Sophie Littlefield - A Bad Day for Sorry

“Wow, sounds like a setup for hundreds of hours of therapy if I ever heard one.”

“Ain’t no Lardner ever had therapy,” Chrissy said, with a note of pride.

Stella figured that was a discussion for another time. She found the gas cap right on top, conveniently located where she didn’t even need to lean far over the open water. She twisted it off and slipped one end of the black plastic tubing inside.

“Let’s hope they left the tank full,” she said. She let the hose loop down so that it touched the deck, then lifted the other end up to her lips and made a face.

“Wow, I’ve sucked all kinds of stuff in my day,” Chrissy said, giving Stella a leering grin, “but I’m glad that’s you about to put that in your mouth and not me.”

“Well, honey, the idea is not to get any in your mouth.”

“How you gonna manage that?”

“It’s a physics thing.” She sucked on the hose until she figured the liquid had traveled as far as the dock, then pulled her lips away and whispered, “Here goes nothing.”

After giving the gas a minute to make its way through the tube to level, she put the open end in one of the water bottles and then held the bottle down along the side of the dock.

Liquid began to fill the bottle.

“Yes!” Stella exclaimed, pleased, a little surprised the technique actually worked.

“Damn,” Chrissy said with admiration. “That’s quite a trick, but it smells nasty.”

“Well, we’re a couple of nasty girls,” Stella said as she filled the second bottle.

When it was full, she coiled up the tubing and dropped it on the deck. She handed a bottle to Chrissy and they started back up the steps.

“So now what, we ask them fellas to drink this shit and hope they pass out?” Chrissy asked when they got back up to the lawn.

“No, darlin’, we’re gonna set this place on fire.” She led the way to the side of the house, running her fingers along the stucco and the trim, trying to judge flammability.

“Stella, I don’t think we better burn the house down,” Chrissy whispered, clearly worried. “I mean, Tucker’s in there. And if, you know, if we get blown away or something, I still want him to get out. Even if it’s with, you know… them.”

Stella turned to Chrissy and saw moonlight creamy on her pale, broad cheeks, eyes miserable with worry. That was a mama for you, putting aside thoughts of her own safety, her own life even, for her baby. It gave Stella an extra little burst of determination. “Ain’t gonna happen,” she promised. “No one’s getting blown away today—at least, none of the good guys. Besides, I’m talking about a little bitty fire, just on the outside of the house. Just enough to set off the alarms and get their attention.”

She settled on a stretch of flower bed that ran along the back of the house. A row of shrubs had been planted out of reach of the sprinkler system and had died and dried up into sticks. Stella slowly poured the gasoline out of the bottles onto the shrubs and the wood trim, and up along the side of the house. She wasn’t sure what stucco was made of these days—probably Styrofoam—and hoped to hell it would burn.

“Okay,” she said. “Moment of truth.”

She dug her lighter out of the bottom of the backpack and then reached for Chrissy’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

Chrissy squeezed back. “What are we going to do when it lights?”

“Well, first of all, try not to set ourselves on fire. Then I guess let’s stay close to the house, maybe around the corner. That way we can see around but we’ll be out of the fire. This ought to smoke up good, so it should set off the alarm and they’ll be able to see it out the windows. You gotta figure they’re gonna come out the back to see what happened.”

“But what if they go out the front?”

“Well… whoever comes out, it’s going to be my job to take them down, so all you need to worry about is getting in. Don’t wait around to see, just go. If no one shows up back here, I guess I’ll go check on the front door. But I got to think they’ll come around to the back once they see nothing’s burning out front, don’t you think?”

“Sounds like a lot of guessin’ and hopin’ to me,” Chrissy said.

“ ’Fraid so. But I’m plum out of alternatives.”

“Okay. So you get the guy outside, I go in and find Tucker—”

“Upstairs, I’m thinking. There’s probably three, four different bedrooms up there. I’ll be right behind you, soon as I can, and I’ll try to cover you. But there’s a chance you’re gonna be on your own until you find him. So you just concentrate on finding him and then you grab him and go. I’m not kidding, Chrissy, you come out of there and you fly . Back to the Jeep, unless you get hurt or something, then I guess you’ll have to get to a neighbor’s house and call the cops.”

Shot, she meant, or stabbed or clubbed or any other manner of violent reckoning—and then it would be a matter of great good luck if Chrissy got out of there at all.

But Chrissy just nodded calmly. “Then what?”

“Throw Tucker in the Jeep and go . Don’t wait on me. Here, you’re going to need these.” She got her car keys and Patrick’s phone out of the backpack and handed them to Chrissy. “Give me a call when you’re safe. I’ll take care of myself until I hear from you, okay?”

Chrissy took the keys and stuck them in her pocket, then flipped open the phone. “Okay. Give me your number.”

As she recited it and Chrissy keyed it into the phone, Stella tried not to think about how flawed the plan was. What if the fire didn’t catch? What if the flames outdoors weren’t enough to set off the alarms? Or if the smoke detectors were out of batteries—they were always going on about that on the news, how people let their batteries run down and ended up cooked in their beds.

Or what if the fire just took off and sent the whole house up in a ball of flame? Unlikely; they probably coated that Styrofoam stucco with the stuff they made kids’ pajamas out of before the house got a coat of paint.

What if they all came out—Funzi and his wife and Beez. That would be three against two, and then—

Stella forced herself to stop. That kind of thinking wasn’t going to help.

She zipped the backpack shut and slipped it on her shoulders. The pain and fatigue she had been feeling earlier was gone, replaced by a nervous tension that hummed through her whole body.

Chrissy snapped the phone shut and slipped it into her pocket. “Well, what’re ya waiting for?” she demanded.

“Right,” Stella muttered, and flicked her Bic.

She held the flame down to the trim around the window, and there was a sputtering and a strong smell of burning chemicals, but no fire. Stella realized she was holding her breath as her fingertips grew increasingly hot. Right when she thought she was going to have to drop the lighter, a tiny lick of flame went up and over the edge of the painted wooden trim and spread its way down the board. A fraction of an inch at first, and then another one… and then in a whoosh a finger of flame tracked down a rivulet of gasoline that dripped from the stucco and grew into a sizable flame.

“I think we’re in business,” Stella said.

She stepped back and slid the lighter into her pocket. She grabbed Chrissy’s hand and led her away from the growing fire. Chrissy gave her a businesslike nod and sprinted to the back porch, where she took up position on the side of the door, flattened against the house, gun hand bent at the elbow, looking plenty ready to blow the head off anyone who even looked at her sideways.

Stella took the other side of the door, copying Chrissy’s stance, the Ruger drawn and ready. Her fingers felt faintly sweaty on the warm ivory grip, and her heart was keeping up a pretty good pace.