Blind Copy (The Technicians Series Book 5)

by Olivia Gaines

  Raphael was taken aback by her words. For a second, he found himself with an odd feeling in his stomach and chest. His eyes were stinging as if he were possibly on the verge of shedding a tear. When he answered, his voice was laced with emotion.

  “Dusty, you asking for help tells me that you understand far better than I could have said it myself,” he said, swallowing hard. “Also, asking for help makes me proud. Get over here and let me show you a couple of things.”

  In the kitchen, Willow set out lunch for her family, sending Dusty to the garage to retrieve Raphael to come in and wash up. She was taking too long, which made Willow head to the garage to see for herself what the holdup could be. The door was barely opened when she heard her pretend husband yell ouch. Her mind went into overdrive as she flung open the door to get a full view. Raphael’s arms were around Dusty Rose. The back of her body was pressed against his front as if he were wrestling with the young woman. Before Willow could open her mouth, in three moves, Dusty was out of the hold, pretending to step hard on her Daddy’s foot and placing the heel of her hand in his nose.

  “Very good, very good,” Raphael said. “Keep in mind, if you put your body weight behind that upper thrust of your hand, you can break a nose. Only use it if you are imminent danger. Good job.”

  He looked up to see Willow standing on the landing of the stairs. “Hey.”

  “Lunch is ready,” she said. “Wash up and come on before it gets cold.”

  “You made lunch?”

  “Yes, three hots for our cots,” she told him.

  “Good enough,” he said, patting Dusty on the shoulder.

  “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, smiling at him.

  Raphael found himself frowning. The smile she gave made him feel squishy on the inside. He didn’t do squishy. He was a governmentally trained assassin or some reasonable facsimile thereof. He took out bad people for a living. There was no way in hell he’d gone through all of that to get back to the world and get conquered by a pretty, dark skinned woman who made omelets that melted on his tongue. He wasn’t about to be conquered by a teenage girl with green eyes who looked at him as if the last thing she ever wanted to do in the world would be to disappoint him. And last but not least, he sure as hell wasn’t about to get dragged across the coals by an adorable 10-year-old obsessed with unicorns.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” Karli called from the top of the stairwell, vacated by her mother to be replaced by the small unicorn worshipper. “Mommy made french fries. I’ve never had french fries. You’re supposed to dunk them in this red sauce called ketchup. Hurry up. This is exciting!”

  “On my way, Pooh Bear,” he said, realizing instead of frowning that he was in fact drowning. Raphael Hoyt didn’t bother to look for a life raft or a buoy. There were worse ways to go. If a child could find that much joy in eating fried potatoes with ketchup, then this is where he belonged, because more than anything that he’d wanted in the past few years, Raphael Hoyt longed to see her face when she tasted such a simple treat.

  THE PHONE CALL WAS indeed a treat for Rami Slanecki, who was building a name for himself as the Glitter Man. Nearly a year had passed since he’d spoken with the charismatic cult captain outside of Pine Knot, Kentucky. He’d given Proderick Hymn the number in case Proderick came across the family which had been taken from him by his wife’s meddling family.

  His bitch of a wife took her love and his child in the middle of the night, leaving him alone. Rami never laid his hand on either his wife or child, but she was spoiled, overindulged by her father and older brother. Her mother catered to her every whim and his refusal to do the same made them all label him as a bad husband.

  “I wasn’t a bad husband and father,” he yelled at the wall.

  The phone call was a nice distraction. It meant he was being hired to do a job. They didn’t know that about his life. Beauty and her Technicians didn’t know that little tidbit. Bad men hired him to do odd jobs.

  “Hymn, how can I help you?” he said into the line.

  “My children have been taken and there are two men I need you to find. One is Kindred Seoul, and the other is the bastard who took Willow and my daughters,” Hymn said into the phone.

  “Five grand when I arrive and another five when I locate these two men,” Rami said. “Do you want them alive to handle matters yourself?”

  “Kindred, I have no use for,” Proderick said.

  “Then it will be another 10,” Rami said.

  “He’s not worth that much alive. I’m not paying that much for a corpse,” Proderick said.

  “Then find him your damned self,” Rami said.

  Silence ensued on the line. Rami was about to end the call when Proderick exhaled the words, “Fine, but for that price, both are dead, and you bring home my family.”

  “Nope, ain’t no babysitting service. I find them, you pay, and you go and get your own rotten kids,” Rami said.

  The line went dead. Rami didn’t like working for the bad guys. He wanted to work for the good guys getting rid of parasites like Hymn and the rest of his ilk. His connection to the man came by way of looking for his own wife, who ran away to join a Vampire Cult in Murray, Kentucky. She was dumb like that, fascinated by things she read in books, almost unable to distinguish the difference between what was written as fiction for the amusement of lonely women and the truth.

  The vampires no longer existed in Murray, but she was told about another group in Pine Knot. She dragged his child to the homestead of Proderick Hymn, who considered the woman to be unstable because she encouraged the other women to read books. He didn’t want those types of women in his care.

  Hymn had booted her out.

  She tried one group after another until she landed in Ohio with a group of militias, operating under the guise of being Amish Mafia. They too were sadistic whoremongers. It was the last place his wife and child had been seen. Their trail went cold from there.

  In his heart, he knew they were still alive. He could feel it. He would find them and bring them home, but first, he had to go and deal with that asshole Hymn. A fleeting thought crossed his mind of locating the woman and children, but killing the cult leader.

  He would have been paid.

  One more bad man would be taken out.

  “Maybe I can still be of some use in this world,” Rami said aloud, looking at the barrel of solvent he’d taken from Wrong Way’s van. Thus far he’d dipped in a stray cat that had still been alive for a hot minute. The product she’d created was far superior to his own. He would make a mint using it to rid the world...no, he couldn’t do that. Without the traces of glitter on the body, no one would know it was him.

  “Find Beauty, return the solvent, and earn a few bonus points, and maybe I can still get the job,” he laughed, knowing Tempest Fateman could never do it again. “Serves that bitch right.”

  Chapter Seven – Likeness

  THE TABLE WAS SET WITH cloth napkins, bowls, saucers, and the fancy napkin holders; Raphael hadn’t seen much of the stuff in years. A great deal of it had remained in the butler’s pantry, and he truly didn’t have any use for it. Willow managed to give the items a second life, which he appreciated. He also appreciated the lunch.

  “Wow, look at all of this,” he said, taking a seat at the end of the table. “This looks and smells amazing.”

  “Thank you, it’s just soup and sandwiches with a side of fries, but it’s a meal,” she said, placing a bowl of vegetable soup in front of him. He stirred the bowl, eyeing the thick tomato sauce which enveloped the vegetables. The girls both had grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato and spinach. His sandwich had a wedge of ham shoved in between the slices. Eight, perfectly trimmed crinkle cut fries rested on the side of his plate next to the sandwich.

  “Crinkle cut fries?” he asked Willow.

  “Raphael, your mother has everything in this kitchen a chef or wannabe cook could ever want. She had a crinkle cut slicer, which is what I used on the potatoes to make the fries,” she said, feeling
proud of herself.

  “Honestly, there is no telling what you may find around here,” he said, looking down at the food. He waited for her okay before he dug in, and he wasn’t disappointed. “Oh, wow, this is really tasty. A grilled ham and cheese with spinach and tomato...never tasted so good.”

  Anxious, he wanted to taste the soup. Raphael didn’t even think he had soup in the pantry, but once he spooned in the first helping, he knew it wasn’t from a can. Willow had actually made the soup.

  “This is delicious,” he said, going in for another mouthful. The children remained quiet, watching him eat. They ate slowly, happy their new Daddy liked the way their Mom cooked. If he liked the way she cooked, then maybe he would allow them to stay with him.

  “Raphael, was your mother a chef?” Willow asked to make conversation.

  “No, my mother was a homemaker. Her job was to take care of my father and me and my sister,” he said. “She threw parties often and hosted Bridge on the third Saturday of the month. Once she took ill, her friends, well the ones who were left, still came by on the third Saturday to sit a spell with the old girl.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners when he spoke of his mother.

  “And your father, what did he do for a living?”

  “He was an orthopedic surgeon,” Raphael informed her. “The ongoing joke used to be at the end of this street you could get your knee fixed, your ear, nose, and throat cleared, and check your teeth. Stanley is an ENT doctor like his father and Jeb’s a dentist like his father used to be. They took over the family practices.”

  “You didn’t want to be a doctor like your Daddy?” Dusty Rose wanted to know.

  “No, I didn’t have the hands for it,” he said, holding up the bear paws God had blessed him with. “Kind of hard to hold a scalpel and do delicate surgeries with ham hands.”

  “How long have your parents been gone?” Willow asked.

  “My father, it’s been about 12 years and my mother, we are coming up on four years. She had cancer,” he said, lowering his voice.

  “I hate that word, cancer. It is said in hushed whispers as if the unbearable lightness of being is somehow lifted when the word is uttered in reverence,” Willow said. “I lost my mother to it as well, but she had it in her breast. Later it metastasized into her major organs. My father died of heartbreak at losing her. He never snapped back, and his unhappiness rubbed off on us, leaving my sister to constantly search for that feeling of belonging to a thing greater than herself.”

  “I’m sorry for your losses,” Raphael said.

  “I gained two beautiful joys in my life that I’ve dedicated six years with no regrets to guiding into womanhood. I look forward to what the future brings,” she said, smiling at him.

  “And what about me?”

  “What about you, Neck Thumper?” Willow inquired, raising an eyebrow.

  “Am I not considered a win in the things you’ve gained?”

  “Not sure yet, but I love to cook and you seem to love to eat. We share that,” she said, lifting the teacup and looking at him over the rim.

  “We have that,” he said, feeling out of sorts that there wasn’t more and starting another inner dialogue with himself.

  Do I want more?

  I like her boobs. I bet the rest of her is pretty nice too. Wait, you can’t think of the woman like that...you’re supposed to be protecting her. Shit, who’s going to protect me from her? She doesn’t need to be protected from me. No. I’m good.

  He held her gaze. “Yeah, there’s that. I need to go over a few things with you ladies after lunch. I’m going to have to work this week, don’t know when I’ll have to go, and don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  The girls both started to speak at once. Raphael’s head snapped from side to side trying to hear them talking over each other, finally giving up and raising his hands in defeat. He looked to Willow, who lowered her eyes to the plate of food she’d barely touched.

  “Willow,” he said, silencing the girls, “I have to work. Before leaving, I shall do everything I can to make sure you have what you need. You have a phone; I’ll call each day that I’m away to check on you and the girls.”

  “Outside of the neighbors, no one knows we are here,” she said. “What if somebody calls the police to report that I broke into your house?”

  “I have an easy fix for that,” he said with a soft smile. “Let’s clear the table and we’re going for a walk down to the beach.”

  “Oh, my goodness, I can’t wait!” Karli said, bounding from the table.

  “Should I wear shoes or flip flops? Maybe we can find some seashells, Karli,” Dusty Rose said.

  Willow wasn’t as easily amused. Once the girls saw the beach, they would want to go every day. The sun and exercise would do them all some good, but the idea of Raphael leaving them alone made her nervous. Proderick Hymn wasn’t a good guy. He would send his wolves out to hunt them down. She wanted to tell Raphael as much, but she figured he already knew.

  “I can’t expect the man to stop his life to take care of a woman and two kids that aren’t his. He’s done enough,” she said under her breath as she began clearing the table. “He’s done enough.”

  THE WALK SEEMED TO be the perfect balm for restless souls seeking answers that a higher power didn’t yet want to reveal. The girls raced along the water’s edge, dodging the waves rolling into the sandy shore. Raphael walked along beside Willow, starting conversations on every neutral subject he could think of from favorite Bond villains, to worst 007 movie. The footprints in the sand, when looking back or down upon, resembled a double helix of two people dancing around each other, afraid to connect, but longing to be a part of the greater construct.

  “Is your work dangerous, Raphael?” she asked, “I mean is there a possibility of you leaving and not returning to us?”

  “Hell, I could go to the store and get sideswiped by a big truck and not return to you,” he said factually. “Life doesn’t make any type of promises, so thinking we are owed something because for a fraction of a second shit didn’t fall in on our heads don’t mean we’ve broken clear of the fracas.”

  “Jeez, you don’t sugar coat anything do you?”

  “Why would or should I? Hymn was not in that federal pickup sweep at the compound, meaning he could be anywhere and more than likely looking for you and the girls. I don’t see that kind of control freak letting go so easily,” he said.

  “And you’re reminding me of this right before you have to leave us; I’m not feeling really safe right now, Raphael,” she said, lowering her head.

  He wrapped his massive hand around her delicate fingers. “Listen, you can’t get much safer than here. It’s an island. Most of the population here is predominantly white, the rest is transitory or seasonal. You’ll be gone from here soon. I left no trail for them to follow. You’re safe.”

  “That’s not what bothers me,” she said, facing him.

  “Talk to me. Tell me what’s troubling you,” he said with all sincerity.

  “I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want to leave you,” she said softly.

  He didn’t know if it was instinct, but he pulled her into an embrace. He held her close enough for Willow to hear the erratic beating of his heart. The words she wanted to hear couldn’t come to his tongue. He wouldn’t lie to her, but he also couldn’t give the lady false hope of there being a him and her. Not even if that’s what he secretly desired for himself.

  “Let’s head back to the house. I think it would be a great time to put on a movie for the girls,” he said. “Also, I have an extra laptop, and I need to show you how to order items online.”

  “Okay,” she said, letting go. The scent of his cologne lingered on her skin along with the feel of him inside the embrace. She knew later at night the smell of him would send her hormones into overdrive. Willow felt warmth in her armpits.

  “You okay?” he asked, noticing the flushed look on her face.

  “No,” she said honestly, �
��Hymn didn’t allow me to have contact with anyone but the girls. You’re the first man that has physically touched me in six years, so I’m feeling a bit warm.”

  He held up his hands and took two steps back. Raphael walked away slowly, calling to the girls and waving them in. They would need showers when they got back to the house. His mind also raced with the bit of information that would keep him circling back to the ebony woman who cooked like a goddess. It was going to be a restless night, and he pondered her words once more, allowing them to eke out of his mouth.

  “Six years?” he asked, looking at her.

  “Six long, lonely nights, strung out into years,” she said, pressing her lips together. “How many days did you say you’d be away?”

  “Shit, right now I don’t know if I even wanna go. Hell, I may call in and quit my damned job,” he said, laughing.

  “Am I in danger, Mr. Hoyt?” she asked, noticing the shift in his body language. He went from being protector to something else. Once she spoke, Raphael shifted back into protector mode.

  “From me...no, you’re not.”

  “Well, that’s a disappointment,” she said with a downturn of her lip. The girls were arriving with handfuls of seashells, both talking 50 miles a minute. She tried to answer each and praise both for their collections, but Raphael was left speechless.

  Now he had a second problem.

  Not only did he not want to let them go, he wanted to keep Willow. Six years is a long time to not be properly loved by a man. She was too young for him, and he was nearing 50. She didn’t need to be saddled with an old man. The woman couldn’t be any more than in her late 20s. Technically, that made him old enough to be her father. It felt creepy.