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R eeni sat in the kitchen, fidgeting with her cell phone, when Bullard walked in.

He asked her, “You want to go into town?”

She frowned. “Why?” He gave her the short explanation. She pondered that and nodded. “Sure, let’s go see what’s up.”

“But I warn you, Jerome appears to have something against you.”

“Yeah, that’s nothing new,” she muttered. Then she gave him half a smile. “Hey, at least maybe this time, I won’t think it’s both of you.”

“No, I’m not against you at all,” he declared, as he looked over at Dave. “We may have a situation.”

Dave nodded. “Yeah, I got that. I’ll keep an eye out here.”

And, with that, the two of them headed into town.

As they got closer, she felt herself getting more and more tense. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered. “Seriously wrong.”

He looked at her with a narrowed gaze. “When you say that, what do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. I’m just not sure.” She shifted in her seat more and more. “Something’s really wrong. I’m feeling…” She held out her shaky hands. “Almost panicked and it’s not slowing down.” She frowned at him suspiciously. “You’re really taking me to the apartment, right?”

Startled, he looked over at her. “Yes. Why?”

She shrugged. “Feels like my father.”

“Feels like your father?” he repeated in astonishment.

“Yes, it is the same panic I feel when I’m cornered by him.”

“Well, Jesus,” Bullard muttered, “I haven’t done anything to bring that on.”

“No? What about this employee of yours? Jerome?”

He stared at her and then swore. “I have no idea,” he declared in an explosive tone. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but I don’t know.”

“All I can tell you is that, right about now, I’m getting the heebie-jeebies.”

“Do you want me to turn around?” he asked instantly. “I don’t want to put you in that position.”

“No, no,” she countered. “I don’t want to leave Trevor in the lurch. Plus, if something is going on there, I don’t want anything to go wrong.” She wrapped her arms around her chest, feeling almost a pain inside. “I don’t know what this is,” she muttered. “It feels very protective, though.”

“Okay, maybe you could explain that, since protective is the opposite of panicked,” he pointed out, with a note of humor. “Like dumb it down a bit, as if you’re talking to someone who doesn’t get all this stuff.”

“I’m not sure I get any of this stuff either,” she acknowledged, “but it feels as if my body is curling into a ball to protect against something that’s coming, and the only thing I can think of is my father.”

“What about this young man, Jerome, who apparently has something against you for the type of work you do? Has he done something?”

“Yeah, but it’s not even about what I do,” she muttered, and then shrugged. “I have no way of knowing what he did. All I can do is tell you what I’m struggling with right now. Sometimes I think Trevor is right, and I would be better off with Terk, so maybe he could help me deal with some of this.”

“I would agree with that,” Bullard stated. “If you have information that can help people like me, as you did,” he said with emphasis, “that information is incredibly important, and we need more people like you to get it out there. But obviously it needs to be in a sustainable, safe way for you and for us,” he added, with a chuckle. “I really don’t want to keep repairing my gates.”

She snorted. “That’s a true-enough answer.”

“Oh, believe me that Leia gave me her thoughts on that whole scenario as well.”

Reeni burst out laughing. “Yeah, I don’t imagine she takes that kind of behavior very well. She is a force to be reckoned with in her own right.”

“Exactly. She sure didn’t like my behavior toward you beforehand either,” he admitted, with a smile. “And, yeah, she is a force. All I can tell you is that I was worried about my family, and my frustration just boiled over. You had answers, and I wanted them… desperately, and it got the better of me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the whole problem with offering information. Everybody wants a whole lot more, even if we don’t have it.”

“Of course,” he noted. “To think that answers are out there, coming via psychics, is rather startling. Then Terk is another force unto himself, and he is very well known within his own field. So, any of us who have ever dealt with him, would never question him, not for a moment. If he says jump, we’re already in the air, not even asking how high, and making it the best damn jump we can. All because, if he said jump , there’s a damn-good reason for it, and you don’t even stop and ask why.”

“He is like that, huh ? Good to know.”

“Yes, he is. In your case, we did stop. We did wonder. We did have a lot of questions, and maybe we lost out on some information because of that,” he admitted apologetically. “All we can do at this point is try, not even backtrack, but get to where we need to be as fast as possible.”

“You’re almost there.” She pointed at the apartment building ahead of them. “I’m just not sure what’s in there, but definitely something is.” She looked at him and asked, “Are you sure you don’t have any enemies around here?”

“None that I know of,” he replied honestly. “I have enemies, yes. You don’t do my work for a lifetime without that, but none are coming to mind locally for this.” He was thinking hard and fast. “I think the part that’s really upsetting me is the fact that I really don’t know where this is coming from. I’m assuming it’s directed at me because everybody’s telling me it is, but what if somebody is here and is after one of my guys? What if it’s somebody who’s got a problem,… not so much with me but with one of the clients I worked for?” he asked. “What if it’s just a disgruntled person who sees me as a successful businessman and wants to take me down?” He looked over at her to see what she thought.

Just as she went to say something, a bolt of energy slammed into her, and she gasped, holding onto her chest.

“Jesus, what’s the matter?” Bullard asked.

She couldn’t get air into her chest, and it hurt so bad. “Christ,” she screeched. And then, with a wave of her hand, she managed to move the energy around her system, hitting it with little electric shocks. By the time that was done, and she could breathe again, they were parked outside the apartment building.

Bullard stared at her in horror.

“I’m fine,” she whispered.

He shook his head and cried out, “Nothing was fine about any of that. There can’t be.”

“There is,” she stated. “I’m fine now.” She took a deep breath, then looked at him and declared, “It’s definitely got Father energy though.” He winced and she nodded. “I know. Now, for you, that means that I’m a little bit more unstable, a little bit less reasonable to deal with because now I’ve got daddy issues to compound the other problems at hand.”

“No, no, no, no,” he began. “You don’t get to say that about me now. What I might have thought before versus what I’m thinking now is very different. It’s not that at all.”

“So, what then?”

“Reeni,… listen to me. I am very concerned about our men in that building,” he stated. “So, if it has something to do with your father, that’s one thing. Can you tell me if our men are safe?”

She warmed immediately at his ability to compartmentalize the issue. She looked up at the building and around the parking lot. “They’re fine, but definitely something is wrong down here. I just don’t know what it is.”

“When you say down here , what do you mean?”

“ Here -here, as in this parking lot,” she replied. “I hate to say it, but it feels very much as if somebody has contacted my father, and he’s here.” And, with that, she hopped out and slowly walked up to the entrance of the apartment building, leaving herself fully open for any kind of an attack, if one was to come. It was the only way she knew to operate. If the attack came, then she would know she was right. If it didn’t come, well then, maybe, just maybe, she’d been wrong. Unfortunately she didn’t think so.

*