feckyeslife

Parker sighed. There was a voice in her head that sounded unfortunately similar to Archie’s that reminded her that rushing a job was a bigger waste of time than just waiting for the right opportunity. Rushing led to mistakes. Mistakes led to tipped alarms which led to cops and a definitive lack of loot or payment from her fence. She really didn’t want to have to find a new fence, either. Moz already had a buyer on the line, and he had no patience for losing business, either.

She’d never hear the end of it all if she lost the chance for WWII gold all because the guards here walked too slow. So Parker sat on her upturned bucket and waited, all grumbly and impatient, until the stopwatch was well past twenty minutes.

Pressing an ear to the door and stuffing the stopwatch into her pocket, Parker confirmed she was now blissfully alone. The custodial closet she had selected was two doors down from the basement stairwell. Convenient but not so deep in the facility that she didn’t have an escape route.

The museum’s nighttime lighting was poor. Of course the cameras had IR sensors so no one really needed the actual lamps, but that was utterly rude to their visiting thieves. Parker shook her head. Imagine being a local thief and having to put up with this nonsense.

Dinner was set for the upcoming Friday evening with Ellison all but locking Karen out of her office as soon as she had submitted her final piece on the stockyard corruption circuit. There was a brief moment as she stood in the checkout line at the liquor store next to Ellison’s subway stop where she debated the merits of begging off and drinking the fifteen dollar bottle of wine by herself as an equally suitable means of spending her forced time off. Then common sense took over and she decided, no, she did still want to have a job on Monday morning and Ellison’s cooking was going to be far superior to the take out Thai food that was her other meal option.

Lily gave her a warm hug and a very kind comment that the wine looked “very interesting” which was about as much that Karen could hope for when she had selected it by font choice alone. Despite having left the office around the same time as Ellison she had arrived last. Her coat and purse were neatly put away in the hall closet by Lily.

“I’m just going to check on Mitch in the kitchen. Why don’t you open this up and let it decant before dinner?” The hostess pointed Karen to the tidy little cart in the corner of the living room abutting the eat-in kitchen.

"You're not Karen," Matt Murdock said in a matter of fact fashion.

That got Karen out of bed, pausing just to grab the first sweatshirt she laid a hand on on the back of the bedroom door - a baggy USMC one that immediately consumed her hands and waistline - and to relieve Slug of his watch. The dog padded along behind her rather than return to his dog bed, just as curious as his mistress.

"And a very good morning to you, too, Cardinal," Billy snapped. "Please, do come in and bleed all over my freshly washed tile."

Even through the red lenses on his mask Karen was pretty sure she could see Matt's expression twist to glowering. "Cardinal?"

"He likes birds," Karen said as she stepped over to take Matt's shoulder.

At first when he had spotted Frank Castle standing by the elevator doors, Billy had considered throwing himself out the fire escape and praying that his physical therapy would let him make it the block out to where he had a car stashed. It wouldn’t necessarily have worked nor would it really have deterred Frank for terribly long, but the instinct had rattled around in the back of Billy’s skull even after he had let the pair into his condo.

He had managed to ignore the klaxon for a good long while as Karen relayed her story. He’d even made the silent decision that he would help for the day before Frank had pushed for more. Then Billy had frozen, resentment and anxiety racing through him in equal measure as Frank went on about family once again.

Suddenly it wasn’t just about keeping an innocent civilian safe from whatever the hell criminal conspiracy she was trying to take down. It was about making up for what Billy had turned a blind eye to with Maria and the kids.

It was some bullshit, is what it was.