“Shit!” I shrieked. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!”

Everyone on the floor stopped what they were doing and stared at me.

“Okay,” I said. “I feel better now.” It was a lie, of course, but it felt good to say.

Petrucci walked over. “You got any idea who did this?”

“No. Do you?” Another lie. I had a few ideas.

“Somebody with a pretty good arm.”

That could be Maxine. The softball star. But it still felt wrong. It felt more like mob . . . like Joe's pal, Terry.

I gingerly stepped into the kitchen. The brown bear cookie jar was untouched. The phone looked okay. The soot and water were pervasive and depressing. I bit down hard on my lip. I wasn't going to cry. Rex was safe. Everything else was replaceable, I told myself.

We went room by room, and not much was salvageable. A few cosmetics that had been in the bathroom and a hair dryer. I put them in a bag from the kitchen.

“Well, this isn't so bad,” I said to Petrucci. “I've been wanting to redecorate. I just wish the bathroom had gone.”

“What, you don't like orange and brown?”

“Do you think it's too late to burn the bathroom?”

Petrucci looked pained. Like I'd asked him to fart in public “You have insurance for all your stuff?”

“Yes.” Maybe.

Mrs. Karwatt was waiting in the hall with Rex. “Are you okay? Do you have some place to stay? You could sleep on my couch tonight.”

I took the cage from her. “That's nice of you to offer, but I'll probably go home to my parents. They have a spare bedroom.”

Old Mrs. Bestler was in the elevator. “Going down,” she said, leaning on her walker. “First floor, ladies' handbags.”

The doors opened to the lobby, and the first person I saw was Dillon in his superintendent coveralls.

“I was just going up to take a look,” he said. “Guess I'll have to get the paintbrush out.”

“Gonna take a lot of paint.” My lip was trembling again.

“Hey, don't worry about it. Remember when Mrs. Baumgarten set fire to her Christmas tree? The whole apartment was burned to a crisp. Nothing left but ashes. And now look . . . good as new.”

“It's worth a case of Guinness for you to take a sledgehammer to the bathroom.”

“What, you don't like orange and brown?”

* * * * *

I WAS GLAD I'd parked the Buick on the street, out of sight of the fire-?blackened building. Out of sight, out of mind. Sort of. The Buick was quiet and womblike. Nice and insulating against the outside world. The doors were locked, and the activity was all in front of me, half a block away.

Rex and I sat in the car and tried to collect our thoughts. After a while Rex started running on his wheel, and I assumed his thoughts were all collected. My thoughts were taking longer to come together. My thoughts were running in frightening directions. Someone wanted me scared and maybe dead. There was a remote possibility it was the same someone who was chopping off fingers and whacking off scalps, and I didn't like the idea that this was in my future.

I rested my head on the steering wheel. I was exhausted, and I was on the brink of tears. And I was afraid if I started crying I wouldn't stop for a long, long time.

I looked at my watch. It was two A.M. I needed to get some sleep. Where? The most obvious solution was to go home to my parents, but I didn't want to put their lives in jeopardy. I didn't want the next target for a firebomb to be their house on High Street. So where could I go? A hotel? There are no hotels in Trenton. There are some in Princeton, but they were forty minutes away, and I was reluctant to spend the money. I could call Ranger, but no one knows where Ranger lives. If Ranger took me in for the night, he'd probably have to kill me in the morning to make sure his secret was safe. Lula? That was sort of a scary idea. Better to face the scalper than sleep with Lula. There was my best friend, Mary Lou, and there was my sister, Valerie, but I didn't want to endanger them, either. I needed someone who was expendable. Someone I didn't have to worry about. Someone who had extra room.

“Oh boy,” I said to Rex. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

I sat for another five minutes, but I couldn't come up with a better solution to my problem, so I turned the key in the ignition and slowly drove past the lone fire truck at the end of the street. I tried not to look at my apartment, but I caught a glance of the fire escape from the corner of my eye. My chest gave a painful constriction. My poor apartment.

Tags: Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net