A Bad Day for Sorry

shine. She considered dabbing on a little concealer and then realized how ridiculous the idea was: pretty didn’t really play into her agenda.

Which led her to go over the plan. Essentially, there wasn’t one, other than to get close enough to Benning and Funzi and the others to find out what they were up to. Yeah. Maybe they’d be sitting in a kiddie pool unarmed, drinking root beer and talking about where they’d stashed Tucker and the best way for someone to sneak up and take him back.

Stella snorted with disgust as she pulled her hair back and secured it in a short ponytail with an elastic. It was far more likely that she and Chrissy were going to have to beat the information out of one of them. With any luck they’d be able to separate one of the losers from the rest, and somehow make him tell them everything, all without causing the others to wonder where their friend had got off to.

And that’s if Funzi and his associates were even at Benning’s. Maybe it was bowling night, or maybe they’d got tired of the local color and gone back up to Kansas City. They could try to get something out of Benning and his skinny-ass girlfriend, if that was the case, but if Roy Dean had somehow ended up bringing Tucker into the mess, and now the goons were gone, Tucker was probably gone with them. Stella didn’t like thinking about that one bit.

No, it would be better if it was another boys’ night at the play house.

She pulled on the pair of loose camo pants and black T-shirt they’d bought at the Wal-Mart, and laced up her hiking boots. She surveyed herself in the mirror: with her hair up and her mangled face, she looked like a kid who couldn’t decide what to be for Halloween, Rambo or Frankenstein.

Disgusted, she went to the garage and loaded up her backpack with supplies. In addition to a pair of powerful LED flashlights she packed a coil of nylon rope, a utility knife, a compact set of bolt cutters, pliers, her cell phone, and bottled water.

Chrissy was in the kitchen with the box she’d brought from home, strapping a shoulder holster over her own black T-shirt. It crossed in the back and bisected her generous bosom in the front. She picked up the Makarov, gave it a fond little dusting with her fingertips, and slipped it in the leather holder.

She’d tucked her camo pant legs into pink high-top Converse sneakers. Stella couldn’t help grinning at the sight of her; with her ample curves and blond ringlets spilling from her baseball hat, she looked like a demolition cherub.

Stella put on her own abdomen holster and patted the Ruger. After shooting it earlier, it had become comfortable in her hands, and she liked the feel of it close by.

“You take the big knife,” she told Chrissy, rummaging in the box for an ankle holster. She found one, a Velcro and nylon model that fit the knife as though it had been made for it.

“What about you?”

Stella thought for a moment. The other knives that Chrissy brought were small and wouldn’t have much stopping power, and there didn’t seem to be much point to bringing them, especially as she’d packed her utility knife.

Stella had a sudden thought and went to Noelle’s old room, where she stored all her sewing supplies. Since she started her second business, her sewing machine had been gathering dust, but her best Gingher scissors were in the tool caddy where she left them. They were weighty in her hand, a good pair of nine-inch trimmers.

On a whim she grabbed her rotary cutter, too. She made sure the safety was on and slipped it into her pocket.

Back in the kitchen, she found another ankle holster, an old leather one with buckles, which she fitted carefully to her leg. The scissors fit well in the sheath, their handles sticking up in easy reach.

Stella got a couple of Advil, considered them for a moment, and added two more, gulping them down with a glass of ginger ale.

“Bad?” Chrissy asked, watching her.

Stella shrugged. “I don’t feel the best I ever have,” she admitted, “but the smartin’s gone down, mostly.”

“You look good,” Chrissy said.

“You got to be kidding.”

“No. I ain’t. You look like trouble with a capital T.”

Stella wiped her mouth on her arm and burped. “Well then, I guess I can’t ask for much more, right? Let’s get this show on the road.”

She was reaching for her backpack when the doorbell sounded. Stella froze and glanced at Chrissy, who was smoothing down her T-shirt under the cross-body holster.

“Shit,” she said. “Who the hell—”

“You got to answer it, Stella,” Chrissy said urgently. “You don’t want folks wondering where you are. Plus, it could be the sheriff.”

Stella grabbed an apron off a hook on the wall and tossed it to Chrissy. It read “Your Opinion Wasn’t in the Recipe” and had been a gift from a client who’d bought herself a matching one once her husband had learned the hard way not to criticize.

As Chrissy hastily tied on the bright red apron, Stella tugged her pants legs over her ankle holster as well as she could and yanked her T-shirt low to cover the bulge across her stomach. They looked each other over and Chrissy gave Stella a thumbs-up.

Stella took a deep breath, went to the door, and peered through the peephole. A not tall, spare-built man in a shiny blue sport coat and too-long brown pants stood in the doorway, grinning nervously. His yellowish hair had been recently slicked down but was already popping up from the attempted part. He wasn’t a whole lot to look at —neither handsome nor the least bit intimidating. Stella swung the door open and glared. “Yeah?”

“Hello,” he said a little breathlessly. “You must be Stella Hardesty. Pleased to make your acquaintance. These are for you.”

From behind his back he produced a small bunch of flowers, pink mums with a healthy puff of baby’s breath, and thrust them at her. Stella took them, too surprised to object, and was starting to express her cautious gratitude when he craned his neck around her and peered into the house.

“There you are!” he bellowed, spotting Chrissy. “Oh Good Lord in Heaven, there you are!”

As he made to sprint past Stella, her instincts kicked in and she stuck a foot out. He tripped, shiny brown shoes colliding with her hiking boots so that he splatted with considerable force, flying flat out into the small foyer on Stella’s throw rug.

He made an oof sound and a small box that he had been holding went flying. Stella drew her gun and had it on him in a split second, and was standing over him in an uwavering spread, the adrenaline from the afternoon coursing through her veins. Just as she was about to scream something harsh and threatening, Chrissy knelt down in front of him on her hands and knees and shook her head.

“Pitt Akers,” she said, “What have you done?”

What the young man had not done, as it turned out, was to have kidnapped Tucker. Nor had he developed much more hard-boiled courage in the intervening days since he’d last hid in a guest-room closet.

It was the latter that made Stella so certain of the former. After she’d interrogated Pitt for a mere five minutes or so it seemed pretty clear that his story was, in fact, the truth. When he heard—through the closet door behind which he’d barred himself—Roy Dean demanding his hibachi back, he was finally convinced that Chrissy’s relationship with Roy Dean was well and truly over. He’d gone hastily back home to pack a few things and then jumped in his car for a road trip back to his family home in Sikeston, several hours away, where he got the engagement ring she’d returned to him after their marriage ended, and which had been stored in a wad of tissue in a matchbox in his mother’s sewing caddy. He then shared the joyous news of his impending reunion with Chrissy, first with his parents over a pot roast dinner, and then with a few childhood friends. This second celebration turned into the sort of evening out at the roadhouse that tacked an extra day onto the trip for recovery purposes, but by this afternoon Pitt felt lively enough to make the drive home, where he took care of the litter box and showered and dressed in his finest duds and came over to re-propose.

It was, Stella supposed, to Chrissy’s credit that she emerged dry-eyed but kindly from the brief, private discussion she and Pitt had in the guest room—and to Pitt’s that he left without an argument, though they could