Charmed and Dangerous (12 page)

She heard him move and grab the knife and she kept her back to him until he came to stand by her again. She knew
he was observing her, and she swallowed the bile rising in her throat, willing herself to quit being grossed out, since she had so much more to do in order to get to Roy.

“Let’s just get going. And watch for those,” she said, waving in the general direction of the dead snake. “I can’t keep saving your ass over and over.”

“You are a real piece of work,” he said, muttering more to himself than addressing her.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” she answered.

Cam watched Zeke jog over to the FBI helicopter landing on the roadway just clear of the eighteen-wheeler wreck. Another FBI agent stepped out of the cabin, handing Zeke warm-weather fatigues, all nicely folded and pressed. Cam snorted at the army boots, all shiny and new, probably never broken in. The man was going to have blisters.

The FBI agents conferred while Zeke changed right there in the street, and the colleague pulled out maps and drew trajectories. It didn’t appear to Cam that they had a clear projection as to where Bobbie Faye and this Cormier guy may have headed. It
was
clear, however, that they either knew or suspected what this Cormier guy wanted and why Bobbie Faye was along for the ride.

Detective Benoit, a dark, wiry Cajun, strode up behind Cam and stood companionably there for a moment, observing the FBI agents as they prepped for God knows what.

“You’re not exactly having a stellar day,” Benoit noted, and Cam chose to ignore the chuckle in his friend’s voice. “They tell you anything?”

“Probably less than half what they ought to have,” Cam said, his arms crossed, his fingers drumming against his forearm. He noticed Benoit’s glance at his hand and he stilled it. “They’re specifically after the guy,” Cam said, and then filled Benoit in on what little he knew about Trevor.

“Aw, mon ami,” Benoit said, lapsing deeper into his Cajun accent, “you know there’s gonna be hell to pay if you let the Contraband Days Queen get killed.”

“Fucking tell me about it.”

“Hell, you had little church ladies kicking you and altar boys trying to beat you up last time when she was just in the hospital with a concussion.”

“Shut up, Benoit.”

“And remember that priest trying to make you do Hail Marys?”

“Shut
up,
Benoit.”

“And the altar boys threatening to grow up and beat you to a pulp if she didn’t pull through?”

Cam scowled at Benoit, who’d amused himself into full-blown laughter. It had been bad enough around town
outside
of the so-called sanctuary of church. Not that he was big on going, though after what he saw all week long, sometimes it helped to go to a place of goodness; Bobbie Faye had managed to invade even that sliver of peace.

“You on the theft thing?” Cam asked.

“Yeah. I’m on it.”

“Who’s working up background?”

“Crowley and Fordoche.”

“Call me when you find the weird thing.”

“How do you know there’ll be something weird?”

“This is a Bobbie Faye case.”

Benoit chuckled. Then, “You going out there?” Cam nodded. “You wearing a vest?” Cam glared at him. “Hey, can I help it that you dated a woman who can shoot better than you can?”

“Get back to the fucking station,” Cam snapped, and Benoit laughed again as he headed back to his car.

Cam watched the FBI helicopter lift off, and then turned to one of the officers working the wreck.

“Tell Kelvin it’s clear to bring the dogs,” he said, and the officer nodded and spoke into his radio to dispatch.

Cam had already ordered his district’s helicopter, which would coordinate with the dogs on the ground. He had also ordered a boat to bring the dogs to the opposite bank. It was just a damned shame the FBI had taken off before asking if he had any way to track Bobbie Faye.

The dogs arrived a few minutes later in cages in the back
of a truck. The group was a mix of Catahoulas and Redbones and Cam thought them the best trackers in the state. He greeted their handler, Kelvin, a compact, sandy-haired, laid-back man a few years older than Cam’s thirty-two.

“You got something for scent?” Kelvin asked, adjusting his baseball cap and chewing on the corner of a toothpick. Cam nodded, walking around to the trunk of his squad car.

He’d meant to throw it away. It was a good thing he hadn’t, because he really didn’t have time to go to Bobbie Faye’s trailer to get something. He opened the trunk and dug into a satchel and Kelvin looked a little surprised when Cam pulled out a nicely folded man’s flannel shirt.

“Don’t even fucking ask,” Cam said. Kelvin laughed and took the shirt.

Cam watched Kelvin get back in his truck and drive over to the boat that would take him and the dogs across the lake. Kelvin would wait until he got to the other side before he’d let the dogs smell the shirt, marking the scent in order to track Bobbie Faye. Meanwhile, Cam had one call to make if he didn’t want some sort of voodoo hex on his ass. Not that he believed in that stuff, because he didn’t. Not a single whit. He wasn’t even sure that Ce Ce believed in it, and instead, wasn’t just that shrewd of a businesswoman. No matter. He had to make the call. Having Bobbie Faye in his life was bad enough; he didn’t need Ce Ce gunning for him, too.

We ask Bobbie Faye to come to the ball games as an ambassador to the visitors. She sits on their side of the field. We have a four-year winning streak.

—Collins High School Coach Jake Daniels

Ce Ce had the phone pressed to her ear while she stared up at the TV.

“She robbed what?” Nina said, cracking the whip, and Ce Ce watched her on the small screen, hearing the snap and echo as a couple of would-be pillagers backed away from Bobbie Faye’s things.

“A bank, honey. That’s what they’re sayin’ on the news. And she’s on the run, and they’re sayin’ she’s with some guy no one can identify.”

“Damn. She said something about taking a hostage, but I thought it was just a normal hostage thing.”

“Honey, the fact that you think there’s a
normal
hostage thing means you’ve been runnin’ that business of yours too damned long.” She preferred to stay blissfully naïve of what Nina really did at her S & M Models, Inc. business. “But sweet goodness, she took a hostage?”

“That’s what she said. He didn’t seem to mind, though.”

“Maybe you can make a few phone calls? Some of your . . . clients . . . might know some gossip about what’s going on.
I’m not getting specific details from the cops and I can help her better if I know what’s up.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Nina said, cracking her whip again and hanging up.

Ce Ce stood in the little makeshift dining area, a place which typically felt inviting and peaceful, where the early morning sportsmen paused for biscuits and gravy, or deer sausage and boudin balls, a Cajun dirty-rice concoction rolled into a ball and fried. Her Outfitter store was the place where a few early bird customers enjoyed having one last glimpse of the weather forecast and news before disappearing into the Atchafalaya or the woods to the west. Right now, though, every hunter and fisherman who’d come in during the last hour hadn’t left and had, instead, stood gaping at her TV at the newest Bobbie Faye disaster. Stood, because the three creaky chipped red Formica dining booths she had constructed ages ago were crammed full of the earlier arrivals and now the store was standing room only. A few customers were just gossiping. She pointedly ignored the cluster of people in the back of the room who were quietly taking wagers on potential damages, or worse, Bobbie Faye’s survival. She also ignored the incessantly ringing phone and focused on the TV.

Ce Ce watched the aerial footage of the catastrophe that used to be Bobbie Faye’s home. The trailer rested flat on its side; lots of junk aired out on the lawn, a huge crowd gawked, and Nina stood in front of the trailer, wielding her whip. Ce Ce laughed. Thank God for Nina. If it was anyone else out there, Ce Ce would have sent reinforcements. But she suspected that Nina not only didn’t need help, but that they would cramp her style.

Then she snapped back to reality.

Bobbie Faye was running for her life.

Ce Ce didn’t even know why. That girl was a damned fortress, never letting anyone in, never telling when she needed help. Ce Ce was reduced to being on the sidelines, hoping and praying and trying to conjure up what little magic she knew.

She closed her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck beneath her heavy braids. It was at moments like this she could remember things in fine detail—so fine, it smothered her like a thousand layers of silt. She could still see Bobbie Faye, all of sixteen years old, scrawny, tired, dead broke, half-starved, standing in front of her near closing time, having waited until there were no customers so she could ask Ce Ce a favor in private.

“Her mamma sure was a pretty Contraband Days Queen,” Monique said, interrupting Ce Ce’s memory. “Before the cancer got her, of course.”

Ce Ce opened her eyes to see her friend with her wild red hair spiked at odd angles, a heavy splattering of freckles across her wide face. Monique, a plump fortyish mom of four, had such a benign, benevolent appearance, total strangers would leave their kids with her while she was in line at the grocery store when they had to run back to get “just one” item.

“Too bad she inherited her mamma’s nature.”

“Nah, honey, that’s not from her mamma. Necia’s crazy was a lot softer, fuzzy around the edges. She might not remember where she put things.”

“Like her kids?”

“You heard about that one?”

“Everybody’s heard that one. Left ’em at the grocery store. Completely forgot she’d taken ’em with her, didn’t even notice they weren’t at home ’til the sheriff called her.”

“Yeah, honey, that was Necia. In her own world. Nothing like Bobbie Faye’s brand of crazy.”

The phone jangled again. It had been ringing incessantly all morning and Ce Ce hadn’t answered it since the ruckus started; the media always called her first, trying to get a comment on the record and, standard operating procedure, she wasn’t available. If Bobbie Faye called in, she’d use the private line, and anybody else could go to hell, as far as Ce Ce was concerned. And then one of the twins (geez, she really needed to make one of them dye her hair or streak it or something to tell them apart) brought her the phone. When
she glanced down, she saw it was the regular line and she started to chastise the girl, who headed her off with, “I think you gonna want it, Ceece. It’s Cam. He sounds pretty pissed.”

Ce Ce grabbed the phone, snapping it up and said, “You know I’m not about to tell you a damned thing.”

“You’d sure as hell better,” Cam said, his fury quiet and controlled. “Obstruction of justice, Ce Ce, carries—”

“Oh, hush, Cam, honey. You couldn’t get obstruction on me if your mamma gift-wrapped it and mailed it to you directly. I don’t know anything, anyway.”

“Are you sure? Because I’ve got the dogs out here, Ce Ce. I’m fixing to have to turn ’em loose and chase her down.”

“Don’t you be puttin’ no dogs on my girl, Cam.”

“You want the FBI to get to her first and maybe kill her?” he asked, and Ce Ce felt like she’d just frozen clear to the spot. She listened as he gave her the brief version of the strange man with Bobbie Faye. She knew he wasn’t telling her everything, but he was telling her more than he should have because he knew she wouldn’t say a word. And, she knew, he was hoping it would soften her up to spilling something he could use.

“Hon,” she said, “I don’t know a thing. Except . . .” She debated a second. “Except she was pretty scared when she came in this morning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that girl actually
scared,
you know?”

“Oh,
hell
.”

She knew what he meant. Bobbie Faye was a handful when she was calm and her version of ‘rational.’ God only knew what chaos she could wreak when she was running scared.

“You keep me updated,” she said, and he ended the call without saying anything else.

When she hung up, she gave Monique a nod which sent the other woman to the back room to get more ingredients. One bowlfull of magic was not even gonna begin to cover it.

Roy watched Vincent lower the sound on the TVs and click the stereo on; “Luck Be A Lady” hummed, one of the Rat
Pack songs his mom had loved. He remembered her dancing with Bobbie Faye in their living room when he was buried in comic books, too much a
guy
to dance to that weasely music. Eddie glanced up and chuckled.

“Good song, Boss.”

Vincent laughed, and headed toward the elaborate liquor bar at the far end of the room, then paused, and danced a few Fred Astaire steps, pulling into a neat slide just as he reached the bar. Roy could never have managed that sort of debonair footwork, though he was a damned fine two-stepper down at Cat Balou’s every Thursday night. The ladies loved being swept off their feet and it kept talking to a minimum. He was impressed with Vincent’s ability, just a little envious, and he knew he could learn a lot from the man’s charm and finesse.

While Vincent fixed himself a Glenlivet, Roy heard him take a call and negotiate the sale of some item, stolen from the sound of it, for which he was asking seven-point-five million. Vincent played hardball while smoothly dancing back to his desk, pausing for a brief moment in front of that antique-looking handwritten book he kept under glass on his desk.

“Ah,” he purred into the phone, “Renee, you underestimate me, as always. My asking price will go up in an hour when I call our Iraqi friend. I know he’ll pay more, though he’s such a hassle to deal with these days, I’d just as soon forgo it for a quick sale, but only at my price. No? Ah, well, too bad, Renee. It would have looked good in your collection.”

He hung up, and seemed, to Roy, to be clearly unruffled at having turned down seven-point-two million dollars because it wasn’t his asking price of seven-point-five.

Just who the hell are these people?

This might be the worst jam Roy had ever found himself in.

The time with Carmen and the meat cleaver was starting to edge down to number two on the “top-ten” slot, and Bobbie Faye had saved him from that one, too. It had never
occurred to Roy that a woman might get angry if the flowery things he’d said weren’t exactly true. Of course, he meant them. Each and every time. But people didn’t really mean those things permanently, right? He had figured the only people who finally settled down were the ones who didn’t know better or the other ones too unlucky (babies, debt) to do anything about it. The idea that a woman really and truly might have wanted to live an entire suffocating life with him boggled his mind. Not as much as Carmen wielding the meat cleaver, mind you, because he never thought women could use weapons. He remembered being genuinely shocked that Bobbie Faye had figured out he was in trouble that day and had shown up in time to throw a blanket over Carmen and confuse the woman long enough to lock her in a closet until the police had gotten there.