The bell over the pawn shop door jingles as Irene slowly slips inside with a flashlight. Dusty watches, tools, and guitars line the walls and shelves, but no one's buying now. At the back of the store, Irene stops and stares at the former pawnbroker, who grins sheepishly from inside his own security cage.
"I heard someone might be in here, but why in the world did you come back?"
The pawnbroker shrugs and looks around. "I had to see it one more time. But I dropped the key down the vent, and there's a horde out in the side lot. They could come back any second."
Irene spots a familiar style of blade in one of the cracked display cases and smiles. She grabs the kukri with its rust-brown blade and the black sheath underneath. She slips the blade under the padlock and pops it free with one hard twist.
"All right, out back. There's a manhole in the alley my brother is watching."
He hurries in that direction. Irene slides the kukri into its sheath. Her dear brother Scott always brags that he has the only kukri in the area. She can't wait to tell him he's wrong. She hears a scrape at the front door and quickly follows the pawnbroker out the back.