Page 14 of Scar

He put the jar back inside the cabinet and closed the door. The bathroom counter was completely clean with a single electric toothbrush on a charger in the corner. Opening the drawer of the vanity console, he found toothpaste, hairbrush, hair pick, and a cup full of thick hairbands in very specific spots within the drawer.

If he didn’t know any better, he would think the apartment was owned by someone with obsessive compulsive disorder. However, he supposed having clutter around would be difficult for someone who couldn’t see. She lived alone, which meant this apartment was designed for her. Of course, there weren’t pictures on the walls. She couldn’t see them even if there were. The only reason they would be there would be for other people.

Scar admired that she put her home how she needed it to be comfortable and did not bend to the comfort of any potential visitors.

In her kitchen, he found a braille microwave, oven, and range. Pots and pans hung on hooks in the wall by size. Cooking utensils were kept similarly, not thrown into a single holder as was typical. It took him a moment to figure out her measuring cup until he realized it was digital and had a sensor that told her the amount being poured.

Everything had labels, including her immaculately kept fridge and freezer.

He liked how her place smelled, clean with a hint of flour. It was a gentle scent that didn’t overwhelm. The only eyesore in the entire place was the puke orange couch with brown accents in her living room.

It was getting late enough that Scar wondered what time Tallulah would be home. He knew from the restaurant’s website that they closed at ten. Scar had no intention of harming Tallulah. She was innocent and there was a good chance she did not even know what her father did for a living. Regardless, Scar did not hurt women without just cause.

His aim was to surveille her for a few days, get some pictures to prove to Alpha that hecouldget to his daughter. It was unfortunate, but she was nothing more than bait. Then, once his shoulder was healed, he would go after Alpha.

Primis would be no more.

Scar did not set up cameras in the apartment. He did take pictures in case he had to show Alpha that he’d been inside, but he would not breach Tallulah’s privacy by setting up surveillance cameras any hacker could use to also watch her.

Scar’s old-fashioned camera was not connected to any network and therefore could not be hacked. He would take the pictures required and then go.

He headed towards her restaurant. Her apartment was within walking distance of the riverfront district, which was likely intentional because Tallulah couldn’t drive. She would either need to spend a fortune on cab fare or walk to work.

Scar found a roof across from her restaurant with a good view inside. The dining room looked packed, despite that it was after closing. He pulled his laptop out of the pack he had strapped securely to his back.

A phantom jingle bell rang in his head as he secured it again.

While waiting for the restaurant to clear out and for Tallulah to head home, Scar pulled up the blueprints for the building. The brick structure, as well as many of the buildings in the district, were over a hundred years old. Her restaurant,The Unseen Palette, used to be a clock factory that closed in the 1940s.

Scar glanced over the rooftop at the building below. He knew old clocks were radioactive and had heard that factories were too. Clearly this building was either decontaminated or the activity was low enough that the city allowed a restaurant to be opened in it.

Personally, his attention was fixated more on the play on words. From her test scores, he knew Tallulah Meacham was too smart to not realize the typo in her restaurant’s name. ‘Palate’ when referring to tasting and food was spelled with an ‘at’, whereas she spelled it with an ‘ett’.

He pulled up a video of an interview she’d done at her Grand Opening two years ago. Tallulah stood outside the same building below in a white chef’s uniform. Her skin was lighter than her father’s, a milk chocolate compared to her father’s dark. Her green eyes looked so real on the camera, but Scar had seen that shade of green in her bathroom cabinet. Did she change eye color each day? Though she was holding an all-white cane, she was not wearing sunglasses that people traditionally associated with someone who was blind.

Her long, black hair was held in a braid down the back of her neck. It shimmered in the sunlight like obsidian. She stood just enough off center that it was obvious she couldn’t tell where the camera was, though her face was tipped slightly towards the interviewer.

“Food is too fun to be boring. A mentor of mine once told me that people eat ‘with their eyes’.”On the computer screen, she waved her hand in front of her face.“I love food and I’ve never seen it a day in my life. I create my food like an artist creates a painting. This restaurant is my palette foryourpalate.”

Her voice was smooth and velvety. Based on how she spoke, he could imagine she had a great singing voice too. He noticed that the interview had a footer at the bottom of the screen that stated, ‘Chef Tally, The Blind Chef of Atlanta’.

It was after midnight by the time Tally left the restaurant. By then, Scar’s laptop was back in his pack and he was starting to grow concerned. He’d watched as the dining area emptied, then the employees trickled out. Almost twenty minutes after the last employee left, Tally came out of the restaurant.

Alone.

Scar’s eyes narrowed. Why the fuck was she alone? If any of the club’s ol’ ladies worked past midnight, her ol’ man would have a conniption. But to have her walk homealonein the dark? Fuck no.

Scar headed for the fire escape. He would come back to surveille the restaurant once he saw her safely to her apartment.

He reached the alleyway just as Tally was passing by. He didn’t move back into the shadows as he normally would upon someone’s approach. As he realized that he didn’t have to hide from Tally as he did for people with sight, it also occurred to him that he’d made the mental comment earlier that she was walking alone in the dark. But to her,everythingwas dark.

It still bothered him that she was alone, though.

She was not tapping her cane along the sidewalk but sweeping it side to side. It gave off a consistent plastic crackle against the concrete. But Scar heard something else, too, and it took him a moment to figure out it was coming from her.

“Click… Click… Click…”

Tally was clicking her tongue. It was a faint, very discreet, sound, but deliberate. It wasn’t something she was doing as a nervous tick or out of boredom. The way she moved her head, always with her ears tipped, Scar realized she was using echolocation. Like a bat using sonar.

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