Charmed and Dangerous

by Toni McGee Causey

  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.

  Shit. Maybe this thing with Trevor paralleled Alex? Maybe she was attracted to him, in spite of his past? Assuming she knew?

  Sonofabitch.

  Cam stopped thinking and focused on not pulling his gun when Alex sauntered out of the hole with a demeanor as casual as if he was heading down to the Circle K to pick up a pack of cigarettes. Clearly, he was not the kind of man who would ever give up information, even in the most arduous interrogation. Cam didn’t have time for arduous. He would have liked to have made time for an intensive one-on-one, no holds barred, private interview, but that wasn’t going to happen. He had made it this far without being one of those cops, though right about now, he was starting to seriously reconsider his code.

  It was purely from a professional frustration that he was reacting this way. He was certain of that.

  The bastard looked in Cam’s direction, and grinned.
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  She went to that sonofabitch for help, before she came to him?

  He’d known she was furious with him. He knew she hated him with a white hot passion. Hell, you could fry eggs on the level of heated hatred she held for him arresting her sister. He knew that. He’d felt the same way, for the things she’d said. He hadn’t fully understood that she couldn’t trust him. That she’d trust a pathological bastard before she’d trust him. Or, if not trust, at least accept his help.

  Cam didn’t crack an expression, or let Alex know that he had, in any way, registered on Cam as anything other than another suspect.

  “Sir,” Aaron said from the trapdoor. “There’s tunnels.”

  “Get the dogs.”

  The dogs went baying down into the entrance, straining at the leashes Kelvin kept them on. Since they didn’t know where the tunnels led, Kelvin would keep them reined in until he knew the tunnels were safe.

  Cam watched Alex as the dogs and then Kelvin entered the tunnel. Alex furrowed his brow and seemed to tense. The man actually looked a little concerned.

  Good.

  That meant Bobbie Faye was still in there, somewhere.

  “We’re going in,” Zeke said in Cam’s ear, and he mentally cursed his distraction. He’d forgotten all about the asshole to his left while he was watching the bastard on his right.

  “And if we find Cormier,” Zeke warned, “you and your men better fucking get out of the way.”

  Zeke spun away from him, though Cam wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction of answering.

  He glanced in Alex’s direction as he entered the trapdoor and the smug bastard smiled at him. Smiled as if he knew something about Bobbie Faye.

  No. He remembered that smile. That was Alex’s “I have something of her that you don’t have” smile.

  Good goddamned thing he had a code and there were witnesses, or Alex would be in the bottom of the bayou.

  Cam climbed into the trapdoor entrance after the dogs.

  Thirty-Two

  The National Hurricane Center came out with its list of hurricane names for the next few months. When it was announced in Louisiana that one of their name choices was “Bobbie Faye,” it was the first time in history an entire state flinched.

  —weather anchor Patricia Burroughs on Dallas Morning News

  Trevor tied the tiara to Bobbie Faye’s belt loop.

  “You’re going to need your hands to hold on.”

  The hounds bayed, the racket echoed through the tunnel and, in spite of the steel door which had closed down between them and the tunnel, filled the room. Trevor hooked his makeshift harness to the elevator cables, turned, and then sat in the harness, hooking the shoulder straps across his chest to hold him in.

  “I’m going to have to support your weight. We don’t have enough stuff for two harnesses, and since we can’t rappel in the traditional sense, you’re going to have to hang on tight. It’s a quick ride.”

  He held out his hand to her, ready for her to board the straight-to-hell, do-not-pass-go, do-not-use-any-common-sense express, and all she could do was stare at his long, slim fingers. She was telling her muscles to move. She commanded her legs to walk on over there and step into the little foothold he’d fashioned for her and take his hand. Her legs pretty much said “fuck off bitch, and die.”

  “Did I ever mention that in high school, I was voted ‘Most Likely to Cause Armageddon’?”

  He kept his hand outstretched, waiting for her.

  Did she trust him with her life?

  The sound of the dogs’ barking increased and she could hear their grunts and heavy panting, their nails clattering on the concrete floor of the tunnel, the echoing voices of the men who must not be far behind. She turned to Trevor, grasped his hand, and stepped into the foot-harness. She leaned into his body, he wrapped one arm around her, and they adjusted positions a little until he had a strong grip. He handed her the flashlight, its dim beam barely illuminating the murky dark of the shaft, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a second as he reached above her and released the makeshift brake.

  They fell.

  Plummeted.

  Bobbie Faye’s nerves screamed at her to clutch onto something solid, anything, to keep from falling, because falling meant dying. They were not exactly helpful nerves. Very possibly, they were a little hysterical. No, no, as a matter of fact, the Nerves had moved just to the other side of Hysterical and were beating the ever-loving shit out of it for being such a blatant underachiever.

  She and Trevor plunged down, air rushing past them, and her soul shivered as she inhaled the smell of oil and grease from the old elevator shaft. Dust stung her eyes and nostrils and she buried her face against Trevor’s chest.

  Still, they fell.

  Bobbie Faye half-wondered if she was already dead, if she’d died years ago and was just doomed to live this moment over and over for all of eternity, this falling falling falling forever falling when Trevor applied the makeshift brake to slow them down before they hit the bottom of the shaft, or the top of the elevator car, whichever came first.

  The metal brake scraped the elevator cable, slowing them both, and sparks rained down on Bobbie Faye.

  Catching her shirt on fire.

  She instinctively let go of Trevor to beat out the fire.

  “Noooo,” he shouted, and that’s when she remembered she was supposed to keep holding onto him, not the other way around.

  She slipped from his grip, floundering away from him, spinning dizzily, dropping away from him faster as his speed decreased due to his makeshift brake. He released his hold on the brake, accelerating again . . . leaning . . . stretching . . . his fingertips brushing against the tiara, the bottom of the shaft racing up toward them.

  The flashlight fell away from her, and for a brief moment, it illuminated his face, furious with concentration, every muscle taut as he reached for her. She stretched toward him, and she felt his hand, all corded sinews and roped muscles, yanking her toward him, applying the brake with his other hand, showering sparks across the top of the elevator car as they smashed into it. The thudding impact thundered up the elevator shaft as the blow killed the flashlight and the sparks in one swift second.

  Roy was worried. Frankly, he was about to piss himself and probably should have asked for another bathroom break, but the thought of going back to the bathroom with The Mountain as an escort made certain body parts retract clean up to his neck. He was particularly worried since Eddie had lost all interest in the copious decorating magazines lying around the room and was sharpening his machete-sized knife. Again.

  The Mountain kept looking through the discarded magazines, pointing out fancy doorknobs he’d like to collect.

  Worst of all was Vincent.

  When the phone rang, Roy jerked, reflex, and the ropes bit into his arms. Vincent answered and listened a moment, then seemed to somehow grow more pointy, all violent angles and sharp features.

  “You had better,” he seethed into the phone, “make sure our little Professor can’t tell that version of the story.” There was a heavy pause. “No, I don’t care what you have to do, or what it costs. Take care of it.”

  He set the phone down and Roy felt very sorry for whoever the Professor was. Vincent still seemed to be seething, which couldn’t be a good sign.

  “Twelve minutes left on the clock,” Eddie murmured to Vincent, who had returned his focus to the TV images of the burning shack and police activity covered by the news.

  “Hey, Vincent,” The Mountain squeaked, “ain’t that the FBI going in that hole in the ground now?”

  “Indeed, my boy, it is.” Vincent peered over to Roy. “Which is, sadly, very bad for you. The FBI have a very nasty habit of getting in the way, and your sister certainly won’t find the tiara for me if she’s locked up in some federal prison somewhere.”

  “Do we have to wait the full time?” Eddie asked, testing the sharpness of his blade by holding up a magazine page and slicing it diagonally as easily as Roy usuall
y convinced women to go out with him. “There’s still no sign of the GPS signal.”

  Roy would have focused on that latter tidbit except for the fact that Eddie had stopped directly in front of him and had taken a rope and cleanly sliced it lengthways with one swift stroke. Roy tried hard not to picture that blade going through his neck.

  “I’ll wait until the deadline,” Vincent said, and he turned to Roy, a particularly disturbing gleam glittering his dark eyes. Vincent’s focus shifted back to the TV, and his momentary bout of smiling, as frightening as it had been, was immediately replaced with a scarier grimace as the news replayed the footage of the police going into the trapdoor. The video zoomed in, capturing close-ups of the SWAT, then FBI, and Roy could feel Vincent’s displeasure ripple through the air.

  The SWAT team pried the first steel door open and ran across a large room with blank monitors to a second door. A deep, thudding sound of collision reverberated up from the bowels of the earth, and Cam was almost certain he’d heard Bobbie Faye’s shriek just a split second before.

  SWAT redoubled their efforts to get through that last door.

  “How much longer?” he asked the leader, Aaron.

  “Not sure, sir. This one’s jammed, and it’s not a thin sheet of steel, that’s for sure. Our pry bars aren’t strong enough, and the battering ram won’t work. We may have to blow it.” Aaron looked around the room. “But I don’t know how strong this structure is, or how old. If we blow it wrong, we could collapse the whole room.” Then he tapped his foot. “And if we’re right, and there’s a dome beneath us, we could all drop straight through to the dome. Kill us and anybody underneath us.”

  Every. Single. Thing. Hurt.

  Which was probably the best result, she realized. At least she could feel all of the parts of her which were in agonizing pain and that had to mean she wasn’t dead, right? And hopefully, not paralyzed?