Charmed and Dangerous

by Toni McGee Causey

  “Does it look like I’m having a good day here?”

  The guard, mid-forties, took in her rough appearance, with her torn, filthy shirt, stained jeans, scratches, bloodstains. “Can I just lie down on the floor instead of answering?”

  “You are a smart man,” she said, and read his name tag, “Bertrand. A very smart man.”

  He flattened himself on the floor and she removed his gun.

  “I’m just gonna throw this outside. Wouldn’t want you to get into trouble for it completely disappearing.”

  She turned to go.

  “Wait!” he pleaded, and when she looked back at him, “Could you autograph my lunch pail? My wife will never forgive me if I didn’t ask.”

  “On one condition. You tell them I knocked you out and you’re not sure where I went when I went out the door. I promise you, it’s for a good reason.”

  “Aw, hell, you’re the Contraband Days Queen. I’d be real happy to help.”

  She didn’t have time to marvel at that; she grabbed a Sharpie off his desk and scribbled her name across the closed lunch box set on the corner of his desk, then ran toward the front door when she heard the helicopter blades whirring closer.

  With bright yellow call letters emblazoned on the side, WFKD, Channel 2, the media helicopter set down on the outer edge of the large parking lot. She jogged over to it, her gun in the back waistband of her jeans. She beamed the high-wattage Contraband Days Queen smile she’d learned from her mom. The cameraman grinned back.

  “Are you for real?”

  “As real as it gets.”

  “We actually get an exclusive?”

  “Yep.” She pulled out her gun. “While you’re giving me a little ride.”

  “Oh, hell no. You never said anything about a gun, lady.”

  “Well, duh. Do you usually give people a ride if they call you up and say, ‘Hi, have gun, need to take you hostage for a minute?’ I promise you, it’s going to be a huge story and no one else will have it. As soon as you drop me off, you can tell the police where I am.”

  She stepped toward him and the cameraman looked at the pilot.

  “I heard she’s a real good shot,” the cameraman said.

  The pilot, grizzled, old enough that he probably flew over Vietnam, looked at her and grinned.

  “Do people tell you you’re really cute when you’re carrying a gun?”

  “Not if they don’t want to be shot.”

  “Wimps. C’mon. This better be good.”

  She climbed on board and gave them instructions, and the helicopter lifted off, spun, and headed east.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Zeke yelled, and Cam grinned. God it felt good to annoy that officious jackass.

  “Stopping you from killing innocent bystanders.”

  “Innocent, my ass. That woman had a gun. She aimed the gun at us. She clearly is working with Cormier, and I warned you that if she was, that made her a target. I’m going to make sure you’re busted down so many grades, your kindergarten teacher is going to be greeting you next week.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Where the hell did Cormier go?”

  Cam shrugged.

  One of Zeke’s FBI colleagues ran up, short of breath.

  “Sir. I tracked him to one of the conveyors. I think he went up it and into the loading dock.”

  “You run back and bring the helo around here. We’ll scour the area. He can’t have gotten far. There’s nothing but swamp and marshland out there.”

  One of the FBI agents peeled off back toward the way they came in, while Zeke and his other agent ran back to the conveyor area and started climbing it, much the way Cam suspected Cormier had done earlier.

  Cam sent two SWAT team members to tail the agents. “And if you see Cormier, remember, we’re to bring him in alive. Unhurt.”

  He took the rest of the SWAT team up the elevator, where he found the guard lying on the floor, admiring the autograph on his lunch pail.

  Cam looked at the autograph.

  “You’re fucking kidding me. She stopped to autograph this?”

  “Uh, yeah. I think maybe she felt bad that she had to knock me out.”

  “Where’d she hit you?”

  The man thought a second too long and Cam knew he was about to lie. Cam put his own gun to the man’s head.

  “You know what? I’m really tired. Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know! Out! Out the front door!”

  “And then what?”

  “Well. There, there might have been a helicopter?”

  “Whose?”

  The man cut his eyes up and to the right, and Cam suspected he was trying to come up with a lie. He pointed his gun at the man’s autographed lunch box, directly on the autograph. The man flinched, aghast.

  “What helicopter?”

  “WFKD. Channel 2.”

  Cam rocked back on his heels.

  What in the hell was she doing?

  She hated heights. Loathed flying. Thought reporters were about ten rungs below maggots after they pestered her so severely during her last debacle. Really detested having her photo taken, and she’d been through a lake, a swamp, and God knows what all.

  He and the rest of the SWAT team ran to the front door of the office and out into the parking lot. No WFKD helicopter. He did, however, have a signal on his cell again, and he dialed the other SWAT, only to shut the phone as they ran around the corner of the building to meet him.

  “No sign of him,” Aaron, said, “but they did determine a truck was missing. The FBI are already calling it in, trying to get an APB out on it.”

  Cam heard the FBI helicopter overhead and saw it land on the side of the building where Zeke and his men were waiting.

  “I’ve already called ours,” Aaron said. “There he is, now.”

  Once on board, the pilot asked, “Where to, boss?”

  Cam had two people to chase, and one bird. His highest priority was Cormier. He had something, the Captain said, that they had to have. Probably some inside lead on evidence the state needed for a big case. He was a mercenary, according to his sheet. He’d probably been promised a big payoff for whatever information he had, which may have had something to do with him not shooting Cam when he had the chance. Kill a cop, the money goes away. In one direction, Bobbie Faye. The other, Cormier.

  He made the only choice he could make.

  Thirty-Nine

  Well . . . I told the boss he had to deal with another Bobbie Faye incident. He started crying and making out a resumé.

  —Shannon Kelsey to Kymm Zuckert, FEMA coworkers

  It took the cameraman almost ten minutes to set up the shot, which wasn’t much of a shot, given that the inside of the helicopter was cramped and filled with enough state-of-the-art electronics to send the geekiest of geeks into orgasm. He apologized a little too profusely for his shaking hands and taking so long to set up. He looked at her through the camera, then popped up, a concerned frown scrunching up his chinless face.

  “Did you know you were bleeding?”

  She looked around and sure enough, there was blood on her hip, and when she pulled at the jeans a little, she saw where a bullet had ripped across the side there, taking material and a hefty gash of her skin with it, which was the cue for her brain to get over the shock and allow Pain to come out to play. She tried not to flinch.

  “Great. Look, can we just get this on the record?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” the cameraman said. “You sure you don’t need something? Band-Aid? Ointment?”

  “Roll the camera.”

  Best to get on with it. She wasn’t going to have another chance to tell her side, and if it turned out the way she thought it was going to turn out, she wanted at least some of the insanity explained. She hated the idea that Stacey would grow up referring to her as “my Crazy Aunt Bobbie Faye,” never knowing the truth. Okay, never knowing the other truth, the reason behind the crazy.

  The camera’s red light
popped on, and Bobbie Faye started talking, beginning with that morning and her first phone call to Roy.

  By the time Ce Ce got most of the ingredients poured into the bowl, there was a small crowd gathered in the storage room. Someone had propped the Social Services woman in the corner against a case of broken duck calls Ce Ce kept meaning to return. Ce Ce studiously ignored the fact that Monique had further decorated the woman with pipe cleaners she’d had in her purse. (Although the pipe-cleaner horns wound in the woman’s hair were a nice touch.)

  “That potion reeks,” someone grumbled from the back of the crowd.

  “Are you sure it’s supposed to smell like that?” one of the twins asked.

  “Of course it is.”

  “Is this Voodoo?”

  “It’s Stinky Doo!” Monique sang out, and Ce Ce paused a moment to glare at her.

  It did emit a bad stench, and she tried to remember if it had smelled quite that awful last time. It reeked something like a sewer crossed with rotting chicken marinated in orange juice: sharp, pungent, rank, eye-watering.

  “Hey, we can use these,” someone exclaimed, and there was a lot of rushing and bustling about around a set of shelves just beyond her range of vision as she carefully tapped out the ground antler. When she looked up, the entire group had clothespins on their noses and tears streaming down their faces.

  “Y’all don’t have to stay.”

  “No, we want to,” the other twin said, though quite nasally. “We’ve got to root for Bobbie Faye.”

  “Fine. No more complaining.”

  She had four more ingredients to add, and two of them were going to gross everyone out and, unfortunately, they were the foulest-smelling of all. She decided not to mention that fact or what the origin of the ingredients actually was. She didn’t have time for fainters.

  Bobbie Faye stood in front of the metal recycling yard at 1601 Scenic Highway in Plaquemine, the daylight fading into dusk, a few streetlights blinking on. She yearned to go back into that helicopter cockpit for just a few more minutes. As much as she hated heights and flying and being on camera, all of that combined was suddenly preferable to standing at the entrance to the recycling yard, hoping to be able to face down the psychopath who held her brother. When she’d finished her story and how she planned to face the kidnappers, the cameraman and pilot had become Grim and Grimmer. Not exactly the encouraging rah-rah attitude she’d hoped for, the old music for Rocky on the steps, the feeling that ultimately, this would turn out okay. Now, she was standing near where twelve-foot-tall hurricane fences with razor wire wound at the top flanked the entrance to the yard to keep out thieves who’d steal the metal at night and try to sell it back during the day. Just beyond the gate opening was an empty guard shack, and beyond that, a dusty scale where big trucks weighed their cargo beside an even dustier, decrepit scale house, a tiny box of a building where the computers read the weight of the trucks running in and out all day long.

  The entire yard had a veneer of brown, a thick layer of dust kicked up from the unpaved roadways crisscrossing the mammoth yard located on the Mississippi River. She walked through the entrance, her gun in the back of her jeans for quick access but, she hoped, not visible to the kidnappers as she approached. She mulled the idea of picking up something round and tiara-sized from one of the thirty-foot-high metal scrap heaps silhouetted against the fading sun and large pedestal cranes dotting the yard.

  The lie couldn’t buy her enough time. She might as well face up to that fact.

  There was no one on the yard.

  No guards, no workers. Quiet velveted the place, eerie and dark.

  No Trevor. The bastard. Of course he hadn’t shown up. He’d been all about the con, right from the beginning.

  She wasn’t sure where to go, so she continued moving forward until she heard the smooth baritone she’d come to know from their brief phone conversations.

  “Stop there, m’dear,” the man said. “Where’s the tiara?”

  “Somewhere safe. Where’s Roy?” She tried to fix a location for the voice, but it echoed in the canyons between the mountains of scrap metal.

  “First, the tiara.”

  “Good luck with getting that if I don’t hurry up and see Roy.”

  The largest man Bobbie Faye had ever seen in person stepped from behind a pile of metal, yanking Roy out to stand next to him. Roy’s eyes were nearly swollen shut; he was bruised, gashed, lips bloodied, and Bobbie Faye lurched toward him until the mountain of a man held a gun on her.

  “Not so fast,” the baritone voice said, and the owner of the voice stepped out from behind another large hill of rusted metal. He looked, if possible, genetically mean, all sharp angles and smug smile and with the self-satisfied air of a man who always gets what he wants. “Where’s the tiara?”

  Bobbie Faye reached behind her to grab the Glock, and instead, someone grabbed her arm and twisted it away, snagging the gun neatly in the process.

  “Anh anh ahn,” the voice holding her warned. “That would be a bad decision.” She craned around to see him, and flinched at the twisted features. He looked like he’d taken a bad beating with the Ugly Stick. Several times.

  “The tiara, Bobbie Faye. Now,” the baritone said, and he signaled the large man to hold the gun to Roy’s head.

  “I can duplicate it for you.”

  “Why would I want that? Where’s the real tiara?”

  “Stolen. Again.”

  “Dear, dear Bobbie Faye. That is a shame.”

  The baritone nodded at the large man, who tugged Roy back a little, as if to avoid splattering the baritone with any brain matter, and Bobbie Faye tried to lunge forward again.

  “I know where the gold is. You’ll never get it if you hurt Roy.”

  “Oh, dear girl, I’ll get it. If killing your brother doesn’t make you talk, and torturing you doesn’t encourage you, perhaps I will then move on to your sister or your niece or your best friend. I’m sure, eventually, I’ll wear you down.”

  “Let Roy live, and you’ll get the gold a lot faster. I’ll go with you. I’ll give you whatever you want, without a fight.”

  “No!” Roy shouted, and the mountain of a man immediately jerked him hard, slamming Roy to his knees on ground filled with sharp metal debris.

  “You may be the most fascinating part of this treasure hunt after all, Bobbie Faye,” the baritone said, smiling a snake-charming smile. “I have never met anyone so determined in my life. Both you and Roy would have been great students of mine, at any other time, my dear. It really is a shame to have to kill you.”

  “Would this do instead, Vincent?” Trevor’s voice asked, and Bobbie Faye’s legs wobbled a little as he ambled out from behind one of the stacks of sheared metal material, twirling the tiara. “It is, after all, worth what? A couple hundred million? At a minimum?”

  He was bloody, with at least two grazings from bullets that she could see, and he looked bruised and sore and walked with a slight limp.

  God, he was gorgeous.

  He actually showed up. He’d shown up for a disaster, fully prepared to help. She’d never actually been in the position of having to apologize for doubting a guy. The absolute elation made her warm and squiggly inside, and she wanted to hug him.

  “Ah,” Vincent said, facing Trevor, “so I see you figured out what the item was after all. Took you long enough.”

  Check that. Substitute “kill” for “hug.” The freaking bastard had been working with this “Vincent?” All along?

  “You fucking bastard. I’ll kill you.”

  “Promises, promises,” he answered, and he winked at her.

  “Yes, he is a bastard, isn’t he, dear girl? And an expensive one, at that.” Vincent appraised Trevor. “Though worth it, since my hunch was right; if I hadn’t hired him, the Professor’s double cross would have worked.”

  “Temporarily,” Trevor said, shrugging. “I’m sure you’d have had someone follow the Professor and retrieve it once you knew who had double-cro
ssed you.”

  “Yes, well, the poor thing’s been taken care of.”

  Suddenly, the universe clicked into focus and Bobbie Faye remembered what Trevor had said he did for a living.

  “Procurement. I should have guessed.”

  “One of the best, m’ dear. Now, Trevor, I’ll have that tiara.”

  “Not so fast.” Trevor backed up a step, and was holding a gun Bobbie Faye would have sworn wasn’t there a minute ago. “My price has changed.”

  Vincent looked exceedingly displeased, and for all that Bobbie Faye currently hated Trevor’s ever-loving guts, she appreciated that he was annoying the shit out of Vincent.

  “See, dear boy, this is exactly why I didn’t tell you what the item was in the first place: I suspected as much from a mercenary. Don’t be tedious, Trevor, by turning greedy. It’s such a cliché. We agreed on a price and you’re going to be fabulously wealthy. I’d rather pay you in a gentlemanly fashion and keep using your services than severing our relationship, and you, right here in this yard.”

  “Oh, I don’t want more money. My fee is fine. I want the girl and her brother.”

  “Who the hell are you calling girl?” she steamed, trying to yank out of the pug-faced freak’s grip so she could kick Trevor, but the bastard holding her slammed her to her knees. Shards of metal bit into her skin and she knew they were both bleeding. Then pug-face jerked her back to her feet.

  “You prefer demon?” Trevor asked.

  Vincent chuckled.

  “Grown fond of her, have you?”

  “No. Quite the contrary. She forced me to plow my truck into a lake, and I’d like to,” he looked at Bobbie Faye, “extract payment. I have spent the entire day with her insanity and her deranged bossiness, and I’d like to be able to repay that.”

  “I? me? bossy?” she snapped, and kicked at the ground, a strong toe-dig which sent rocks and small shards of metal flying at Trevor.

  He stepped back to avoid the rocks to his face. . . .

  Just as a bullet whizzed over his shoulder, nicking him instead of killing him.

  Bobbie Faye scanned back to the spot the bullet may have angled from, and she spied a sniper hunched on the top of one of the metal hills. In the dimming light of the day, recognized the insignia: FBI.