“I asked you a question,” she said, her voice sharp.

“Uh, we’re fine. We should plan more before we do this again, teach our people to load things efficiently. Giant monster? How giant?”

“Seventy-five feet? I don’t know. Big doesn’t matter.”

“We’re not concerned?”

“I am concerned that we have a convenient distraction and we might waste it. Will we be done in five minutes?”

“Last load, people!” J shouted. “We’re out in four!”

“Alright,” Damsel said.

People who’d been inside made their way out, carrying large boxes. A few had flat boxes stacked three or four high, each stack carried by two people.

“Careful about tipping them over!” a man called out. It was Marrow, at one of the trucks. “You can mess with the internal hardware or some shit like that.”

Damsel walked over to him. “Any complaints?”

“Nah, this is good,” Marrow said. “What was the rumble?”

“Giant monster. But it’s not here and it’s not threatening the city. We can ignore it.”

“You’re sure?” he asked. At her nod, he asked, “We part ways after this, then? Your convoy goes one way, me and my brothers go another?”

“We’ll touch base soon. If you can’t offload your take, we might have an offer,” Damsel said.

“You’re pretty confident you’ll be able to sell all this,” he observed.

It was four trucks that were partially filled—three smaller moving vans and one eighteen wheeler. Marrow’s ex-cons had one large moving van.

“We’ll see,” she said.

“Get in and buckle up!” Bar called out. “Don’t let any of those boxes fall on you!”

People filed into the eighteen wheeler. The shutter at the back was closed.

The other trucks were loaded up, her people inside, and the doors shut.

“Bring my trucks back whenever,” Marrow said.

“Yeah,” she said. She walked away.

It was one of her underling’s cousin’s tips that had given them the location of the stocked warehouse. That cousin was in their security uniform, at the far end of the lot with a broken leg, a shiner, and two of the four mercenaries she’d hired standing guard over them.

By choice, as strange as it seemed. Cape insurance was paying out the nose while Boston was being turned upside-down, and they weren’t vetting a lot of the reports, or so this cousin thought. For enduring a broken leg and a bruise, they had a disability payout, an excuse to claim mental distress, and the ability to coast for six months to a year before they had to go back to work. That was their estimation, reportedly. She didn’t really care if it worked out or not.