Blake tossed a lock of his brown hair from his eyes as he thought on her demand.
“Hmm, this is not going to be easy,” Blake said forcing a smile and scratching his head. His smile, she was sure, broke quite a few hearts. It was precious, comforting, and contagious. His whole face smiled, like nothing he would say could possibly be untrue. Uh huh, she thought. He shared this smile with his brother and between the two of them, they must leave quite a wake of women behind.
“The thing is, there is a huge part of the story I think should come from Devon. It should be his choice or burden to give the details about us. But I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.”
She raised her eyebrows as if agreeing, but doubting it would go well. “All right. Who is the Van Helsing guy?”
“His name is Max Porter. He’s a hunter.”
“Uh huh. A hunter—that’s vague. A deer hunter? A lion hunter? What?”
“A hunter of a specific kind of person.”
“A person hunter? Yuck!” she said thinking she was definitely NOT going to like this. A thought occurred to her and she continued, “You mean like an assassin? A terrorist with a crossbow?”
He rolled his eyes and grimaced. “Somewhat like an assassin, but for a very, very specific kind of person.”
“This is getting annoying. You mean like a, I don’t know, a bounty hunter or a vampire slayer?” she laughed thinking how ridiculous that sounded.
He stoically answered, “Yes, very much like that.”
“I see. So this Max was hunting your brother?”
“And me,” he said.
“So this Max guy, he’s a software engineer slayer?” she jested.
“Well, not exactly, but let’s go with that for the sake of time.”
“Good. Max, the Van Helsing wannabe, is a software engineer slayer and came looking to kill you and your brother, because… your software stinks?”
He laughed. “Sure, okay. I’ll go with that.”
“Are there more of these software engineer slayers out there?”
“Yes. Not a lot, but some.”
“And their plan is to take out all software engineers, everywhere?”
He tried conceal a laugh by running a hand across his lips, and said, “Yep.”
“So is there a hierarchy of these software engineer slayers, or was Max just a rogue?”
“Umm…I don’t know if there is a grand pooba of slayers, but Max was sent by someone above him. His name is Terrence Paine. Max was one of his thugs.”
She shook her head. “Okay, now we are getting somewhere. How many thugs does Pooba Paine employ?”
“Including Max, there are three we know of. The other two are Olaf Obert and Norman Beoff.”
“All right. If Max doesn’t check in, then Pooba Paine will send Norman and/or Olaf to find out what happened, right?”
“Probably.”
“If that is the case, how much time do you think we have before the others come looking?”
“Well, my guess is that Max was a scout, and may or may not have told them specifically where he was. If that is the case, then I would estimate a week, maybe two at the most.”
