"Nobody move," Hannibal told the others as he made his way along in the dark, "I'm going to go check the breaker."

"Hannibal, when has it ever been the breaker?" Face asked.

"Don't move!" was Hannibal's only response as he disappeared off towards the back of the house.

"Don't move he says!" Face groaned.

"That's what they say in every horror movie," Murdock said, "And you know where that gets them then."

"Yeah, same place you gonna be if you don't shut up," B.A. warned him.

Everybody tried moving around in the dark without stumbling into each other but after a few steps, it was inevitable.

"Hey!" Face suddenly exclaimed as he felt someone rush past him, "Who was that?"

"Who was what?" Murdock and B.A. asked from off in different parts of the room.

"There was somebody here," he said.

Murdock felt his way along in the dark to get back to the couch and found it empty, "Wait a minute, where's Jean?"

"What?" Face asked.

"She's gone!" Murdock announced.

"Oh great," Face groaned.

"Jean!"

A possible response was the sound of somebody groaning from out in the hall. Murdock and Face managed to get out there when they saw a weak light coming from above. And following the light, they were able to see it was coming from a candelabra Jean was holding onto; with her other hand she held onto one of the posts in the banister because she'd apparently tripped on the stairs and fallen down. As they ran up the stairs to see what had happened they saw her doing a good impression of a pretzel.

"What happened?" Face asked.

Jean groaned and let out a small sound of relief as he took the candles from her and she explained, "I came up here to get the candles so we'd have some light until Hannibal gets back."

"How the hell did you find them in the dark?" Face asked.

Murdock helped Jean up and she glared at Face through one eye and replied as though he'd been patronizing towards her "I'm an observant person, I know where things go."

"In the dark?" Face responded.

"Well finding the matches was the first order of business, and they were easier to find," Jean answered.

"Are you alright, hon?" Murdock asked as he looked to see if the bandage on her foot had been ruined in the fall.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she answered.

"How's your foot?" he asked.

"It's fine," she answered with a slight groan.

"Come on, let's get back downstairs before something else happens," Face told them.

"Please, I'd kill for something to actually happen around here," Jean said.

They got back to the living room where B.A. had been standing by incase either Hannibal called for him or somebody tried sneaking in through the windows. So far neither had occurred.

"B.A.," Jean said, "You better go find Hannibal and see what the holdup is with the breaker, it'll be our luck he'll blow the whole house up."

"Your faith in the Colonel is extremely underwhelming," Murdock told her.

"That's because I know him," she remarked.

Face used the candles to dig around in the drawers to find a couple flashlights, and after momentarily blinding himself in the name of making sure they worked, he gave one to B.A. and seconded the motion, if nothing else at least it would speed up the process. Once he'd gone, Murdock suggested to Jean they get her off her bad foot and helped her over to the couch, despite her insistences that she could manage by herself.

"So what do you think?" Jean asked, "Think the neighbors decided to take a few pot shots at the power lines?"

"I wouldn't put anything past them," Face said as he sat down on the arm of the couch, "But I still wonder what that was we were smelling out there."

"Don't you get any ideas," Murdock told Jean before she could even open her mouth.

"About what?" she played innocent.

"Jean, I love you, but I also know you," he said, "And I know that if you thought you could get away with it, you'd put out these lights and be out that door before we even knew what hit us."

She just shrugged and replied, "Couldn't blame me for trying if I did."

There was a small click in the split second before the lights came on again. They looked up at the newly illuminated bulbs in the ceiling in momentary disbelief.

"Well," Hannibal said as he and B.A. reentered the living room, "That solves that problem."

"It was the breaker?" Face asked, unable to believe the luck.

"Yes, Face, for once it was the breaker," Hannibal remarked.

"So now what do we do?" Jean asked.

"Well unfortunately," Hannibal explained, "Since we don't know what that smell is out there, we can't very well go busting over into Bakewell's home on the suspicion that he's cooking up illegal substances in his kitchen, and I don't think they're going to come over here and try anything tonight."

"So that leaves us waiting?" Jean asked.

"Until further notice, until something actually happens," Hannibal said, "Yes. And just as well, I'm in no mood to see how much worse you could make that foot in one night."

"Why does everybody keep saying that?" she wanted to know.

"Because we know you," they all answered together.

"Who asked you?" was her dismissive response.

The next morning, Jean lay on her back on the bed as Hannibal unwrapped the bandage on her foot to assess the damage, and Murdock sat up at the top near her and kept his arm pressed over her eyes so she couldn't see how bad it was, and he alternated between looking himself, and covering his own eyes with his other hand.

"Looking better today, kid, you had a narrow escape with this one," Hannibal told her as he doused a rag in peroxide to clean it.

Jean didn't move a muscle until the peroxide started to burn the cut and her whole body flinched, a small grunt worked its way through her clamped teeth and her closed lips but otherwise she didn't make a sound.

"Are you sure you don't want to see it?" he asked teasingly.

"Positive," Jean replied.

Hannibal shrugged and said, "Suit yourself," and set to work tying it up with a new bandage. "Alright, Murdock, you can look now."

Murdock lowered the hand he'd been using to cover one eye and when he saw Hannibal was finished, also lifted his arm so Jean could sit up and see for herself.

"So, you think the dumb hicks next door are going to try anything today?" Jean asked.

"They might," Hannibal said uncertainly.

"But they might not," Jean finished for him.

"That's possible too," he coyly remarked.

Jean shook her head, "You're more annoying than Sherlock Holmes."

"Comes with the job," Hannibal said dismissively. He lightly patted his hand against her leg in an equally dismissive manner and said, "Alright, you're ready for the day."

"That's a matter of opinion," Jean said, wondering just how she was going to get through the day playing blind now.

It was easier when she could hide behind the black shades, and if she did make eye contact with anybody, it wasn't obvious. But now…that was the problem, these were the things they never told you about when you didn't know someone who was blind. Could someone without the ability to see still be able to bore holes into a person with their eyes and give the illusion of staring right into their soul? She didn't know…but she would have to try. She guessed, and she hoped, that those nitwits next door had never seen a blind person before, if that were true perhaps she had a chance to pull this off after all. And then…an idea hit upon her. If amputees could still feel their missing limbs, could still feel the pain in them, the arthritis in them…then might not a blind person, still acting on reflexive impulses, use their eyes in a manner which seemed to follow just like a sighted person? Yes…that could work, if nothing else it would give her a good chance to weird out anybody she encountered, that was always a plus.

One uneventful day turned into another, then it had been three days since Jean fell down the hole in the backyard, and through all this time there was hardly a peep out of the Bakewells; it was unnerving and from the A-Team's perspective, unnatural. On any other mission by now they would have gotten to the root of the problem, got the bad guys bagged up, delivered to the police, and been back home for at least 2 days. Everybody was tired of the wait, and the heat, especially the heat, Face knew he was tired of it, and he also knew Jean was tired of it because all he heard out of her day in and day out was how she couldn't wait for this job to be over so she could go home and go swimming.

And that struck a nerve, for her as well as the rest of them. Earlier in the year, Jean had shelled out a few thousand dollars to get an in-the-ground pool put in; only it had been found out after the fact that she'd been the victim of a set of conmen who took the down payment and ran. Whoever they were, they were good; they found out which company was contacted to have the pools put in, got the addresses, and in trucks resembling the actual ones of the company, beat the real crew out to the addresses, measured the property, took the down payments and ran and moved onto the next pigeon. As a fellow conman he could both appreciate the evil genius in the scam, but also wanted to see these guy caught, and he'd given her his word that when they got back they were going to track down the men responsible and introduce them to B.A. and make them sorry they'd ever been born. In the meantime they had to have something to use for the summer so Jean had ordered in a 24-foot above ground pool, it was just a matter of getting the whole thing put together and set up. But between the five of them, they'd figured that would only take about a couple hours.

Though right about now, Face couldn't say he didn't sympathize, the heat was about to drive him out of his mind. Even with the air conditioner running the house was still a heat trap, the kitchen was the worst, Hector had been right about that. Every night when dinner was cooking, the kitchen heated up to temperatures nearing 100 and that was with the air on, and it took at least an hour to cool down enough for the cleanup. Hell, his own room had been so hot the previous night that he'd taken to sleeping out on the balcony outside his window, thinking it couldn't possibly be as hot all night outside as it was inside. He was wrong, if anything the heat outside had been even worse. Too hot to sleep, that's what it was, and yet, somehow he was sure he'd managed to get a couple hours' sleep, though for the most part he'd guess that over the past three days he maybe got a grand total of ten hours' sleep. And it was starting to show on him, he knew that, he knew that because he already felt like he was losing his damn mind and he was sure he looked the part as well. Not good for his image at all.

The sun was starting to come up already, but he was in no mood to rise or shine yet. He turned over onto his other side so his back faced the approaching sunlight and tried to go back to sleep. If he didn't get some sleep soon, the rest of the Team would have him committed, he was sure of it. He hadn't breathed a word of this to anybody but he was worried that he was already starting to see mirages. Nothing as corny as seeing a river out in the middle of nowhere or anything like that, instead the things he was seeing that he swore weren't there seemed more akin to an acid trip, not that he could speak from experience, but he'd seen enough crazy movies in the 70s to have a rough idea. And the worst part about it all was that when it was late at night or early in the morning like this, he could never be sure if he was having a dream or suffering from heat exhaustion and just seeing and hearing things that weren't there, fortunately most of the time it only happened when he was alone so he hadn't had to explain himself too much.

Now though, he couldn't be sure if it was one, the other, or if he was actually still awake for this one. He could swear he could hear somebody yelling down below. He opened his eyes and sat up and looked between the bars of the balcony and saw somebody standing on the pavement down below. Huh? Getting to his feet, Face looked down and saw they were no longer at a southern plantation style house, instead it looked like they were up in some building, and all the outside porches were connected by zigzagging stairways coming up the side of the building.

"What the?" he asked as he rubbed his eyes.

He looked down and saw that the man who had been yelling was…well, he didn't know what the man was, but whatever he was, it looked like one of Hannibal's less convincing disguises. He closed his eyes for a second and when he opened them again and looked down, the old man had disappeared and had been replaced with a much younger man in a business suit, one, Face noted, that looked around his own age.

"Excuse me," the man said as he came up the stairs, "Does one Mr. Patrick Henry Rosenbloom live here?"

"No he does not," Face answered as he folded his arms against his chest and tried burying his face in them in hopes of being able to get back to sleep.

No such luck. The man came up on his porch and for some reason felt a need to explain to him, "I'm looking for Patrick Henry Rosenbloom to sell him life insurance from my company."

"How nice," Face dryly remarked, and gestured for the man to go away, but he wasn't getting the point.

"This is a very good deal on insurance, my friend, you should get in on the action, you buy a $50,000 policy with us now, and within 20 years' time it becomes $100,000…"

The window behind them opened and Jean stuck her head out and asked, "Alright, what the hell's going on out here?"

"I can honestly say I have no idea," Face told her, and pointing to the man on the porch explained, "He's looking for a guy named Rosenbloom."

"Must be a gardener," Jean replied, and raising her voice for the man to hear she told him, "There's nobody by that name in this building." When she saw he wasn't taking the hint, she pulled her head back in the window and came out the front door.

"As I was saying," the man continued without missing a beat, "If you pay the premiums with us for 20 years, the policy then becomes $100,000 of life insurance. So, if you were to live to be 80 years old."

Jean listened to the man's gibberish for a few minutes about if they lived to be 80 or if they lived to be 90, then she disappeared back in the front door. Just when Face was contemplating kicking this guy down the stairs, the salesman looked to the door and took off screaming, Face turned and saw why when he saw Jean running out the front door with a meat cleaver in a two-fisted grip over her head. She stopped short of the stairs and lowered the cleaver and remarked, "And I suppose when I'm 200 years old, I'll get a velocipede."

Face could hardly even keep his eyes open, but he was able to stay on his feet long enough to tell her, "Thank you."

"No problem," Jean said, "There's supposed to be a sign at that door: any solicitors will be shot on sight."

"Not a bad idea," Face murmured to himself as he got settled on the floor again and tried to go back to sleep.

However that proved to be an exercise in futility because a few seconds later he heard someone else down below; opening one eye he looked down and saw the old man again, pushing a cart and seemed to be hawking vegetables like boys used to do with newspapers. He listened to the man's squawking about cabbage, lettuce, leeks, kale, carrots, radishes, etc., before it finally came to be too much He jumped to his feet, ran in the apartment, and came out a minute later with a rifle and he went over to the balcony and looked down below, but the old man was gone.

However, his heat induced and sleep depraved mind refused to let it go, and in a singsong voice he called out as he looked around the yard down below, constantly readjusting the aim of his rifle, "Oh-h-h vegetable man…vegetable gentle-man!" but nothing.

Face opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor of the balcony outside his bedroom window, the house was a house again instead of a building. He looked around and everything was as he remembered it being, only by now the sun was up and shining on everything. Oh brother, he hoped that they got to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on, and soon, because between the wait and the heat, he was going to go crazy or stupid, or both. He got up and opened the doors leading back into the bedroom and decided to see if he'd have any better luck sleeping in his own bed, it couldn't possibly be as bad as trying to sleep out on that balcony.

"Boy I wish we could get this job over with and go back home," Jean told Murdock the next morning as they sat out on the front porch while he continued reading from one of her vampire novels, "I think the wait, the heat, and the lack of any stimulation is making Face go berserk. He was telling me about a dream he had the other night, sounded like an old W.C. Fields movie."

"Oh I wouldn't be too worried about Faceman," Murdock said as he turned to the next page, "He's a lot harder than he looks."

"Still the fact remains he is a city boy," Jean pointed out, "And you take him, what, 10 miles out of civilization, away from TV, the radio, the daily news, to say nothing of reliable indoor plumbing, takeout food, fine restaurants, dry cleaning, maid services, his corvette, and any remotely good looking women, and he's starting to go cuckoo here. What the hell do you think they're waiting for?"

Murdock shook his head, "Beats me, you'd think if they were going to do anything, they would've done it by now. I don't remember ever having to wait around this long for something to happen. And they did threaten us, didn't they? Does what that guy said count as a threat, do you know?"

This whole episode was a new one for them. Not only had they not faced any further threats, or any vandalism to the property, the nighttime odors were hit and miss; one night there was something in the air, the next night nothing, and the next time the smell was something different entirely, and none of which was setting off any olfactory bells for Hannibal or any of the other guys. Strange indeed.

Jean turned her head and glanced over to the Bakewell property and murmured, "Check it out."

Murdock turned to see what she saw and he saw about five people loading up into an old truck and then taking off.

"Huh," he said, "I wonder where they're going."

"I don't know, but how many people did Hannibal say are supposed to be in the house?" Jean asked.

"Well, we've never seen more than two or three of them out at any one time," he noted.

"So maybe the house is empty," Jean said, "And even if it isn't…"

Murdock looked to her as she shot up from the porch swing and asked her, "What're you going to do?"

"Shhh," she told him, "I'm going to go investigate, if they're not going to come over here and give us a reason to bust them, then I'm going over there and finding one."

"Jean!"

"Luella, remember?" she asked as she stepped over him.

"Luella!" Murdock whispered loudly as he stood up, "Are you nuts? What if they're still there?"

"That's why I'm going in alone," she pointed out, "If anything happens to me then the cavalry can come rushing in to save the day as they usually do." Murdock opened his mouth to protest but she cut him off and said, "Now listen, Murdock, if I'm not back in…20 minutes, then you can send in the troops, alright?"

Murdock sighed, he didn't know what she had planned but he could tell she had a plan, "Just be careful."

Jean flashed a smile that was not so assuring to him, and replied, "Darling, you know I'm always careful."

Murdock laughed nervously as he watched her make her way barefoot down the porch steps and out into the yard. Resuming her act as a newly made blind woman, she once again crouched down and walked on two feet and one hand and felt her way along with the other, calling out, "Pa! Yoo-hoo, pa! Where are ya?"

Murdock sat back and watched as Jean fell down in the far side yard and feigned disorientation and got up and continued feeling her way along to the Bakewell residence. Murdock watched with his heart in his throat as Jean made her way over to the house, and he held his breath and slowly counted to ten before he ran into the house and called out, "Hannibal!"

Hannibal was willing to wait for 15 minutes before he also went over to the Bakewell home, apparently in search of his daughter, Luella. He'd given the others orders to move in if they weren't both out of the house in 10 minutes; after all if there wasn't anyone there, he did intend to look around a little for anything incriminating. First he went around the yard, trying to look in the windows as he passed but they were too dark, so then he went around to the front door and rang the bell, but there was no response. So he opened the door and helped himself in. The house was dark, and hot, not particularly clean or organized, and it reeked of something awful though he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Luella?" he called out, half whispering, "You in here?"

The house was quiet, he didn't know whether to take that as a good sign or not. On one hand, the house was large enough Jean could be in another room and not hear him. On the other…

He didn't get a chance to finish that thought because as he crossed over the threshold leading into the kitchen, he felt something hit him in the back of the head and that was the last thing he knew until he regained consciousness. Since his men weren't busting in like the movie villagers storming the castle, he took it as meaning he hadn't been out for very long.

The man who was standing over him and holding a gun on him, he'd seen around outside but never really talked to, he thought that this one was called Henry Bakewell, a younger man, didn't strike Hannibal as being particularly bright though right now he did look plenty dangerous. And he saw that there was another member of the clan standing by the door, also with a gun.

"This the welcome wagon?" Hannibal tried to joke.

"Boy you a dumb one, pal," Henry told him.

"Why's that?" Hannibal asked, gradually dropping his country accent.

"Come tres-pessing into a fella's home unannounced, thas' a good way to get your head blown off," he said.

"'Ah see," Hannibal replied, "Well I came over looking for…"

"Pa?" Hannibal felt his heart skip a beat as he heard Jean call out from somewhere else in the house. It sounded like she was moving around, and based on the looks on the Bakewells' faces, they hadn't known she was there. Hannibal saw her entering the doorway of the next room and saw her coming, feeling her way along, putting on a very good act considering she could very well see the men and their guns and her eyes weren't focused on any of it.

"Pa, that you?" Jean asked as she came into the living room, walking right past the man at the door. When he cocked his gun and pressed it against the side of her head, she stopped but her eyes continued to look straight ahead.

"Don't move," the second man told her.

Jean cocked her head to the side and looked somewhat annoyed as she said, as she demonstrated, "I know…I know, hands up over your head, left hand behind the back, just like on TV, always left hand behind the back to get handcuffed first, and why is that?"

However instead, the man grabbed her by the back of the neck of her shirt and dragged her over to where Hannibal was and tossed her down beside him. Hannibal looked her over to see if she was alright and, while he didn't know how she'd gotten into the house, he did see why she was able to get in unannounced. No shoes. Jean had jumped into this country hick appearance with both bare feet and they were still that way. Her bandage had come off a couple days ago and now it was only a couple smaller bandages to keep dirt out from the cut that was still closing. Barefoot he knew she could creep around like a cat if she walked softly and knew where all the creaky floorboards were. Now, she couldn't possibly have known where they were in this house, but for whatever reason, nobody had noticed that she'd gotten in in the first place.

"Luella, you alright?" Hannibal asked as he helped her up into a semi-sitting position instead of being knocked onto the floor twisted up like a bow.

"I'm fine, Pa," she answered as she pulled her shirt down on one side to straighten it out, "What's going on?"

He looked up at the two men holding their guns on him and, trying not to sound grim about the present situation, told her as he put his arms around her, "Darling, I think we're about to be killed."

Hannibal looked around the room for a clock on the wall, to see how much time before the others came, but he couldn't find any.

"Alright, Mister," Henry Bakewell said, "Now how about some answers, what was you really doing over here?"

"I was looking for my daughter," Hannibal said as he pointed to Jean, "She'd gone out earlier and ain't come back, so I came over to inquire if any of you-all had seen her."

Henry went over to Jean and pressed the muzzle of his gun against her throat to get her attention and asked her, "And what was you doing over here?"

"I thought this was our house," Jean answered, "I got dizzy in the heat and tried making my way back."

"You expect us to believe that?" Henry asked.

"Well if you don't, sonny, I reckon we'd like to hear your own theory," Hannibal said.

"I think you just couldn't mind your own damn business, Mister," Henry said as he aimed his gun on them.

Hannibal raised his hands slightly and asked, "That a reason to kill a man, and his blind daughter?"

"That all depends on who and what you could tell when you leave," the man answered.

"'Ah see," Hannibal responded.

The second man went over to them and stared at Jean and yelled at her, "Stop staring at me!"

"Sure, make jokes," Jean said as she continued to look at him, "As if I could stare. As it is I can't even tell you to get out of my light because I know there is no light, because there's no heat burning onto my face. It's not dark outside, because the sun's hot, but it's dark in here, because everything's closed up."

Henry also noticed that Jean turned her head and moved her eyes in compliance with whatever small sounds were heard around the room, "If you' blind, why you turning your head?"

"Really now," Jean said, "You don't mean to say that just because an eyeball can't see anymore that it also can't move? Blind does not mean paralyzed. And you may note that for a person who has spent their whole life moving their eyes in accordance to see what they're hearing, that that is not a habit that's going to be broken after merely one month of blindness."

"Uh…would either of you gentlemen happen to have the time? Could somebody tell me what time is it?" Hannibal asked, not sure, but sensing that the moment of truth may be upon them.

At those last words, Jean perked her head up like a dog and looked to the windows and answered, "I reckon it's dinner time, pa, 'cuz here comes Mr. Wolf."

A split second later, the windows were smashed open as B.A., Face and Murdock showed themselves in, automatic rifles and all.

"You win," Hannibal said with a small smirk.