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It was Ally.
“Do you know what’s going on?” she asked.
“Escalated hostilities, on both sides,” I answered. I wanted to talk to Lee, see Lee, hear from someone that Lee was okay, even if it was a disembodied communication from a higher deity.
“What does that mean?” Ally went on.
“Hell if I know.”
And I didn’t want to know. I was deep in my Denial Fortress. Way deep.
“Do you want me to come over?” Ally asked.
“I’m not allowed to open the door to anyone but Lee, Mace or Vance,” I told her.
“Says who?”
“Says Vance.”
“Since when do you do what you’re told?”
“Since the words ‘escalated’ and ‘hostilities’ entered my vocabulary, and I finally told your brother I love him, and he’s living with me and I might be pregnant with his child, and I haven’t seen his cabin in Grand Lake yet and his office is not safe anymore and—”
“All right, all right, I get it,” Ally cut me off. “Call me when you know something.”
“Gotcha.”
I hung up, stood in my living room and stared at the weapons on my dining room table.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
This was all my fault.
Well, maybe notallmy fault. It was mostly Rosie’s fault, but if something went wrong I’d feel responsible. This wasn’t the kind of something that could go wrong like jumping in a car with ten dollars in your pocket and a half a tank of gas and driving to Colorado Springs in hopes of going to a bar, not getting carded and meeting hot soon-to-be fighter pilot cadets from the Air Force Academy, an endeavor doomed to fail (and I would know as I was the voice of experience on that kind of thing; how do you think I got my T-shirt?). This kind of something meant guns and bullets and Brody in the surveillance room where, outside the door, grunts of pain could be heard.
I wasn’t really good at doing nothing. I was kind of an action girl and sitting around waiting was not my style.
Nevertheless, I pulled my cop’s daughter shroud around me. It wasn’t impenetrable, but it would do the trick in a pinch. I sat on my couch, pulled my heels up on the seat, rested my cheek on my knees and waited.
* * *
Looking back,it was kind of an idiotic thing to do.
Not that I should blame myself too much. It wasn’t like cars exploded in front of my house every day. Not to mention I was a little wired, what with the love of my life, who I’d finally hooked up with, done the deed with and started living with, out there escalating hostilities.
In my defense, Vance didn’t say anything about not going outside if there was an explosion that shook your house, made your windows buckle and was so loud it made you think your ears were bleeding.
I wasn’t totally stupid. I did look outside first. There was a car on fire in the middle of the street, burning debris everywhere. The car didn’t explode. Itexploded, and bits of it were all over the road, the sidewalk. Even in my front yard, wrecking Stevie’s beautifully tended legacy. There were people shouting and running around. And anyway, what kind of neighbor would I be if I hid in the house if someone was out there, hurt, burned, whatever?
Not to mention that someone could be Lee.
I thought, with all those people, I’d be safe.
I was wrong.
I nabbed the stun gun (my premier choice in weaponry), unlocked the door and the security door, did a scanning sweep of my porch and stepped outside.
