Sarah, suddenly grasping the urgency of the situation, pushed Mrs. Big Bad Wolf up and toward the phone. The gun, lying nearby beneath a bureau, half-hidden by sheets and blankets tossed aside in the frenzy of the bedroom battle, suddenly seemed less important, but Sarah grabbed at it, reclaiming it for her own. She, too, pointed her weapon at Mrs. Big Bad Wolf.
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf hesitated. Her eyes widened as they fixed on the knife blade at her husband’s throat, ignoring the gun barrel staring at her. He managed a small nod, and she scrambled across the bed and grasped the receiver. “Hello?” she said shakily.
“This is Alpha Security. We have a silent alarm at your location. Are you the home owner?”
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf stammered, trying to catch her breath and reply simultaneously. “Yes, yes. The alarm, uh, what…”
“Your alarm system is showing an intrusion.”
She held the phone near her ear, but her eyes were on her husband. “An intrusion?”
“Yes. A break-in.”
“We were asleep,” she said. Her mind was working as fast as it could. “You just woke us up. The phone ringing scared the bejesus out of both of us. We have a new puppy,” she lied. “Maybe he set it off. Can you give me a minute to check?”
“You need to give me your security code,” the voice on the other end said briskly.
“Okay, let me just check,” she repeated. She used an old person’s whiny, shaky voice. “Won’t take more than a second or two. I have to go downstairs. I know I wrote down that code in the drawer there…” Again she looked toward her husband.
But it was Karen who whispered a direction. “If you don’t give the right code, and do it right now, he will call the cops. That’s fine,” she said, a smug grin flitting across her face, “We can all just wait here quietly for the cops to show. Then we will happily tell them everything. Think about it: Is that what you want?” This was directed to the Big Bad Wolf.
A part of Karen that seemed cruel found the situation suddenly delicious. So, Mr. Wolf, Mr. Killer, Mr. Whoever the Fuck You Are, you want to explain to some surprised cop just what’s going on here tonight?
She smiled sickly as she spoke in a low, fierce tone. It was as if her words carried extra weight spoken in the dark shadows thrown by the flashlight. She felt on the verge of total savagery. Karen the comic, Karen the doctor-both had been replaced. She did not know that the other Reds were feeling similar conversions. She whispered, “The cops will want to know exactly why three women who are strangers to each other chose this night to join up and break into this house. Not some other fancy house, where there’s money or jewels or expensive art, because we’re sure as hell not here to rob anything. This specific house. A pretty fucking ordinary place, right? And they will hear a story from the three of us that they will have a lot of trouble believing. But it will only make them more curious. And then they will have questions for you. Those will be hard questions. Do you want to answer their questions? Is that what you feel like doing tonight?”
His eyes widened.
“So, if you are not the Wolf,” Karen said slowly, “by all means give the emergency response. Bring the cops here as soon as you can and they can lead us all away in cuffs. But if you are…” She reached up and pulled off her black hood, spilling her red hair out. The other two Reds did the same.
At the phone, Mrs. Big Bad Wolf gasped.
The Wolf hesitated. He could still feel the blade tickling his throat. He could see the fear in his wife’s eyes. He was trying to sort through his options, and saw only one available. Delay. And this did not include a conversation with the police. The local cops were ineffectual and incompetent, but not totally. “Give the code,” he muttered angrily. “Tell ’em we’re okay. It was the dog we don’t have, just like you said.”
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf removed her hand from the telephone receiver. “We’re all okay. Just fine. It was a mistake. The dog set it off,” she carefully repeated. “Our all-clear code is Inspector Javert. That’s J-A-V-E-”
“Thank you,” said the voice. “That’s a cool code. Very literary. I saw Les Misérables on Broadway. I’ll reset your system from here.”
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf replaced the receiver on its hook.
“Now we should just kill them both,” Jordan said. The words coming from her lips surprised her. The weak, scared-outside-in-the-shadows Jordan had been shunted aside and replaced by the fierce, uncompromising, murderous Jordan. It had happened in the matter of seconds. Perhaps, she imagined, it was shaken loose inside her by the physical contact; being slammed against a wall can open up unseen resources that are rarely called upon. Regardless, she felt a cold, homicidal urge come over her, and she moved the knife blade back and forth just slightly, tearing the surface of the Wolf’s skin, so that a thin line of blood started to trickle down to his chest and stain the top of his pajamas. She bent forward, leaning her head down, so that her lips were next to his ear. “You thought it would be the other way around, didn’t you? You thought you would be holding the knife to my throat, huh? And then what were you going to do?”
He didn’t answer. He wore a snarl on his face and he could barely contain his own rage. He wanted to wrap his hands around her neck. Any neck. But he was locked in position.
Sarah struggled to her knees. She had her gun in both hands, holding it straight out. She was right in front of the Wolf with the barrel of the weapon pointed at him from perhaps six inches away, aimed right between his eyes. She thought, Pull the trigger and you end everything. Start over again right now and the new you will be safe forever. The Wolf was bracketed by the two Reds. The gun and the knife were like deadly parentheses.
“I thought you were dead,” the Wolf said bitterly.
“I went to your service,” Mrs. Big Bad Wolf said piteously from across the room, where she suddenly slumped onto the bed, tucking her knees up under her arms like an unhappy child. She spoke in a whiny tone, as if this trick was a cheat and unfair.
“I am dead,” Sarah answered brutally without taking her sight off the Wolf. She squinted down the barrel. “Jordan’s right,” she said coldly. “Let’s kill them both right now.”
The Big Bad Wolf felt his muscles constrict. He breathed in sharply. He fantasized himself bursting forward, miraculously slamming Jordan’s knife aside, wrestling Sarah’s pistol away from her with a single immense and magical tug. He would kill them all. Right then and there. Right on the floor of his bedroom, in front of his wife. He would save her. They would kill together. He could hear the sharp reports from the gun. He could see the bleeding forms of the three Reds in front of him. He would win. It was always supposed to be that way.
And then, suddenly, he could not move.
Inwardly he shouted commands: “Move legs! Hands! Arms! Now!” Outwardly he remained frozen. And he thought, Am I going to die now?
Getting older was inevitable. Being forgotten was something he understood. Getting caught was always a possibility.
But being murdered had never occurred to him.
“No, please,” Mrs. Big Bad Wolf moaned. A small stream of blood was dripping down from the edge of her mouth where Sarah had landed a lucky punch. Her hair was frizzed out in a tangle of knots. She had paled and the doctor in Karen thought she had seen the woman age years in the space of seconds. She suddenly wondered about the woman’s heart. It could give out any second. We’ll have caused a heart attack. Is that homicide? Or is it justice?