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I moved down the hall with the bathroom to shrink into my room, closing the door, taking a deep breath.
I should have known this job would come back to haunt me. There was no way they would let us get away with stealing from them. Especially guns that were so hard to replace. If we'd jacked some AKs or pistols or something, they probably would have chalked it up to part of the job and moved on. But when it came to collector's items like these, ones that were hard to get, ones that influential clients wanted their paws on, yeah, of course they would track us down.
I guess I had maybe been imagining they'd want money. With interest. Or possibly beat the crap out of us as a message to others who might think of crossing them.
Honestly, as much as it would hurt our bottom line to do it, I think I'd have preferred the money.
And as much as I ached enough in random areas from harsh beatings already, I would have probably taken a beating too.
This was going to be a pain in the ass. Require endless hours online hunting things down. Then likely some travel as well. And when you were dealing in illegal guns, you couldn't exactly make life easier by hopping on a plane real quick to pick it up.
So, no.
There would be cars.
Or, worse yet, boats.
Even just at the thought of it, my stomach lurched, sloshed around.
Boats and I, we never got along.
It didn't matter how often I had to be on one, my stomach had violent objections that left me queasy for weeks after even on solid ground.
But we had to do what we had to do.
Get this burden off our backs.
Then we could maybe take a vacation, go somewhere that Astrid could actually drink piña coladas on the beach while being fed pineapples by hot men who told her how beautiful she was.
Maybe I could too.
Then take one to bed.
My eyes moved around my room, taking in the lack of art on the walls, the fact that I hadn't even painted it after we'd moved in. I hadn't put anything down on the cold, hard cement floors either.
My bed, though, my bed was where it was at.
For someone like me, someone to whom sleep was not usually an easy thing - either falling or staying - I tried everything I could think of to make my bed a bit of a sanctuary for myself in the hopes it might fight off the insomnia or the bad dreams.
It was king-sized which was unnecessary for most single women. But I tended to explore in my sleep, ending up not only from one end to the other but also from top to bottom, diagonal to diagonal, or even, on occasion, all my body but my legs on the bed. So room to roam was mandatory for me.
The sheets were all Egyptian cotton, gray, buttery to the touch. There were two rows of pillows, a giant body pillow, heavy blankets, and then a light blanket for those nights when you're too hot, but you need to sleep with something on you anyway. There was a heating pad, a sleep mask, and a sound machine on my nightstand, blackout curtains on the windows that lined one wall, a fan overhead to move some air.
It was a sleeper's paradise mostly wasted on someone who struggled to get a good five hours in.
As I walked past, I tossed the blankets back into place, picking up a Christmas throw that had fallen to the floor to drape off the side.
Christmas.
If we were traveling, we might miss it.
My heart sank a bit at the thought as I went into my closet, dragging out light wash jeans and a long-sleeve hunter green tee, slipping into underthings and those before pulling out my hair, dragging a brush through it as I tried to fight off the stab of guilt I felt at possibly making us work through Christmas.
I had told Astrid this year that we would get to have a nice, calm holiday. That she would be able to do all the normal stuff. That we would be home to bake and cook and wrap and sing. Instead of like last year when we'd exchanged gifts we'd wrapped in hotel room towels in ninety-degree weather, no one actually in the spirit, simply going through the motions.
It would suck to break that promise. Even if she was a grown woman who would understand.
I'd tried every single year to make it perfect, idyllic, the kind of Christmas she had never gotten.
But many years, something came up.
I took a minute to dry my hair, not knowing if the day would demand we go out in the cold at all, then finally made my way back out of my room, figuring that if we hustled hard, harder than normal, we might be able to wrap all of this up in time for the holiday.
