The bar is dark and quiet when I walk inside. The only light comes from a couple of fluorescents that I assume they keep on to deter intruders.
Didn’t work on this guy.
The bird’s cage is in the corner, shielded with the purple zipped cover. It’s about five feet tall, three feet wide, and two feet deep. In other words, way too big for me to easily steal by myself, but whatever. I’ll make it work.
When I bear-hug the cage to lift it off the stand, the bird flips out.
“Red alert. Red alert.Danger, Will Robinson.” The tone of his screeching changes. “Gonna kill you, mothafucka.”
Yeah, anyone upstairs is going to be wide awake now. I turn with the cage, glad it’s not as heavy as I anticipated, and move toward the exit.
“Sorry, buddy.” I use the cage to push open the door.
“Red alert. Dead man walking.”
As soon as I’m outside, thinking this went way more smoothly than I planned, Ripley hops out of the passenger side of the truck and hurries around to open the door to the back of the cab.
I’m cursing at her in my head as the bird swears at me to anyone who will listen.
I put the seats down in the crew cab before attempting this shit, so with the door open, all I have to do is slide the cage inside.Thank fuck it fits.
“Get your ass back in the car, woman. I told you—”
“You needed help.”
She’s more stubborn than I am, and that’s saying something. I slam the door and pick Ripley up, her body pressed to mine as I walk her around the truck and heft her higher to sit her in the seat.
The bird is squawking, but I can’t make out what it’s saying. Either way, that’s not important.
“Next time I’m kidnapping a bird for you, your ass stays in the truck. Got it?”
“Fine,” she huffs. “Now we just need the stand and we can get out of here.” A certain sadness shrouds her features. Probably thinking about how the life she had only days ago is nonexistent thanks to a good-for-nothing dad and a piece-of-shit cousin.
“Give me two minutes and we’ll be gone. Hold tight, sugar.”
I shut her door and head back into the bar. Bird-cage stand in one hand and a bag of bird food in the other, I’m ready to get out of this bar when footsteps pound down the stairs from Ripley’s old apartment.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
It’s the cousin, Brandy. She’s wearing some kind of lacy number that looks like what you’d see a stripper walk around in after she finishes dancing onstage. Not a single trace of modesty in that one, because I can see both her nipples clearly.
“Getting out of here.”
She looks at the stand and the bag in my hands and then to the corner where the bird cage used to sit. Then her face twists into an ugly scowl.
“I shoulda known she’d come back for that pain-in-the-ass bird. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you walk out of here with it, though.”
“Already did, so what you gonna do about it?”
“I could call the cops on you. You’d be arrested for breaking and entering and stealing my shit. I bet those reporters would be plenty happy to pony up cash for this story too.”
With one hand on the door to shove it open, I’m ready to get my ass out of this place, but when she sayspony up cash for this story too, I still.
“What the fuck did you say?”
“That the reporters would probably be happy to pay for this story.”
I drop my hand from the door and take a step toward Brandy. She might not be the brightest bulb in the box, but even she recognizes over two hundred pounds of pissed-off man when she sees it.