Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(20)
Just like he figured, any place with a security camera that old didn't have the most secure windows in the world. The iron grating, rusted and rough on his palms, had simply come out of the window frame with a little pressure, and the window itself hadn't even been locked. It made sense, in a Mayberry sort of way.
If things are locked, people want to get at them. If they're just open, if they just invite you in, then there's no thrill, no sport to it. At least, that's how he'd thought way back when. He lived for the challenge and the danger. The wealth was nice, but shedding a massive fortune didn't bother Ryan Drake as much as it would most anyone else.
Things had never been what he cared about.
He hoisted himself up and through the window into what he assumed was the manager's office. The safe was open, but empty; though he wasn't interested in that anyway. He would have left it if there was anything to take. There were, however, keys.
Lifting the key ring off the hook, Ryan went through them, slowly. Some were obviously locker keys, judging by their size and relative flimsiness. The loading bay key - or rather, the key to the huge padlock chained onto the door - was equally obvious.
With keys in hand, he silently pushed open the office door and descended a short half-flight of stairs that took him down into the warehouse. "Look at that," he said in a soft, but happy voice. "I couldn't have come up with a better plan myself."
The Fresh Land delivery van, in all its gaudy glory, was parked facing the bay door. It was a large, yellow and red panel van with the store's logo, the name in big, block font, along with a bunch of different vegetables arranged underneath. Alongside that were a number of very happy looking cartoon animals, including a jumping cow with a smile on her face, and a pig doing a somersault.
"Not quite what I'd drive if given the choice, but... what the hell. Oh, what's this?"
The door, he noticed, had been left ajar. The interior light was on, but fading fast. I'm gonna do some good deeds after all. If I hadn't come by tonight, this van would be dead in the morning. Call it karmic balancing.
He shut the door, but not before trying the headlights to make sure there was enough juice left to get the old tank running. Then, he grabbed a hand-drawn pallet jack, the big heavy type, and Ryan went shopping.
Whistling as he browsed, the naked bear found the desolate, empty grocery store a lot creepier than he ever thought blood diamond vaults had been. Vaults were supposed to be empty, but stores? They were always teeming with life, and noise, and Michael Bolton coming through the loudspeakers. In the dead of night, with no one around, it was a very strange experience.
His goal was anything with a long shelf life. The meat at this place wasn't exactly top notch, so he would try the other place - Earth Market or whatever it was called - for that.
That turned out fine - this store was filled to the brim with all sorts of canned vegetables, fruits, and of all the strange things, a whole lot of Mexican foods. So, with a cart loaded full of tamales, tortillas, and enough hot sauce and packaged enchilada dinners to last an entire frat house a semester, Ryan made his way back to the warehouse and unloaded his goods into the van.
Just the feeling of doing what he'd always done put a spring in his step, even if there was more than a little guilt attached. Stealing from diamond dealers and art thieves never bothered him. Not one bit. But this was just a local store.
I'll make good, he thought. Somehow, I'll pay them back. He pushed the massive, sectioned door up high enough for the van to clear, and then drove it through before hopping out and closing it behind him.
A second's rest - that door was damn heavy - found him crouched down under the sad old camera again. The whirring had taken on a kind of mournful tone, to Ryan's imagination. Instead of avoiding the arc, he strode right out into it.
"I'm guessing as old as you are, you don't have the best resolution," he addressed the eye that swept past him but did not react. "So, at the worst, there's gonna be a fuzzy image of a big, naked guy standing here waving." He waved.
"You did a good job, camera. We've all got our purpose."
And with that, it was time to visit the butcher's shop.
Although he was slightly worried about looking suspicious driving a delivery van into the competition's loading bay, he needn't have worried. Not a soul was there, and Earth Market hadn't even bothered to install a camera in the back. The loading bay here was keypad controlled, and of course the code was "1234" because everyone knows not to do it, but everyone does it anyway.
The warehouse here was more cramped, with a long meat locker running along the west side. He poked his head in, wondering what he'd find. In his worst nightmares, the place was just hung full of massive, awkward, unwieldy rough cuts of all sorts. But a smile broke across Ryan's face when he found the light.
"Would you look at that," he whispered to himself.
A line of perfectly cut quarters of pork were . arranged in neat rows, ready for either further processing or packaging for wholesale. He shook his head. At some point, the other foot's gonna drop and all this good luck is going to turn out to be either a dream or the prelude to a meteor falling on my house. But for now? Shit, I'll take it.
It took no time at all for the big bear to pull down the meat, wrap it up and deposit it in his then-sagging van. When he was finished, he had managed to play meat Tetris enough to get four pigs, and three cows shoved in the back of the van, along with the harvest from Fresh Land. His stomach started growling at a fairly alarming volume, as he looked over what he'd managed to snag. This wasn't going to be enough - not by a long shot - and it didn't take into account everyone who couldn't eat this stuff, but what the hell, it was a start.