Charmed and Dangerous

by Toni McGee Causey

  Cam’s every muscle tensed as he fought to maintain control. It made no sense . . . Zeke said he had orders to shut down Cormier, no matter what. The Captain said to bring him in without harming him, that he was the priority. Two diametrically opposed orders, which means something more covert lay under the surface. Which also meant, of course, that the Captain wasn’t at liberty to say.

  Cam puzzled over the Captain’s oddly blank expression. He was rarely a blank slate, so that, in itself, was a clue that this was far worse than Cam had imagined. Sometimes the government used criminals, made deals, getting them to do the really dirty work no one wanted to have culpability for. Of course, officially, this never happened. Zeke said Cormier had merc’d out, hired out to do the black ops work no one else wanted. It was possible Cormier was blackmailing someone with evidence of their connection to a horrible assignment and that person was trying to take him out and someone else knew of it, and wanted him pulled in. It was also just as possible that Cormier was as bad as Zeke described and Zeke was right to be trying to take him out and Cormier had blackmailed or conned or paid off someone into trying to protect him. There were too many permutations to explain the conflicting orders.

  So of course Bobbie Faye was in the middle of this mess. And he was supposed to keep Cormier safe?

  “Captain, Cormier’s trailing through the swamp with Bobbie Faye. It’s a miracle he’s alive. It’s too much to hope for ‘unhurt.’ ”

  “Well hell, Cam, there’s your answer,” Benoit said, grinning. “Another hour with Bobbie Faye and the man is going to be begging you to arrest him just to get away from her.”

  The Captain and Benoit chuckled, but Cam kept working the problem backwards and forwards.

  “We haven’t worked with Zeke Wright before. Did he check out?”

  “Nothing off that I could tell,” the Captain said.

  “Then I’ll need Benoit here to continue annoying ol’ Dellago in there. I need to get back to the field.”

  The Captain nodded, leaving the two detectives.

  Cam paced a moment, and Benoit waited. “Somebody thinks the Professor’s pretty damned important to be sending Dellago.”

  “Yeah. Are you thinking ‘too’ important?”

  “Last time we had one of those, they mysteriously died in their cell.”

  “I’ll put him in a private lockup and put a guard on him. Vicari’s good. Mean as a snake, but good.”

  They went separate directions, and a few minutes later, Cam was on the district’s second helicopter. But not before he’d stopped in to the dispatch office and pulled Jason aside.

  Jason was somewhere around twenty-eight, though he barely looked twenty. He was good-looking enough to avoid the “total geek” handle, though he was a communications freak.

  “You think you could poke around in the frequencies and listen in on the FBI helicopter?” Cam asked him, and Jason grinned.

  “Man, she’s got you twisted in a knot, don’t she—” and then Jason seemed to notice the look Cam was giving him and not only backed up and put a chair between them, but started apologizing.

  “Shut it,” Cam said. “I need to listen in to them without them knowing. Can we do that?”

  “Officially? Nope. We don’t have the same sort of radios.”

  “Unofficially?”

  Jason beamed. “Well, there are a few ways. See, I could—”

  “Don’t have time for the tech version, Jason. Just see if you can listen without them knowing.”

  “No prob. Unless it’s encrypted. I’d have to be on my home computer to break their codes.”

  “I’m going to slide right by that one and pretend I didn’t hear you say that you can break FBI codes on your home computer, Jason,” Cam said. “You might not want to discuss that with anyone else, either.”

  “Good point.”

  As Cam was leaving, he glanced back and noted Jason was peering around, making sure no one was watching him. Then he pulled out a different scanner as Cam hurried out of the door.

  Seventeen

  No. Just . . . no.

  —Luke James, local mailman, on learning Bobbie Faye would now be on his mail route

  Bobbie Faye pulled open the ancient, creaking screen door to the landing’s store and walked inside into the cooler shade of the room. The place smelled overwhelmingly like fresh peaches and boiled peanuts, a strange mix that seemed to battle in midair. The overhead fan barely pushed the air in and around the impressive stacks of supplies. Items were piled floor to ceiling in every nook and cranny and even right by the door.

  From the other side of a stack of saltines taller than her head, an old man’s voice chirped, “Help you, miss?” and Bobbie Faye yelped in surprise, spun, forgetting her purse was dangling, and knocked over the entire stack of saltine crackers, which fell into the pyramid of laundry detergent and that toppled into the fishing rods leaning against the wall, which fell dominolike into the cricket bin, knocking it open and setting half of the merchandise free.

  Only then did she see the cash register and the two old men sitting in lawn chairs behind the counter.

  “Holy freaking geez, warn a girl, will you?” she snapped, trying to pick up the debris.

  Trevor hadn’t made it past the doorway; he stood there, gaping at the destruction. He checked the sweeping second hand of his expensive diver’s watch, and arched his eyebrow at Bobbie Faye.

  “Four seconds. I swear, woman, if we could find a way to market that talent, we’d be rich.”

  Both of the old men behind the counter were laughing when she looked up, and the skinny one nearest the register took off his glasses to wipe the tears from his eyes.

  “Leave it,” said the other man, a short, round fellow who hadn’t risen. “It’s slow here in the middle of the day. That’ll give us something to do.”

  “Uh, sorry,” Bobbie Faye said. “It’s been a kinda stressful morning.”

  “Do you happen to have a phone we could use?” Trevor asked from immediately behind her, and Bobbie Faye nearly jumped again.

  “Don’t have a regular line,” said cash-register man, “but I have this old cell phone. Reception’s pretty crappy and the battery’s dying, but you can try it. Seems to work best outside.”

  “Thanks.” Trevor took the phone, and then gave Bobbie Faye an annoyed glare. “Honey, try not to tear the place down, okay?”

  “Sure, pumpkin,” she said through gritted teeth, barely refraining from giving him the smacking he so clearly needed. “I’ll get supplies.”

  When Trevor stepped over the boxes of saltines and back out the front door, the cash-register man leaned over the counter and motioned to Bobbie Faye to come nearer. He didn’t look pervy, and she figured she could take him, so she angled a little closer.

  “You okay, Miss Bobbie Faye?”

  She squinted at him for a better look, hoping he wasn’t someone she’d run over, folded, or stapled inadvertently. He didn’t seem to be giving her a hostile expression and there were no weapons being brandished about, unless he was really slow to lift whatever lethal item he might have.

  “How do you know who I am?”

  They both motioned her to keep the noise down as they glanced uneasily out the window to where Trevor spoke on the cell phone.

  “Everybody knows the Contraband Days Queen,” the cash-register man answered, then he motioned to the laptop she could now see propped on the other man’s knees. That old man turned it toward her and she could see he had a satellite phone hooked up and was getting the live news feed.

  “Playing solitaire gets old,” laptop man said by way of explanation. “We saw you coming up the road and we recognized you from your photo here.” He tapped the screen. “We wanted to make sure that guy wasn’t holding you hostage or doing anything sneaky.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” the cash-register man asked. “We’re big fans, you being the Queen and all, and I don’t know if we could both take that young man out there, but we could try if you
’d like us to. Especially if he’s some low-down dirty-dealing dog.

  “Whaddya think, Earl?” the cash-register guy continued. “I could distract him, you could hit him over the head with one of those rice cookers.” He winked at Bobbie Faye. “They’re on sale anyway. Wouldn’t be a big loss.”

  She wasn’t quite sure what to respond to first; there was the horror of the live feed (with the news having placed the skank-ugly shot of her at the edge of the forest in the top right corner of the screen) or the way the grainy surveillance video from the bank was apparently on a constant loop.

  There it was again: that nervous, wormy guy (she saw a photo of him flash next to hers—ah, his name was Bartholomew Fred) standing in line, moving up to the front of the line. He nicely let a woman ahead of him, then another and another. Then he stepped up, looking jumpy and a few seconds later, here she came into the surveillance frame, walking right into the middle of twitchy guy’s robbery.

  And handed him the money.

  Oh, hell, and talked with him.

  Roy was right. It really did look like she was working with the guy and robbing the bank.

  Oh, geez, now there was surveillance footage from outside the bank of her jumping into Trevor’s truck. The station froze the image of him driving away, with a tag of “unidentified man” underneath and another tag of “considered armed and dangerous.”

  Great. Just great. Bonnie and Clyde ride again. She was so not going to look good with bullet holes all in her.

  Her eyes traveled from the news footage to these two sweet old men offering to fight Trevor for her, both at least eighty, beaming at her like she was a celebrity.

  She squeezed the hand of the cash-register man. “I’m okay, really, but thank you. My friend out there’s trying to help me. My brother’s in trouble and if the police stop me, the people holding him will kill him. I can’t explain it to the police—you know how they love to run everything through the paperwork grind first, and I don’t have time for that.”

  “Say no more, Miss Bobbie Faye,” laptop Earl said. “Me and Jean-Luc here have your back. You just let us know what you need.”

  “A little food, couple of bottles of water? And you never saw me, right?”

  “Never,” Jean-Luc of the cash-register exclaimed. “But would you sign my cap here? It’d be a real collector’s item if you live through this an’ all.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, signing his John Deere cap with the Sharpie he handed her, about the time the laptop dinged. She looked at it, puzzled.

  “Oh, I’m just IMing Collete at home, letting her know we have a celebrity here.”

  “Earl!” Jean-Luc shouted. “Turn up your dang-gum hearing aid and pay attention. No one is supposed to know she’s here!”

  “Aw, Collete ain’t gonna tell nobody today. She’s gonna save it up for her Po-Ke-No party next Thursday and trump ’em all on the excitement meter. Man,” Earl said, switching his attention back to Bobbie Faye, “if you live through this and saw fit to come to that, I wouldn’t have to buy Collete an anniversary gift or birthday present for at least a couple of years!”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Earl. Wait—can I send a text message on that thing?”

  “Sure. Hang on.” Earl opened up the text message box and pointed out where to type in the phone number. She plugged in Roy’s number just as Trevor returned.

  “Young man,” Earl addressed him while Bobbie Faye sent Roy a message, “you better damned be careful with our Contraband Days Queen, you hear?”

  Trevor frowned at her and she pointed at Jean-Luc and Earl, saying, “Wasn’t me! I didn’t say a word. They’re fans.” To prove her right, Jean-Luc proudly displayed his cap with her autograph on it.

  “Good job,” he said, scowling deeper. “The cops will take one look at this disaster, then see that cap and know we were here.”

  Jean-Luc immediately shoved the cap into a safe.

  Bobbie Faye typed her message, pressing “send” as Earl stood up and waved his cane at Trevor.

  “I mean it, young man, you take good care of her. Don’t you have any better sense in how to go about helping a lady than to drag her across a bunch of woods and water and wildlife? She gets hurt, me and Jean-Luc here are going to skin you, you got that?”

  Trevor looked from man to man to Bobbie Faye. She smiled so sweetly at him and bit back a laugh when she saw him arch an eyebrow, casting her a look of complete incredulity as if he was the one about to get her killed.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’m going to make sure she’s back in one piece.”

  “One live piece, right?”

  “The vote is still out on that. Did you get supplies, or are you too busy being Ms. Contraband Days Queen?”

  Bobbie Faye grabbed a few prepackaged crackers, energy bars, and bottles of water. Jean-Luc threw a couple of candy bars on top of the heap and refused to allow Bobbie Faye to pay.

  “Oh, he was paying,” she said, motioning to Trevor, and both old men turned on him with a gleam.

  “Well, in that case,” Jean-Luc said, “hand it over, sonny.”

  Trevor cut a look of asperity at Bobbie Faye. She beamed at him as he dug cash from his wallet.

  Trevor handed Jean-Luc back the cell phone with a thanks.

  “Wait—can I borrow that?” she asked, her voice quivering as she looked down at the live feed on the laptop. “I need to call about my niece, Stacey, and send someone to get—”

  “Battery died on me,” Trevor said, shaking his head. “C’mon, we’ve got to go.”

  Bobbie Faye didn’t move, didn’t look up at him, and he stepped closer, peering over her shoulder to see what was so riveting. There on the laptop’s live feed was an aerial shot of Stacey’s elementary school: a crowd of reporters hovered just across the street, along with a growing mob of onlookers.

  Sonofabitch. Stacey. She’s not safe. Whoever had Roy could easily pluck Stacey from that school.

  Trevor’s hands rested on her shoulders; he squeezed her arms gently, speaking low into her ear. “I found out most of what we need to know before the cell went dead. We need to get moving.” He craned his head a little as if listening for the helicopters, then frowned at her. “I think we’d better hurry.”

  Roy glanced around the room. This was not going well. Eddie flipped the ginormous knife and caught it, causing Roy to nearly seizure on every release, flinching as if it were headed his way.

  “You really ought to proceed with another story of your very interesting sister,” Vincent purred, “before Eddie gets bored with his play and decides to make you target-practice.”

  He needed a story that showed she could come through for someone. Something that made her look dependable.

  “She saved a man’s life, once. He was gonna toss himself off a tall building. Well, as tall as they get in Lake Charles, which is only about four or five stories tall, but still, there he was, all torn up over a broken relationship, and the police got her to come in to help him.”

  He neglected to mention that the failed relationship had been with Bobbie Faye and that the man had chosen the top of the building from which to jump because Bobbie Faye had suggested, in a fit of annoyance with him, that the bridge wasn’t high enough to do him enough damage. Nor had Roy expected his audience to realize that it was the same man who Bobbie Faye had pushed when she’d gotten fed up trying to talk him out of jumping, and as he plummeted toward the large airbag below, he had found religion and was now a superstar radio evangelist who went by the name “Mark in the Morning” and promised listeners he could pray the demons right out of them.

  A text message beeped into Roy’s phone, and Vincent read it, scowling, and then set the phone down.

  “Your sister is working under the mistaken impression that there will be no penalties if she’s running late. Perhaps we should start photographing your body parts to persuade her to speed this along.”

  Roy had trouble swallowing. His mouth had gone dry. He was spared Vincent instru
cting Eddie to implement this plan when Vincent’s cell phone rang. Vincent turned his back to the room, speaking in silken, hushed tones. Roy, frankly, wasn’t used to someone speaking so quietly, especially in a tense situation. A shudder rippled through his shoulder blades, and every noise around him turned into senseless buzzing.

  “Yes,” Vincent said. “Failing that, there’s always the sister.”

  Vincent was speaking quietly because it was about killing Bobbie Faye. That had to be it. Impending death equaled quiet, and Roy found himself rocking against his chair.

  Roy had no clue who the call was from. Vincent’s voice dropped into a low register, spoken so softly, Roy thought his eardrums would burst from the effort of trying to listen.

  “Yes,” Vincent said, only slightly louder. “You’ll get full payment. No, no, we’ll talk about a bonus when you’ve delivered.”

  For all his effort, Roy couldn’t piece together more of the conversation from Vincent’s end of things. He mentally replayed what he’d heard. He needed her to know she was being watched. He needed to give her as much of an edge as possible. He needed to tell her someone was there, planning on killing her.

  He had no idea how to do that.

  Eighteen

  Do you have any idea of just how much damage she could do to a state our size in one day? You’ve lost your mind. No way are we taking Bobbie Faye.

  —the governor of Rhode Island to the governor of Louisiana

  Bobbie Faye peered through the brush and undergrowth from the hiding spot Trevor had found. He sat on his haunches next to her as they observed a remote fishing camp. It was set back from Lake Charles about a hundred feet or so and looked a bit more like a sprawling compound than one of the more raggedy fishing camps thrown together on so many other lots carved out of the swampy lake’s shores. Many camps were barely more than rickety cast-off trailers with porches added on, and there were still a substantial number which were never going to be even that nice. This one, however, looked like a fashionable Craftsman home, something that spoke of architects and designers and planning. Where most other camps simply let the landscape run to the natural vegetation, this place could easily have been the featured spread in Southern Gardener. It looked, in other words, like someone refined had chosen this place as a vacation spot and had poured a great deal of care and money and taste into making it a true home away from home.