Charmed and Dangerous (30 page)

“Well, I’m thirsty,” Monique announced. “That was hard work. Anyone else want some tea?”

“No!” Ce Ce shook her head emphatically, her braids bouncing. “There will be no drinking of the tea.”

“But the detective might be thirsty. And it’s so hot now. It’s the least we could do.”

Ce Ce pulled her into a conspiratorial stance. “Honey, no. I can’t drug a cop.”

“But with all of them running around like chickens with their heads cut off, they won’t miss him for a few hours.”

“No. Tea.”

“Especially not your special mix, Ce Ce,” Detective Benoit said, obviously having heard everything. He looked
down at the Social Services lady. “Please tell me she’s not dead.”

“Of course not. She fell asleep. We’re trying to get her to a cot.”

“Asleep. Right. Ce Ce, we need to talk.”

Dammit. Nothing good ever came from “we need to talk.”

We always know when Bobbie Faye is in the woods because there’s always a mass exodus of animals in the other direction. We had to make it illegal to hunt using Bobbie Faye.

—Michele Montgomery, LA game warden

While the SWAT team waited near a second helicopter which had arrived with Kelvin and his dogs, Cam prowled around the burning shack, contemplating myriad issues. What had the Professor sold to save his ass from gambling debts? What did that have to do with Bobbie Faye? What in hell was driving her? Where the hell was Stacey? Or Roy, for that matter? And why would Cormier tell him to back way the hell up, unless it was because Cormier knew the shack was going to blow? Why in the hell would a mercenary give a rat’s ass whether he was blown up? To appeal to Bobbie Faye? She might hate him, but he didn’t think she’d want him blown up. Maybe. But then again, why would Cormier know that, or care? Maybe Cormier still needed something from her, and needed her not wigging out to get it. What was it Zeke said? Cormier knew exactly how to manipulate and charm and get what he wanted. Right now, he had Bobbie Faye. Cam had to believe they were alive.

And why warn off someone if you intend on self-destructing? No. They were here. Somewhere. He’d bet a year’s salary on it. The trick now? Finding a room, a basement . . . something they’d gone down into; and since they blew their front door, there had to be a back way out.

The FBI agents were scouting closer to the shack, checking in the debris where the fire had died off, looking for clues and bodies. Cam, meanwhile, carefully walked a spiraling perimeter, moving outward from the shack. If it had been his design, and if he’d wanted a back door, he’d want it in the woods, where no one would be paying as much attention.

He moved carefully. Slowly. Wary of destroying any potential evidence, yet needing to examine the terrain. Several times, Cam sank to his haunches, pausing, listening. Smelling the soil, checking for small disturbances.

A broken plant here.

A couple of leaves recently turned over just beyond that.

An odd scrape in the soil just past that.

He waited, instinct telling him he was onto something.

He stood, following what was an almost indecipherable trail, farther down the bayou, where he suddenly found footprints. Men’s boots, at least four different sizes. He backtracked farther and found two speedboats, similar to the one he’d seen Bobbie Faye and Cormier in earlier, well hidden in a tiny inlet in the bayou, camouflaged with limbs and fronds piled around them.

Okay, so that’s how they got here. Now where did they go?

He moved back to where the footprints ended, picking back up where they must have started being careful. There were the tiniest indentations on the grass, where someone passed by.

Then, nothing. Past that last broken twig, there were no other disturbances, save the footprints made by Bobbie Faye and Cormier, and now his own.

Except . . . there was an odd furrow beneath several of the large ubiquitous wood ferns. A perfectly straight line in the soil, a few feet in length.

Bobbie Faye and Trevor stared down the elevator abyss, contemplating options. Trevor gazed back toward the monitor room.

“Is this one of those times when a man won’t ask for directions? Because it’s pretty much a no-brainer that we’re not going down.”

He looked at his watch. “Going out Alex’s direction is riskier. You realize that?”

“Maybe once we move closer to the surface near the door, the cell will work. I could call Cam, try to convince him I want to give up and that we’re somewhere else?”

“He probably won’t leave, but it might pull the majority off this detail for a few minutes. It might work.”

They turned, and Trevor hung the satchel of guns and odds and ends across his shoulders. They walked in silence back to the monitor room, where all of the view screens had shut off. Timers? Bobbie Faye wondered. They crossed the room and moved up the long, curving slope of the ramp to the other exit.

There was a boom. Echoing down through the tunnel.

Some sort of small explosion?

Then, more small blasts and shouts, dogs barking, people running, boots hitting pavement.

Trevor stopped and she slammed into him. “The cops found Alex’s other entrance. Those are smoke grenades. And tear gas.”

He spun, yanking her with him.

“You aren’t seriously thinking we’re going to jump down that elevator shaft?”

“Not jump. Rappel. Have you ever rappelled?”

“Hello? Louisiana? Everything’s flat?”

“Right. Sorry.”

“What are we going to use?”

He didn’t get to answer, for just at that moment, they had entered the monitor room and realized Alex had one last trick up his sleeve: automatic doors on both entrances, which were closing.

Trevor pushed Bobbie Faye through the closing door first, then rolled underneath just as it smashed shut.

“Here,” he said, handing the flashlight to Bobbie Faye. “We’ve only got one chance. They’re going to be pulling Alex and his men out of that other end in a few minutes, and it should be pretty confusing until they figure out you’re not there. Maybe that’ll buy us time enough to rappel.”

He tossed open the satchel and set to work on something about which she had no clue. It gave her a moment to peer down the dark abyss, tossing another salt rock down into the shaft, waiting a million years before it finally bounced and echoed at the bottom.

“Oh, you know, that’s just about perfect. I knew when I woke up this morning that this was going to be a special day and you know what I said to myself? I said, ‘Gee, Bobbie Faye, you should go find a really sexy guy and plunge eight hundred feet to your death with him. It’ll be romantic.’ ”

“
Really
sexy guy, huh?”

“And there’s the finest example of ‘man hearing’ I’ve ever heard. You missed that whole ‘plunge to your death part’ you know.”

“I didn’t miss it. I just skipped to the important part. But just for your information, we are not going to plunge to our deaths.”

“Right. Because you’re making rappelling gear out of twist ties and bottle caps that came from the
magic
satchel. She squinted at him in the light of the flashlight. “So we’re just going to jump into a really deep hole? No definite knowledge as to whether there’s a door down there somewhere?”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“It died of fright a couple of hours ago.”

They heard another round of smoke grenades and tear gas and Trevor sped up his dismantling of various guns. She stared at this man she’d kidnapped, not able to wrap her mind around the kind of man he’d turned out to be. He MacGyvered a makeshift harness and rappelling gear using bits and pieces hacked off from the guns, rope, and other oddball items he’d thrown into the satchel from Alex’s storage
shed. The muscles in his arms were well defined in the stark light and shadows, and his focus was mesmerizing.

He was, inexplicably, still trying to help.

She had a hard time not just believing that, but accepting it. She’d lived so long by the code of being self-sufficient, it was as alien to her to accept so much help as it would have been to sit in a glassed-in high-rise, dictating to a cadre of accountants. Too strange. Now they were boxed in with a SWAT team and guns and an ex who was pretty thoroughly pissed at her. Maybe if she gave the cops what they wanted, they would help her find Roy. Maybe if she was permanently behind bars, Cam would quit all of the crazy-making chasing and focus on the rest of his job. Maybe they wouldn’t be mowed down in the hail of “Hi, Bonnie; Hi, Clyde; nice t’meetcha” bullets she was pretty sure were on their way through the tunnels.

“Can you think of any other options? Have I overlooked something?” When he didn’t respond, she quietly asked, “Maybe the police could help me save Roy? They don’t know exactly who you are, and you could still leave out through the salt dome.”

Without pausing in his work, his fingers flying, tying knots for which she couldn’t even begin to guess the names, he asked, “What do you think the guy holding your brother would do the minute he saw you in police custody?”

Barely above a whisper, she answered, “He’d probably assume I couldn’t get to the tiara, and that he no longer needed Roy as leverage. He’d kill him.”

He nodded, curt and crisp, his hands still working with ropes. They could hear dogs barking, though they didn’t echo. They weren’t yet in the tunnel. Trevor checked his watch.

“We have about twelve minutes left. We can make it assuming that phone in the salt dome is where Alex said it was.”

She studied him as she held the flashlight so he could finish assembling his gear.

“I’m sorry I kidnapped you this morning.”

He stopped, his expression odd and frustration swept across his brow. He snagged her, pulling her in, and kissed her.

Hard. His hand wove into her hair and he pressed her to him, claiming in a way no man had ever done before, promising something she knew she didn’t fully understand. But her body did, apparently, as heat poured through her, racing through her heart, clenching in her stomach, and pooling between her legs. She felt imprinted with his taste, his smell, and the world spun off its axis. There was heat and passion and a tenderness she hadn’t expected. He let her go just as abruptly.

“I’m not sorry. Now, let’s go.”

Trevor tossed all of the extra loose parts not used in the making of the harness back into the satchel and looped it across his shoulders and then stood, facing the abyss of the elevator shaft. With his back to her, she allowed herself a moment to revel in that kiss, and the heat flooding her limbs. She mouthed “wow” to herself.

“Of course,” he said, and she saw that he’d glanced over his shoulder.

She wanted to smack him, the smug bastard, but that felt too much like third grade right at the moment. Then she smacked him on the arm anyway, and her inner third-grader cheered.

Cam waited, tense. He had his gun drawn and aimed at the open trap door where the SWAT team had entered. Kelvin’s hounds were baying not far away, itching to track, still on scent from the shreds of Bobbie Faye’s T-shirt that Kelvin had brought back from the bayou. They were putting up such a fuss, Cam was certain the SWAT leader was going to be dragging Bobbie Faye out any moment now.

Instead, the SWAT team leader, Aaron, popped out of the trapdoor entrance and motioned Cam to the opening.

“Sir, I’ve got six males down here. Two of ’em are college kids who are tied up and gagged, and the rest of ’em were armed.”

“And Bobbie Faye?”

“Sir, they all claim to not know a Bobbie Faye.”

“I know exactly how they feel. Get them up here.”

He stepped back and watched as the SWAT team slowly brought up each of the suspects. The first up were two college kids who Cam recognized as the two boys who fled the bank robbery in the Saab. They practically fell upon the SWAT team with embraces and incoherent babbling. It was going to be real interesting to see what light they could shed on this.

He didn’t recognize the next three men who came out of the hole, but the last one made him raw with fury, though the most Cam allowed himself as a physical reaction was to cross his arms and watch from behind his sunglasses.

Alex.

Bobbie Faye’s ex.

The lowest scum on earth, who’d done more harm to her than Cam could ever have made up for, who’d lied and cheated and who, rumor had it, was a gunrunner, though no one had an ounce of proof. Alex was a few years older than Cam, and Cam never took the man seriously as a threat for Bobbie Faye’s affections when he first started hanging around. He was the kind of guy Bobbie Faye could see through in a heartbeat. Or so Cam had thought. But there she went, getting caught up in his charm and excitement and the pretense of a big family, with all his so-called “friends” hanging around all of the damned time. Before he knew what was happening and had the courage to risk their friendship in order to ask her out, she was dating Alex. Cam had kicked himself a hundred times over for waiting too long, and then he’d had to stand by and be her friend through the whole Alex debacle.

When he did finally ask her out and they started dating, he always wondered if she was secretly bored, secretly longing for that risk, that darkness that exuded from Alex.