Page 61 of The Woman with the Wallet

Miko looked at me, then exhaled hard. “Guess so,” he agreed. “Pack a bag. And your gaming console.”

“Why?”

“Chuck, it’s been a fucking endless night. Just do it. Please,” he added to soften the demand.

“Where are we going?” Chuck asked, hopping up to rush to his closet, grabbing a duffle bag and stuffing random shit into it.

“The city.”

“Yeah? Road trip!” Chuck said, sounding excited, seemingly forgetting about the danger.

Miko nodded toward the hall. I followed him out, handing him his gun back. “You alright?” I asked.

“Worried about me, sugar?”

“I dunno. Might build character to get your face fucked up a little.”

“Like the way I look too much, huh?” he teased, then sighed. “Sorry about the tagalong, but we couldn’t just leave him here to die. He’s helpless.”

“Yeah, about that. How the hell did he pull off a heist?”

“Honestly, because it was so simple. He stole one of the empty bags from the warehouse. I filled it with the fake shit. He brought the fake shit in and put it in place of one of the real diamond bags. Though, according to Henry, he’d been antsy as fuck the whole time.”

“Why is he not at work? Didn’t you tell him to act normally?”

“Okay, all set,” Chuck said, moving out into the hall with his bag slung over his back, his console in one arm, and a fucking stuffed pig under the other. “It’s a pillow,” he insisted when both of our gazes moved in that direction.

“Alright. Need anything else?”

“Think I’m set.”

“Okay, we’re gonna do this fast, in case that fuck is still lingering,” Miko said as we moved as a group toward the front door.

Morning was dawning, casting reds and oranges across the sky, brightening the shadows that could have easily hidden someone just half an hour before.

“We don’t run,” Miko instructed. “You got neighbors that are probably waking up about now. We do a brisk walk. Me and Max in the front, you in the back. Got it?” he asked, looking back at Chuck as he reached for the door handle.

“Got it,” Chuck agreed, still looking entirely too excited about the prospect of a ‘road trip,’ and forgetting all about the guy wanting to kill him.

With that, we moved outside.

Miko’s and my head were on a swivel, looking for anyone lingering around while Chuck lumbered on, clueless of any threats.

But we all made it into the car, and I breathed a sigh of relief when we finally moved away from the curb.

“This isn’t the way to the city,” Chuck said, leaning between the two front seats.

“We have to get our shit,” Miko explained, glancing over at me. “Why the fuck weren’t you at work today?”

“Oh, I, uh, got in trouble.”

“The fuck you mean you got in trouble? You’re supposed to be toeing the line. I explained that.”

“It wasn’t my fault! Not really. I was just doing my job, and someone moved something in my way. I fell over it, sending millions of dollars of diamonds scattering around the floor. It was a whole thing. I was told to stay home until they could decide what to do with me.”

That kind of worked in our favor, I guess.

“You didn’t get a look at the guy in your house?” Miko asked as we drove around for what felt like too long, making me think that he was trying to make sure we didn’t have a tail before going to the hotel.

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