,” she said.

“What kind of snacks?” Helen asked.

“Chips, cookies, animal crackers, juice boxes,” she said.

“Can you spare a little so Yield and I can have a bit to nosh on while we head to the next site? We also need more supplies. Do you know where we can get a reup?”

“Call it in, and Azrael will handle it for you,” Pear said, adding, “Good work you two.”

She walked away to get the kids settled and returned a moment later with snack packs for Yield and Cranberry. Pear stated she needed at least an hour to unload before she’d be ready to roll out to the next one.

Inside the F-150, Cranberry opened the bag of chips and passed it to Yield. She didn’t know why, but she used the straw on the drink box to punch in the hole on the juice container, insert the straw, and pass that to him as well.

“Mommy, did you want to cut the ends off my sammich too?” Yield asked sarcastically.

“No, I figured it is what your wife does when you’re driving so you can keep your good eye on the road,” she said. “We will need to move as soon as I make this call.”

“Okay, Ms. Scary,” Yield said, sipping the juice box like a child who’d been reprimanded for being naughty. He snacked on the chips as she made the call.

“How did you know?” Azrael asked.

“Instinct, plus I’m sitting beside a master tracker,” Cranberry said to her boss. “We know where the other two are. If we can hit them now before they have a chance to hide the inventory or find out, it would be wise. I have addresses. Want to make some magic?”

“Give me the details,” Azrael replied, jotting down the information.

Helen provided a bit more detail, “Pear said she needs an hour. It has been fifteen minutes. We also need a re-up on smoke grenades, flash bang thingy-ma-bobbers, and tear gas. I think the flash bang thingies would work a lot better in the element of surprise, but the window is tight before somebody starts making phone calls to lawyers and shit, sounding the alarm of the raid. We can go scout it out and report back if you like.”

“Send the coordinates for the re-up for Yield. Go ahead and make it happen,” Azrael said, disconnecting the line.

“She loves me; she just doesn’t know it yet,” Helen told Yield, who nearly spit out the juice he was sipping.

“You do seem to have an effect on people. Is that how you reeled in the Mustang?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but that stallion is wild and free to roam whatever pastures he chooses,” she said. “As am I, but I’m not hungry and ain’t looking to be fed.”

“Yeah, I hear you, but that man is a master tracker. His instincts come naturally, like yours. He figures out what people want and need and based on that intel, he moves accordingly. Did he teach you the same?”

“What that man has taught me is between me, him, and Jesus,” Helen said, offering a smile. “The question is, what will you leave me knowing, Mr. Yield, about the art of tracking and making assumptions?”

“Right now, I feel like I know nothing, so there’s that,” he said. “You seem to have had plenty of training before I got here.”

“My training is based on survival,” she told him. “I have a certain look. People want to talk to me, and outside of sometimes looking like an angry black woman ready to snap her fingers and roll her neck for coming at her wrong, I’m can also be very approachable. I vibrate at a different frequency which puts people at ease with me.”

“Yeah, noticed.”

Helen pulled a knife from the inner pocket of the jacket. She pushed the corner of juice box to a point, then cleanly sliced off the end. He watched her turn up the container to drink, avoiding the fight with the straw going into the hole. Until now, in his entire life and existence with juice boxes, it had never dawned on him to do such a thing or think such a thing was possible. The Cranberry thought differently.

Technicians were trained by the government in some form or another to color within the lines. The Cranberry, as far as he could tell, lived on the periphery of a line drawn for her by people who wanted to control her existence. Instinctually, she’d learn to observe and move accordingly. She was operating on instinct alone and thus far, everything was as she saw it, and he couldn’t argue with the logic.

“Thirty minutes have passed; let’s get this done so you can get a good night’s rest,” she said. “We close them both out tonight, I’ll drive us back to Apple’s, and you can sleep there, if that’s okay.”

“It’s okay,” he said, turning to take a look at the woman. He incorrectly made assumptions about her when they initially met this morning in Apple’s kitchen, and now he would have to eat crow, washed down with a juice box. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

AT FIFTEEN TILL MIDNIGHT , Helen pulled the F-150 into the yard at Apple’s rundown home. She was glad to see it and ready for a hot shower. The ick of the assignment was a bit too much for her brain to process. The last few months had been trying on a bitch’s soul, but she felt good.

On the porch, the headlights from the truck outlined Apple’s silhouette. Ricky’s form appeared next to him. At the upstairs window, she spotted curtains moving at the windows of Oscar, Stephen and Jeffrey’s rooms. A smile came to the corner of her lips.

“It appears I have been missed,” Helen said as Yield came awake.

“I can see it,” he said, sitting up. “We made decent time.”

“Time is something I truly hate to waste,” she told him, cutting the headlights. Helen stepped out of the truck, waving her newfound small family forward. “We need to unload, guys.”

Apple arrived at the truck first, doing a visual survey of the woman. Then he asked, “Unload what?”

“The spoils of your private war,” she told him. Yield lowered the tailgate to boxes of food that Helen had removed from each of the warehouses.

Rocky asked, “Where did you get all of this stuff?”

“We found three of the Milwaukee Fields of Flowers, shut them all down, and commandeered these food stores for the house here, and I only shot one smart mouth chick who tried to be flip with me,” Helen said. “Amazing how a bullet can loosen lips.”

“You shot someone?” Jeffrey asked.

“Yes, in the leg. She is not dead but will be limping for the rest of her life as a reminder of being an evil person,” Helen explained. “She was allowing adults to hurt children in those warehouses and being paid money for it. We put a stop to it.”

Stephen, his arms loaded with a box of canned goods said, “I knew of a few kids who went into those warehouses but never came out, and if they did, we found them on the street barely alive or worse. You guys shut them down?”

“We shut down the ones in Milwaukee,” Yield said, looking at Apple. “It seems somebody didn’t want you going out and leaving your kids to handle the situation. She took care of it.”

Helen was no longer with the truck. She’d left them all to go into the home, get a hot shower, have a cup of chamomile tea, and go to bed. It was enough for one day.

Ricky noticed she’d left the group to go inside. When the kids were gone with Oscar being the last to unload the boxes of dry goods, he turned to Yield with questions. “Well, how did she do?”

“She did it all,” Yield said. “All I did was drive her around.”

“What?” Apple asked. “Explain this to me as if I were an idiot.”

Yield didn’t know where to start to explain the phenomenon that was The Cranberry, so he began with what he knew. “Whatever has happened in her life has turned her into what can be a force for good if it is harnessed in the right way. There is an inherent trait in her to care for others. You have some spoils of what was in those warehouses, but she reached out to kids on the corners to go in when the police left to empty the shelves to feed the neighborhood.”

“Huh?” Apple said.

“Yeah, we found the first one by her looking for the food suppliers to feed the kids in the warehouse,” Yield said. “A bodega that had high end foods and a woman named Rochelle told her everything we needed to know. A walk through the warehouse where the kid escaped from gave her the idea of size and set up, and we went hunting. We found it, and she checked it out by walking to the door with a jar of pickles and a jar of peaches.”

Ricky rubbed his chin, saying “You’re shitting me.”

“I shit you not,” Yield said. “She told the woman at the door that Rochelle was arriving with the rest of the supplies at the back door, which allowed her to see into the front, and she spotted the playground equipment inside to confirm we had the right place. She called Azrael, who rolled in support, quiet and deep. We threw in a couple of tear gas cans and smoke bombs and the roaches scattered.”

Apple inquired, “She shot someone?”

“The woman who came to the door. She asked for the location of the other two facilities, and the woman said no and challenged Cranberry, saying if she told the locations they would kill her. Cranberry politely informed her that the gun in her hand indicated she would kill her as well, and the one didn’t think Cranberry had it in her to shoot. Cranberry proved her wrong.”

“Good grief,” Apple said.

“That’ it! I’m in love,” Ricky said.

“If I wasn’t married, I would want a night or a lifetime in her arms myself,” Yield said. “For a second, I found myself envying the man with the whinny, but honestly, she’s scary.”

“How so?” Apple wanted to know.

"She's got knowledge, but can't put it all together. When she finally figures it out, I hope she uses it for good," he said. “I need a couple of hours of sleep then I’m heading home. She said you had a place here I can crash.”

“Sure, sure,” Apple said, “this way.”

Apple had a thumb drive's worth of information to consider as the man with the scarred face closed the bedroom door of the downstairs room Ricky had barely finished. The room had a bed and a dresser, nothing more. It would serve its purpose for the evening.

As the door closed, Apple’s phone rang. It was Azrael. The conversation would be short. He didn’t have much to say or add. In his opinion, the assessment was over.

“Bad Apple,” he said into the line.

“Can we talk?” Azrael said.

“Not much to say.”

“The report from Yield?”

“Your report from Pear?” he asked.

“Odd, but effective. Three warehouses closed and you didn’t have to leave home. What are we dealing with here?” Azrael asked.

“The hell if I know,” Apple said, “but we would be stone blind to assume that placing a weapon in her hand would make her the ideal asset. She has a quality about her that puts people at ease, and she knows how to work it. Her way with words gets past the defenses, and she gets the information needed. She’s a unifier, a doer, and has limited fears. If she does, we never see it.”

“What kind of technician would best suit her skills, based on what you have seen?”

“She hasn’t had a chance to do anything yet but track, do minor set up, and intake children,” Apple said. “Making her a sweeper would be a waste. A cleaner would be distasteful, and tracking may be her thing, but seriously, we need to see what she does with Lemon and chemicals or with Passion Fruit and Accidents.”

“Which one should be next?”

“Move her to chemicals and see how she fares with a tough cookie like Lemon,” Apple said. “I would love to be a fly on the wall for that one.”

“How much longer do you want or need?”

“I’m done; she doesn’t need me. Give her a couple of weeks off then on the next training,” Apple said.

“Good enough,” Azrael said, ending the call.