Page 14 of Snow Blind
Chapter 5-Unfortunate Incident
The ache to her jawadded to the dull throb in her belly, which churned with acid as she sat behind the wheel of her vehicle, attempting to listen to the universe. A feeling like this didn't come at her often, but when it did, Helen recognized it as the start of fear. Why she felt afraid, Helen wasn't sure, but life had taught her to listen.
Another issue of contention for her was having to use her money to buy clothes for a dude that wasn't her man. Instead of embarrassing him by asking his sizes, she had rummaged through the burn piles of trash to find any remnants of the cut away pants, shirt, and jacket. Finding none, she used Mustang’s sizes, cutting Bryan down by four, and Helen made a note in her handy dandy planner of his sizes, then used her phone to search for local stores.
She sat behind the wheel of the SUV wondering why she needed to be the one to go into town to buy Bryan some drawers. He wasn’t her man, and personally, she was offended Passion Fruit had given her such a task as if she were the hired help.
“Well, technically, I am, but that’s beside the fucking point,” she grumbled, starting up the Subaru.
She pressed the button to open the garage door where she’d been told to park out of sight and eased her way out of the garage onto the gravel drive. The nose of the vehicle pointed toward town, and she made her way down the road. An uneasiness came to her again as she reached for her personal cell phone. It rang in her hand, nearly making her jump. Helen hit the brakes and looked down at the device. It showed no number and only read unknown as the caller’s identification.
“Nope, not today,” she said, setting the device down.
A text message flashed and instructed her to take the call. She stared at it, watching it ring. A second text came.
GENTLY, SHE SLID HERindex finger across the screen, connecting the caller.
"Yes?" she said into the device.
“Ola, Tia,” the deep voice said.
“Bushmaster?” She softly spoke into the line.
“Sí, it is I,” he said. “I understand you had a visitor yesterday.”
“Correct; we had a nice chit chat,” she said taking her foot off the brake. “Are you well?”
A loud sigh proceeded his next words. “As one can expect in such scenarios, he is angry, a predicament I often find myself in with him.”
Helen knew Micah Delgado was speaking of his relationship with his father. Father and son relationships were often as complex as the relationship between a father and daughter, which she understood well. She attempted to offer a bit of solace.
“He was curious as to what and why. I don’t understand the why myself,” she said to Micah Delgado, recently inked by the cartel and given the handle of The Bushmaster. He'd placed a tracker on her vehicle to keep tabs on her comings and goings. Currently, she was going, and he was tracking. She too wanted to understand the what and the why for his actions. Helen inquired again about his why in tracking her movements.
“Too many interested parties in you, Cranberry, which raises red flags. I am keeping watch to keep you safe,” Micah told her.
“Keeping me safe from whom, Bushmaster?”
“I find slight amusement,” he replied, “in the things we often look the hardest to find, which are usually right under the nose. Be careful today. Pay attention to those paying attention to you.”
“Okay, weird and cryptic. Hey, how is Alita?”
The pause came as if he were attempting to gather the complicated thoughts hovering on the periphery of his brain. The relationship between him and his personal guard Alita would be one that would grow in complication as they aged. At 18, the young man was navigating his own place in the world. A beautiful young woman as a bodyguard would change his life in ways he had yet to figure out, but that was for another conversation and another story.
“She wants to go to the winter formal. I would rather shoe the horses and muck the stalls, but we do what we must.”
“Bushmaster, be young while you can,” she told him. “Adulthood isn’t all that fun.”
