With These Eyes by Horst Steiner

overhead. Even Isabelle was
surprised when her puma continued past her as if she wasn't there.
Throughout the night, Isabelle could hear the monotony of the
drone's buzzing being interrupted by the sounds of Tasha's platoon
driving through her neighborhood in their relentless search.
    Time had gone by relatively quickly for
Isabelle and soon the black of the night sky yielded to the light
blue and orange hues of the morning. The sun appeared on the
horizon for its daily path across the sky. Soon, it would bathe the
city of angels in its life-giving energy. Isabelle knew that along
with the cloak of darkness disappeared her sanctuary from Tasha's
persistent intrusion. As it happened often with the day's first
light, Tonati was heading for the kitchen where he would find his
way to Isabelle. It had almost become a morning ritual for Tonati
to make sure Isabelle would be awake for the beginning of the new
day. Isabelle loved it when the puma's giant nose would nuzzle her
awake, a routine that left most of her gentlemen-callers too
mortified to be much fun in the morning. Isabelle had little use
for a grown man who was afraid of her cat. Next to her career,
Tonati was in many cases a contributing factor why she had been
single for most of her life. Isabelle had some flings, even fell in
love a few times, but the men in her past had other things on their
minds than her happiness. As a rule, her relationships seemed
perfect in theory - a good-looking guy, career, no children - but
each time something just wasn't right. Isabelle never felt the
spark that should have propelled a relationship into a long,
certain future. Each time it was her who broke it off if Tonati
didn't already send the guy screaming and running off into the
night. Her would-be boyfriends failed to understand why she handed
them their walking-papers. Isabelle least of all could explain it
to them. She had gotten accustomed to Tonati being the one she
kissed “good-morning.”
    It looked like Tonati was on his way to seek
their first morning encounter. As he approached Isabelle and the
adjacent heat pump for the first time in seven hours, she separated
from the water heater that had kept her safe from Tasha throughout
the night. Tonati stopped to kiss Isabelle as he had intended.
Together, they marched to the kitchen.
    The morning shift of Tasha's Troopers had
populated their new mobile command post that had arrived an hour
before sunrise along with a fresh complement of 12 undercover
vehicles. The new command post looked like a delivery truck for one
of Apophis' many brands of bottled water. It was another one of
Tasha's special designs from the hide-in-plain-sight series. The
water-bottle truck was much like the cement mixer, a shining
example of the philosophy to be so elaborate in her methods of
surveillance and pursuit that few people would find suspicion in
her activities. Police and private investigators would often rely
on covert vehicles too small to draw attention. Tasha preferred her
approach. The interior of the ten-ton truck was home to one of the
warrior's numerous spyrooms. The only way to stay unnoticed with
such large vehicles, Tasha reasoned, was to switch them out as
often as practical. What was as much a factor as her strategic
reasoning was Tasha's affinity for gadgets and machinery. The
on-board crew of 3 Troopers that was working the first shift of
surveillance had picked up Isabelle's image on several hidden
cameras and sensors. It was time to notify Tasha who was still
asleep.
    Tasha was sprawled out across the bed in the
trailer. Her covers were in a ball on the floor. The warrior’s eyes
were moving in jagged motion under her eyelids. Her feet twitched
like she was running in the air, then stopped moving. Tasha licked
her lips when suddenly, the buzzing from her cell phone tore her
out of her dream. Instinctively, her hand reached for the phone
clipped to the side of her underwear. Her large greenish-brown eyes
still seeking to return