We kept low among the bushes and used the larger trees and hedges for cover as we crept to the front of the house. From the shadows of the hedgeline we could see the guard clearly through a side window. He was sitting on the stairs and had the bleached blonde on his lap. The shotgun was on the third step, loaded and close to hand.
“As soon as you jimmy the lock,” the Pixie whispered, crouching, down beside me, “I’ll distract him through the window, draw his fire if necessary. But the plan is for you to get inside and get the gun away from him before it goes off.” She crawled on her hands and knees to a haggard bush set in the garden, the last bit of cover between her and the window.
“You know what they say about plans,” I hissed after her, and then circled to the sidewalk and went up the front steps, standing off to the side of the door with my back against the wall in case anyone looked (or fired) through the peephole. I pulled the bump key out of my pocket and slid it into the lock as smoothly and quietly as possible. Only the first third of the key made it in. I retrieved the key and pulled the file out of my hip pocket, making it’s arches shallower and sharper in the place it had caught like the videos on the internet had shown me. I glanced at the Pixie who was signaling clear, clear, clear, with alternating thumbs-up and OK signs.
I jammed the key in the lock a little more forcefully and it slid past the half-way point. Almost there. I filed down the base of the key and slid it nearly all the way in. I glanced at my partner to make sure it was still clear, and then stood up and planted my feet shoulder width apart perpendicular to the door. The instructions I’d read had advised using a brick or hammer. I put one hand on the solid wood atop the door frame and swung my hips left and then right and bumped the key with my hip, right on the hard bone with my leather belt riding low around it. I heard it click home and grasped it and then glanced at the Pixie. She was waving her hands like a referee calling the end of a fight, creating a repeated X in midair.
I froze. And then I breathed and pulled the key out of the lock and tossed it in the garden.
The Pixie ducked away from the bush and flattened herself against the wall on the opposite side of the door.
“Get ready!” She hissed.
I flattened myself low against the outside wall so as not to throw a shadow in the peephole’s line of sight. I leaned in and put my ear on the door and my hand on the knob. The chain rattled and then the deadbolt slid out of place. The knob turned under my light grasp.
~*~
Lover Fighter Writer 
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