She got what she’d wanted. Trucks loaded with stolen goods. J’s suggestion had been to basically sell some of the computers and TVs to her people for ten percent of their label prices. From the buzz she’d heard, some seemed excited about the idea. Less profit, but it made for happier underlings and less stock to offload.

Some of her people were prepared to drive to major cities and towns nearby to offload to groups and connections there. Bar had family who wanted to buy some of the stock to sell on the down-low.

J and Bar seemed pretty confident that they’d already made arrangements to get rid of two truckloads. Part of one truck would go to her people—that was fine—and the rest? It couldn’t be too difficult. The trick was that her people would be selling it themselves, rather than distributing to people who would sell it. That involved risks.

“Ready to go?” J asked.

She nodded.

J signaled with a wave of his hand.

His car was parked between two buildings. Damsel took the passenger seat, and J shut the door for her.

“Want me to drive ahead or behind?” J asked.

“Behind.”

J leaned out of the window and waved his arm in a forward motion.

The trucks rolled out.

They pulled out of the broad concrete lot that bounded the warehouse and other buildings in the same broader complex, and Damsel raised a hand to signal the mercenaries.

“Is Marrow happy?” J asked.

“Happy enough,” she responded. They’d allowed Marrow to bring a single truck in exchange for loaning them the vehicles to move the stock. It built relations, which was handy. Marrow had ignored her or claimed to be unavailable the last four times she had reached out. She’d stung his pride.

Forming working relationships would be good.

“My heart is pounding like crazy,” J said. “It has been since we first got into the trucks to drive here.”

“Wuss,” she said.

“Isn’t yours?” he asked. “How are you calm at a time like this?”

“I’m not, I suppose,” she said. She wasn’t calm, but it made her uncomfortable to try to explore that simple question of how she felt or where her ‘normal’ was. There were times her heart raced, and her heart was racing now, but that wasn’t unusual. It was almost normal. Whenever it wasn’t like this… she couldn’t say she was calm. If she wasn’t actively doing something then she generally had other concerns.

It was a rare, rare time that she was still, things were mundane, and she found a moment to consider to how she felt or how her body was doing.

She moved her hand with care, because an incautious movement could destroy the car door, wheel, or engine. She didn’t recognize her own hand.