Free Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) by Joseph Nassise Page A

threat against my friends would keep me docile and obedient that I was free to come and go at will as long as I left word where I would be and a cell number at which I could be reached. When I admitted to Fuentes that I didn’t even own a cell phone, he had one of his men get me one.
    The thing was, I didn’t really have anywhere to go. The few items I considered my possessions had been picked up from the motel and delivered to Fuentes’s compound while we had been at the church. I returned from our “mission” to find my things in a brown paper bag in the middle of my bed. A note inside the bag informed me that the bill at the motel had been settled.
    With the motel bill taken care of, I lost just about my only excuse to be out anyway. Living as a fugitive with the FBI on my trail made me naturally wary of being seen in public. The average person on the street might go unnoticed, but a blind guy with a cane always draws someone’s attention. The quirks of my condition make it easier for me to slip out at night, but even that was problematic; people tend to remember the guy wearing sunglasses after dark.
    In the end, though, the thing that kept me hanging around with little to do was the simple fact that Fuentes was right. I wouldn’t do anything to put my friends in danger. I might be a total jerk to most people—I’m well aware that I’m generally what those with sunnier dispositions like to call abrasive—but I will literally go to hell and back to help those who have earned my trust and compassion. Fuentes’s threat against my friends might not be real, but I couldn’t take the chance that it wasn’t. Which, when considered dispassionately, was the real beauty of the trap Fuentes had sprung. My conscience would keep me in line far more effectively than anything Fuentes’s people, including Rivera, might do.
    I spent the time hanging around the estate, getting to know some of the staff and trying to learn more about Grady, Perkins, and the others. The latter was difficult; while the staff was more than happy to talk about themselves, they were far more reluctant to talk about those they considered to be “Señor Fuentes’s friends,” and they clammed up tight if I pressed them for more information. I knew I should be thankful—as one of those so-called “friends” myself, their code of silence kept my identity and location secret from anyone who might come asking after me as well—but it was frustrating just the same. I had pretty much given up hope of discovering anything when an unexpected source all but dropped into my lap.
    I was in the basement pool room, shooting a game of nine-ball by myself in the dark, when the door opened suddenly behind me, spilling light into the room and chasing my sight away with it.
    I stood up from over the table and turned toward the door. I could sense someone there, even if I couldn’t see them. “Hello?”
    “I’m sorry,” said a voice that I recognized as Perkins’s. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
    I shrugged. “No problem.”
    I could practically hear the gears turning in his head as he took in the pool cue in my hand and the balls scattered around the tabletop.
    “You’re … playing pool?” he finally asked.
    “No, tiddly-winks,” I almost said, but managed to bite my tongue just before the words left my mouth. Compared to the way the rest of those in our little group treated me, Perkins was being downright friendly. If I was going to survive this mess, I needed a lot more information about what was going on than I had right now and the only way I was going to get it was to get someone to talk to me. Perkins seemed genuinely curious about my condition and it made sense to play along, to see what he might give in return. So instead of giving him grief with a smart-ass remark and driving him off, I answered with a simple yes instead.
    “But … I thought you were blind.”
    “I am.”
    “So how…”
    I held a finger over my lips and