The Woman at the Docks (Grassi Framily)

The inside was about what you expected of a budget hotel with its ugly brown and tan patterned carpets, its white nightstands with cheap lamps flanking the queen-sized bed that was covered in a dark brown comforter and four sad, deflated pillows.

But the tan tile bathroom was clean.

The TV worked, though I only used it for background noise, trying to quiet my swirling thoughts.

And, most importantly, there were the glass sliding doors and the small balcony with a wrought iron railing of questionable strength.

Shucking off my pants, rummaging around for a tie to wrap up my long hair to get it off my sweaty neck, I grabbed the desk chair, dragging it back over toward the window where I'd left it before housekeeping had come in and moved it.

I grabbed the set of binoculars I'd bought at some hole in the wall feed store on the way through town, pulled open the doors, and sat down.

Objectively, I should have been sleeping. I'd maybe gotten two hours a night since I had taken a plane down to Venezuela a few days before. My mind refused to rest, though. Constantly whirling with what-ifs and regrets until I felt motion sick, nauseated, reaching for the pack of peppermints from my bag.

This should have been all over by now.

And the stress was eating a hole in my stomach lining.

The worst part was I had to go back. Even knowing they were onto me, even fully aware that security would likely be ramped up.

I had to go back.

There was no way around that.

It was all the more reason I should have been sleeping, making sure my mind and body were as sharp as they would need to be to get on those docks once again with the mob looking for me.

Life had certainly taken quite the turn over the past week or so.

I'd just been living my life in California, sleeping in my shoebox of an apartment, driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic day in and day out to get to a job that, while fulfilling, made it difficult to ever plan on getting ahead in life. My biggest problem had been having to drag my laundry across town because the laundry room in my apartment complex was always out of order.

And now I had been to and back from my homeland, was holed up in a hotel in Jersey, and being actively chased down by the mafia.

The me I had been a week ago would have snort-laughed over the very idea, then gone back to drinking the drip coffee I made at home that I was trying t

o convince myself tasted as good as the fancy lattes that simply weren't in my budget for the rest of the month.

Reaching up, I scrubbed a hand over sandpaper-dry eyes, suddenly wishing I had been interested in martial arts in my teens instead of cross country running. Or that I had any idea how to get a gun around these parts.

Back home, I knew what neighborhoods to turn into to ask, that was for sure. Here? Not so much. And I figured it was a bad idea to walk up to a stranger and ask for a gun if they weren't in that particular business.

Pissing off more criminals sounded like a bad idea at this point.

Not that I thought I'd be any good with a gun even if I got my hands on one. I knew how one worked, of course. They weren't exactly rocket science. But I wasn't sure how good I'd be at pointing it at someone and pulling the trigger.

Besides, what were the chances that, if it came to a face-to-face, I would be able to pull and point a gun faster than a man who'd likely had his first machine gun when he was in elementary school?

I just had to be even more careful, quicker.

And to be quicker, I needed to make sure I didn't miss a single ship as it came in.

I got up, grabbing my notebook out of my purse, flicking on the TV, and grabbing the room temperature energy drink I'd picked up earlier, knowing I was going to need a kick of caffeine, and not being nearly bold enough to use the ancient coffee pot that came with the hotel room. And, well, going downstairs to get a coffee from the dispenser would mean putting on pants. When given a choice, not putting on pants was always the better option.

Especially in this heat.

I situated myself back on the seat with my setup, going over my notes, checking some off, underlining others, making a map of the containers, of where I knew the cameras were, trying to come up with a new course of action to evade the likely doubled security for the next evening.

Eventually, despite the caffeine, sleep claimed me, albeit fleetingly.

A car alarm going off made me shoot forward in my chair, heart hammering in my chest, everything around me feeling hazy and foreign for an alarmingly long moment before I remembered where I was, why I was here.