Surreptitious continued... again

      Coleen stopped the car and handed Thomas her coat.

“Wait here.” She walked across the muddy street to an older style building and disappeared inside. Ten minutes, twenty, twenty-five, a half hour. He grumbled and got out of the car. From the street, the building didn’t look like much; a sign in the window read “closed”. He stepped through the door and looked around.

 Across the room was a bar with drinks and mugs behind it.  Card tables were scattered in no kind of order around the rest of the room. Empty. He moved past the bar and slipped through a small door. A storage room; no good. But there was a small window up high. He stood on a stool from the bar and looked into a narrow alley.

There were crates and pallets of junk stacked in the alley on either side of the window making visibility limited. Standing with his back to the wall of the opposite building there was a large man talking to someone just out of sight. The man was wearing some sort of work uniform and he kept getting interrupted by whoever he was talking to. Thomas watched one side of the silent conversation with interest as the man started to get angry. Suddenly he shook his head, smiled, and started to walk away. A slender hand on his shoulder slammed his back to the wall.

Coleen.

The man sneered and grabbed the slim wrist but suddenly his face changed from contempt to fear as Coleen said something in his ear. Then she brought her gun butt down hard on the man’s head and he fell to the dirty pavement at her feet. She searched his pockets, pulled out a wallet and stuffed it in her purse. Then she started back.

He scrambled to get out of the little closet, but realized escape was impossible, so he tried to look unconcerned as he stepped around the corner into Coleen’s path. She stopped but didn’t act threatened. He knew it was the other way around; she was a cornered rat, and dangerous.

“Thomas, I told you to wait.” She took a step further to his right, trying to get around him.

“I would ask you who that guy was but you might knock me out, too.” She ignored his last comment.

“He was trying to back out of a deal we’d made. Unfortunately he has a fiancée he doesn’t want hurt. Are you close to anyone Thomas?” She smiled sweetly.

“I get the point. Shall we go?” She tossed the man’s wallet to him.

“You never got out of that car. Understand?” Again, she smiled.

“Right. Let’s go.”

(I really need to think of a more creative title for this thing.)