Free A Bad Day for Scandal by Sophie Littlefield Page A

need a whole lot of manual dexterity, and cost a fraction what the gloves did.
    “Nothing’s too good for Priss,” Stella said sarcastically. “Why, she probably wipes her ass with silk scarves.”
    She jiggled the door handle, finding it locked but cheap. “Here, hold the flashlight for me, this won’t take but a minute. I swear, you can’t find a challenge anywhere around here these days.”
    “Whyn’t you let me try,” Chrissy said. “Might as well learn something, seein’ as I’m missing family poker night at my folks’.”
    Stella selected a narrow tension wrench and handed it to the girl. “What happened to your principles? How you were just going to focus on the shop and the computer stuff and stay out of all the hands-on lawbreaking?”
    Chrissy snorted, an unladylike sound that contrasted with the sweet frown of concentration on her full cherubic lips as she held the tool up and examined it in the powerful white light of the flashlight.
    “Well, now, I guess I just ain’t got enough starch to resist the lure of the dark side no more, Stella, not when I’m exposed to you every durn day. Which end of this am I supposed to use, anyway?”
    Stella tapped it delicately with a fingernail. “That there—see where it’s bent? Jimmy that into the keyhole.”
    Chrissy got it started, and Stella showed her how to finesse the pins with a narrow hooked pick, and soon the door opened up with a little rattle. “Why, it’s just like Liman’s begging to get robbed,” Chrissy marveled.
    “Don’t go getting any ideas. We don’t run that kind of outfit.” Stella slipped the tools back in the Tupperware container and snapped it shut with a satisfying little burp. Chrissy pushed open the door and entered the house, snapping on a light switch, which lit up a ’70s-era bean-shaped lamp with a macramé shade. The single bulb made little effort to illuminate the room, casting yellowish shadows over the huddled low-slung furniture, the piles of newspapers and magazines on the coffee table, the collection of dusty beer steins lining the shelves of a laminate entertainment center. “You start on the bedrooms. I’ll take the main rooms. And remember, this flash drive we’re looking for is just a little thing, a—”
    Chrissy stopped cold, so that Stella walked right into her, nearly falling on Liman’s musty brown carpet. When Chrissy put her hands to her hips and planted her feet wide and gave her a withering glare, like Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Stella knew she’d messed up.
    “What I meant was—”
    “You were not about to tell me what a fuckin’ flash drive looks like, Stella Hardesty,” the girl fumed.
    “I only meant that it’s not very big, that we need to be looking in—”
    “Whyn’t you tell me what one looks like. Since you know so much.”
    “Now, Chrissy, don’t be like that. You know I respect your skills. You know I consider—”
    “You best be considering telling me exactly what I’m lookin’ for. Take your time, Stella, and tell me all about it. Since you’re the expert and all.”
    Most gals, Stella reflected, tended to the hysteria end of the spectrum when they got flustered. She’d seen it over and over among her customers: The female brain seemed to require a lot of extra oxygen and bosom heaving when it was processing trouble and disharmony.
    Not Chrissy, though. Ever since the girl had faced down a pack of angry professional killers during Tucker’s rescue over the summer, she’d developed a repertoire of reactions more suited to, say, a ninja warrior. Her eyes narrowed and her breathing slowed down to what a person might experience if they were laid out on an iceberg and chilled like a shrimp cocktail, and she managed to radiate pure focused menace, as if she could kill with her mind alone.
    And that was with people she loved. Because, as Stella reminded herself now, Chrissy did indeed love her very much.
    Only Stella had done it again, had