Girls Just Wanna Have Guns

by Toni McGee Causey

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think she’s big on listening.”

  John had tried to tell ’em that. But now he was going to make her wish she had.

  * * *

  From: JT

  To: Simone

  The bridge? Her car blew the bridge? And there’s a sniper again? How many people hate this woman?

  * * *

  * * *

  From: Simone

  To: JT

  Apparently, a lot.

  * * *

  Relief flooded Bobbie Faye when she heard the motorcycle. She pushed up, her face just inches off the hot asphalt that burned her hands, small pebbles biting into her palms, and she looked down the length of the bridge where two men held guns on the cousins. Damn, she’d wanted to do that all morning. Trevor wove past the Hummer and then the hole and the debris, stopping between her and the direction the sniper bullet had come from—a bullet that was way too close for comfort. She was still shaking from it.

  “Get up,” he barked at her. He was in character, Bobbie Faye realized, for Francesca’s benefit. She hoped. Because that look on his face? Scarier than the fact that the sniper was apparently still determined to finish her off. And strangely, a lot better shot than he had been at the store. Unless there were two snipers? Noooo . . . not even . . . damn! Who was she kidding? She wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there was some sort of sniper contest going on.

  “Get on the bike,” he ordered. When she didn’t stand up immediately (Brain: move now. Legs: fuck you.), Trevor pulled out his SIG, pointed in her direction, as his expression hardened into murderous. “Get on the bike. Now.”

  “Where are you taking her?” Francesca demanded, standing, her hands on her hips, her toe tapping in her stiletto as if he wasn’t frightening enough to make Satan feel insecure in his job description.

  It surprised Bobbie Faye that Trevor paused to answer.

  “I’ve got a message for you from your dad,” he told her at gunpoint as Francesca’s eyes narrowed into a glare. “Stay out of it. She,” he angled his head back toward Bobbie Faye, “is working for him now.”

  Of course she was. Because having four psycho cousins, three crazy hijacking groups of morons, a sniper, and a sneaky FBI guy wasn’t quite enough insanity for one day.

  Cam waited at the foot of the bridge, watching as the fire department prepared to douse the remains of Bobbie Faye’s car. Most of the car had blown up and forward, landing on a section of intact pavement; there was a gaping hole in the bridge behind where the car currently burned. Parts of the car littered the bridge and dead fish floated in the slow-moving bayou, while cops and bystanders alike shouted in vain against the blaring sirens. He stood there in sunglasses, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, sweat trickling into his collar, ignoring the oven-level heat. The advantage of being tall allowed him to see above most of the other officers milling around, and he scanned the road beyond the smoking bridge, looking for a sign she was okay.

  Patrolmen canvassed witnesses, occasionally glancing his direction with a small shake of the head to indicate no specific sighting. The car was probably too charred for the crime scene team to know yet if there were remains inside. Bitter-tasting smoke billowed up and hung in the otherwise crystal-blue sky, casting an ugly haze over the surrounding run-down waterfront property. Not even the lush green of the cypress and birch could offset the smoggy cloud hovering over the fishing area.

  Cam tried to see past the smoke to gaze back south at the city. He wanted to feel its rhythm, the hum of Lake Charles’s industry situated smack in the middle of farmland on one side and swamp and fishing on the other. Sometimes, he could detach himself from the harsh reality of crime, feel the heat of the small city, listen to its heart, its good intentions that offset the bad stuff happening, and that sustained him.

  Then there were days like this that killed him. He didn’t know if she was dead in that car, or maybe at the bottom of the bayou, or if she’d escaped. (How? And had gone where?) This was why he couldn’t have married her, he reminded himself. This was why that engagement ring was at the bottom of the lake behind his house, Bobbie Faye never the wiser. Because, ultimately, he would have gotten the phone call. He knew so many cops’ wives and husbands dreaded that call, and yet, he had always known that if he’d married Bobbie Faye, even though he was the cop, he’d have been the one on the receiving end. Too many times he’d tried to get her to be safe. Too many times he’d tried to make her see if she just asked for help, she wouldn’t have to face this sort of danger. Too many times he’d told her she could keep this sort of chaos from happening, she could have an easier life, a real life. She never listened. Dammit, she never listened.

  Right now he had to do something—anything—because thinking was just no damned good.

  Ce Ce scanned over the disaster zone that had been her store, her long braids swinging as she turned and turned her ample body, trying to take it all in. The pieces of four display cases filled the aisles around the gun counter where Bobbie Faye had holed up, the merchandise shot all to hell. There was no blood, so Ce Ce breathed a sigh of relief.

  How could this have happened? Ce Ce felt wholly at fault, wholly unworthy. People knew her for her good voodoo. She ran an entire side business on her reputation for getting results. She’d cast several protection spells for Bobbie Faye recently and they should have been in effect. Those incantations should have prevented any craziness from getting in the store and bothering Bobbie Faye. Every angle should have been covered.

  Wait. Multiple spells. Could they have cancelled one another out? Oh, Lord. She looked around the old mazelike store. Half of the wooden floors sagged from age, and dust coated some items that maybe hadn’t been such good purchases at the time (she didn’t know how she was going to unload those Pet Rock Vacation Spas that were cluttering aisle twelve). Somewhere in that store was an inlet for the bad, and it had gotten her girl.

  The twins joined her—Alicia with streaked hair now so that Ce Ce could tell them apart. They all watched the cops range through the aisles as they interviewed witnesses, took photos and fingerprints, and bagged evidence.

  “Bobbie Faye was just minding her own business,” Alicia whispered in awe.

  “Trying to talk Maimee out of buying that gun,” Allison agreed. At nineteen, the twins had seen a lot of Bobbie Faye disasters, but nothing quite this up close and personal.

  Ce Ce looked over at Maimee, who was giving her statement to the cops and who was now extremely disgruntled at being detained. Several other customers gathered at the worn, chipped red Formica tables over in the little breakfast nook Ce Ce had installed near one of the counters where she sold biscuits and gravy and chicken tenders to the fishermen heading out for a day on the lake. Those who weren’t answering the cops’ questions had their attention riveted to the little TV mounted above the food counter, where footage from the local TV news showed a crater in the Highway 171 bridge. Ce Ce grabbed Alicia’s arm to steady herself as the camera zoomed to the remains of a Honda Civic with telltale Bondo and duct tape holding on the rear quarter panel—or what was left of it.

  “That’s Bobbie Faye’s car,” Alicia whispered, and Ce Ce swallowed hard.

  Ce Ce’s best friend, Monique, bustled out from the back office area and gaped. Monique, a mom of four hellions, was squat and heavy, red hair and freckles, and looked like the safest, sweetest, nicest person on the planet. Her sunny disposition was probably a result of having a flask handy twenty-four/seven—something Ce Ce didn’t entirely fault her for.

  “How did you get into a crime scene?” Ce Ce asked her. As the owner, they’d let Ce Ce in, but no one else was supposed to get past the perimeter until the cops were done with the evidence collection.

  “Oh, honey, I used to babysit Earl over there,” Monique waved at one of the cops. “Hey,” Monique said as she took in the extent of the damage, “I thought we cast a bunch of wahootsie thingies to keep Bobbie Faye safe in here.”

  Monique had insisted that she wan
ted to learn how to cast the spells, but her extreme lack of attention to detail (especially as she’d drink whatever was in the flask throughout the lesson) was going to get them killed if Ce Ce wasn’t careful.

  “Honey, whatever we did wasn’t strong enough.”

  Excitement brimmed in Monique’s big blue eyes. “Are we about to go all kick-butt in the voodoo-rama department?”

  Ce Ce scanned the room and then turned toward the storage area where she kept her supplies. “You bet your sweet freckled ass we are.”

  Cam stood near the crime scene tech as she checked over the car. It reeked of burnt rubber and the sour tang of seared metal. The tech, Maggie, was older than God, and she always wore a nice suit with a red flower in the lapel. A short woman who barely came up to Cam’s sternum and was as wide as she was tall, Maggie nonetheless moved with an elegant grace that made Cam think of ballet lessons and etiquette classes instead of the grisly reality that was Maggie’s day job. None of this whole scene was improved by the dead-fish smell wafting upward from the bayou below them.

  “I’m not seeing remains,” she said to Cam in a volume low enough, Cam suspected, that the news couldn’t catch it on their boom mikes, which were extended as far out from the police barrier as possible. It was always an insane feeding frenzy with a Bobbie Faye case—the news ratings usually spiked on days when she created a wide path of destruction, and per usual, every TV station, radio station, newspaper (even high school), and Internet news site was represented. Cam tried to stand between Maggie and the cameras as she worked, but the cameras had set up on both ends of the bridge just beyond police barricades, so there was no avoiding them. “I’ll get you something more conclusive once we go over the debris,” she told him, “but I think your girl must’ve gotten out before the bomb blew.” She leaned into the car through the missing doorway. “Looks like we got a good fire crew this time—they did the best they could not to destroy the evidence. I might get lucky.”

  Cam allowed himself a small sigh of relief even while he flinched a little at the your girl part. When in the hell was this freaking town going to let him forget they’d once been together?

  “What about the bomb?”

  “Looks real basic from the little bit I’m seeing, nothing fancy, but that’s nothing more than an educated guess at this point, since we’ll have to put divers in the bayou to try to find out if there’s any more evidence below us. I’ll have something more for you by tomorrow.”

  He didn’t have to tell Maggie that this was a priority case. Bobbie Faye–related events automatically got the mayor’s and the governor’s attention and their urgency to make it go away, fast. Maggie went back to supervising the collection of evidence and Cam surveyed the crowd. Somewhere, there was someone who’d seen what happened. The damned frustrating part about investigating anything that the Contraband Days Queen did: most of the town felt a sense of loyalty, as if she were really some sort of crowned royalty of their own, and they wouldn’t rat her out if they thought it would help her get away. Of course, as soon as it was clear she’d gotten away, he’d have fifty people claiming to have been running from the car with her when it blew up, just to get themselves on TV.

  He kept scanning the crowd, looking for an expression of . . . confidence. Of someone who already knew that Bobbie Faye hadn’t been in that car. But most of the people were scowling with curiosity or worry. Then he landed on a familiar face.

  His headache instantly got ten times worse.

  * * *

  From: Cam

  To: Bobbie Faye

  Where the hell are you? This is my SEVENTH message! Call me.

  * * *

  Bobbie Faye pressed her face into Trevor’s back as she rode behind him on the Harley, the wind whipping her hair against her, stinging her face until she had to close her eyes. Which meant she couldn’t see the curves ahead as Trevor sped through them, leaning into the road, going so fast that the terrain was a blur and she was in serious risk of becoming asphalt décor.

  She made a mental list of asses that needed to be kicked, and it was getting freakishly long. Who in the hell did these people think they were? How was it okay for them to just ram into her life and threaten her and her family? She knew Francesca’s dad was a scary guy, well-connected to organized crime if the rumors were anything to go by. (Nothing had ever been proven.) Someone like that probably would order a hit on his ex-wife, to do whatever it took to get something back that he wanted. Him, she understood. But these other people . . . trying to kill her? Who were these people trying to manipulate her for their own ends . . . were they insane? Did they think she’d recoil in fear and do what she was told, like she operated on common sense or something. . . .

  . . . Oh. Wait. Okay, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she should, but at this point, she was freaking pissed off. And sore. Blood ran down her left arm from scrapes and scratches she’d gotten when she was thrown from the explosion. She could only imagine what the cut on her forehead looked like from that second abduction; she was probably going to be turning purple from bruises at any point.

  The adrenaline must have been subsiding, because her arms felt loose and weak and she had the shakes. She pressed closer to Trevor, and he let go of one of the handlebars and covered her hand with his. Then he turned left off 171 onto Sam Houston Jones Parkway and then a right into a gorgeous neighborhood.

  Marie had moved into this exclusive enclave after she’d left Emile. Mature trees filled the lawns, including stunning live oaks with lush, green canopies and massive limbs that dipped down almost to the ground, colorful crepe myrtles with a riot of pale pink flowers, and stately pecan trees. Each mansion sported at least two stories, many of them, three. Trevor drove to the back of the neighborhood, one of the last streets fully developed. There were obviously developers with plenty of optimism in Lake Charles: a new huge section of the neighborhood was under construction on the street behind Marie’s place.

  Bobbie Faye would have picked the Victorian as having been her aunt’s, in spite of having not seen it before. It was quintessential Marie: pinkish siding with deep fuchsia flowers that overflowed from every inch of the yard and porch. As soon as they came within sight of the house, Trevor stiffened and quit holding her hand. They parked at a side entry, and Trevor moved so quickly she didn’t realize what he was doing until he’d done it: he’d zip-tied her hands.

  “What do you people do, buy these in bulk?” She felt the claustrophobic freak-out factor click on. “Get these off.”

  He pointed to where he’d notched the plastic tie; the notch was nearly all of the way across the middle of the tie, which meant one good twist of her wrist and she should be free.

  “Don’t even think about this being a regular habit,” she muttered.

  He grabbed her wrists to lead her inside. He bent down to whisper in her ear, a hint of a smile in his voice. “I wouldn’t bet on that.” They stepped inside the house and her really crappy day just went all to hell.

  Eight

  Reggie “Buzz Saw” O’Connor and her cameraman walked toward the police perimeter where Cam stood on the bridge, and his mood worsened with her every step. She was a beautiful woman, though Cam refused to acknowledge that maybe he felt that way because she was a Bobbie Faye type: long, lean, and a little curvy. Unfortunately, the beauty hadn’t made it past her skin. Reggie was extremely manipulative and the kind of reporter who would not only plant a banana peel in someone’s path, but who would be there for the fall and probably have paid a hooker to pile on while she took the photos. She called herself an “investigative” reporter, and if there was no news, then by God, she created it, even if it meant blowing a case detectives had worked more than a year to put together.

  “Cam,” she said, when she confronted him. “You look like shit, as usual. Still missing Bobbie Faye, I see.” She looked over to the burnt car. “Literally.”

  “How’s the ex doing? Still annoying you by breathing?”

  “Hey, at least I know how to get
his attention. You got anything for the record?” she asked, shoving a microphone in his face as her colleague aimed his camera at Cam.

  He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. Come to think of it, considering how bitter her divorce and well-publicized custody battle had become, she probably had lost her mind.

  “So,” Reggie said, talking into the mic, “what would you say if I had inside information that says that Bobbie Faye might be working for organized crime, setting up some big heist. I hear she’s in deep trouble.”

  “You know I never give a statement, Reg. Whatever game you’re playing, you’re wasting my time.”

  Reggie laughed. “I’m not playing, Cameron, but that’s okay, you’ll catch up soon enough.” She turned to walk away and the cameraman followed until she stopped and peered over her shoulder. “You know, it has got to be really debilitating for a girl like Bobbie Faye to be dead broke all of the time. She’s got a niece to raise and no real decent place to live . . . what if she were to suddenly come across a way to be wealthy, even if it’s a little fuzzy, morally? I know”—she stopped him before he could respond—“no comment. But personally, I think she’d be tempted. In fact, I don’t think you know her as well as you think you do. You really don’t know what a woman pushed to the edge is capable of doing. I, however, don’t have any illusions about your Bobbie Faye.”

  Cam just stared at her, poker-faced, until she turned around and left.

  Sonofabitch. What was that all about? He knew Bobbie Faye had shaved a rule a time or ten when she thought they were dumb or in the way and weren’t really necessary, but Reggie was hinting at something bigger, something that brought out the feral, competitive reporter in her.