The plus side of Karl barging in as he had was that Alyssa now got to see a whole other side of the operation. There were certain aspects of this op that hadn't been matching up as well with the outside intell as she'd like, and there was only so much a dancer could ask about. Grace had to keep her head down. Matt, on the other hand, could shoulder in and be as loud and obnoxious as he wanted - right up to the point of being shot or fired.
Not as if that hadn't happened before - the part of her that was Grace chimed in wryly. Matt might have been her true love or her fallback guy or the bad habit she just couldn't kick - but he'd been an on-again off-again constant for the past five years and even when Grace moved she couldn't seem to shake him. She didn't like to think about it too much - Grace was a woman with plans and feelings would just get in the way... if only he wasn't so good at eliciting them from her...
And it was for that reason Grace picked her way through the streets at 3 am after her shift ended. She was just checking up on him, making sure the boys were treating him right...
Alyssa's reasons were somewhat different. Initial surveillance being one of them, playing the part a of the 'definitely on in her own weird way' girlfriend another - Grace hadn't liked the comments some of the other girls had made about Matt - and maybe a small part was 'turnabout is fair play.' She needed to make sure that everything was OK. He was her partner, after all.
The shop's security was a regular at the bar, and it wasn't too hard to get past him, wearing little more than her leather jacket and high boots as she was. Grace was working her way up in their little organization, and soon, they thought, she'd be in too deep to ever leave. They'd see.
Grace had surely seen Matt at work before, but this was a side of Karl Alyssa had never seen, up to his elbows in grease and scowling at the mess insides of a -- since when did he smoke? -- car.
"Knock, knock," she drawled, just loud enough to be heard over the scrape of machinery which came to a halt as the other men became aware of her.