Running down the bastard

* Note: this picture has no significance to this week's flash. But it was too damn sexy not to share!

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Jenna stumbled off the steps of the Greyhound Limited, local service to Missoula, Talbots Peak, and every single piss-ant little town between the two. She'd seen much more of Montana than she ever wanted to. Curses to every client too stingy to pay expenses for a plane ticket. Or a rental car, at least.

She huffed miserably. Curses on her ex for splitting and taking her car with him. The car may be in her name, but the cops weren't going to actively hunt him down over it, so it might as well be on the moon for all the good that title did her.

Hope was not lost, of course. After this run, she'd be flush enough to buy another car, maybe one new enough to be worth full coverage insurance this time. All she had to do was find one fat Aussie bastard, hand him "his shit", ask if he had anything to take back to her client, then she was done.

Not for the first time, Jenna contemplated the odd phraseology her client had used to describe her mark, but as a contract runner, she'd learned to take the three monkey approach to life: hear no evil, see no evil, say nothing. Just do the job, collect her bananas and leave. Metaphorically speaking, of course—she was an American born dingo, not a monkey. But the only saying for her kind was "the dingoes ate my baby!!!" and that certainly didn't encourage clients to trust her. Whatever was inside the sealed package Jenna carried did not concern her. She’d signed for it pre-sealed so if it caused her to get busted, it would fall on her client to pay any legal costs.

Of course, with her luck, Jenna just might end up stuck in jail, rotting because the piss-ant client ran at the first sign of cops. She signed again and then mentally shrugged. Them’s the breaks. When you are down on your luck, you sometimes have to take the odd jobs no one else wanted. Besides, after this job—assuming the client was lagit and actually paid her—she’d have enough money to buy a car. Then she could start pulling in the good runs again.

A gust of frigid wind blew her hair in her face, smelling of rain and mud and—coffee? Quickly, Jenna stuffed her hair back into her hood and sniffed. Yep, coffee. And good coffee, too; not the crappy coffee she'd choked down at the ten minute rest stop three towns back.

Jenna spun around, frantically looking for the source of this divine aroma. Not only would an extra tall latte warm her bones and make that hellish 300 mile bus trip worthwhile, a coffee shop would be a good place to start looking the “fat Aussie bastard.”