Bonaparte's Belle: A SEALs of Honor World Novel (Heroes for Hire Book 24)

by Dale Mayer

“Because then I can keep an eye on all of you,” he said, with a bright smile.

  “No, they are fine here. This is their home.” She laughed. “I checked out the freezer, and we don’t have enough ribs.”

  He groaned in mock despair. “In that case, we’ll definitely go to town.”

  “What do you want first? The ribs or your package?”

  “The longer we have the ribs marinating, the better,” he said. “So we can go now, or we can wait a little bit and see if that parcel is in.”

  “It’ll take a miracle to get a parcel in that fast,” she said. “But I’d rather do only one trip.”

  “Miracles happen,” he said. “This is Levi. Remember?”

  “And that’s true. If anybody can get this stuff done fast, it would be Levi and Ice.”

  “Levi and Ice are a hell of a pair, aren’t they? And Ice makes things happen. Stuff that you wouldn’t believe even possible.”

  Angela nodded. “Ice and I have become good friends,” she said, “but we’re just far enough away that we don’t get to visit.”

  “Not sure any visiting happens anytime,” he said, “unless you live in the compound.”

  “Must be a few dozen people living there now, at least, isn’t there?”

  “Oh, yes, every bit of that,” he said and laughed. “But it’s a fun environment.”

  “For a lot of people,” she said, “unless you’re the kind who wants space.” She motioned to the area around her.

  “Not many people have this option,” he said, as he surveyed all that surrounded them. He checked his watch. “What time does anything open in town?”

  “Not for hours,” she said. “We’re early.”

  “Damn,” he said. “I was hoping to go grab the stuff we needed and get home.”

  “We will, but we might as well have breakfast first.”

  “Oh.” He looked at her with interest. “What do you have in mind?”

  She snorted. “If you’re like the rest of Levi’s crew, anything that’s food will do nicely.”

  “That’s true, but we all consider ourselves gourmets, with Alfred and Bailey there.”

  She snorted at that again. “You guys are just plain spoiled.”

  He grinned. “I can cook too.”

  “Well, ribs at least,” she said, “but I’ve got sausage and bacon, hash browns and eggs. So you tell me what you want.”

  “Yes.”

  She stared at him for a minute, then burst out laughing, and, hopping to her feet, she said, “Got it. But do you always eat like this?”

  “Every chance I get,” he said, with a bright smile.

  She shook her head and led the way back inside, where she poured two more cups of coffee, brought out a frying pan, and started working on the sausage.

  “We don’t have to have both bacon and sausage, if you don’t want to.”

  “I’ve just got a few sausages left, so I can fry them up before they go bad,” she said. “So we’ll have bacon too because I don’t have enough sausages.”

  “Well, as long as there’s plenty of something,” he said, “I’ll be perfectly happy to stay here and eat.”

  “So long as there’s grub,” she murmured.

  He nodded. “That and good company.”

  She laughed again and shook her head. “I forget just how lonely life is out here now,” she murmured.

  “You should never be lonely,” he said.

  “Well, you are, when you face situations like this sometimes.”

  He stopped, thought about it, and then nodded. “That, unfortunately, is quite right. Nobody should have to face something like this alone.”

  “Well, I’m not alone now, am I?”

  “Nope, you’re not,” he said, with a definite nod. “As long as you remember that, we’ll be good.”

  Chapter 6

  By the time Bonaparte and Angela headed into town, the butcher shop was due to open in another ten minutes, and the post office would be a little bit after that. They still had to deal with pretty-lazy town hours, but they did the best they could, and she appreciated that. They went to the butcher first, and she bought two racks of ribs, but, as she went to pay for it, Bonaparte stepped in and paid instead. She looked at him with a sideways glance. He shrugged, and then he ordered more bacon, and, as he wandered around, he picked up two big steaks.

  “When do you want the steaks?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow night,” he said. He tapped the glass case. “You know what? We could use some stuff for sandwiches too.”

  “Hey, if you’re always hungry, you’re the one who needs to pick up enough stuff to fill that stomach of yours.” She could tell that the butcher was more than a little interested in everything they were doing. She had never really been known to have much of a boyfriend. She had dated and had a few relationships, but nothing that would ever cause a commotion like this guy would. Not only was he her deputy but he was huge.

  She smiled over at Ross and said, “Looks like I’ll be getting a little bit more than normal.”

  He just nodded and rang it up, but his gaze flicked from Bonaparte to her and then back again. But he was too polite to say anything. Bonaparte quickly paid for the rest and then moved the purchases outside. “I figured he might have said something,” Bonaparte murmured.

  “He was probably too afraid of what you might say back.”

  Bonaparte nodded. “I do tend to have that effect on people.”

  “In that case, I should make you come shopping with me all the time,” she said. “I think we got faster service too.”

  “I’m not sure about faster,” he said. “The store was empty.”

  “Yeah, but normally he dawdles and likes to talk and take his time.”

  “Well, socializing with you is probably off the table now,” he said.

  “That could be,” she murmured. Next they drove to the gas station, where Bonaparte filled up the truck. “We’ll head to the post office next.”

  “I don’t think I’ll have anything there,” she said.

  “Mine came in by courier,” he said, checking his phone. “Got confirmation of arrival.”

  “So we’ll go there afterward,” she said, with a nod. By the time they had collected everything they needed in town, they had caused quite a stir, with various people stepping out on the sidewalk to watch them. She smiled and called out to a few of the locals, who more or less inclined their heads at her but studied Bonaparte warily.

  “So are they scared of you?” she asked. “Is that a normal reaction?”

  “Well, I’m not exactly putting out friendly vibes,” he said. “I don’t want them to chalk up my being here as your boyfriend and thus not as great a threat to them.”

  “I think they’ve been threatened enough,” she said, choosing to bypass his boyfriend comment.

  He smiled. “Maybe, and maybe that’s not a bad idea anyway.”

  She just shrugged. As they hopped into the truck for the last time, she said, “Don’t look now, but we have company.”

  He pulled out onto the road and said, “Are they likely to follow?”

  She checked her side mirror and said, “Looks like they are.” And, sure enough, a big Hummer pulled in behind them, as they headed toward home.

  “Interesting,” he said. “Not local kids here. The Hummer speaks to money. So somebody hired from out-of-town?”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Will they just follow us in?”

  “Unless they’ve got firepower,” she said quietly.

  He looked at her sharply and immediately punched his foot down hard on the gas pedal. The Hummer came flying up behind them as well. Bonaparte turned sharply around in the middle of the street, too fast for the Hummer to hit the brakes. By the time the Hummer even realized Bonaparte had bypassed him, Bonaparte was back on the road, behind the Hummer at the same speed.

  “That was a pretty nifty maneuver,” she said in surprise.

  “Yeah, it is,” he said, “and some
times, when you get assholes on your tail, you need to know how to do a few of these.”

  “In that case,” she said, “maybe you could show me one or two.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. They drove down the road, but now the Hummer had slowed, figuring out what to do.

  “Do you think he’ll try the same thing?” Angela asked.

  “He’s not fast enough,” Bonaparte said calmly. Sure enough, the Hummer tried to pull off to the side, and Bonaparte just pulled off at the same time. When the Hummer pulled back onto the road and tried to go to the opposite side, Bonaparte followed him. She wanted to laugh because it’s exactly what the Hummer was trying to do to them. But, in this case, the rattler got rattled. “He’s likely to just drive home to his house.”

  “And that’s fine,” he said calmly. “We’ve got one weapon, and I’ve got a job to do at home to find those bullets. But, in the meantime, I’m not interested in being somebody’s prey.”

  “We’ll just piss him off,” she said.

  “If we piss him off, he’ll do something fast and stupid.”

  “You mean, more stupid,” she said. “They’ve always been just at the edge of the law. Nobody ever really crosses the line, so I can’t do much.”

  “Yeah, you get guys like that sometimes, who know exactly what they’re doing.”

  “And it’s irritating,” she said, “because I know that the rest of the town is looking at me to do something, to stay out of it and leave them alone, or to throw in the towel and walk away.”

  “Not your style,” he said calmly.

  “No, it sure isn’t,” she said, loving that he actually got it.

  “Besides,” he murmured, “I’m not into letting assholes take over a place like this and do stuff like that. It’s not cool.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s cool or not,” she said. “Money can buy quite a lot of leeway.”

  “It does, and too often guys like this get away with that crap, but we won’t let them.”

  Her emotions were bolstered immediately at his positive tone. “I wonder how long you’re planning on staying then?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.

  He looked at her in surprise. “How long do you think this will take?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, studying him. “Depends what game plan you have.”

  “You see? That’s the problem. We don’t have one yet,” he said. “We’re still getting our defenses going and figuring out just what we do have for a plan.”

  “You mean, options,” she said, with a shrug.

  “We need more history on these guys, so I’m waiting for Levi to get back to us on that.”

  “I’ve asked him for a bunch of information too,” she said. “And I’ve talked to a couple of my bosses. Just to see what options I have.”

  “Do you have bosses?”

  She shrugged. “Really the people are my boss because I’m voted in, and I can get voted out, but it’s more than that. There are laws that these assholes aren’t allowed to cross.”

  “But they’ve already crossed them, haven’t they?”

  She nodded. “They have, yes, but I have nothing to pick them up for, as I have no proof.”

  “And, if you did pick them up, you couldn’t keep them, and all it will do is cause trouble and make it look like you’re weak and inefficient.”

  “Which is what they’re already doing,” she admitted.

  “Right, because you don’t have a good legal leg to take a stand against them.”

  “Well, I should be able to, but again I don’t have any real reason, outside of making it look like I’m hassling them.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Have you got a siren on this thing?”

  “I sure do. Why?”

  “Because he’s missing a taillight. That should be plenty of grounds for pulling him over.”

  At that, he reached over, hit the siren, and sped up, putting pressure on the Hummer to either pull off to the side of the road or try to escape. And, sure enough, he stepped on the gas and took off.

  “Wow,” she said, “I didn’t think he would run.”

  “And the fact that he is makes me very curious as to why,” he said, stepping on the gas. “Well, this old girl’s still got some juice in her,” he remarked, as they were able to quickly catch up to the Hummer.

  “That she does,” she said. He kept on driving behind the Hummer, staying up tight. They were almost up to the two properties recently bought by the asshole brothers, when she said, “I wonder if he’ll try to go on past, hoping that we’ll go home.”

  “It doesn’t matter what he’s hoping for,” Bonaparte said, holding steady.

  “Well,” she said, “we’ll find out soon enough.” And, just as she said that, the Hummer blew a tire, just ahead of them. It fishtailed several times, back and forth on the road, its brakes flashing off and on, off and on. Then finally it spun around out of control and came to a stop, half in and half out of the ditch on the side of the road. Bonaparte pulled up beside the wrecked Hummer, and Angela raced ahead, her handgun available and ready to pull, then popped open the driver’s side door.

  “What the hell,” the driver said blearily, blood streaming off his forehead. “I’ll have your badge for that, Sheriff.”

  “You blew a tire all on your own. Driver’s license and insurance,” she said in derision. “You were trying to elude the sheriff and her deputy.”

  “You are just hassling me,” he said, “I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “You’re driving without functional taillights,” she snapped.

  “What?” He looked at her and over at Bonaparte, who shrugged.

  “Your lights are out on the one side.”

  The driver tried to exit the vehicle.

  “Hand over your DL and proof of insurance. Then you can exit your vehicle.”

  He grumbled, but he complied.

  Angela wrote down the info on her ticket pad, showing Bonaparte the driver’s name.

  He snorted. “John Smith, huh? You can bet we’ll dig deep to find out more about you.” And Bonaparte promptly sent a copy of his DL and insurance papers to Levi.

  The guy continued to moan, got out of the vehicle slowly, and stood up precariously. She reached over to grab him and asked, “Do you need an ambulance?”

  He shrugged her off and said, “If I do, it’s because of you.”

  “Not hardly,” Bonaparte said. “We were pulling you over to ask you about the taillight not working.”

  He glared at him. “It was working this morning.”

  “Well, it isn’t working now,” Bonaparte said. “And then there’s that tailgating earlier.”

  “I wasn’t doing nothing. You were driving too slow, and I was trying to get home.”

  She looked at him with half a smile. “Really? Do you think that’ll work in a court of law?”

  He sneered at her. “You don’t have anything on me, and I’ll have your badge for putting me in the ditch.”

  “Not happening. In the meantime, you should take some driving lessons.” She wrote him up a ticket for his taillight and said, “Get that fixed within forty-eight hours.” He just glared at her, as she slapped it in his hand, and then she walked back over to the truck.

  Bonaparte hopped in, and they turned around and drove to her property. “Did you know that guy? Ever seen him before?”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  “He seems to own the Hummer, not renting it. So will he get it fixed?”

  “It’s a simple-enough thing, and he certainly should, but will he? I don’t know,” she said. “A citation for something like that is hardly a big step in any direction.”

  “No, but it still shows that he can get pinned by something as negligible as that,” he said.

  She shrugged. “But it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in the end. He’ll be back doing some other shit before long anyway,” she said, sounding frustrated.

  “Hold
steady,” Bonaparte replied. “We’ll find a way.”

  She looked over at him and said, “Sorry. I’m just out of patience and have no clue how we’re supposed to make any of this happen.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but you haven’t come up with any ideas yet either.”

  He winced. “Hey, since I’ve been here, we pushed Ronnie’s buttons and flushed out a shooter. I’ll now go hunt for the bullet,” he said, as he drove up the long driveway to her home. “We’ve found some of the local teens who do Ronnie’s and Johnny’s bidding, plus the Hummer guy who’s already pissed off that I’m here, enough that he’s chasing us down the road. As a matter of fact, I happen to think we’ve chased quite a few bad guys out of the shadows.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but all of it is the same old shit.”

  “Well, I’m here now,” he said, “so I won’t deal with the same old shit. We’ll find some bright shiny new shit.”

  At that, she burst out laughing and said, “This is a ridiculous conversation.”

  He looked over, grinned, and said, “I know, but you’re smiling again.”

  She shook her head, feeling the same gloominess take over again. “I’ve got no business smiling,” she said. “This is just a crap deal all around.”

  “But it’s what we do,” he said, “so we’ll fix it.”

  She smiled, loving his positive attitude. And knowing that he was one of Levi’s guys, she was willing to give him a little bit of rope. She didn’t want it to be enough to hang him because she really, really wanted him to have some great ideas of what they could actually do here. Otherwise, she was afraid that, one night, she just wouldn’t wake up.

  As soon as they were home, greeted by all the dogs, and everything was unloaded, and he’d fussed with the ribs and the steaks, he grabbed the package that had been sent overnight from Levi. Bonaparte unpacked a metal detector, a small handheld unit without the long bar, but something useful for vertical applications. He systematically went over the relevant side of the house, thankful for the access Levi had to a unit that had a broad range and could even discern between different metals.

  Because her home had old wood siding, clad with shingles, it was easy for a bullet to get missed by a visual check. He was into it about an hour, when he heard a distinctly different ding than it produced when he went over the nailing line. He stopped, refocused, studied the spot, marked it, and then went into the kitchen and asked if she had any tools. She quickly walked over to a large toolbox she kept in the pantry.