Charmed and Dangerous (21 page)

Cam watched the speedboat lurch forward. It was Bobbie Faye as he had suspected. He’d recognize her body language anywhere, especially since she was clearly arguing with the man in the boat, presumably Cormier. He held himself spectacularly still as the boat tilted through the first row of pilings and, for a split second, he thought he saw Trevor holding Bobbie Faye just before the boat went down the side of the rig opposite from the helicopter. They disappeared from view and then the boat exploded and a minute later, the rig followed.

“Now see this,” the cameraman said, rewinding the tape back to that moment when Cam thought he’d seen Cormier holding Bobbie Faye. The tape froze there. Cormier appeared
to be holding something aloft. Maybe a rope? Cam couldn’t be sure, but he could see Bobbie Faye squeezing tightly against the man. As the scene crawled forward, they disappeared from sight, and then the explosion.

The acid in his veins threatened to sear him from the inside out, and he stood, quiet, still.

“We won’t be able to get in there for a while,” Cam found himself saying. He sounded calm, steady. Strange, how that worked. “The emergency response team is on their way. They’ll have to get the fire out and then get the well capped before it’ll be safe enough to get any of our CSI in there.”

“How long? Hours? What?” Zeke asked.

Cam almost snorted with derision. “We’ll be lucky if it isn’t days. You don’t exactly turn off one of these at a spigot.”

They replayed the tape twice more, slowing it down for a frame by frame study, and still couldn’t discern any movement of Bobbie Faye and Trevor from the boat.

“Well that’s it, then,” Wellesly said. “They’re dead.”

Zeke shook his head. “I’ll believe Cormier’s dead when I have his body parts in a bag.”

Cam ran back to his helicopter. For once, he hoped the FBI agent was right.

“I’ve seen some tick-fevered dogs do some crazy-ass shit, but each-a-you, y’all done take the cake. What the hell were you thinking, stealing my boat?”

“Honestly, there was a mix-up,” Trevor said, and Bobbie Faye rolled her eyes at him. That wasn’t going to work.

“What?” the man behind her scoffed. “Like you took your brains out and forgot to put ’em back in? That’s one hellified mix-up.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Alex,” Bobbie Faye said, turning around to face the man leading the gunrunners. “It was just one measly little boat.”

“Goddamnit, sonofabitch, I thought that mighta been you,” Alex said, and Bobbie Faye and he glared at each other. The gunrunners grinned like a bunch of kids who discovered they were about to have front-row seats to a primo fireworks
display as they all studied Bobbie Faye, then Alex, and then back again.

He wasn’t much changed from her memory: dark, wiry, muscular, with a hook nose and fierce angles and planes to his face, but the shoulder-length black hair worked for him. He was part Cajun, part Choctaw, and no one would have ever described him as handsome, but he definitely had the kind of charisma that made him a leader and made his men loyal.

The years had been good to him, which pissed her off.

“I saw on the news that you were running loose,” Alex continued, and Bobbie Faye noted with a shameful amount of satisfaction that he was seething. “So of course you have to lead the whole damned state to my door. Have you lost your mind? Wait a minute, look who I’m talking about.”

“I didn’t know it was your crappy old boat, for one thing. If I had, I’d have blown up the whole freaking lot of them.”

Trevor turned to her, his expression shot through with incredulity. “Perhaps you haven’t noticed who is holding the guns on whom.”

“Oh, she knows, all right,” said the second man standing near Alex. He was a stump, short and squat, with tobacco stains on his chin from the permanent chew he held between rotting teeth. “They used to date.”

“Don’t fucking remind me, Marcel,” Alex said.

Bobbie Faye watched realization dawn in Trevor’s eyes.

“So that’s why you knew they were gunrunners. And that’s why you’re such a good shot.”

She couldn’t tell what he was annoyed about. “I didn’t know it was Alex’s camp, though. That one is a lot fancier than the last one. He moves around a lot, since he’s a pus-filled, slimy, good-for-nothing waste of human skin.”

“Promise me you’ll never work as a negotiator.”

Alex’s face reddened, flushed with fury. “I should have killed you back when I had the chance.”

“He got a restraining order on her,” Marcel said, “on account of when she blew up his favorite car.”

“I was aiming for the camp,” she explained to Trevor. “Alex and I never did see eye-to-eye.”

“I wanted her dead and she wouldn’t oblige.”

“I’m beginning to know the feeling,” Trevor muttered, and Bobbie Faye cast him an icy frown. “So,” he asked Alex, “why didn’t you shoot her this time?”

Alex stared at Bobbie Faye. She could see his mixed emotions, but she also knew it was more than that. She had leverage.

The question didn’t elicit an answer, though it did make Marcel suddenly regard the men around him. “Y’all show some respect. Y’all can’t point your guns at the Contraband Days Queen!”

As a unit, they all swung their guns so that they aimed solely at Trevor.

“Somehow, today,” Trevor said, “this makes perfect sense.”

“Y’all are all right,” Bobbie Faye said to the men. Most of them blushed, though a couple of them looked appreciatively at her belly-baring
SHUCK ME, SUCK ME
T-shirt and tight jeans. Then they checked to see if Alex had seen them do so, and when they met his glare, they suddenly found their boots fascinating.

“Just what in the hell are you doing out here, Bobbie Faye? And why the hell are you dressed like that?” Alex focused on Trevor. “You let her go outside like this?”

Trevor’s expression registered surprise, and then he shrugged.

“You actually expect someone to have some control over her?”

Bobbie Faye wanted to kick them both.

“Hey! What year is it in that universe you live in, Alex? This is none of your business, what I wear.”

Alex focused his searing glare back on her. She heard the helicopters whirring somewhere beyond the billowing smoke from the oil rig’s fire.

“Fine. So why in the hell are you out here in my backyard, stealing my boat? Bored? Thought you’d light a firecracker up my ass just for kicks and giggles?”

His neck muscles were knotted, tense, and there was a
bit of a facial tick, which Bobbie Faye knew was a very bad sign of Alex losing what little grasp he had on his temper. His men looked nervous and sent her pleading looks. And as much as she’d love to mess with him, she didn’t have time.

“Actually, I’m in trouble.”

“Trouble is your hobby, Bobbie Faye. So what’s new?”

“I’m serious.”

“Please tell me it’s bad.”

“It’s about Roy. In fact, I need your help.”

She’d never actually seen synchronized gaping before. Bobbie Faye wasn’t sure who was more shocked at her request: Alex, his men, or Trevor.

“How about I just kill you instead?” Alex finally asked, until he looked around at his men, all of whom were shaking their heads “no.”

“Shit,” he addressed his men. “Y’all are nuts. I’m not helping her, I don’t care if her mamma
was
the Contraband Days Queen for fifteen years.”

“But she’s the Queen, now that her mamma’s gone,” Marcel pointed out. “I’m real sorry to have heard about that, Bobbie Faye.” Marcel’s weaselly features softened. “She was a real good Queen.”

“Thank you, Marcel.”

“Besides, Alex,” Marcel said. “Roy’s in trouble.”

“You believe her?”

“Bobbie Faye never lies. She’s crazier than a raccoon hopped up on Tabasco, but she always tells the truth. And it’s Roy. We gotta help.”

Bobbie Faye noted the eager expressions on the rest of the men’s faces and the rush of the epiphany nearly made her head spin.

“You sonofabitch,” she addressed Alex. “You promised me Roy wouldn’t work for you ever again.”

Trevor stepped in front of Bobbie Faye while Marcel took a step to move in front of Alex.

“Oh, he don’t work for Alex no more, Bobbie Faye. Not since the whole car blowing up deal. But he’s great at poker.”

“Roy always loses!”

“That’s what makes him great,” Marcel said, and the rest of the men nodded.

Trevor grabbed her around her waist to keep her from lunging at Alex.

If she and Roy lived through this, Bobbie Faye vowed to get even with Alex. Then smack some sense into Roy; he’d been lying to her all these years, still losing all of his money to Alex. She’d like to stomp Alex right now, too, but that was going to have to wait.

“I know you know pretty much everything going on around this lake and these bayous, Alex. You’ve always had lookouts everywhere.”

“What the hell do you want from me?”

“A couple of geeky boys took something of Mamma’s,” she said, pointedly to the men, “from me, and I have to get it back. The people holding Roy will kill him if I don’t.”

“So?”

Bobbie Faye watched him. He was normally difficult to read, but she knew him well (too damned well), and she could tell he had more going on here than met the eye. For starters, he didn’t seem surprised when she described the boys, and he didn’t make jokes about how a nerdy kid was just good gator bait in the swamps. In fact, it was more about what he didn’t say than anything else.

“So,” she said, giving him a piercing look, “you know where they’re going.”

“I might have some idea.”

“Are you helping them?”

“Nah,” Marcel volunteered as Alex glowered at him. “Couple days ago, we heard someone like that was looking for a place to hole up. We didn’t know they was gonna be pullin’ a job on you, Bobbie Faye. Honest.”

“Tell me where they are,” Bobbie Faye said to Alex, “and I’ll give you your stuff back.”

Alex’s pupils dilated as his eyes widened, though nothing else denoted just how much she knew he wanted his hands on that stuff again. He glanced around, then back at her, now
looking slightly worried that she might say what the stuff actually was. She followed his lead, looking at his men, realizing they still didn’t know. She grinned her biggest, most annoying “I have your ass nailed, don’t I?” smile at him.

“All of my stuff?” he asked. “Given only to me?”

“Quit worrying about loopholes, Alex. I’ll give it back.” Eventually, she muttered, though low enough that he didn’t hear her. He nodded, very reluctantly, agreeing.

“Hey boss,” one of the other gunrunners said. “What do we do with this guy?” he asked, pointing at Trevor.

Bobbie Faye stepped in front of Trevor, surprising everyone. “He’s with me.”

“Reason enough to put the poor bastard out of his misery,” Alex said, and Marcel and the men laughed, but lowered their guns. “Get her out of here, Marcel. Help her find the kids.” He pointed at Bobbie Faye, a warning. “But I get all my stuff back. Or else.”

She got an A+ in demolition. Unfortunately, we weren’t
teaching
demolition that week.

—André Chapoy, high school shop teacher

Cam’s helicopter swooped low over the canals around the rig, staying well clear of the fire, but still close enough to see if any life rafts were nearby. The entire scene at the oil rig was on a loop in his mind, and he wanted it excised.

He pondered what could be driving Bobbie Faye to these lengths. Even if she’d intended to rob that bank, she wouldn’t have put this many people’s lives in jeopardy on purpose. She was crazy, but she was never intentionally cruel. He could give her that. Reluctantly. Something must be pushing her way beyond the normal level of insanity and the only thing—

He grabbed his phone, and as soon as Benoit answered, said, “Do we know where Bobbie Faye’s family is?”

He heard Benoit flipping through a few pages of reports.

“Nope, not yet.”

“Find ’em. Just verify their location and put someone on each of them.”

“Including the niece?”

“Absolutely.”

“Got it. I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve found ’em.”

He hung up, pissed that he hadn’t thought to find them earlier. One of them was bound to know what the hell was eating Bobbie Faye and, unlike Ce Ce, have no problems blabbing anything anyone wanted to know. He maybe could have stopped this insane chase an hour ago. How in the hell had he forgotten her siblings?

His phone vibrated on his hip and he snatched it open and shouted a little too forcefully, “Moreau here.”

“Uh, Cam?” Jason asked, breathless. “You okay?”

“Of course I am,” he spat, and he could visualize Jason flinching. “What’s up?”

“We’ve picked up a couple of survivors from the rig. A crane operator and a dock worker.”

“And?”

“They said they saw Bobbie Faye, but they don’t know if she made it off the rig before it exploded. The workers grabbed the first life raft and raced off toward the lake. The other life raft didn’t follow. We haven’t found it yet.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Will do. Oh. On that other thing we were talking about?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough. Call me from a land line as soon as you can.”

They hung up, and Cam debated which was more pressing: hearing what Jason had learned or finding that other life raft before the FBI grabbed it. Bobbie Faye could be injured, bleeding.

Or dying. The imagery of the explosion was on constant repeat. Geez, he needed a new brain.

Cam directed the helicopter to land near the marina and he ran for one of the pay phones out on the pier. When he dialed Jason, he was greeted with, “Hello, Mrs. Lee. I’ve got that information for you around here somewhere. Is there a number where I can call you back?” Cam read off the pay phone number and within a couple of minutes, it rang.

“What the hell was that?” he asked Jason.

“I wanted to switch to a secure line and I didn’t want
anyone picking up your cell line and recording this. Besides, the Captain was strolling around.

“I got a snippet. The Fibbies are rotating frequencies, though, not staying on the same channel for very long—probably some sort of automated hack prevention program they have set up to keep anyone from hearing a full conversation. I’m patching it in through the computer to you. Don’t worry, it’ll be scrambled if anyone else picks up on this line.”