“I didn’t realize the cell wouldn’t work in here! The deadline. Oh, shit, I have to make that call. They’ll think I’m dead. They’ll hurt Roy!”
“I don’t think so,” Trevor said. Then as if it was as natural as breathing, his hands had gone to her shoulders, working the tension knotted there. “They don’t know for sure that you were in the shack, unless the police tell them, and I doubt the police are going to say anything until they know what exactly happened. At best, they’ll know you were around here, but they’re not going to risk their leverage until it’s confirmed one way or the other.”
Trevor turned to Alex. “I’m assuming you have a back door, or you wouldn’t have brought us here.”
“Of course. There are two. One is a long sloping ramp I found that was once used to bring the equipment in for the salt dome below us. I had the door disguised so no one knows it’s there.”
“Good, then let’s go.”
“Not so fast.” Alex walked over to one of the monitors and pointed to a spot on the ground. “Here’s the hidden door to the tunnel. It opens up in the ground right where the FBI are camped out. We aren’t going to be able to get out of that door unseen until they leave. That could take more than a day.”
They all looked at Bobbie Faye, who shook her head. “I don’t have that kind of time.”
“I sensed that, chère,” Alex said, smiling. “Never the easy way with you, is it?” He raised his hands when she spun toward him. “The other way out’s through the dome.”
“You mean . . . down? How?”
“The other end is still being mined. There’s an entrance through there.” He pointed to the doorway to his right. “You have to take the elevator down to the dome, then cross through an equipment graveyard. The salt rusts it out fast, and it’s not worth the time or money bringing the equipment back up to the surface, so they just leave it down there. And there are a couple of large rooms they use as a sort of warehouse. If you ask me, they forgot about a lot of this stuff over the years as they mined the other side.”
She looked at the monitors, at the FBI, SWAT, police, and of course, Cam, milling around. There were God-knows-how-many helicopters above it all. No way to get out that exit unseen. But the idea of going down into the dark of a salt dome was like volunteering to walk into your own grave.
She couldn’t find Stacey like this. She couldn’t save Roy from here. She looked down at the dead cell phone.
“There’s an old land-line down there. I think it still works. And the cops wouldn’t dream of you going that way so they won’t be waiting for you at the other end.”
She dropped her face into her hands, feeling an enormous weight pressing against her chest, crushing her heart. She had no choice. She sucked it up, looked up at Alex and Trevor, and nodded.
“Alex? I need the tiara.”
He paused, gazing longingly at the tiara. Then reluctantly, he tossed it to her, and then lobbed the flashlight to Trevor.
“Don’t say I never did anything for you, chère. You hear?”
“Thanks, Alex,” she said, and he nodded.
“I better get my stuff back,” he said as he exited the room, heading out toward his own exit as the words echoed off the tunnel walls.
“I’m impressed,” Trevor said once Alex was gone and they had turned toward a different exit, the one leading to the dome below.
“Why?”
“You got it from him without shooting him.”
“Oh, he knew I’d shoot him. That’s why he gave it to me.”
“You two must have had an interesting relationship.”
“Only if you find pathological liars interesting,” she said, then saw his curiosity. “Don’t ask. I still don’t know how I was so brain dead as to date that man. I definitely didn’t know what he did for a living when we met.”
“He still cares for you,” he said, and she caught an odd note to his tone.
“What do you care?”
“I don’t. Just an observation,” he answered as they traveled through a hallway toward an old elevator. “The man obviously still loves you.”
“He was a poet in school. He loves the idea of love.” They stopped in front of the dusty, rusted elevator door. “In the real world, he turned out to be of the ‘she’s to be seen and not heard’ school of relationships.”
Trevor’s eyebrows arched.
“Yeah, I don’t know what the hell he was thinking dating me, either.”
She pressed the button to the elevator and nothing happened. She pressed it again, then again. Still nothing. She pounded the freaking button. And yet, there was nothing. No sounds, no movement; no groaning, creaking overtures of an attempt of the elevator car to show up.
Trevor pushed the button and she glared at him.
“Right,” she said. “Because if a man does the same thing, it should work.”
He chuckled, setting the flashlight down, pulling out his Ka-Bar knife and used it to wedge open the doors. When he aimed the flashlight down into the elevator shaft, it was as if it were a never-ending abyss. He picked up a small rock of salt nearby and dropped it into the shaft, counting seconds until it hit something. Almost ten seconds.
“That’s at least eight or nine hundred feet to where the car is stuck. Right now, I’d say you’re batting a thousand. I’ve never seen anyone with such stellar bad luck.”
“Go, me. I always was an overachiever.”
Ce Ce had no clue how it had come to this. She shook her head, giving up on anything making sense. They had just lugged the Social Services woman to the back room where they’d put her onto a cot when Ce Ce noted the security monitor and saw what she was sure was a plainclothes cop enter her Outfitter store. She flipped on the intercom, making sure the feed was one-way only, to listen to what he wanted.
“I’m Detective Benoit,” he announced to Allison and Alicia. The twins smiled and leaned forward onto the counter, showing ample cleavage. He grinned back at their beatific smiles, and Ce Ce reminded herself those girls needed a raise.
“I’m looking for a Mrs. Banyon with the Department of Social Services. She was reported to have arrived here a couple of hours ago. Have you seen her?”
“Well, Officer,” Allison said (or maybe it was Alicia), “there’s really been so many people in here. It’s kinda a spectator sport at this point. It’s hard to keep track of all the people we know, much less the ones we don’t.”
Crap. Ce Ce stared down at the woman who weighed as much as a lighthouse and was about as solidly built. The first place the cop was going to want to search was the back of the store. She made a mental note: “special” tea plus slow metabolism equals bad.
“Where the hell are we gonna put her?” Monique asked, wiping the perspiration from her brow, her red hair standing out in spikes, her pink freckles turning a brighter red with the exertion of heaving the two-hundred-plus-pound woman to the back room. “Hey, I know. We could dress her in one of your costumes, put on a mask, and he’ll think she’s a wax dummy or something.”
“She’s snoring, Monique.”
“We could tell him it’s sound effects!”
The Social Services woman farted.
They both looked down, scrunching up their faces.
“Okay, maybe not,” Monique amended.
They heard Detective Benoit give the girls a description of the missing woman. Ce Ce slapped the receiver part of the intercom off in that room and on in each subsequent room as they tugged the heavy, sleeping woman through the cramped hallways. They had to bend her to get her around the junk stacked up in the storeroom, and Ce Ce propped her on a few boxes and an old rug.
“Wanna try the closet?”
“We’ll never get her in there. And she could fall over. That door doesn’t lock.”
Ce Ce looked around the overflowing storage room; there were free-standing shelves jammed against other shelves, all stuffed with every imaginable oddity that she might use in some of her potions and drinks. Spells, some peop
le called them. Alongside that hodgepodge mixture were her books, which tracked some of the more esoteric facts of south Louisiana’s little-known history, particularly anything that recorded old stories of how various salves and drinks worked, anecdotes of those who’d delved into the medicinals before her. In front of all of that, inventory for the store, including more boxes of crystals.
Bobbie Faye may have had a point about the crystals.
The closet was small and crammed with goods. Then, on the intercom, she heard Detective Benoit ask the twins, “Then you won’t mind if I check the back? See if she’s lost back there somewhere?”
“Oh,” one of the twins replied. “Well, we gotta go find Ce Ce. We can’t give anyone permission to go back there. Just her.”
Bless their little peroxided hearts. They really were going to get a raise.
Alicia hustled to the back of the store while Ce Ce could hear the other twin trying to keep the detective distracted. He seemed particularly interested in the crystal matrix and chanting still en force in the store. When Alicia’s head popped into the storage room doorway, her eyes bugged and she slid to a stop.
“Don’t look at me like that, child. She’s not dead. You go distract him some more until we can move her.”
“Which way are you going?”
“We’ll go on through that back sitting room and then through my office. You go tell him I’m lying down and don’t feel well. Tell him I’m real distraught over Bobbie Faye. He’ll have to come back later.”
Alicia nodded and ran back while Ce Ce and Monique hefted Mrs. Banyon up a little and dragged her into the next room. They got a brief reprieve when Ce Ce heard the detective’s cell phone ring, and he asked to step into a back room for that conversation. Ce Ce knew disguising that intercom as a voodoo mask was going to come in handy one day.
Ce Ce and Monique dropped the Social Services lady to the floor with a thud that was a little too loud. They both hovered near the intercom as they tried to glean every word the detective said.
“I still haven’t found the kid,” the detective said. After a beat, he continued. “Look, Cam, I’ve squeezed everyone I know at the FBI and they’re swearing they don’t have the kid. The social worker’s missing, now, too. Yeah, I’m following up on that. It’s got to be connected. Oh, and Crowe and Fordoche finished the financials on the Professor. He’s in debt up to his squirmy eyebrows. Yeah, loan sharks, how’d you guess? Yeah. Looks like he sold something to the sharks to pull his ass out of a fire and word on the street was that the shark sold it for big bucks to a black market art dealer, but nobody knows what or how that ties into Bobbie Faye. When I tried to interview him without Dellago, the sadistic bastard found out and forced me to stop or include him. How’s it going there?”
There was a long pause, and Ce Ce wanted to storm into the other room and snatch the phone from him.
“You saw her?”
The detective was silent a moment and Ce Ce and Monique leaned closer to the speaker to get every drop of information they could.
“Holy shit, Cam. Are you serious? How bad was it?” Then, finally, quietly, “Was she inside when it blew?”
Ce Ce grabbed her ample chest and sagged against the wall.
“Well, then, where?” Detective Benoit asked, his voice growing faint over the intercom.
Monique whispered, “I think he’s moving our direction. We’d better get her out of here.”
Ce Ce helped Monique pick up the woman again, hauling her through another hallway, intending to heave her through the office and onto a private back porch. As they turned from one room to the next, they dropped the poor woman with another loud thud as they encountered Detective Benoit, leaning against the wall.
“Yeah, thanks, Cam,” he said into the phone. “Glad to know about the intercom system.”
He hung up and looked from Ce Ce to Monique, who had beads of sweat pouring from her from the exertion.
“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.”
Thirty-One
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 eleva
tor 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.”
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