"Yeah, graduate school- you really cooked that?" he asked, suspicious that the actress had done this feat of cooking herself.

"Well, sure! You and I have been here all day, haven’t we? No deliveries, no magic chefs! You know Tony, I can do more than act! I AM an artist in other areas…" she said, smiling as she put the roast on the table as a centerpiece and moved Aidan’s carrier to the counter by the sink. She cooed at him as he moved his fists back and forth. She couldn’t wait until he gave his first smile…! She then directed her gaze at the second security monitor in the kitchen by Aidan. She had switched the feed to this monitor, showing her the central area of the loft instead of the front door area. She could see Tony staring at her back as she leaned over, still playing with Aidan. As she leaned over, the short dress she was wearing, revealed upper thigh and she watched the monitor to see if he was capable and suggestive to this bait. If not, she still had plan B.

He definitely had looked, she thought, watching his expression but seeing him approach, she quickly moved Aidan’s bottle over toward him, brushing the off button with her arm.

"Hey, you think I’m stupid or something, don’t you?" Lucinda said, turning around, hands on hips as she untied her apron and walked over closer to him, meeting his eyes.

"No…I guess, I thought you were flighty and dizzy when I first met you and after seeing most of the movies you had done; it gave me the same impression that you were like that in real life," Tony replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"You see, Tony- the distinguishing mark of a really talented actress is her ability to fool you."

"You don’t fool me, Lucinda! I get the dinner thing, the short skirt and the whole observation thing- you switched the feed on the monitor so you could see if I took the bait…now, what could it be? Why in the world are you trying to seduce me into something? Tony said, folding his arms across his chest, opposing her with a slick grin on his face.

Lucinda swallowed hard, her brain screaming- Plan B! Oh, this guy is tougher than I thought!

"That was nice!" Rollie said, as they walked back toward the Astoria from a walk along the Rhine River garden walkway. Even though he hadn’t visualized it, the descriptions from Angie were accurate to his memories of the downtown quaint plaza. He held onto her arm as she stopped suddenly.

"What?" he asked, as he felt her arm slip from his.

"Nothing, I guess. I just had this feeling for a moment that someone was following us! Whew, what paranoia I have been having lately! I have to get some order in my life, Rol. I never know what will be hitting us next."

"Yeah," he murmured as his head lowered and she held on to both his arms, facing him.

"Oh, you said that so sadly, Rollie… I didn’t mean it like it probably sounded," she said, looking at his eyes. They seemed so vacant, the expression gone and she missed their sparkle- the way they would draw her in to his soul.

"You’re right, Angie. We’ve had a bit more stress than your average newly married couple."

"Don’t forget our entire lives before that," she said, laughing as he smiled and hugged her tightly.

"Just remember, we aren’t like anyone else in the entire universe, Rol."

"Ummm, just like I want it!" he replied, kissing her forehead and his hand come up feeling her face, cupping her chin as he kissed her. It was his kiss, the one that no other man, including a masked Loubar could ever imitate. She would walk through fire for that kiss!

"Mr. Tyler?" came the voice from behind them.

They jerked apart, as Angie swung around and was very surprised to see the graduate student from Doctor Eckmiller’s office standing behind them. His face was flushed as he stared at Rollie behind a pair of thick, wire-rimmed glasses.

"It’s the student from Eckmiller’s clinic…" she told Rollie quickly as he held Angie’s hand and stepped forward.

"Have you been following us?" Angie asked, playing on her feelings that he was the one that had been following them.

"Yes, sorry," the man said, in perfect English. Angie had remembered that he spoken no English in the clinic. She had thought at the time, that he had not spoken the language at all.

"You speak perfect English," Angie remarked, in a somewhat distrustful voice as Rollie frowned.

"Yes, I do- I was born in the United States. My parents were German. I was raised bilingual. But that is beside the point. I must speak with you!" he continued, looking over his shoulder, "Can we go inside this shop?" he asked, pointing to a café nearby.

"Angie?" Rollie was seeing something in his mind’s eye as well as hearing it. The sound of the tiny bells all chiming around him and the incredible color of that blue-green ocean surrounded him.

Angie had heard the bells and looked at the medieval clock tower above the café. The bells were announcing the hour in a crescendo of multiple, tiny chimes. It sounded so different, so enchanting to her as she took his hand, looking at the man in front of them.

"What’s your name?" she asked, before entering the café door with him.

"Rolph, Rolph Mer…" he replied, as he held the door open for the two of them and they walked inside.

Tony Alvarez finished the last bite of rib roast and was smiling. He had definitely enjoyed his dinner and watching Lucinda Scott squirm in her seat across from him. She ate hardly a thing as she would mainly talk to Aidan who occupied a third seat in his carrier.

"So, you are Rollie Tyler’s friend from some time ago?" he asked her, as he put the napkin to his lips and pushed his chair back.

"Yes, Rollie and Angie and I go back some distance…" Luce answered, smiling as she remembered those days.

"And Angie was Rollie’s apprentice?"

Lucinda snorted, and leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table as her face got animated; "Are you kidding? Angie’s father was Manny Ramirez! Angie learned the biz from her father…as did Rollie. Call her a partner, but she was never Rollie’s apprentice."

"I see, so that’s where she gets her knowledge. Tyler stole her father’s business out from under her," Tony remarked, putting his hands behind his neck as he stretched.

Lucinda made a face, studying Tony Alvarez’s face. The guy was handsome, with dark, wavy hair and hazel green eyes. He was trying to get something out of her, she knew and she remained guarded. She now recognized him as a man who had his own scheme running. This was likely part of his plan A or something.

"Yeah, sure…" was Lucinda’s comment to his lance being thrown down in front of her, "You ask her, why don’t you? Better yet, ask Rollie. I am sure he could tell you the whole deal there. But hey, that’s beside the point- seeing as how Angie and Rollie are married, love each other incredibly and seem to be doing just fine!"

"Well, how long will that last now that Rollie Tyler has lost his sight? Angie will start to resent him. I mean, the man can’t work. He, at best can be trained to do menial things but she will get tired of that. She is too much of a vibrant, active woman to stay pent up with Tyler like he is…" Tony remarked, waiting for Lucinda’s explosion.

It didn’t come. Lucinda was busy trying to deflect his move. She hoped he had indigestion from dinner as well as she stood up, clearing her dishes and headed into the kitchen.

Tony brought his plate in, leaving it on the counter. Lucinda looked up and smiled sweetly as he meet her eyes.

"So when do you plan on making the moves on Angie, Tony? I figure you for someone who has the whole thing planned out for your seduction of her right out from under Rollie’s nose," Lucinda asked, in a voice as pleasant as possible.

Tony nodded and grinned, "I’m going to keep you guessing on that, Lucinda Scott, world’s greatest actress…" and he bent over, pulling her over by the waist as her hands dripped wet suds from the dishes in the sink. She started to protest his nearness but he clamped his lips down on hers in a rough, hard kiss before he let her go.

"Dinner was great! Gotta run, be up for your business tomorrow though…you’re a lot of fun!" he remarked, flippantly. He walked out of the kitchen, passing Aidan and intentionally startling him with a sharp "Boo!" which caused him to immediately send out a distressed wail. As he walked out the front door, Lucinda shouted for Bluey to lock the place up. She ran over to Aidan, picking him up and worried as she comforted him in her arms. This guy was more than a simple college student working as an apprentice. Who the hell was he?

"So, what’s this about, Mer?" Rollie asked, as Angie held his hand and looked over at the man who had been following them.

Rolph Mer looked down for a moment and then pulled out a small glass vial from the inside of his jacket. Inside the vial, Angie could see two very small, pieces of metal. He twirled the vial around in his fingers and then looked up at her and Rollie.

"I have here the diodes that were taken from your retinas today, Mr. Tyler. I did a preliminary analysis on them this afternoon after Eckmiller removed them. You see, I did hear the part of conversation where you told Eckmiller about your friend who "deactivated" the supposed standard visual complex from them. According to Eckmiller, the only thing that our brain evoking stimulator picked up was the infrared feature. Well, that’s not exactly how I saw that result. I saw what is known as an marker, an inverted wave for most of the optical nerve readout."

His voice was soft-spoken as both Angie and Rollie leaned forward in their seats, huddled together with him, oblivious to their surroundings. Angie raised her eyebrows and shook her head as Rollie frowned.

"What are you saying?" he asked, shaking his head.

"I’m saying that there was more to these diodes then infrared adjusters. The signaling pattern now defunct, causing those inverted waves, was something that I believe can be fixed. I do not believe this blindness is in your mind, Mr. Tyler."

Rollie’s mouth dropped open and Angie held her breath.

"But Eckmiller, surely he must know this by now too!" Angie said, confused as she gripped Rollie’s hand tighter.

"He probably did, Mrs. Tyler. I believe he was too afraid to tell you in the hospital. And now, we will never know what he could have done- he’s dead," Mer replied, his voice shaky as he crouched lower in his seat.

Both Angie and Rollie took in a sharp, intake of breath as Mer continued.

"I walked into the lab this afternoon. I knew he had said he was going back to have a look at the implants. He was very curious about them, you see. I was going to meet him at three, which is precisely what time I walked into that room and found him on the floor beside his bench. There was a small bullet wound in his forehead! I was shocked, and immediately scared out of my wits! I remembered some of the men that Eckmiller would see from time to time…and the diodes were always the topic of conversation. Please, you must help me! The lab was in a shambles, as if they had been searching for something."

"Rolph, dear God, how did you find the diodes from my surgery then?" Rollie asked, using the young man's first name, his mind racing as he tried not to think that the group was reorganizing and cleaning all traces of their former activity.

"He kept all items, implants and tissue surgical pathology in a refrigerator in the ante room between labs. He kept all metalic or non tissue pathology in an egg carton. I guess somehow, they didn’t open it, whoever they were! But here it is, your name on the vial, the date and yes- I ran the readout again from them for signature pattern. I got out of there as quickly as possible then and called the police. I have no idea if they will return because they could not find what they were looking for or what?" Rolph explained, his hand trembling slightly as he handed the vial over to Angie who just stared at the little pieces of metal with a sense of horror.

"Tell me, Rolph. Why is it, that you never told Eckmiller that you could speak English?" Rollie questioned, suspicious, for he had been tricked by many recently and one more twist in this macabre adventure would not surprise him in the least.

Rolph Mer looked up and sighed; "I’m a United States citizen. My parents could not afford the price of the University as a foreign student. But, as a German and with the scholarship from University- this was very affordable. The trick was, you had to be German, native of Bonn. You see my dilemma. I could not even tell Eckmiller. He is, was- a very respected member of the scholarship board as well."

"No one is as they seem," Angie said, shaking her head and wishing for Aidan in her arms, with Rollie, in a small shack in Montana at this point.

"Listen to me! If I find a way to fix them, I can meet you somewhere…back in the United States. I can help you maybe, yes?" Rolph asked, nodding his head.

"Before we go there, Ange- you wouldn’t happen to have your PDA on you, would you?" Rollie asked, already knowing the answer.

"Rol, you know I don’t leave home without it," she chuckled and pulled it out, under the table.

"Good girl!" he remarked as she beamed; now that sounded like her Rollie in action mode!

"Give us a read on those implants, eh? They got some sort of bug or tracker attached?" Rollie asked, as Rolph sat amazed, watching the couple.

Angie held the vial and waved the PDA sensor over it, with an immediate dead read-out.

"They are dead in the water, Rol," she replied, smiling.

"Good, at least with the deactivation that Michael did before he died, that couldn’t trace my movement with them in my head. They have just been following our activity. I figure that they were worried about Eckmiller finding out more than they wanted him or me to know…or maybe, they were closing up all of Michael’s former contacts," Rollie said, his mind racing forward and he suddenly frowned and added; "Rolph- you’re not safe here. They must know you were his assistant. You’re not safe either."

"No kidding!" came Rolph’s answer as Angie smiled and touched the man’s hand slightly.

"I guess we go back to the states tomorrow and try sorting this out there," Rollie remarked, slightly worried.

Angie nodded, her wish to go back was always there, but the news that the killing was continuing, the covert actions surrounding Michael’s group continuing as far as they were concerned; it only made their homecoming grow into an uneasy and unsatisfied pursuit in Germany.

Rolph split up with them, saying he was crashing at a friend’s house for the night. He would meet them in New York after getting a flight out when he could. His face showed his innocence, now inducted into the world of shadows, a mind-altering, fatigued expression now registering on his face.

"His whole future is blown, Rollie!" Angie said, as she watched him disappear into the night as they walked back to the Astoria.

"And it’s my fault!" Rollie said, with depressed affect, his anger and hurt now bombarded with another person’s suffering as a result of this group of people that seemed to have no boundaries and no allegiance to anyone.

Angie slept, wrapped up in Rollie’s arms that night as he lay awake. His mind would not stop running, his thoughts, his experiences, his memories were all getting jumbled up with the one question that had no answer; why?

He felt Angie’s warmness, kissing her lips softly as she fanned slightly at her face as if an insect had flown by her and he felt her hand brush against his face, taking it and pressing it against his lips. Her hand, pressed against his was so small in comparison. His love for her was the one guiding force in his life that made sense. He would have never been able to get himself together after Pollepel without her. She had always been there for him, always.

Remembering their lovemaking from that earlier evening, he sighed slightly. He made a silent prayer to his maker that his eyes would see her again and Aidan. They were more important than anything else in his life, including his own life…