“Everyone knows the conspiracies, man. We’re just a couple of no-names who played our first gig last night.”
“Right. And you happened to play it opening for my band. And you happened to blow us off-the-fuck-king stage. With your—huk-huk-huk!—first gig. Then I get a call from my idiot drummer, saying you’re beating the bushes for me. No, that doesn’t sound like doom knocking.”
Savy pulled free of Clay’s hold and took a step toward Karney, palms held out. “Let us prove you wrong, Davis. We’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see us again.”
Karney lit the gun and held the flame close to his face, so that fiery shadows danced across his nose. “I’m offended The Man couldn’t be bothered to attend my own demise,” he said. “Guess he’s disappointed in me. My record sales are dipping. I never could fill Rocco’s shoes.”
“Don’t do it,” Savy told him. “This isn’t how you want your story to end.”
He looked at her, the flame quivering in his hand. “But I’m not doing this for me,” he grunted. “I’m doing it for you. ’Cause you know jack shit about the deal you’re making. About killing for it, getting pissed on for it. Living with it. It’s better this way, honey.”
The hairs on Clay’s neck lifted. Karney had made up his mind. No words were going to penetrate his resolve. They were going to die here. “This is a mistake,” he whispered anyway.
“No, you fucking amateur!” Karney screamed. “Huk-huk-huk-huk! This is how you make an exit!”
“Savy, get back!”
Karney touched the lighter to his chin and there was an audible whoosh! as flames ran up both sides of his face and ignited in his hair. Karney leapt from his recliner as if shot from a catapult, batting his pajamas, slapping at his flesh, self-preservation overriding delusion. Jumping and shrieking and coughing—and at the same time gathering oxygen for the flames.
Clay shoved Savy at the door and she went stumbling across the kerosene-slick floor. Clay took a running step after her and slipped and went to his knees. Turning, he watched, helplessly, as the flames raced into Karney’s open mouth and down his throat, scorching the shriek away until there was nothing left but the shrill hiss of burning larynx. He won’t be singing a high note again, Clay thought wildly. And the stink was so atrocious even the incense could not contain it. Clay fought to hold his stomach down.
Then the dancing man-sized flame fell back against the wall, and the wall, soaked in kerosene, ignited and spread fire into the central air ducts and down along the floor molding—racing shockingly quick around the room to block the single exit.
“Run! Run!” Savy was screaming, and Clay gained his feet and sprinted, in horribly slow slow-motion. He arrived at the door too late. The kerosene caught around his feet and he yelped and jumped and rolled into the hall as Savy slammed the door shut.
Shouting, moaning, Clay pounded at the fire melting the soles of his boots. Savy shouldered her way into the recording booth and returned with someone’s jeans jacket, swatting at his feet until the flames were out. The smell of scorched rubber and denim temporarily covered the stench of Karney on fire. “We can’t stop, Clay!”
The door to the lounge—all that stood between them and the growing conflagration—was already smoking around its edges. Clay struggled to stand, his boots lighter, sticky under him; he stamped gooey rubber prints across the studio, but his legs kept him upright. Savy slammed into a ride cymbal, sending it crashing to the floor, and Clay tripped over it and almost went down again. Reaching the outer door, Savy grabbed for the knob and Clay dove out to swat her hand away. “Wait! Check if it’s hot!”
She did, touching the knob and the wood simultaneously, shaking her head to indicate that both were cool. But as she twisted the knob, Clay felt a despairing certainty that it would hold, that Kiss Kiss, or someone else, had locked them in to ensure their demise.
Only the door did open, and Savy and Clay found themselves fleeing into the sunshine pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows. In the back yard an Olympic-size pool shimmered brilliant blue, indifferent to the heat and smoke building in the house.
“Has to be a way out there,” Clay yelled, and they hurried from room to room, finding an office, a gym, a makeshift wine cellar, storage closets. But no exterior door. And it was a wonder houses this big weren’t required to post exit signs—they were death traps for people who didn’t know their way around. For people like us.
“Fuck this Lloyd Wright shit,” Savy shouted. “We need to climb.”
“Davis?” Kiss Kiss was calling down, clueless. “Shit, Davis, the house is on fire!”
Clay pounded up the staircase to the next level, Savy matching him step for step. Somewhere Queensrÿche’s “Eyes of a Stranger” was playing at killing volume, and locked to the beat were Kiss Kiss’s oncoming steps, the bombshell hurrying down the hall in a loose-fitting robe, her hair dripping. “What the fuck?”
“We need to get out right now,” Clay told her. “Show us where.”
“Where’s Davis?”
“I wouldn’t go looking for him,” Savy said.
“Did I ask your advice?” Something caught Kiss Kiss’s eye and her head tilted toward the ceiling. Clay noticed it at the same time: Smoke drifting from the air vent. And the smoke detector next to it was cracked open, its batteries conspicuously absent. Kiss Kiss blinked at Clay, her lips drawing back as she backpedaled. “You’re the ones he was scared about.”
“No,” Clay said, “Davis started the fire. He made a mistake.” Except Kiss Kiss was already turning, her wet hair bouncing as she took off down the hall.
“Follow her!” Savy shouted. “She’ll know the quickest way out.”
“Stay the fuck away from me!” Kiss Kiss shouted.
“Wait!” Clay shouted, pursuing her. Kiss Kiss reached the door at the end of the hall
