"I seriously can't thank you guys enough for helping me with this renovation," April said, watching as her turtle friends set to work.
"We're glad to do it," Don replied while feeding new electrical wire through the exposed wall. "This is a very good cause."
Mikey coughed and sat back on his heels, his hands and arms covered in soot. "When was the last time anyone cleaned this chimney?" he asked. "Turn of the century?"
"It's a really old house, Mikey," April told him. "The people who inherited it couldn't afford to make all the necessary repairs or to pay the back taxes. I'm very happy they donated it to be used as a battered women's shelter, but we can't open for business until it's brought up to code."
From his spot atop a ladder, Raph finished disconnecting the old and broken chandelier, handing it carefully down to Leo before asking, "What happened to the workmen who started this project?"
April grimaced. "We didn't have anything in writing regarding completion dates, so the contractor pulled his men to go work on a more lucrative job. The inspector is coming out day after tomorrow to check on our progress and unless all of this work is done, he won't sign off to allow us to complete the next phase. It'll be weeks before we can schedule him to come back. We want to be able to open next month. There is a waiting list for rooms and some of these women are in extremely bad situations."
"I don't understand men who think it's all right to hit a woman," Leo said, his voice filled with contempt.
"Unless it's Karai," Raph said jokingly. "Hold the ladder while I climb down bro'. This thing's about as old as the house."
Leo steadied the ladder as Raph descended and then placed the chandelier in a box of things to be taken out to the dumpster.
"I could use a pair of spare hands if someone's available," Don called out.
"I'm your turtle," Raph said, crossing the room to help the genius.
"What do you think, Mike? Is this fireplace in good shape or do we need to make some drastic repairs?" Leo asked, going to stand next to his younger brother.
Mikey's upper body was inside the firebox and he slowly backed out. "Looks okay. It needs a lot more cleaning but I can't reach up inside there."
April breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Mikey. I was worried that I'd have to find another couple thousand dollars in my already tight budget to fix that thing. I've got a professional chimney sweep coming here tomorrow."
Mikey stood up and accepted a rag from Leo so that he could dust himself off. Leo tapped the brick facing and watched as some of the mortar chipped loose.
"This will have to be fixed," Leo said. "Are you going to change it or leave the brick?"
"I can't afford to do more than give it a facelift," April said. "I've got bags of mortar, so we can chisel out the old stuff and fill it back in. I think a coat of white paint and a new mantel will update it just fine."
"There," Don announced, standing back from the wall. "All I need to do is run new wire in the ceiling and the electrical in this room is up to code compliance."
"Yep," Raph said, grinning at his brother, "only seventy-five more rooms to go."
April laughed. "It's not that bad," she said humorously. "The fourth floor only has five rooms."
"And a bathroom without running water," Mikey said.
"The new pipes are in," April said. "We just have to connect them."
"'We' meaning us," Raph said. "How did Casey get out of this job?"
"He had a delivery to make tonight," April told him. "Don't worry, there are several gallons of paint here with his name on them."
"Hey, I want to paint too," Mikey said. "That's the fun part."
"We'll save you a few rooms," April said, giggling.
Suddenly the group heard the sound of someone trying the front door and all conversation stopped. Don had started up the ladder but jumped down upon hearing the noise and turned to look at April.
"Did you lock the door?" Don asked in a hushed tone.
April's eyes were wide. "I don't remember."
The answer to that question came a second later when the creak of the door being opened echoed in the empty house. In the blink of an eye, the turtles shifted from light hearted laborers to dangerous ninjas, each darting into shadowed areas of the room.
"Hello? Is anyone here?" a women called out.
April signaled to the turtles to stay where they were and quickly stepped out of the living room into the foyer. The woman who had entered was somewhere in her thirties, dressed simply, her dark hair in disarray and had a darkening lump under one eye.
"Are you all right?" April asked, going to the woman quickly.
"I don't . . . I think so," the woman stuttered. "I can't do this anymore. He's . . . he's getting worse."
A small overnight bag lay on the floor in the doorway and April picked it up in order to close the door and lock it.
"Who hit you?" April asked. "Do you want to call the police?"
"No!" the woman exclaimed. "No, please. No police. That will only infuriate my husband. I just want . . . to disappear. Can you help me? Can you hide me?"
April placed her arm around the woman's waist and guided her to the staircase, helping her to sit on one of the risers. "This shelter isn't open yet," she explained. "We're still in the process of renovating the house."
The woman looked up at her with frantic eyes. "I don't need anything other than a place to hide. I can sleep on the floor. Oh please, I don't know what else to do. He said he was going to kill me."
The woman's fear was clearly real but April didn't again attempt to persuade her to bring the police into the situation. It was a phenomenon she'd experienced many times since volunteering to help with the battered women's shelters. The fact that this woman had run from her abuser was a big step; normally women in her predicament remained in the abusive situation.
If April could make her feel safe and get her into counseling, she had a real chance at starting over without a dangerous spouse destroying her life.
"What's your name?" April asked gently.
"Anita," the woman said, without volunteering a surname.
"All right, Anita," April said. "There's a room upstairs that's been redone. We haven't electricity or running water, but the bed is new. You'll have to stay up there for safety reasons because I have a crew on-site working on the house right now. In the morning I'll find you a bed in one of the other shelters, though you might have to leave the city. Will that be okay?"
There was an immediate look of relief on Anita's face. "That would be perfect."
"Hang on while I get a light," April said.
Going back into the living room to fetch one of the camp lights, April saw that the turtles weren't anywhere to be seen. As she started back to the foyer, motion caught the corner of her eye and she turned to see Mikey waving at her from the doorway into the dining room.
"We're in the kitchen," Mikey whispered. "We can work in there until you give us the all clear."
April lifted a thumb in acknowledgment and made her way back out to where Anita waited. Together they climbed the stairs, going slowly because the woman seemed like she was nearly all in.
Opening the door to one of the bedrooms, April set the light down on a small side table and placed Anita's bag on the bed. The woman sank down next to it and April crossed over to the window and carefully adjusted the curtains so that no one could see inside.
"I'll bring up a bucket of water," April said. "You can flush the toilet once but we'll have to refill it manually if you need to flush again. I don't have any way to warm the water so you'll have to wash your face and rinse your mouth with cold water."
April walked over to a side door and opened it, walking inside to check that it was clean. "You're lucky; this room has its own bath," she called back to Anita. "There's a roll of tp in here, thank goodness. I hope the light blanket on the bed will keep you . . . ."
Before April could finish the sentence, she heard Anita shriek. Dashing out of the bathroom, April saw a man sprint across the room, his fist catching Anita on the chin as she was starting to rise from the bed.
The blow hurled Anita into a corner, where she crumpled in a heap. Lifting her hands, she begged, "No, no Eric! Stop!"
"You!" April shouted. "Get away from her."
April was halfway across the room when the man reached into his waistband, pulling a gun and spinning around with it in his hand. Grinding to a stop, April held up her palms, heart thudding in her chest as her eyes met his crazed ones.
"Back up," Eric demanded from between gritted teeth.
Doing as she was told, April said, "You don't have to do this. We can talk this out."
"Talk?" Eric asked in a nasty tone of voice. "I'm done talking to this bitch. She can't do anything right and now she thinks she's just going to run off?"
From a pocket he dug out a switchblade, flicking it open one-handed as he kept April in the gun's sights. With the gun aimed in April's direction, Eric looked back at his wife.
"You think you can leave me and what? Start over? Find yourself a new man? When I get through carving your face and tits, no other man will ever look at you," Eric said. "Then I'm going to cut my initials into your redheaded friend's face so she'll never interfere in someone else's life again."
April glanced quickly at the door, noting that it was standing open. Taking a quick breath, she spun on her heels and dove for it, keeping her head down.
She heard a shout behind her but didn't look back as she ran for the stairs. As April rushed down to the ground floor, she heard Anita's high pitched screech and almost stumbled in her haste to find help.
At the top of her lungs April began screaming, "Leo! Leo! Leo!"
Her mind a blank of panicked fear, it was the only word that came to her.
Like a bolt of lightning, Leo suddenly appeared in front of her. April couldn't speak; she just pointed towards the stairs and he was off in a flash, his mask leaving a streak of blue hovering in the air behind him.
As his brother's appeared, April found her voice. "He has a gun!"
The other three turtles ran from the room and April followed them, hoping against hope that she wouldn't hear a gunshot.
Leo entered the room both silently and swiftly. He immediately spotted a man bending over a crying woman, noting that the man held both a gun and a knife.
Drawing his sword, Leo swept across the floor on soundless feet and grasped the man's shoulder, jerking him up and around. As soon as Eric's face came into view, Leo slammed the hilt of his sword into the bridge of the man's nose.
The effect was instantaneous. A loud crunching sound filled the room and Eric's eyes rolled back in his head. As he slumped unconscious to the ground, the gun and knife fell from his hands.
Leo sheathed his sword before grabbing the front of Eric's shirt and dragging him towards the exit. Raph appeared in the doorway, stopping when he saw Leo coming towards him.
"Everything okay?" Raph asked.
Leo tipped a nod back towards the room and told April, "You need to check on her. It looks like he cut her but I don't know how badly."
Don snapped his shell cell closed and said, "I called the police and EMS. They'll be here in a few minutes."
Dragging the man past his brothers, Leo unceremoniously pulled him down the stairs, unworried as to the amount of damage being done to Eric's body as it bumped over the risers.
From the bedroom doorway, Don watched as April yanked a pillow case off the bed and held it against the sobbing woman's cheek.
"Is it bad? Do you need me?" Don asked in a low voice.
They both heard the approaching sirens and April shook her head. "I've got this. You should scatter."
With a nod that April probably didn't see, Don joined his brothers on the first floor. Eric lay in a heap at the base of the stairs where Leo had deposited him, blood flowing from his nose and mouth.
The brothers glanced at each other and beat a hasty retreat.
Almost two hours later April had the house to herself again and the turtles reappeared.
"What did you tell the cops?" Raph asked as soon as he saw their friend.
April sank down on a stool, feeling very weary now that the adrenaline had left her system. "The truth up to where I started yelling for Leo," she answered. "I told them I had a crew in here working on the fireplace and that one of them heard the screaming and came upstairs to help. I said that he knocked the gun from Eric's hand but that they tussled and ended up on the landing, where Eric lost his balance and fell."
"What did you say when they asked where we were?" Mikey asked.
"That you'd run off as soon as the police were called," April said. "I told the police that I'd hired non-union labor and that I didn't know your names and that you probably wouldn't come back."
"Are you in trouble over that?" Don asked.
April shook her head. "No. It's fairly standard practice and Anita backed my story. They took both of them to the hospital. Tomorrow when they release her I'm taking her to a shelter on the other side of the river. Her husband will be going to jail. It isn't up to her to press charges; I can do that and the fact that he threatened us both with a gun and then sliced her face will get him put away for a long time."
"How bad is it?" Leo asked, his voice low.
"It's ugly, but it could have been a lot worse," April said, smiling at him warmly. "I've never seen you move so fast."
"Is that why ya' came running downstairs screaming 'Leo, Leo, Leo'? I guess the rest of us are chopped liver," Raph said teasingly.
April blushed. "Sorry," she said. "My mind went blank and I just automatically called for Leo. I think it's that certain quality he has, that quiet assurance."
"You don't have to apologize," Mikey said, patting her shoulder. "Master Splinter saw the same thing when he made Leo the leader."
"Can we stop talking about me now?" Leo asked. "I didn't do anything special."
"And he's also very self-deprecating," Don added, punching Leo's shoulder.
April stood up, gaining the brothers attention and putting a stop to their teasing. "We're two hours behind schedule," she said in a no nonsense tone
Mikey groaned good-naturedly. "Are you sure we aren't done?"
"Yes I'm sure," April said, placing her hands against his carapace and giving him a shove. "I'll tell you what, let's take a quick snack break before we get back after it. I have a batch of double chocolate cookies in a hamper in the kitchen."
Perking up quickly, Mikey hopped off in the direction of the kitchen. "Cookies!"
Raph and Don were right on his heels. "Hurry up or he'll hog all of them," Raph said.
April hung back with Leo, who watched his brothers with an indulgent smile. "Thanks, Leo," April said softly.
"You don't have to thank me, sis," Leo said. "That was the kind of thing we're trained to deal with."
As he said that, April could see the inner strength she'd come to admire about Leo.
"I know it is," April said. "Let's see if Mikey will share those cookies."
They walked towards the kitchen together, Leo still exuding the aura of confidence that made everyone he came into contact with rely on him.
"You may all have the same training, Leonardo" April thought to herself, "but when it comes down to it, you're still the one we count on."