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"One-point-two."
"You've got to be fucking with me."
"Nope," she told me, smile huge. "She can afford it. They know that. And she will pay it. They know that too."
"What is she paying you?"
"If I get the dog back alive, and bring in the guy, half the ransom amount."
"No shit. You've been making bank all these years, huh?" I asked, impressed.
"You have a problem being with a woman who makes more than you?"
"Fuck no. Sugar Mama me up, Mack," I told her, making that snorting laugh escape her.
"Not all the jobs bring in as much, though. I mean poor people have kids go missing just as often as rich ones. More, probably. They're more easily preyed upon. And, well, I don't really need the money. You know... the bank..."
"Can't imagine what you got for that."
"It was valued at two-hundred-million. But I, well, I think I was too busy being hurt and angry and confused to fight for anything near that." She shrugged her shoulders, never having been materialistic, so the money didn't matter all that much. "I ended up with thirty. After everything and everyone was paid. And I gave a lump sum to the families of the staff members who had been killed that night."
"Oh, you know, just a measly thirty million dollars," I said, shaking my head.
"I always figured I would find a way to put it to good use someday. I don't know how, but that is what I would like to do. Maybe slow down on the catching bullets with my ass thing," she said with a smirk.
"Settle down with an arms-dealing biker, perhaps?"
"Well, I have always been attracted to the simple things in life," she agreed. "A nice, easy-going retirement."
"Where we attempt not to burn the place down while cooking," I agreed, liking the idea more than I could have ever anticipated.
I'd never given settling down much thought. It was a useless thing to consider. Cruel and selfish, even.
Because no one would have ever sized up. Everyone would be compared to my memories of Mack. And no one could ever come close to her. It would have been wrong to expect another woman to accept being second best.
So I always figured I would end up single for the rest of my life. There seemed to be no other viable option.
But then there she was.
The Mack from my past, yet better, more layered, more complicated, someone who sized up as more of an equal now that the years had seasoned her as well. She wouldn't be unsure around me, insecure, intimidated.
She knew who she was, and would be that woman unapologetically.
I couldn't imagine anything better.
"I like to clean on Sundays," she blurted out oddly, making my brows furrow.
"Come again?"
"Sundays. I like to clean on Sundays. It's a tradition I learned from my mother growing up. Do you clean?"
"Or roll around in my own filth?" I asked. "My old job taught us to be tidy. You didn't want to leave much of anything behind in case it left a trail back to you. And I had to start from the bottom at the club. Prospects always have to do the dirty work. Figuratively, but also literally. I can get behind Sunday cleaning."
"I have to sleep with the light on," she went on.
"Yeah?" I asked, interested. She'd been fine with the dark when she was younger.
"Had someone sneak in on me at night once. I've been careful since."
"Okay. Light on at night."
"I limp when it rains," she admitted, curling her lip up.
"My bones grumble when I get up in the morning," I told her. "We're getting older. Our bodies have quirks now."
"Quirks. I like that."
"So how long do we have before we need to hit the road to go save a spoiled Schnauzer?"
"It's, what, a three-and-a-half hour drive to D.C. from here? We will need to get on the road within the next two hours to meet the client on time."
"Two hours," I mused. "We could really break this place in in two hours."
"Well, we already broke in the living room. And the kitchen."
"Still got the bathroom and the bed."
"Bed first, then shower," she decided, hopping up, climbing off without a shred of insecurity, another improvement the years had brought on.
As I sat there, watching her make her way toward the hallway, her ass jiggling just the right amount as she did so, I couldn't help but feel the weight that had been pressing down on me for so long lift slightly.
There would always be a bit of guilt, for what I had willingly done, for leaving before I knew for sure she was gone, for allowing her life to be so hard to her.
But had things gone differently, I wouldn't have gotten to know the woman she had become.
There was hard, sure, a bit of a rough external shell. But inside? Inside it was still all mush. I wasn't even sure she saw that. But I saw it. Because I had been intimately acquainted with all her soft and sweet in the past, had spent years poring over all the details of it in my memory.
