Phantom Prey

could find a few of my hairs in there, or something, along with the blood. If they do the DNA, they’ll connect us.”
    “So we have to burn it,” Loren said.
    “That’s my feeling. We’ve got gas out in the garage. If we splashed five or ten gallons of gas inside it, it would burn right down to the wheels. Alyssa looked it up on Google.”
    Alyssa flowed back. “As soon as I read about burning it, I tried to figure out ways to do it. But there are all these stupid problems. Like, how do I get home without witnesses?”
    How to get home without catching a ride, without a cabdriver? She could, she thought, drop the car someplace where it could sit for a day or two, without being noticed, then drive in, set it on fire, and drive away. Maybe that would obscure a taxi connection. But then, what about surveillance cameras wherever she left it? What if somebody noticed it had been parked for a long time, and then checked it. What if she bumped into somebody she knew?
    “That sounds like Alyssa talking,” Loren said.
    “It is,” Alyssa said.
    Fairy came back, speaking to Alyssa: “You know, honey, there aren’t any guarantees—and you’re making this way too complicated. You think we’ve got to get the car far away from here, but we don’t. If something happens with the car and they can match us to it, then we’re finished, no matter where it is. If we burn it completely, and they can’t make an ID, then it doesn’t make any difference if we do it right down the street.”
    Alyssa thought about that for a moment, then nodded, sipped the V8. “Okay. But I’d rather not burn it right down the street.”
    “Of course not—but it doesn’t have to be in North Dakota, either. I say we move the car out of the hangar during the night, drive it onto one of the construction sites down by the river bridge—that’d mean we’d actually be in the car for only a couple of miles, which would reduce our chances of getting stopped for some reason. We park it, we set it on fire, right then, in the dark, and then we run. Simple, effective. Black jogging suit, scout the way in and out ahead of time, burn it.”
    “In the dark?” Loren asked. “You don’t see a lot of women jogging down there. There are some rough people around there.”
    “I’ll take Hunter’s switchblade. It’s still there in his bedstand, and I know how to use it,” Fairy said.
    “Of course,” Alyssa said, and she actually smiled.
    “If the police get there too fast . . .” Loren began.
    “We use a fuse. Soak it in fuel oil and gas, ten feet long, under the car, light it and run,” Fairy said. “We’d be a hundred feet away before it got to the car. In a minute, we’d be three blocks, jogging. The police aren’t going to get there in a minute. From there, it’s probably three or four miles—we can jog home in half an hour.”
    “A risk.”
    Alyssa snarled at them: “If you morons hadn’t gotten us into this, we wouldn’t have to take any risks. If some guy thinks he’d like to sneak a peek at Hunter’s hangar, sees that car, looks inside . . . we go to jail. My prints and Patty’s blood are all over it. Maybe blood from some of the others, now that I think about it. You weren’t all that careful.”
    “We were a little carried away,” Loren said. “The revenge was so . . . tasty.”
    Fairy: “So we have to do something. We can’t not do something. I’m in favor of the straight-ahead, burn it and run. No point fucking around with something subtle, that’d leave a trail.”
    Alyssa: “You may be right.”
    Fairy: “Of course I’m right.”
    Loren: “What about Frank Willett?”
    “I’ve got an idea on that,” Alyssa said. “The car not only has blood in it, it’s got the knife you used on Patty. We lift the knife out of there, clean off the handle so there are no fingerprints, but leave a little blood down where the blade goes into the handle. A few specks, stains. Then we put the knife in Frank’s house.”
    “How do we get in?” Loren asked.
    Alyssa said, “I’ve still got a key to his house, if he hasn’t changed the locks since we were dating. I can’t believe he’s organized enough to do that,” she said. “We jog again. Watch until he’s out, I go in, I leave the knife, and then we figure out something that triggers Davenport to make a search.”
    “We scare him. We get him to run away,” Fairy said. “We get Frank to make a break for it.”
    Alyssa: “Not a bad idea. How do we do