Agent finds a Warrior (4 page)

“
He won’t be able to resist you. He will
have to give his fears to Me as they come between us and obstruct
the deepness of our relationship.”

Maria’s eyes opened for a moment, “Elon has
fears?” She asked surprised.

“
Many.”

“Why do You talk with me? I’m so unworthy of
it!”

“
I choose whomever I will to fulfill My
will and I long for deep relationship with those of My own
creation.”

Maria had a question, but she held it
back.

“
Speak.”

Hesitantly Maria asked, “If I hadn’t agreed
to do Your will would You have found another?”

“
I would have.”

Maria swallowed hard, as an intense emotion
welled up inside of her at the thought of Elon with another woman.
Shocked deeply by the emotion Maria had no choice, but to accept
that somehow she’d already welcomed a relationship with Elon before
she had even known it.

How was it possible not to like a man who
helped clean up your puke and save face the way he had for her. He
hadn’t had to do any of that for her, but he did. She knew so
little about him and yet she knew so much. What would tomorrow
bring?

I watched her sipping her coffee, as we sat
at the outdoor café in the busy downtown section of the city. She
seemed somehow more at peace today, even relaxed and of course she
was always ever beautiful.

She glanced over at me and smiled, “So
what’s next boss?”

She had a direct way about her that spoke of
confidence. This was the Maria I was more used to.

I gestured to the busy street scene going on
all around us, “What do you see?”

She looked away from me and surveyed the
scene of a busy city coming to life, as the morning sun rose in the
sky sending filtered rays of light through the scattered high-rises
to touch the steaming pavement below. She took her time in her
assessment, but eventually her eyes came back to me and she said,
“The normal hustle and bustle of a city that one would expect to
see at 9 o’clock in the morning on a weekday. Why? What am I
missing?”

I reached my hand across the table and left
it open before her, “I want you to see what I not only see, but
also perceive going on all around us.”

She looked at my outstretched hand for a
moment and then reached hers out toward it.

“Put the coffee cup down.” I said
softly.

Her gaze came up to mine and she complied,
even as her outstretched hand hesitantly fitted into mine. She
jerked and her eyes flared wide, as she glanced all around us.

“What do you feel?” I asked calmly.

Her panicked eyes turned back to me,
“Everything! I see…… feel everything!”

I shook my head no, “Right now it may feel
like that, but it’s not. All you’re seeing is the momentary flashes
of thought of some individuals in the crowd around us.”

“You’re seeing more than this?” Maria asked
incredulously, as she put a hand to her forehead as if she had a
sudden headache.

“Yes, but my mind is screening a lot of it
out. What you are seeing is my interpretation of that which is most
important in terms of either negative or positive action.”

Maria was shaking her head as her eyes
rapidly blinked, “How do you stay sane? This is overwhelming!”

I squeezed her hand and her eyes came back
to mine, “This isn’t the part that will drive you crazy Maria. What
will drive you crazy is if you can see what you are right now and
do nothing about it.”

Maria’s head jerked around and she started
to rise, but I pulled her back down.

“That man across the street he just stole
that old woman’s purse!” Maria exclaimed in frustration with me, as
she tugged at my grip on her hand.

“Focus on me for a moment Maria.”

Reluctantly her eyes pulled away from the
man escaping down the street with the purse, as the old woman
having realized for herself of the theft was screeching for help
from nearby passerby’s.

“Just as it will drive you crazy to not do
anything so will it if you try to fix all the wrongs of the world.
You are only human Maria. You’re not God. Pick your battles and try
to do the most good that you can with the limited resources
available to you.”

Maria nodded shaking slightly, as she tried
to ignore all the little terrible things that were happening all
around us that so few in the crowd were even noticing.

A married man slipping his wedding ring off
before saying hello in a charming fashion to a younger woman he was
offering to share his taxi with.

A man with a clipboard, who under the guise
of having a tourist look at what he was offering clipped to the
clipboard in the form of a coupon of some sort, was meanwhile
slitting the tourist’s fanny pack with a box cutter and stealing
both their identity and vacation money.

The passerby stopping to pick up the $20
bill that fell from the person ahead of him before hurriedly
stuffing it into his own pocket, with a furtive glance around to
see if he’d been noticed.

A tear slipped down Maria’s cheek and I
could sense through my shared conscious link with her that she was
panicking.

“I don’t like this!” Maria said her words
almost sounding out as if they were one long groan of angst caused
by the turmoil that she felt all around her.

“I don’t like it either Maria, but……”

Maria vaulted out of her chair and shoved
through the people on the packed sidewalk to dive into the street
and scoop up a little boy that had wandered away from his
distracted tourist parents. She dodged out of the way of a
fast-moving taxi that would’ve ran over the little boy, even as a
slower moving taxi came to a screeching halt in front of Maria.

With the taxis’ horn blaring loudly Maria
quickly stepped from the street and delivered the boy back to his
horrified parents. Maria waived away their copious ‘ Thank You’s ’
and started backing away into the crowd that had gathered, until
she pressed up against me.

I leaned forward enough to whisper into her
ear, “but……… how does saving that little boy’s life make you feel
now? Worth risking some sanity for?”

“Yes!” She breathed out.

I took her hand then and led her out through
the crowd that already begun to break up.

“What I do is a sacrifice Maria. It’s not
easy and I’d rather not do it most times. Moments like this can
make it worth it, but it’s still not easy. In fact it can be
downright tormenting! Are you sure you want this, because it’s not
too late to back out yet.”

She seemed to have reached a calm level of
assurity and she responded back strongly, “I am fully committed to
doing what God has in store for me. I’m going to be around for the
long haul so stop trying to scare me off.”

Some part of me rejoiced at her words, while
some part groaned. It was a tossup as to which was the stronger of
the two emotions.

“Okay then.” I said resignedly.

She was watching me and a smile had started
to come out on her face.

“What?” I asked defensively.

She shook her head in refusal to answer me,
which I didn’t like. Oh well there were a lot of things I didn’t
like about this working relationship, but I was stuck with it
now.

I dug a credit card out and handed it to
her, “Use this to buy yourself some clothes and whatever items you
may need, but no more than what fits in a pack that you don’t mind
carrying the weight of. I recommend you get something comfortable
to walk in as I do quite a lot of walking at times. I’ll meet you
back at the café in a few hours and then we’ll leave the city.”

I turned to go attend to my own needs when
she called out to me, “Elon?”

I turned back.

Maria looked as if she had something she
wanted to say, which she hesitantly put words to, “This work we’re
going to be doing is going to be dangerous no doubt. I imagine that
you also have some rather extreme enemies.”

Maria paused for a moment and then patted
her side, “I have a 9mm, but that’s all I’ve got. You must have
twenty knives and assorted other devices stashed all over your
body. That silky shirt you’re wearing is some kind of light body
armor and I’d be willing to bet that your leather coat would stop a
high-powered rifle bullet. The point is I feel both underdressed
and under-armed for the fight. I’d like to armor up some more, if
it’s not too much trouble?”

She had a valid point I had to admit.

“On Robert Avenue off of 75th St. there is a
store called ‘Kinks of the Trade’. Tell the store owner my name and
she’ll get you anything you want.”

Maria looked at me a little oddly before
starting out in the direction that I had indicated. I grinned, as
she disappeared from view, if she only knew what kind of store I
had just sent her off to. Appearances could be so deceiving.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maria stood outside the store embarrassed to
even be seen near it. Elon couldn’t be serious, but the store’s
name read ‘Kinks of the Trade’, only the name was spelled out in
leather whips. It was an Adult store.

Elon had to be playing some kind of
practical joke on her, right?

She looked either way along the sidewalk to
see if she would be observed entering the store. The coast was
clear so she ducked into the store.

Oh how she wished that this was a practical
joke of some kind!

Why would Elon send her to such a place? As
bad as she wanted to believe that this was a practical joke she
also knew that Elon wasn’t the practical joke kind of person.

Her olive skin darkened under the heat of
the blush that suffused her face as her wondering eyes fell across
the specific items that were arrayed throughout the store as she
made her way towards the sales counter at the back of the store.
The middle-aged woman standing behind it looked surprisingly normal
given the nature of the shop.

She wore a wry smile and as Maria got closer
she said, “Honey if your man ain’t satisfied with what nature sure
enough done give you already in bountiful supply, then you best get
yourself another man, because Lord knows you don’t belong within a
hundred miles of half the stuff in this hell depot!”

Maria did her best to meet the woman’s eyes
as she stopped at the counter, “I didn’t come for any of this……
stuff. A man said you could help me.”

“And what man would that be honey?” The shop
owner asked suspiciously.

“Elon Gideon.”

The black woman’s features sharpened and her
eyes got hard with all the friendliness disappearing from them,
“And what relation to him would you be missy?”

Now that was a good question. Maria answered
as honestly as she could think to do so, “I’m his woman.” The
admission of saying that added to the heated blush of being in this
place that already had her face feeling like it was on fire.

The sharpness left the shop owner’s eyes who
eyed her up all over again, while she shook her head doing it, “I
always says to myself, ‘Elsie, that Elon Gideon is a man of style
he is. He sure enough picked himself out a purty princess!”

Maria’s sense of acute embarrassment only
deepened. She abruptly flinched, as she heard the locks of the shop
click closed behind her.

She turned to see the neon sign in the
window go from reading “Open” to flash “Closed”. She turned back to
the shop owner in time to see a wall pull apart revealing a hidden
space that lay behind the sales counter.

“Follow me deary. We’ze got to get you
outfitted. What’s your size honey?”

Maria told her and the older woman giggled
with exuberance, “I’ze got just the thing for you! We’ze gonna load
you down with surprises for Mr. Gideon!”

Maria hurriedly stuttered out, “I…… I don’t
want lingerie….…”

“Lingerie!” The shop owner screeched out
indignantly. She picked up an automatic pistol laying on a nearby
workbench and emptied the entire clip into some of her creations
within the secret room.

Turning with smoking gun in hand the black
woman jerked a thumb over her shoulder, “Now honey, any of your
lingerie ever do that before for ya?”

Maria peered around the woman at the
evidence that was plain to be seen and stated softly, “I can’t say
that it has.”

The shop owner went on as if she hadn’t
heard Maria, “This ain’t lingerie! It’s art!”

Maria stepped past her and picked something
up, “Do you have this in my size?”

“The older woman smiled richly, “You bet I
do honey! Wait till you see what else I got in your size!”

“What does this do?”

“Oh no honey! You don’t want to touch it
like that! You’d get an awful nasty surprise. See what I mean?”

“I see what you mean!” Maria affirmed, as
Elsie demonstrated the working effectiveness of the object in
question.

“You make sure you tell Mr. Gideon about
that before he takes it off of you! Wouldn’t be wanting him to get
no such surprise when he’s unwrapping your goodies. My land’s child
you sure do blush a lot! How long you say you two been
together?”

“Two days.”

The shop owner guffawed into another fit of
laughter, “You got a lot more to experience of Mr. Gideon then just
two days will get ya! You hang on to him for life honey, if you
know what’s good for you!”

“What did he do for you?”

“Somebody done stole my son from off school
property and Mr. Gideon was the only one who knew where to look. He
helped give me back my soul, when he saved my son. Then he set me
up with this store so I could support myself. I sell the stuff out
front to the freaky people who want to go whaling away at each
other for no good reason, while I get to practice away with my art
in here and sell it on the side to people recommended by Mr.
Gideon. Sure enough set me up for life he did! That was ten years
ago now. Funny thing about it is Mr. Gideon just ain’t never aged.
I sure has though!”