JE created the characters below.
Jenny (JenRar) your work as the beta on this story is incredible. Thank you for giving so generously of your time and know-how to make this story stronger.
Chapter 8 – Just When Things Were Going so Well
After accepting the fact that men are unable to leave a television on the same channel for more than ten minutes, I picked up the laptop and began to look up random things online. The first thirty minutes were interesting, as I learned that the chances of you dying on the way to buy a lottery ticket are greater than you actually winning the lottery, and that the can opener wasn't invented until forty-eight years after the can was. But after that, the facts went from interesting to downright weird, so I had to stop.
I glanced over to Manny and saw that while his face was aimed at the television, he still didn't look like he was watching it. "Is there anything you'd like to know?" I blurted out.
He looked at me as though he didn't understand my question, so I gave him some random fact examples, and he nearly smiled before saying, "You're bored out of your mind, aren't you?"
There was no point in lying to him, so I nodded.
"Do you have all the RangeMan search programs on that laptop?" he asked, surprising me that he wasn't just shooting down my question.
"Yeah, they run a little slower than they do in the office, but I have access to all the information," I replied, pulling up the general search program I always started with and logging in just in case he had something I could do.
"How much can you find out about Mateo Hernandez?" Manny asked, narrowing his eyes when he said the name.
"There are over eleven hundred people currently alive with that name in the world. Is there anything else you can give me to narrow it down a little?" I asked, hopeful. I could certainly go through every one of these, but I had a feeling I'd get a quarter of the way through and start begging for a break so I could go back to reading random facts.
"He was born in Colombia and is the only son of Julio Hernandez," Manny added, narrowing the field down to a single candidate.
"Got him," I mumbled under my breath. "How much do you want on him?" I asked so I'd know how specific to get.
"Everything there is," Manny said, shifting a little in the bed.
I started the standard scan, knowing it would take a little while to produce anything. "It's running," I told him so he'd know I was working on it. "Can you tell me what I'm looking for?"
This time, he hesitated, as though he wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to give me any more details. He must have decided in my favor, because he confessed, "I think he's the man who tried to kill me. I need to know everything there is to know about him so that when I can safely get out of here, I can go hunting."
Ah, I recognized the expression on his face now as one I'd seen a few times before. The first time I saw it was on Ranger's face after he saw what Abruzzi had done to me. The next time, Tank's face had had that look before he disappeared for an hour and then the skip that had nearly raped me when a distraction went terribly wrong had been picked up. Strangely that skip never made it to jail, as he somehow outsmarted the guys who had been hauling him in, and then he'd turned up in his apartment a couple of days later after committing suicide with a single gunshot to the head. I had a feeling Manny was saying that when he was able to exact his revenge, Mr. Hernandez would suffer a sudden onset of severe depression before taking his own life, as well.
I watched the screen flicker and then the basic data sheet come up. Normally, I would print this off, but it would be about seven pages long and the portable printer I had was so slow. "Do you want me to use the little printer on this, or should I just read it off to you?"
He turned off the television, moved his bed back slightly, and then shut his eyes before saying, "Read everything to me."
I began at the top with his date of birth and demographic information. I figured this was all stuff Manny already knew, but he didn't interrupt. I read about Mateo's school performance, that he was lackluster at best and dropped out after only one year of higher education in order to join his father in their family export business. Officially, they exported textiles, but the government seemed to suspect them of being a major drug cartel, so my guess was that was what they really shipped out of Colombia.
Near the end, I read about Mateo's personal life, which included a wife named Benita and twin daughters, Maria and Anita.
"When were they born?" Manny asked, speaking for the first time since I started talking.
It took a little more digging to produce a birth date of April first, 2008. "So they're four," I added, doing the mental math for him.
"What else?" Manny asked, obviously interested in hearing more.
"That's the end of the standard search, but I can pull up some other information in the different databases," I offered.
He nodded and then turned his head in the direction of the windows. They were covered, so there was nothing to see, but I figured he wasn't really looking anyway; he was turning away so his mind could mull over everything I'd just shared with him.
I got the news scan running for articles over the last three years and a secure scan of data collected on him by the various branches of the US government. I wasn't entirely sure about the legality of the last one, but Ranger had given me the ability to use it, so I decided to go with it.
While those were searching, I noticed he was looking around the room. When he asked, "Where the hell are we?" I couldn't help but smile.
"What?" I pushed a little, unable to stop myself. "You don't like the décor of the safe house?"
His confusion grew at my response. "I just don't remember RangeMan owning a sixties retro house."
I looked around at the brown shag carpet, the burgundy, green, and gray-striped velour sofa, and the lamps with the little fringe of orange balls hanging around the shade and had to agree that this looked like a bad stereotype of a historic sixties dwelling.
"Actually, RangeMan doesn't own this place," I explained.
"Then where are we?" He wasn't irritated, but he was curious.
"We're about five miles outside of Trenton in a house that is owned by my Grandma Mazur. This was the home her parents lived in," I told him.
Manny looked around quickly once more before asking, "Your grandmother isn't here, is she?"
That made me laugh. "No, you're safe."
His head fell against the bed once more. "Good, because we were going to need to discuss me wearing pants if I had to be exposed to her."
"Trust me, if Grandma Mazur thought you could be exposed in front of her, something as insignificant as a pair of pants wouldn't really keep her from seeing what she wanted to see," I warned him, admiring her spunk even if I was occasionally mortified by her behavior in certain settings.
"Why hasn't the place been…updated?" he asked gently, obviously not wanting to insult me by stating the obvious that this place could be a set for a documentary on the swinging sixties if it was toned down a little first.
"They both passed away about three months apart in the seventies when they were in their nineties. I guess they redecorated when this was all in style and then were too old to modernize any more after that," I explained, before deciding to give him the full scoop, too. "Of course, they were a little on the out there edge of things, so for all I know, they may have intentionally done this because they had a thing for color."
"What do you mean a little on the out there edge?" Manny asked, giving us our first pleasant full-length conversation since we'd been forced together.
"My Grandpa Mazur called them gypsies. They immigrated to America from Hungary when they were only seventeen and somehow made a life for themselves that centered around this house and the parcel of land it's on. Being here had a strange effect on people; they tended to be more relaxed and happier, but that could be because Nagypapa was a jokester and Nagymama was the world's best cook. They spent loads of time outside in their garden, which was huge and full of food and flowers." I stopped abruptly when I felt like I was rambling, unsure if Manny really wanted to know all of that.
"What did you call them?" he shocked me by following up.
"It's the Hungarian names for Grandma and Grandpa," I explained, realizing they were somewhat strange titles if you weren't used to hearing them.
"Do you speak Hungarian?" he questioned.
"No...I know a few phrases, but they didn't really try to teach me. I asked why that was once, and they said they used Hungarian to say the things little ears didn't need to hear," I told him, sharing a memory I hadn't thought of in years.
"So nobody has lived here in over twenty years?" Manny looked around, trying to fully understand what I was telling him.
"Nope. Grandma Mazur and my mother come over a couple of times a year and check on the house and clean it, but they won't let anyone stay, and Grandma Mazur refuses to sell the house or land. She said her parents would haunt her if she tried it. Apparently they wanted one of their grandchildren to live here, but they were very particular about the circumstances under which that should happen," I said, knowing I was being a little vague.
I should have known he wouldn't leave it there. "What circumstances?"
It was tempting to tell him it was none of his business, but I didn't want to shut down the conversation just because it was getting personal. "According to Grandma Mazur, the people that live here need to be madly in love with each other, or the mojo in the house from my great-grandparents will make them go crazy."
"Mojo?" he echoed.
"Gypsies, remember?" I teased as an explanation.
"So they did some kind of magic?" He actually seemed interested.
I shrugged, not really knowing the answer. "Nagymama was really earthy; she did stuff with lots of herbs and flowers. And Nagypapa had a way with people that was calming. He could read somebody the first time he met them, sizing them up about what they needed so they would trust him and relax, knowing he was sincere in wanting to help them. I don't think you could call that magic, but it was magical to be around them, if that makes sense."
"I get the difference. It sounds like you share a lot with him," Manny offered, making that probably the first nice thing he'd said since he woke up here.
I blinked at him, unable to formulate something to say in return. Luckily, Manny yawned, which gave me the excuse of telling him he should rest. He didn't argue, so I took the chance to shut the lights out, turn off the television, and pick up the laptop to make my escape into the kitchen.
The programs I'd started running when we began talking had finished, so I hooked up the printer and started running pages through, despite its slow speed, so Manny would have something to read when he woke up. As it came off, I read through everything, highlighting what I considered to be important information.
By the time I'd gone through fifty pieces of paper, I'd come to the conclusion that Mateo Hernandez was a bad man. While the Colombian press seemed to think of him as a humanitarian of the highest caliber, surrounding counties had blocked him from crossing their boarders, claiming he was responsible for murders, drug trafficking, and many other atrocities to women and children. Additionally, it seemed there had been an unexplainable amount of explosions surrounding him when he traveled, often resulting in the death of one or more "innocent" people. The American government had him on a watch list as being suspected of horrible crimes. They had been unable to prove anything; and his philanthropic efforts gave him a different sort of reputation so he was not specifically barred from entering this country.
According to what I could piece together from newspaper articles and other websites, he was in America now, which would give him opportunity to have crossed paths with Manny. Although, I still couldn't see a connection that would explain why he was so convinced that this was the guy that tried to kill him.
I figured Manny would be recovering from his injuries for a couple of months at a bare minimum, so I projected Hernandez's travel calendar as best I could through that time so he'd see there would be multiple opportunities to contact him once he was up for it. Hernandez didn't seem like the kind of guy you wanted to cross unless you were at a hundred percent.
Once I was done gathering everything I thought possible, I shut down the computer and stretched. I was exhausted, too, so I decided to take my own advice and get some rest. Before I went to sleep, I checked the time and topped off Manny's meds, deciding that beginning tomorrow, we'd start stretching the wait time between doses out a little more. For now, though, I wanted him to rest well, and after moving around for his bath, I didn't want him to be uncomfortable.
With that done, I collapsed on the sofa and curled up on my side with my head on one of the throw pillows. I couldn't get comfortable; something hard was poking my hip, so I got up and moved the cushions around to discover a Glock had been wedged between them in the center of the sofa. I wondered how many other guns were hidden in the house. Of course RangeMan would consider strategically placing guns to be vital in cleaning and prepping a house for occupancy, so I shouldn't have been shocked. I moved the gun to the coffee table, where all the medical supplies were spread out to hide it. My first reaction had been to hide it in the cookie jar in the kitchen, but I figured it might be a good idea to offer it to Manny instead. I knew most of the guys felt naked without a gun, so he might be much more comfortable if he had a weapon somewhere in his bed. I put it inside the file I'd been using to track all the medication doses and times, figuring that way I couldn't forget to offer it to him, and then climbed back onto the couch, desperate for some rest.
Most likely, I fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow, as it seemed like I went from dragging to dreaming almost immediately. I was walking out the back door of this house and into the garden in the back yard that looked exactly as it had when Nagymama had worked it when I was little. In the center was a picnic table where she and Nagypapa were seated on one side talking to Manny.
They smiled at me as I approached, but Manny didn't seem to acknowledge my presence.
"He can't see you, child. You can sit down," Nagymama told me as I drew closer.
I sat on the same side as Manny and watched as my great-grandfather spoke to him about not letting the past take away his future. Manny was listening, but I could tell he wasn't changing his mind. He wasn't arguing, but something in him couldn't let go of a piece of his past.
Nagypapa told him, "Do you think she would want this? Would she want you to give your life, too, even though hers is already gone?"
Manny looked away, out at the edge of the garden, before saying, "She wouldn't want her death to go unavenged."
"No, son," Nagypapa corrected him. "She wouldn't want her death to be for nothing. But the dead no longer need vengeance. What good is that to us now?"
There was no response this time, as the truth of what had been said soaked in.
"If you sacrifice your own life, it dishonors her gift to you. Would she want that?"
It took a long time before Manny softly responded, "No."
"Then why do you poison yourself with these plans? You lie there planning ways to hate, planning death. Why aren't you living?" Nagypapa pushed.
"It's not that easy," Manny attempted to argue, before he was cut off once more.
"Yes, it is," Nagypapa corrected. "You make it hard, but you can stop that, yes?"
It seemed that Manny and Nagypapa faded off so that I was left alone sitting opposite Nagymama at the table. "What was he talking about?"
She smiled at me and wagged her finger. "Always a curious child. Only he can share his secret, but you can help him to want to."
"How?" I pleaded. "Until tonight, he didn't even want to talk to me, much less accept my help."
"Ah, my child, you can't give up so easily," she instructed.
"But what else can I do?" I wondered, completely at a loss.
"Sometimes it isn't about doing new things, but continuing to do the same things so that he can learn to depend on them," she advised. "You aren't the only one who has past reasons not to trust."
Before I could ask what that was supposed to mean, she vanished and I was left sitting in her garden by myself. I walked around for awhile, wishing someone else was here to talk to, but in the end, I realized they'd given me all they could, so I was on my own for awhile. I sat back at the table and put my head on my arms, and as I felt myself go to sleep in my dream, the voice of my great-grandmother filled my ears to say, "Just because you don't see us doesn't mean you are alone."
That caused me to awaken with a jolt, only to find myself sitting up on the sofa where I'd gone to sleep. Manny was looking at me as though I were some kind of wild animal, so I took a few deep breaths, reminding myself that it was just a dream. I was not living or dreaming in the twilight zone.
"It was just a strange dream. I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's okay," he replied calmly. "I had a weird one, too."
We looked at each other for a few minutes, and then I stood up, heading to the kitchen. "I'm making some coffee. I know you don't want any, but can I bring you anything else?"
He didn't respond right away, so I kept walking.
After a moment, he called out, "Is there anymore jello?"
I wasn't sure anybody would believe me, but I finally understood why my mom spent so much time in the kitchen. It was a nice feeling, especially if you didn't know what else to do, to be able to give someone something you made for them to eat. Of course, my expertise ended with boiling water, so jello was about the extent of what I could offer, but he didn't have to realize that.
I whipped up a new box, picking the cherry flavor this time since it was dark enough that it was as close as I could get to black, which the guys at RangeMan seemed to be so fond of. Once it was in the fridge, I pulled out the rest of the watermelon and scooped it into a dessert dish. It was a white, frosted glass dish that was rounded, small, and stood on a stem. I used to love eating out of these dishes because it made the meal seem that much fancier.
The coffee maker began to hiss and gurgle, announcing the end of the brewing cycle, so I fixed myself a tall mug and grabbed the jello to carry it back out to Manny with a spoon.
He looked at the dish as though he wasn't sure what was in it, but took it when I continued to hold it out to him. He set the dish on the wheeled tray and then took the spoon and mumbled a "thank you" as I moved to the chair I considered my spot in the room.
The silence stretched on for awhile. Just before it became too maddening, I remembered the full search I'd run, so I jumped up to grab the stack of paper I'd run off before my nap and brought it back to Manny, setting it beside his dish on the tray.
"What's that?" he asked, not bothering to look at it first.
"It's the rest of the search on Mateo Hernandez that you wanted," I explained.
"You did a full search on him?" Manny sounded shocked.
"You said you wanted everything I could get, and that was all I could get you unless I try to get his credit card activity for you. But unless you tell me more specifically what you need, that isn't all that helpful without a context to put the spending information into," I replied.
He started flipping through the pages, more taking in the general length than absorbing any of the information. Then he looked up and said, "You highlighted stuff."
"Of course," I stated with a shrug. "I always do that when I run a full search because the amount of data is overwhelming unless there are key pieces of information brought out to focus on at first. You said you wanted everything, so I ran it all, but in case you weren't serious about his elementary school records level of detail, I brought out the major points with my highlighter."
He continued to flip through it too fast to be reading it fully.
I was slightly annoyed that he wasn't taking my work more seriously, but I didn't want to just yell at him. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, so I spoke up again. "Is that enough, or were you looking for more?"
"I don't know what I was looking for," he replied without looking at me.
"Then how will you know if you've found it?" I wondered aloud without editing.
"I thought that was your specialty," Manny replied, pushing the tray away with the now empty dish and unread search sitting on it.
For some reason, that act pissed me off. I'd done him a favor, missing out on sleep to print all of that out. Honestly, I could have lived without knowing all the horrible things Hernandez had done, but because it had seemed important to him, I'd read it anyway. And now, he was just pushing it away without a second glance.
"I know you said you thought he was the one who tried to kill you, but why would he do that?" I hoped if I could get him to talk about it, he would get interested in what I'd done again.
Obviously, I was pushing when I should have backed off, because he looked up at me with his irritated face again and told me, "Since you are the woman who can get any answer she needs at the click of a mouse, why don't you get the answer to your own question?"
"I didn't want to run a search on you, because your past is none of my business," I explained.
"If that were true, you wouldn't be pushing me on it now," he replied, his irritation only growing.
"Don't get pissy with me. I was only trying to help," I reminded him, barely hanging on to my temper.
"Then go help somebody who wants it. I didn't ask to be stuck here with the angel of the office. Like I said, everybody else might think you hung the moon, but I'm not going to bow down just because you printed off stuff," Manny argued.
"What is your problem?" I nearly yelled back. "I didn't hang the moon, and I've already told you I'm not an angel. Just because the rest of the guys are nice to me doesn't mean they are blind to who I really am."
"Believe what you want," he countered. "I know you're used to flittering around and having the guys give you whatever you want. It's like you enter the room and all the guys start thinking with their equipment beneath the desk."
I was livid at this point, not only because he was being intentionally mean to me, but because he was insulting the guys at RangeMan in the process. "Would it kill you to be nice to me? I don't know what's pissed you off, but could you just stand up for what's got you irritated and not drag the guys into it?"
"Don't flatter yourself, sweetheart," he practically laughed. "I'm not capable of being nice like the guys are. I've got one leg banged up to the point of no return, and the one in the middle hasn't shown any interest, either. In case you haven't noticed, I'm in no condition to stand up for anything."
"Don't sell yourself short, Manny." I stood up to make my point. "From where I'm looking, you've got more skills than you thought, because despite what you think isn't functioning, you've still managed to turn yourself into one enormous dick. So obviously you can rise to the occasion if you're motivated enough."
He blinked a few times but said nothing in return. I'd had enough, knowing I'd crossed a line with my last comment, but not really feeling as though I owed him an apology for it, either. At least, not yet.
I put my hands up, hoping he understood Italian Hand Gestures 101 and that he needed to stop. "Here." I tossed him the remote to the television. "We need some time to cool off, and I don't really think I want to hear your response to that."
Not giving him a chance to respond, I spun around and retreated to the bathroom, locking the door behind me. It was a sophomoric gesture, because I knew he couldn't exactly get in to interrupt my moment alone, but I still felt the need to put up a barrier.
I knew I was prone to a hot temper, and arguing with a guy was nothing new for me. Joe could offer plenty of proof to that fact. But that had felt like we were yelling about something else entirely, and even with Joe, I didn't tend to blow that much without cause.
It was strange how I had someone here in the house with me twenty-four hours a day but I was feeling more and more alone every day.