She didn't have the hands of a killer, but then killers never did.
Mr. Burke worked with many of them, and he'd yet to see the proverbial blood on the hands. He'd noticed dirt under the fingernails, bruises on the knuckles, and once a deep row of teeth marks scabbing around a thumb in a violent parody of a ring, but never so much as a speck of blood.
She certainly showed none on her hands, the palms gripping the broom calloused and strong, the fingers long and spatulate, with nails marred not by nervous habit, but mechanical leanings and experimentations. Just looking at them he imagined he could smell the motor grease and sulphur trapped in the deep grooves of her skin.
As she tucked the broom to the side, perking up at the new customer in her store, he realized he could smell motor grease, sulphur, and the caustic brine of dangerous liquids lingering in the air.
"Oh, hey there! Don't mind the smell. I was just testing a few chemicals. It's perfectly safe to breathe. Really." The shopkeeper greeted him with a friendly, lilting tone, one he instantly found distasteful. People who sounded like her were always described as cheery or perky or peppy.
He found it simplest to cut the bullshit, and go with a more apt – yet similarly rhyming – description.
Crazy.
No sane person could survive in the wastes and keep such a chipper attitude. No, either their brains were scrambled with radiation, their perceptions skewed in a haze of jet, or their grip on reality crispy fried in the relentless sun. The woman introducing herself as Moira Brown didn't bear the telltale glassy eyes of a jet head, nor did her skin appear like leather left out for a few too many nuclear winters.
Which left the distinct possibility she was emitting more rads than that damn warhead in the middle of town.
Keeping extra space from the bubbly shopkeeper, Mr. Burke pulled the folded list of necessities from the pocket of his blazer. The detonator wasn't that difficult to construct, but it required a confounding numbers of bits and pieces from assorted wasteland junk.
"Ooh, what are you planning to build?" Moira, with an unhealthy amount of delighted curiosity, attempted to decipher his intentions from his shopping list. "Wonderglue, ham radio, fission battery..." she scanned the items, mussy auburn ponytail bobbing as she confirmed everything was in stock, "well, it looks like you're either setting up your own radio station, or you're trying to receive messages from aliens."
"Neither, I assure you," Mr. Burke responded crisply, perturbed by her perceptiveness. The detonator was surprisingly simple – a receiver tuned to the right frequency, the proper amount of wires and connectors to attach to the bomb, and the trigger to make it go – which made it all the more difficult to disguise.
There wasn't much left in the wasteland that one could possibly detonate, activate, or otherwise set off.
Moira rummaged around her shelves, pulling things out from cartons or behind precariously balanced stacks. Mr. Burke ignored her for the most part, settling for the occasional grunt whenever her mumbled runaway train of thoughts – somehow bouncing from the possibility of aliens to musings about their societal structure to ponderings about the social life of mirelurks – elicited a response. To the background of her half-spoken chatter and the clatter of her junk hunting, he took the opportunity to look around the shop.
There wasn't much to it, fashioned from the same rust coated scrap metal as the rest of town. The main floor held the shop, with its crowded shelves and cluttered countertop, while the second floor acted as her personal residence. A terminal – surprisingly functional – hid behind the counter. Trying to get a better glimpse of it, Mr. Burke was startled by a gruff voice behind him.
"It's locked for a reason," the mercenary leaning against the wall growled out. Mr. Burke turned to look, a silent comparison of relative lethality passing between them. The guard, with his leather armour and rifle, was better prepared for a sudden fire fight.
Mr. Burke offered him a thin sneer of a smile and turned back to the counter, smug in his secret plans. Little did the hired goon know he was working on something that would soon vaporize his powerful armour along with the rest of this pissant town.
So, really, who was the most dangerous man in the room?
"There you go!" Moira, arms full of greasy components, set his purchases on the only clear bit of counter space in a racket of loose springs and rusty gyros. Grubby hands hovering over the goods, she mentally tallied up the cost of it. "It'll be a hundred caps for the lot."
"One hundred?" Mr. Burke's lips thinned as he surveyed the pile of junk. He didn't begrudge spending what he had to in order to make things happen, but he'd be damned if he'd accept a poor deal. He was a businessman, after all. "I could purchase this from the traders for fifty, and in far better condition." To emphasize his point he poked at a broken clock, prompting the corroded spring bobbing inside to pop out. It flew through the air, going down behind a stack of wooden crates.
"Well, there might be a piece or two missing. I may have used some in my experiments..." Moira rubbed at her chin as she conceded the point. "Tell you what. I'll let you have them for seventy-five, and you can use the workbench to make your...sonic screwdriver?" At Mr. Burke's tight-lipped lack of response, Moira let out a chuckle. "Well, it was worth a shot. But my offer stands; seventy-five caps, and I'll even lend you a hand if you need it. Not literally, of course. What good would a severed hand be? Now a third hand – that would be useful. Though it would mean you'd need a whole new wardrobe..."
Seeing her thoughts jumping track, headed into the nebulous territory where imagination and science intersected, Mr. Burke quickly intervened to conclude the business at hand. "Seventy-five, you said?" He counted out the exorbitant price, considering those extra twenty-five caps worth it to make her insane pontifications cease.
He internally lamented the necessity of using the workbench in Moira's shop. He wouldn't return to Tenpenny Tower until his job was complete – he did have a reputation to uphold as a man who made things happen – but without his work area and the helpful assistance of Godfrey he couldn't build another fusion pulse charge.
He grimaced as he carefully removed his blazer, searching out the best spot to hang it – he'd just had it cleaned, after all. The mercenary cast a baleful glare as peeled himself off the wall beside the workbench, moving to find another comfortable spot to lean.
"Here you go," Moira chirped as she brought over a toolbox, popping the top open to show a vast selection of well-used implements. "Just let me know if you need anything else. I know how hard it can be to find a good assistant—"
"Silence," Mr. Burke quickly interrupted. "I must have absolute quiet in order to concentrate on my work."
Pressing a stained finger to her lips, Moira pantomimed shushing him, before leaving him with a cheerful nod.
As he rolled up his shirtsleeves, preparing to get his hands dirty – but not bloody, never bloody – Mr. Burke ruefully thought he understood how the woman managed to convince the gullible vault dweller to willingly traipse through a minefield.
He'd almost agree to it himself if it meant getting away from her overwhelmingly perky insanity.
