Bang Theory

by Valente, Lili

  “Great idea,” I say, my breath rushing out. “Thank you, Abby.”

  “No problem.” She smiles and gives me two thumbs-up. “I’ll be right back. Everything’s super organized out there, so I’ll be back in a jiff.”

  The door closes behind her, and I catch the sound of her footsteps crunching through the fallen leaves, but after that, the afternoon falls silent.

  One minute passes, then two, then five, and still Abby doesn’t return. We’ve moved way past “a jiff,” but I try not to worry.

  Maybe the tools weren’t as organized as Abby thought. Maybe she’s searching for a spare battery or the right drill bit. I’ve been buried in home renovations for the past two months. I know things don’t always go smoothly in the tool shed.

  But after ten minutes without a peep from outside, I call out, “Abby? Abby, are you okay?”

  I wait a beat, listening to the wind toss the trees outside before I call her name again, but she still doesn’t answer.

  I reach for the knife, ready to start sawing at the rope again—it’s probably a pointless exercise, but if Mary stays gone all night there’s a chance I might get through it before she gets back—when I smell smoke.

  The hairs lifting on the back of my neck, I take a slower, deeper breath. It’s definitely smoke, wood smoke, like from a campfire.

  But where is it coming from? And why would Abby have wasted time starting a fire before coming back to take the bed apart?

  She wouldn’t have, of course.

  Which means someone else set the fire.

  Which means either Mary has neighbors living closer than I thought or…

  “Shit,” I mutter, pulse picking up as smoke begins to seep through the floorboards on the opposite side of the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Bridget

  Kirby sinks lower in the seat beside me, bracing her legs against the floorboard as she grips the handle above the door. “Go for it,” she shouts. “Fast, but steady on the acceleration. Don’t slow down. If you slow down, we’ll spin out for sure.”

  “Got it.” I push down on the gas and hold my breath, willing my ancient Corolla to make it up the insanely steep, muddy road.

  We’re not even sure Mary lives here—Abby’s boss said she’d dropped Abby at the base of the road a few times after work, but that she couldn’t confirm that Abby or her mother actually called this place home—but it’s our only clue. Abby isn’t answering her cell, Mary’s number has been disconnected, and Kirby’s Googling led to nothing but old court records regarding Mary’s divorce and a couple of fairly quiet social media accounts.

  Mary’s Instachat page did reveal that she’s a member of a local hunting club, however, so it’s safe to assume that she could be armed.

  And possibly dangerous.

  And definitely out of her mind.

  I should have kicked Kirby out of the car at the edge of town. Taking risks with my life is one thing; taking risks with hers is another.

  So even though I’m desperate to get to the top of the hill, I’m almost glad when we spin out about a half-mile up, skidding off the road into the ditch beside it with thankfully minimal damage to the Corolla and none to my sister. It may take longer now to get to the top, but I’ll have a better chance of keeping Kirby out of the line of fire. She has many fine qualities, but long legs and dedication to a morning jog over cuddling up in bed with Colin aren’t among them.

  By the time she emerges from the car, I’m already fifteen feet up the road.

  “Bridget, wait!” she calls after me. “Don’t you dare go up there alone!”

  I rarely ignore my sister—Kirby’s not easy to ignore—but Shep could be in danger. God only knows what’s happening to him up there, so I run faster, tuning her out as I push hard toward the curve ahead.

  I reach it and dart off the gravel into the woods, leaping over a fallen log and swatting at low-hanging branches that catch in my hair. I emerge onto the road on the other side, where it’s wider and flatter, and turn to my left. My heart jerks in my chest as I catch sight of a circular building with canvas walls—a yurt—surrounded by several tidy outbuildings.

  There are two cars parked beside what looks like a water catchment tank, so I immediately suspect I’m not alone.

  But that isn’t what scares me.

  It’s the fire that sends fear dumping into my bloodstream.

  The entire front of the yurt is on fire, its small porch engulfed in orange flames with more smoke billowing out from underneath it, making me think the foundation is on fire, too.

  If there’s anyone inside the structure, they need to get out.

  Now.

  The thought is barely through my head when a voice cries out from inside the cabin, “Abby, please! The floor’s on fire. You have to call 911 or I’m going to burn up in here. I still can’t cut through the rope.”

  Shep!

  I push into a jog, aiming for the building. I have no idea how I’m going to get in or get out with Shep without either of us catching fire, but there’s no way I’m leaving him in there alone.

  I’m so focused on the immediate danger—and worrying what I’ll do if the yurt doesn’t have a back door—that I’m not paying attention to my surroundings. I have no idea where the blast comes from, only that one second I’m dry and on the move, and the next, a high-pressure stream of water has knocked me off my feet and sent me skidding across the dirt drive.

  “Stop!” I hold my hands up in front of my face to block some of the spray and blink to clear the water from my eyes. But the water keeps blasting, stinging my arms and upper body and steadily soaking my clothes, leaving me shivering in the cool October afternoon.

  “Why are you doing this?” I shout over the barrage. “At least turn the water on the fire. Can’t you see? It’s right over there!”

  The hose abruptly shuts off, leaving me gasping and coughing in the sudden silence. Swiping my sleeve across my eyes, I scramble to my feet to see Mary standing several yards away, holding a massive hose and glaring at me like I stole her puppy and peed on her shoes.

  “I can see just fine,” she says with a hard sniff, smearing her palm through the tears glistening on her cheeks. “You’re the one who can’t see straight. You wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and bit you on your tiny little butt.”

  “Mom, please,” a second voice cries out from behind Mary. “Stop this and let me go. We have to put out the fire!”

  I shift my gaze to where Abby sits in front of a small utility shed, her hands tied together in front of her and her ankles bound to an old-fashioned hitching post.

  “You love Shep,” Abby continues. “You don’t want to hurt him, let alone kill him.”

  “This isn’t my doing.” Mary watches me steadily, too focused to think I can rush her and grab the hose before she can turn it on me again. “It’s the two of you, coming up here and ruining everything before it even got started. You millennials think you have it all figured out, but you have no idea what life or love is really about. You spend all your time on the Internet, lost in a virtual reality, hoping someone is going to give you clicks, when—”

  “We’re Generation Z, Mom, I’ve told you that a thousand times.” Abby says, her pitch getting more and more shrill. “And this isn’t the time for a lecture on the importance of face-to-face conversations and IRL communities. A man is going to be burned alive.”

  “Because you couldn’t leave us alone and give love a chance!” Mary shoots back.

  “Kidnapping isn’t a part of love, Mom.”

  “Neither is talking back to your mother.”

  “Oh my God,” Abby shouts. “Seriously, Mom, just stop being crazy and put out the fire already!”

  But people don’t just stop being crazy.

  That isn’t a thing, no matter how much Abby and I want it to be right now.

  Which means we have to shut the crazy down ourselves, a fact Kirby has clearly already figured out.

  I spot her
in my peripheral vision, creeping around the edge of the tree line by the parked cars behind Mary. I keep my attention fixed straight ahead, refusing to do anything to tip Mary off that she’s about to get pounced by a pissed-off big sister.

  I’m going to keep her focus right here with me.

  “Shep doesn’t deserve to die for not loving you, Mary,” I call out, hoping Shep will hear my voice and know help is on the way. “That isn’t how love works.”

  “He didn’t get the chance to love me,” she says, her eyes blazing in her pale face. “You didn’t give us any time! If we’d had time, you would have seen it. We would have been so perfect together.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” I say, silently willing Kirby to hurry. “Abby’s right. Love stories don’t start with kidnapping.”

  “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” she says, in a “gotcha” tone that’s lost on me.

  “What?” I shake my head as I shove my damp hair off my forehead.

  “It’s a terrible old musical,” Abby pipes up again. “About seven brothers who kidnap their wives.”

  “It’s a classic,” Mary counters.

  “It’s fiction!” Abby screeches, doing an excellent job of covering the sound of Kirby stumbling over a rock concealed beneath the fallen leaves. “And there’s basically a song about raping women in it, Mother, which is so messed up I can’t believe you let me watch it when I was a kid. This is why I wear black now. Because you traumatized me with sexist, Crayola-colored musical theater about creepy mountain men and kidnapped girls in pink dresses frolicking with baby animals.”

  “It’s romantic,” Mary shouts.

  “It’s pathological,” Abby shouts back.

  “It’s payback time,” Kirby screams from behind Mary as she leaps onto the other woman, wrapping her legs around Mary’s waist and fisting both hands in her shoulder-length hair.

  Mary drops the hose with a cry of pain and spins around, trying to buck Kirby off of her back. But my sister is holding on like a rabid spider monkey, and I’m already halfway across the yard to that hose.

  I snatch it from the ground and jog back toward the cabin, stopping when the heat of the flames burns my cheeks. I widen my stance and bend my knees, bracing for the kickback before I reach for the lever at the top of the nozzle and yank it toward me.

  Water shoots out so hard and fast it sends me skidding across the gravel, but I shift my right foot back and lean into the pressure, regaining control of the spray and guiding it to the base of the flames.

  Behind me, I hear Mary growling and Kirby shouting a string of creatively abusive insults, but I focus on smoothly guiding the stream back and forth across the flaming wood, even as a voice in my head screams that I’m too late and that not even this serious hose action is going to be enough to save Shep. The back of the cabin is completely hidden by smoke and I’m sure at least some of it is getting inside.

  He could be gasping for air right now, on the verge of passing out from smoke inhalation as I stand here doing too little too late.

  I glance over my shoulder to see Kirby and Mary still struggling—Mary has size on her side, but Kirby has mama-bear energy, so they’re proving to be pretty evenly matched—and then back toward the porch, my heart lurching as I see how bad the smoke is getting.

  I have to go. Now. And hope I’ve put out enough of the flames to make a difference.

  Shutting off the hose with a shove of my palm, I drop it and run for the porch, pulling the front of my soaked sweater up over my face as I sprint up the steps and through what’s left of the smoking door. I feel heat on the bottom of my tennis shoes and the smoke stings my eyes and blurs my vision, but I get through to the main room.

  It’s not as bad as I feared, but I’m grateful for the wet fabric covering my nose and mouth. Without it, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have more than three or four breaths left until I’d be in trouble.

  Even with it, I won’t have long.

  As I squint into the smoky air, I can feel my lungs beginning to ache.

  “Shep!” I call out, my voice muffled, but loud enough that he should be able to hear me. “Shep, can you—”

  I break off as I spot a bed pulled too close to the kitchen island and the figure slumped on the floor beside it.

  “Shep!” I run, closing the space between us and dropping to my knees beside him as I roll him onto his back. His eyes are closed, but I can’t tell if he’s breathing. Either way, I have to get him out of here.

  But how the hell am I going do that when he outweighs me by at least eighty pounds?

  “Think, think,” I mutter behind the fabric, the words ending in a coughing fit as I pull in a lungful of the smoke seeping between the floorboards beneath us.

  Floorboards!

  Slick floorboards.

  The kind that would be easy to drag something across if you had the right kind of material underneath it.

  Standing, I reach for the top of the bed, yanking the soft yellow quilt off the mattress and spreading it on the ground beside Shep. A beat later, I’ve rolled him onto one end, gathered the other in my hands, and started tugging.

  I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline pumping through my veins or if I just underestimated the power of one slick surface against another, but it’s easier to move him than I expected. I’m across the room in just a few seconds. I hesitate at the door, knowing it’s going to hurt him to slide over the bump separating the yurt from the front porch and then go knocking down the steps, but I don’t have another option.

  The flames I took down a notch with the hose are already flickering back to life. The porch won’t be passable for more than another minute or two.

  Gritting my teeth, I tighten my grip on the quilt and charge through the door, inwardly cringing as I feel Shep thunk down the stairs behind me.

  I keep going, tugging harder on the quilt as I drag Shep through the gravel to safety. It’s harder going than across the floorboards, but I manage to get him all the way to the patch of damp ground where Kirby is sitting on top of a now-subdued Mary with a feral expression on her face that makes me glad I’ll always be on her good side.

  I stop, letting the fabric fall from my aching hands.

  “I called 911,” Kirby says tightly. “They should be here any minute, but if he isn’t breathing, we should start CPR.”

  “On it.” I drop to the ground and reach for Shep’s shoulders. But before I can roll him over, he starts coughing—loud, hacking, gasping, raw coughs that are the most terrible and beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard.

  “I’m so glad you’re awake,” I say, tears stinging into my eyes as I pat his back. “Just hang on, the paramedics should be here any second.”

  “I’m okay,” he manages to get out between fits. “Just need a second…” He coughs again. “To catch my breath.”

  “No, you’re going to the emergency room,” Kirby says in a no-nonsense voice. “Both of you. All three of you, in fact. We don’t know exactly what happened to Abby, but her wrists are all red from trying to untie herself, and I just need all of you to get your asses to the hospital for my own peace of mind. And since I’m the one sitting on the person who kidnapped you, Shep, I’m calling the shots now.”

  Abby sobs, “Thank you,” while Mary makes some muffled grunting sounds, drawing my attention to the mitten shoved in her mouth—probably one of the many that Kirby tucks into her coat pockets and forgets about until she’s amassed such a collection her jacket bulges at the sides.

  “You, shut it,” Kirby says, glaring at the woman beneath her. “I’m the alpha now. And I say who goes to the hospital and who stays on the ground until the police get here.”

  “All right,” Shep says, his voice scratchy. He pushes himself up slowly to sit. “We’ll go to the emergency room. Together.”

  “Together.” I throw my arms around him and hug him tight. “I’m so glad you’re okay. When I saw you on the floor by the bed…” I trail off without finishing, not wanting to speak the terrible
words aloud.

  “You shouldn’t have gone in there,” Shep says, his arms closing around me. “You shouldn’t have put yourself in danger like that.”

  I pull back, smiling into his precious face even as tears slip down my cheeks. “Oh, shut up. What else was I supposed to do? I love you. That doesn’t stop when you’re kidnapped or missing or tied up in a burning yurt.”

  “Yurt,” he says, his own eyes shining. “That’s what that fucking thing is called.”

  “Was called,” Kirby says. “Not going to be much of it left if the fire department doesn’t get here soon.”

  As if summoned by her words, sirens blare softly in the distance, sending a shudder of relief through me.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I say, cupping Shep’s face. “We’re going to be okay.”

  “We’re going to be more than okay. I love you so much. Thanks for saving my life.”

  “Thanks for saving mine,” I whisper as I lean in, pressing a kiss to his lips.

  We’re still kissing when the fire truck roars up the road, filling almost all of the drive as it parks in front of the yurt and half a dozen firefighters spill out, leaving no room for the ambulance behind it to get close to us.

  But that’s okay. We’re good to walk, so we do, Shep leaning on me and Abby trailing behind us with the quilt clutched in her arms for emotional support. We reach the ambulance just as two police officers rush by, headed for Kirby.

  Neither of them is Detective Harris, which is a good thing. I’d have to stop and give him a piece of my mind, when all I really want to do is crawl onto the seat beside the stretcher where the medics insist on strapping Shep, since he’s the most seriously injured among the three of us.

  There will be time to serve the detective a heaping helping of “I told you so” later, once Shep has a clean bill of health and we’ve put this nightmare behind us.