I tuck my gun in my waistband as I follow her to the mafia-sized trunk. In a fluid blur, she's sliding away a metal case that I recognize as a gun carriage, and she's opening a black one that is unfamiliar to me.
“Stay in the car,” she says softly, her tone solid and measured.
She opens the case with the precision and surety of an assassin. Inside, nestled between some egg crate foam, is a fifth of Southern Comfort. The liquid inside is the right color, but it moves like mostly melted butter.
I'm too stunned to respond properly. Stay in the car? Not likely. She can't expect that of me. I watch her retrieve another bottle lid that has a big, white tampon hanging through it by the string. It is severely out of place, that tampon. Almost comical.
She replaces the bottle's lid with the tampon-laden one, leaving the cotton to dangle inside. I watch with morbid fascination as the liquid bleeds into the misemployed feminine product. Events are beginning to reshape in my mind's eye, as the thing in her hand begins to make more sense in my frayed thought process. This is no bottle of summer evening rowdiness, this is one mean little Molotov cocktail. Frederick's work, no doubt.
“At least stay here,” she says, unexpectedly nailing me with dead seriousness.
I can barely see the brown of her irises in the moonlight. Summer bugs buzz in my head. My stomach invades my lower intestines at the sight of the deadly intent on her face. She's sidelining me, putting me on the bench until her business here is done.
She steals away. Her feet barely make any sound in the gravel. Her hips sway slightly, sending upon me a wave of slow motion sensory cues that always seem to happen before something significant comes. My consciousness breathes in. I close the trunk as gently as I can manage and wait.
She sidles up to the house, a stalking predator in the shadows. A siren erupts somewhere several blocks away. The noise makes my heart stutter, nearly fail, but Maria is steady, unaffected. She doesn't give a shit about authorities in the still night air.
I keep waiting for gunfire, or a signal of danger from a hidden lookout, for some indication that they have been waiting for us all this time. Perhaps they really have underestimated the magnitude of their actions and the force they have angered. These fuckers are crazy if they believe they won't be hearing from us tonight, even crazier if they thought they could scare Charlie's little sister into inaction. Such is the smug self-confidence of their ringleader.
I watch her silhouette slip a lighter from her pants pocket. Its flame illuminates her face for just a moment and the tampon's fuse is lit. She waits long enough to make sure the flame will hold, then unceremoniously chucks the bottle toward the house, a baby sis with something to prove.
All I can think is that if he could see her now, he would be proud.
The bottle of spirits smashes through a large, picture window, raining viscous death into the enemy's front room. Muffled expletives can barely be heard as she heads back to the car. As I throw myself into the huge car seat, the worst kind of explosion rocks the hell house, and with it the entire neighborhood and my sanity.
My girl is back at the wheel like liquid grace running over steel nerves, and she's rolling the Caddy back onto the street once more, at a speed that my dear grandmother would use to get away from the devil himself.
We're blocks away before the confusion of the Reaps' neighbors can even settle. I doubt she cares if someone did see her getaway. She has made her play, upped the ante.
I watch, through the rear view, the orange blaze grow exponentially. Anyone caught inside is toast. Anyone in the area has a good chance of a contact buzz as who knows how many different drugs are incinerated. I hope, vaguely, that the fire doesn't spread to neighboring houses. Then I remember that sort of compassion has no place in this world, that this attitude is why the guys call me green.
Maria is dialing her cell phone as she drives. She feels far away across the front seat that was made in a time when front seats fit three adults. Everything seems a little askew to me, life on tilt. I'm only slightly surprised at her method of going off the deep end. I've always known that she and her brother were volatile and dangerous. I feel unpleasantly high.
“Start packing,” she says into her Samsung, calling me back from my trauma. The voice on the other end doesn't say much. Who would argue with her right now? No one who knows her. No one from our camp.
I can hear the muffled reply to her directive. She answers before the voice is finished.
“There's no time for that now. Get Frederick on a connection with a morgue. You start packing, we won't have long.”
She hangs up the phone and abandons it on the seat between us with a toss. I don't want to lose her to silence again, but I don't know what to say. Miles away, our home is in disarray. Charlie has grown cold, no doubt, his life drained out onto the kitchen floor.
I search her face for any sign of emotion. She shows none. She's being strong, impossibly stoic. She has officially taken the reins of the family business. She has inherited a great responsibility.
“Where will we go?” I wonder, not really counting on an answer. But I can't take the void anymore.
“New Orleans.”
I might have guessed. It makes sense. That's where the majority of our business lies, even if we don't currently live there. And it will be infinitely harder for the
