Chapter 115

THE RETREAT, THURSDAY EVENING

Jeff, Diana, Arlene, Laura, Joyce, Hope, Jennie and Ann were in the living room, most of them watching the news. Most, because Ann was snuggled to Jeff's side while they lay on a recliner, and she had no interest in the news at all.

"Hope will see us," Jeff whispered in her ear as he trapped Ann's hand when it slid nearer his groin.

"I know she's had problems, but are we supposed to pretend there is no sex in our home? I'm going to cuddle with my man. She'll get used to it," Ann whispered back, her hand headed for his groin again.

Her hand froze short of its goal, though, as Selina walked in bearing a now fluffy, but growling kitten, its ears laid flat on its head. There were three small Band Aids on Selina's left cheek, one on her forehead just below her hairline, and two on her left forearm. She marched up to Diana. "My Queen, where might I resupply the small Band Aids for my medicine cabinet? There was an assortment package in the first aid kit, but I have used all of the small ones that were in the box. Truthfully, Billy did not appreciate his bath; however, I have a considerable strength and weight advantage over him, and he will become accustomed to the water. Admittedly, he was much stronger and faster than I had anticipated."

Diana hesitated for a second, refusing the laughter that bubbled up inside her, realizing it would be an insult to the child. But then Billy leaped from Selina's arms to dash behind Diana and turn, bristling, to glare at Selina amid chuckles from the group. Diana managed to keep hers to a small "Urrrk" with a painfully straight face. Then the mother in her awoke. "Are you hurt? Are any of those scratches deep? Did you put antibiotic ointment on them? Maybe I need to look at them," she said, preparing to stand.

"No My Queen. My injuries are superficial, and I had enough of the small Band Aids, but I anticipate that I will need more in the future. And I did employ the ointment I discovered in the first aid kit in my bathroom."

Diana relaxed, realizing that Selina wasn't hurt. "First off, you're still calling me your Queen, and we've discussed that, already..."

"But you are the Queen of this extended family. As I explained previously, it would be disrespectful for someone my age to refer to you by your given name. I realize that everyone else here refers to you by your first name, or an endearment, but I respectfully request to continue my manner of address until I am older. It would seem ... appropriate to do so."

"I uh..." Diana got out as she looked at Jeff for help.

Anticipating, Selina turned to Jeff. "And equally so to you, My Prime. I could never refer to you without using a respectful manner of address, particularly now that I have learned more of your background."

Jeff realized he wasn't speaking to a six-year-old at the moment, despite the fact that the child in front of him was sporting a number of Band Aids and had walked in holding a kitten that had caused her to need them. Clearing his throat, "Look, Baby. Diana is, indeed, a Queen. The Queen of our household, and yes, I guess I am a Prime, but neither of those makes us any better than the next person. We would both appreciate it if you would just call us by our names..."

Tears suddenly sparkled Selina's eyes, and she turned and fled the room. Billy emitted a surprised, "Meewww," and darted after her.

"That went well," Diana said sarcastically as she came to her feet. "I'll go talk to her."

"No," Arlene said, quickly standing. "I'll do it. I'll probably stay with her tonight if she will allow me. We need to get to know each other better, anyway."

"Tell her I'm sorry, and I'll come and apologize when she's not so upset. Tell her I would be proud to be referred to as her Prime," Jeff said.

"And I as her Queen. Tell her I didn't realize..."

"I'll handle it, Mom," Arlene said, hurrying out of the room.

Jeff stood to stare out the window. "She looks like a kid," he quietly said. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

JUST OUTSIDE ATLANTA, GEORGIA

The back door of the nurses' home opened into the kitchen. "Hey, this is nice. You two have spent some money in here," the ASAC said as he walked in and looked around at the obviously new cabinets and granite counter tops. "Granted, I don't know much about kitchens, but this one sure looks nice."

"We had some money from our folks..." Bobby started, but stopped when her voice threatened to break. "Anyway, we bought the cabinets at Lowe's, but we installed them ourselves."

"Well, we did have some help," Sandra added with a quiet giggle.

The two nurses looked at each other, then burst out laughing. Turning back to Grigsby, Bobby said, "We did a lot of the work in the house ourselves, but the wall cabinets were too much for us weight-wise. This is an older neighborhood, mostly retired people, and one of our neighbors a couple of doors down has two grandsons. We kinda drafted them into lifting the wall cabinets while we attached them. Otherwise, we did everything in here ourselves."

"You would be amazed what short shorts and tight tops will get you from eighteen and nineteen-year-old boys," Sandra offered. "But we also paid them for their time."

Bobby continued, "We did most of the plumbing, too. We asked around until someone told us where a retired plumber lived. He's a widower. We baked him a cake and went visiting. We were a little more subtle with him than we were with the young men, though. He showed us what to do and got us started. Heck, anyone can learn to glue plastic pipes together, although there are a couple of tricks that he showed us. We bought How To books, and even went to Lowe's with our digital camera. They have displays of wiring and plumbing on the walls. We took pictures and printed them out to go along with the books. In addition, we watched clips on the computer on how to do things. We're outside the city limits here; not that anyone would notice what's going on inside the house, anyway, or care. This isn't one of the northern cities where everything has to be done by a licensed this or that, or done by a union person.

"The retired plumber knew a retired electrician that needed a little extra money, so he did the wiring of the house with our help. We learned a lot from him in the process, and it didn't cost us nearly as much as it would have if we had hired a company to do it."

They walked from the large kitchen into an equally large dining room that had obviously not been updated yet.

"We haven't touched this room; we usually just eat in the kitchen. The big table and chairs there," she said nodding, "were left in the house from the previous owners. We'll redo this room one of these days, but it's serviceable as it is, though not very nice. There are other rooms more important right now," Sandra said.

"Wow," Grigsby remarked as they stepped into the living room. "This floor is so shiny it looks wet." He stood looking down at his feet for a moment, then, "You can actually see yourself in it."

The nurses chuckled again and Sandra continued. "You should have seen us trying to manhandle that big floor sander until we got the hang of operating it. Fortunately, all the floors have been here so long that the wood is extremely dry and hard. If not, we would have gouged grooves in it until we learned how to use the machine. We wore out a lot of sanding belts before we were through with the living room. You wouldn't believe how tough that old oak is."

Bobby frowned a little. "We probably shouldn't have used the high-gloss polyurethane. The floor will probably show marks sooner than a satin finish would have. We put five coats on with a light sanding between each coat, and it looks good for now. We can always lightly sand it and put on a fresh coat of urethane if we have to."

"Well, it surely is beautiful now."

"The room is a little bare with only a couch, chair and TV, but we spend most of our off time working on the house, so watching TV in here isn't high on our list of things to do, plus we have smaller TV's in our bedrooms."

"Come on," Sandra said as she motioned Grigsby toward the doorway that led to the den. "We'll show you the rest of the place. We're finished with the den, but our furniture in there is Goodwill. When we're through with the house, we'll put our money toward nicer furniture."

Later they approached the bedrooms. "That's Sandra's room there," Bobby said, motioning to the door on the right side of the hall. "This is mine on this side. Each has its own bath. Well, they do now since we remodeled them," she corrected. "The plumber helped us set the commodes, but we did the rest of the plumbing and carpenter work ourselves. We're beginning to have a real assortment of power tools. A lot of men would be jealous," she finished, grinning.

As Bobby was talking, she had begun to open her bedroom door to usher Grigsby in. Suddenly, she slammed the door back closed. "Uh, wait just a minute," she said to Grigsby, her face flaming. Opening the door just enough for her to slip in, she hastened into the room, quickly closing the door behind her.

Sandra tried for a second to act casual, but it was obvious that Grigsby already had a good idea what was wrong.

"Okay," Bobby said as she opened the door after returning her clitoral vibrator to the bedside table drawer. Then looking at Grigsby's face as he walked in, she sighed, "Oh, crap, we're all adults here. Alright, we don't have boyfriends, and I left my toy out." Then turning to her sister, "We'll look at your bedroom next. Sure you put yours away?" she asked with a devilish grin.

"Uh..." Sandra got out before turning to hurry across the hall to check.

A little later, they were back in the den, where Bobby and Sandra sat on the couch while Grigsby took a chair. The two nurses looked nervous. Everyone started to talk at the same time.

"Ladies first," Grigsby said, chuckling.

The women looked at each other, then Bobby asked him, "Well, what do you think?"

"Hmmm, I guess I need to discuss a few things with you two. First off, a safe house is useless if anyone knows it's one. That's obvious of course, but crucial to whomever we're trying to protect. I can't discuss this in detail, as you no doubt realize, but I will say that Agent Hanes had information that turned out to be far more important than he realized it would be. His information caused several other ... things that we knew to ... uh, fall into place. He has seen certain individuals and we might be able to expand on that information, even though he doesn't know their names, plus he's aware of locations that we didn't know about.

"We assumed that the ... organization might want him dead, and we were not able to keep the gunfight out of the media, nor were we able to suppress the information that an FBI agent was involved, since he had identified himself when he called 911. I'm certainly not inferring that was the wrong thing for him to do. Conversely, it probably went a long way toward saving his life. Without the police blocking intersections and the paramedic's record run in that rescue unit, Agent Hanes would have died.

"After his recent debriefing, we are convinced that he is in more danger than we first suspected. Due to recent high-profile terrorists activities, we have all probably realized that it is very difficult to keep someone from being targeted and killed if the other side is determined, and has the resources to accomplish their goals. The only way we can keep Agent Hanes safe until we arrest and try these individuals is to secrete him where no one will ever know his location. His injuries and need for medical care complicate this task immensely. Otherwise, we could ship him off to a cattle ranch in Montana, or a beach house in Florida, or some other secret location where no one would ever know who he was.

"Our next best option, everything considered, is to put him in a safe house in the area and to try to maintain as much of his medical care on the premises as we can. Now, you two have offered to not only let us use your home as a safe house, but you are willing to provide nursing services as well.

"You must understand, however, that this would involve a certain amount of danger for the two of you. To keep you as safe as possible, I am willing to put personnel in the house with you and station others on the outside, as well. After the debriefing, my superior and I are convinced we will be able to take down a lot more of the people in this organization with Agent Hanes' help. You will be safe, as will as Agent Hanes, if ... his stay here remains a secret. These people are far from stupid. They will try to get to him. I'm amazed there hasn't been an attempt already. You two need to think carefully about this before you say yes. I don't want you to do this for a week, only to have you suddenly decide you want out."

"We'll do it," both women said almost together.

"And we won't back out," Sandra finished for them.

"I would prefer that you wait, think about and discuss this between yourselves before you make a decision. This would mean having several people living in your home for an extended period of time. We would, of course, provide everything, compensate you for the use of your house and pay your regular salaries. And yes, I do realize that you would be working seven days a week. On the plus side, you should have a considerable amount to add to your refurbishing fund when this is over, and as Agent Hanes' health improves, your duties should taper off accordingly.

"The doctor says Hanes will need physical therapy, but his trips to and from here on a regular basis for that therapy will greatly increase the chance of his whereabouts being discovered. People will probably see him leaving or coming back, or will at least see vehicles with blacked out windows coming and going. Our transport vehicle could be followed from the rehab location by the simple expediency of attaching a tracker to the vehicle while he's in rehab. Obviously, we will guard our vehicles, and regularly change them, and inspect them for bugs, but things happen. As long as he stays here and we keep traffic in and out of your home to a minimum, we stand a far better chance of keeping him safe.

"We also need your input on the physical therapy problem. You might have ideas that we haven't considered. We are dedicated to getting Agent Hanes back to one hundred percent within a six-month time frame, and the backing for this goes well up the chain of command. My boss and I aren't the only ones involved in this, anymore. Sometimes even politicians manage to do something good. As I've said, the agency has had some bad publicity lately. Not doing everything possible to rehabilitate an agent who the news media has made out to be a hero would reflect badly on our higher-ups. The higher you go in the agency, the more political the position — my opinion, not necessarily what those people would say."