When a Man Loves a Weapon (6 page)

Lonan, Ian, the rest of the crew, and especially Sean, watched the camera angle from the computer monitor as one of their hijacked pieces of equipment was delivered. The camera had been set atop the metal structure and Ian could control how it pivoted with a little joystick. They watched as the delivery truck backed in, and the final security checkpoint belched out two guards who examined the paperwork the rental company driver provided.

The paperwork would be in order. The mechanic would believe this piece was on its way to Poly-Ferosia, and he would see paperwork on line confirming that order. Ian had made sure of that—hacking into the mechanic’s computer. Meanwhile, these guards would see a purchase order to replace a broken piece of equipment inside the facility.

“It’s a fine piece of gear, Lonan,” Sean said, eyeing the screen. “They’ll never look inside—right?”

“Not likely. This one’s too new, and the crowd’s already building.”

“And this is where the magic’s done,” Ian said, pointing to the screen as the guard reviewed the purchase order the driver provided. “He’ll check his computer . . .” and Ian typed into his own, sending a signal to the facility’s maintenance program—something so easily hacked, Ian had wanted to call and gloat. Facilities like this often firewalled their financial data with the best encryption and often thought of maintenance as a necessary evil, but certainly not a department vulnerable—or interesting to—hackers. “And there—he’ll see the confirmation. And now he’ll see where it’s already
been inspected by the dogs at the outer checkpoint.” An invented report, Lonan knew.

They’d waited ’til today to make the delivery of this big piece of equipment—it would have been too interesting to the bomb-sniffing dogs which had been scheduled for the day before. Once the dogs were done, it was up to security to keep the place clear of any unlabeled, unexpected, nasty items that could be a potential bomb.

Oops.

One of the guards compared the order to his computer, nodded to the other guard, and they waved the driver in. Lonan could hear the
beep beep beep
of the reverse-engine warning as the big diesel truck backed into the shadow of the cavernous bay and he glanced over at Sean, who was wearing the first genuine smile Lonan had seen since the surgery to save Sean’s hands.

Sean flexed his fingers now around an exercise ball in his right hand, his left grabbing Lonan’s shoulder.

“Good job, me lad,” he said, and Lonan nodded.

When Riles slept, Bobbie Faye showered, changed into jeans, and then chose one of Trevor’s shirts—a startling blue that matched his eyes, and now the living room—to wear over a pretty lacy cami he’d given her. She sat for a while on the cold tile floor in front of the pantry, her head leaning on the doorframe. The shirt still had a lingering Trevor smell, and she crossed her arms on her knees, propped her chin there and breathed.

He’d alphabetized the food. Categories, subcategories. She closed her eyes, saw him standing in the cramped closet in his raggedy “Kiss the Cook” t-shirt, moving all of the chicken soup under “C”—not, God forbid, under “S” for soup or, had she had her way about it when carrying in the groceries, shoved onto the same shelf as the juice boxes because there was more room there . . . and then when he was done, she’d followed his t-shirt instructions. (They were going to have to replace that old tile on that rickety island with something a little more substantial.)

She wandered into the living room, napped on the floor, then woke and stayed there, trying to decide if the blue was such a great idea. It had
seemed
like the perfect choice, but maybe it was too predictable? Maybe the butter cream was better because it was a neutral. The Home Depot paint department manager had said the butter cream was a neutral (sometime before she’d caused the manager to hide in the storeroom, and she really was sorry about that), but what if she was just saying that to get Bobbie Faye out of her department? Or what if a woman saying “neutral” was really girl-code for “something guys resign themselves to” instead of actually being neutral, like beige? Would Trevor like the blue? What if he didn’t, what if he thought it was awful? What had she been thinking? Maybe one more coat? One more? Maybe that would work, make it richer, more striking, and she wondered what time it was.

Some time later, she wasn’t sure how long, she was aware of movement in the house again. “He’d have called,” she said loudly, so that Riles could hear her—he was in the kitchen, making a sandwich from the sound of it. She wasn’t sure how many hours she’d been lying on the floor, staring at the walls. She couldn’t keep doing this. She’d have been better off at work. Shooting things. That was exactly what she needed to be doing right now, holding a loaded weapon while she was sleep-deprived and exhausted.

“He’ll call you when he wants you to know something. If he wanted to come home, he’d come home, though at this rate, I’ll be damned if he’s not halfway across the U.S. by now, changing his name to hide from your female version of Jackson Pollock in there.”

Bobbie Faye was absolutely certain she was going to break her promise to Trevor. It was not a question of
if
but
when
. “It’s day
seven
. Something’s wrong. I’m calling the Feds back.”

“Didn’t the last guy call you the Devil’s Spawn?”

“He’s gotta be off duty by now. I’m trying again.”

She grabbed the cordless lying on the floor next to her and dialed. She’d gone through six people—all of whom assured her that they were not going to tell her a Single Damned
Thing—when Riles came into the living room, flapping paper at her. She hadn’t bothered to get up from the floor yet, and he stood there, quite a few feet from the trajectory of a well-aimed cordless phone, and asked, “What’s this?”

“What?”

He turned the piece of paper toward her and said, “This was on the refrigerator under your ‘to-do’ list.”

“Oh. Ways to kill you. I brainstormed a bit.”

He spread the pages out where she could see all three. Lots of diagramming involved.

“I was inspired.”

He flipped it back, pulled out a red pen from his pocket, and doodled on her list. “Oh, look, you misspelled
hanged
. It’s just one ‘g’ like
deranged
, a word I’m willing to bet you’re familiar with.”

“I was going for emphasis.”

“Glad to know you have a hobby.” He sat at the card table and pretended to consider the papers in a thoughtful, almost academic manner. “Yes, yes. I’m sure you need some sort of psychiatric help.”

“I’m too busy with my murder-by-correspondence course, but I’ll look into it.” She needed to think about something else. Something that would shove the panic rising in her chest back down. “How’d you meet Trevor?”

“I believe someone said
hello
and we probably shook hands. Exciting stuff. You should be writing this down.”

When Trevor came home, which had better be in the next five minutes or Riles was toast, she was going to ask him just exactly when he’d lost his mind and thought Riles being anywhere in the state of Louisiana was a good idea, much less driving her crazy in what was supposed to be her own home. Dipping her in a big vat of acid would have made more sense at this point.

“I’m going in to work,” she said, getting up and heading into the kitchen to find her purse, “and you can be all super psycho guy over in a corner somewhere.”

He followed her. “You’re supposed to stay here. You’re on vacation.”

“Only if we spell ‘vacation’ ‘h-e-l-l.’ If I stay here, I’m going to paint that living room again.”

“That’s not going to work, by the way,” he said, nodding toward her keys, indicating her car. “I disabled the battery.”

She stopped, keys hovering midair. “You did what?”

“I disabled your car. You’re staying home.”

She slowly scanned the small kitchen, seeing without really registering the surroundings. A white (of course) curtain hung at the small kitchen window over the (white) sink, a set of (white) empty open shelves on each side, which Trevor had yet to fill with whatever it was that people used when they were the kind of people who cooked instead of making sandwiches for every meal, and there was a small clock she’d brought with her from her old place—a crazy plastic crawfish clock Stacey had loved. Then she saw what she’d been subconsciously searching for: the knife rack.

“Here’s the thing,” she said, all reasonable and virtuous as she turned back to Riles, “I agreed to three days. It’s four clicks of crazy past that. I can’t stay here.”

“This is what he does, Batgirl, and you need to get used to it. He can’t afford for you to go apeshit every time he’s a few minutes late. It’s part of the job—if you can’t hack it, you need to do him the favor of getting the fuck out of his life.”

“Annnnnnnnnnnd I’ve officially had enough. You want to keep me here? You’ll have to stomp my ass to do it.”

He scowled at her, grabbing the cordless as she attempted to call for a ride. Clearly, the Neanderthal had believed that talking tough would make her cave. Then he shrugged. “I’m not going to fight you. I, however, did not promise not to tie you up and gag you.”

Bobbie Faye leaned forward on the cracked kitchen island, propping her chin in her hand, trying to plaster an innocent expression on her face. “Tell ya what. I’ll agree not to go anywhere—today—if you win the toss.”

“I’m not tossing a coin with you. The odds are too even.”

“No, I meant a knife toss. You, Mr. Big Bad ‘I was a sniper’ Guy,
can
throw a knife, can’t you?”

“Like I’m going to let you arm yourself.”

“Oh. Sure. Okay.” She shrugged. “Chicken.”

Riles frowned at her again, knowing she was up to something. “So I’m assuming you have some talent throwing knives.”

“I’m not too shabby. And I did promise not to kill you, so what have you got to lose? I haven’t slept much, so surely with your training, you stand a small chance of winning.”

If she’d known he was going to sulk so freaking much, she’d have let Riles get a little closer to winning that seventh round. They went two out of three, then three out of five, then five out of seven, and when she’d beaten him at every single round (they played fifteen), Riles finally had to concede. And Jesus, could the man whine. She was pretty sure, though, that it was the humiliating double-or-nothing round where she bet him the trip out against him having to wear normal jeans and a normal shirt that was irking the hell out of him. She probably shouldn’t have humiliated him quite so much.

Maybe she could do it again tomorrow.

They stood now in Ce Ce’s Outfitter store, a battered old repurposed Acadian-styled house complete with a porch spanning the front and about two billion little rooms added on haphazardly, half of which were accessed through a closet or by standing on one foot and singing the “Hokey Pokey” while rubbing one’s ear. It was packed with more merchandise than most stores four times its size.

At the front near the door, was the checkout counter, where biscuits and gravy were homemade for the early morning fishermen. She’d been in charge of cooking the biscuits. Once. Ten fishermen getting their stomachs pumped later, Ce Ce had decided that Bobbie Faye’s talents definitely lay elsewhere.

Off to the right of the counter leaned a few old red, chipped Formica booths, the red worn past the undercoat down to faded yellow plywood underneath. Ce Ce had an ancient TV mounted to the wall, usually tuned to the news
and weather, but it was getting to the point that someone had to smack it every few minutes when it went all fuzzy.

Sometimes, she felt a little too much like that TV, as if the Universe thought she might not be focused enough and therefore needed to be smacked around regularly. She and the Universe? Not exactly on speaking terms right now.

Riles hovered.

If she thought the customer might like a Glock, Riles countered with a Kimber 1911.

If she said SIG, he said, “Walther P. Don’t listen to her, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

When she tried to explain how to unload a Ruger, he took it away to demonstrate.

Trevor had still not called. The hours were ticking away. How the hell did people
do
this?

She picked up the phone to make another call and Riles took the phone away. The only thing that saved her from ripping his arms off and beating him with them was a timorous woman’s voice warbling behind him, asking, “Am I dangerous enough yet?”

Bobbie Faye leaned a little to see around him to octogenarian Mabel Gill, who stood stoop-shouldered, propped on her walker, holding a spatula from the BBQ section.

“I could smack her with it,” she explained to Riles, who appeared, for the first time, a little helpless.

Bobbie Faye would give up her next paycheck to see that expression permanently etched on his face. As it was, she settled for the temporary revenge. “Oh, of course, Miz Mabel could definitely hurt me,” Bobbie Faye said, smiling sweetly at Riles. “You have to frisk her again.”

“Payback is going to be a bitch,” Riles muttered just within her hearing as he turned to the woman. “Arms forward, Mrs. Gill,” he said and the woman beamed.

“Be careful,” Bobbie Faye added. “She hides stuff in her girdle all the time.”

Riles scowled at her, and Bobbie Faye made a mental note to tell Miz Mabel where the flyswatters were located.

“Does Bobbie Faye have an expiration date?”

“We can only hope.”

—Lorelei Chapman, to Terri Smythe Department of Health and Human Resources

She wanted to throw the damned phone across the store and watch the pieces rain down onto the floor, except for the tiny little detail of it then
really
not working, which just was not an option.
Maturity fucking
sucked. It was near the end of the day and she still didn’t have any answers. Friday. Everyone going home for the weekend, no one on duty for her to harass for answers.

Bobbie Faye eased backward just enough to glance out of the storeroom doors and into the main store area, where Riles was surrounded by more than twenty little old ladies and their walkers. Miz Mabel had apparently called in friends, who closed in on him, demanding to be frisked.
Ha
.