Cam stared at the photo and dropped into his chair, the wind sucker-punched out of his lungs. First, her hair was found at the murder site. Then he’d found the casings hidden in her trailer. Not that the casings were proof positive of wrongdoing, because they could have been from some other shooting event, since she was the world’s worst at picking up her brass. Next, there was surveillance footage, which was damning all by itself, and then the shirt and eyewitness account Benoit had just told him about.
Now, her bracelet.
He didn’t want to think it was possible that she could have actually pulled that trigger. He hadn’t thought it was possible, really. Until now. But what if she was in trouble so deep that she’d thought murder was her only way out? Would she have done it for herself? No. But to save someone? Or if pushed to do so by some outside force? Cam remembered only too well how crazed she got when her brother had been kidnapped—he was pretty sure she’d have done anything to save Roy.
How could he think this? He didn’t know. Whether she was being framed, or whether she’d been coerced, he just didn’t know. He only knew that this was something he might not be able to save her from.
John had lost Bobbie Faye in Iowa, the tiny town to the east of Lake Charles, where Highway 165 intersected with I-10. The Harley had stopped to gas up, and when he’d followed the bike at a distance, he thought it was still Bobbie Faye and Emile’s lackey, but when they were a few miles up 165 near Kinder, he got a little closer and realized he’d been had. There was some other couple on the bike—Emile’s guy and Bobbie Faye must’ve switched rides.
This was not going as planned. The night before, it should have been easy, but it turned into a fucking nightmare. Neither he nor his men had been able to get a shot at her, and there were several Fed types positioned all around the perimeter of the building—he couldn’t get close enough to set off an explosion without getting himself caught.
He radioed the men he’d hired and they all turned back toward Lake Charles. He knew Bobbie Faye had been heading east when they first left the city, but he didn’t know her ultimate destination. He did, however, know someone who might. It was a simple matter of timing.
Seventeen
The advantage to having Mollie along, Aiden grinned, was that she could put on a wig and slip into just about any place and not a soul would pay her any mind. It was not that she wasn’t good-looking, because to Aiden, she was beautiful. She just had a chameleon quality to her—something Sean appreciated.
“You see her, then?” Sean asked when Mollie got back from the restroom in the gas station and climbed in the Subaru they’d switched to driving.
“She’s getting in a red GTO.” Mollie pointed to the muscle car and Aiden saw Sean smile. It was the second vehicle change that morning—and Mollie had spied both by simply hanging around when Bobbie Faye had hurried through a store or, in this case, a gas station. “She’s definitely carryin’ a different purse.” She looked a little impish. “I asked her for a light.”
“You’re supposed to stay in the background,” Sean griped.
Mollie pulled off her blond wig. “She tumbled into me, what the fuck would you have me do? I had to say something.”
“You’ve got a fuckin’ accent, you moron.” Sean looked like he was on the verge of clocking Mollie upside the head—something he’d routinely done with other women, but never with his cousin. He’d practically raised Mollie.
She smiled, and drawled in a great honey-filled Southern accent, “I hate to bother you, but do you have a light?” She was spot-on for American. Maybe not one from south Louisiana, but at a truck stop, there were always tourists and travelers. Aiden beamed, quite proud of her, though Sean remained grumpy.
“Okay, but see to it next time you fuckin’ do what I say, and nothin’ extra.”
“Oh, yeah, Sean, and then I wouldn’t get the chance to drop the new little tracker thing into her purse.”
“Fuck, woman, say so next time,” Sean spat, and Robbie already had the laptop humming.
“I can’t believe that guy at the gas station let you borrow this car,” Bobbie Faye said to Trevor, her hand running across the immaculate black leather seat of the fully restored classic 1966 GTO.
“I gave him enough money to buy it three times over, but yeah, if this thing gets scratched, the car gods are going to burn me at the stake.”
“Why do I feel like there’s a cosmic short-order cook who just shouted order up, one Federal agent, extra crispy?”
He chuckled and she went back to staring out the window. She had to ignore how he made her feel. Manipulation, she reminded herself. That’s what he used. Just because he made her think she could have more—have him—didn’t mean she ever could and the sooner she accepted that the better. Besides, even she could learn to use common sense when it came to a guy. Damn it to hell.
Bobbie Faye could see the silos of the grain-drying mill long before they turned off the interstate just west of Crowley. If she closed her eyes, she could see the images still, the same as when she was a kid. Seven huge cylindrical buildings, some ten, twelve stories tall, one or two about half that height, grouped at a 45-degree angle to the dual driveways (one for eighteen-wheelers, one for cars). When she opened her eyes again, she noticed the subtle differences twenty years had wrought: the once shiny metal buildings were faded, more worn-looking, as if they were slowly becoming an organic part of the landscape. There was an office building, low and squat, at the base of the silos, with rough limestone parking.
On this summer day, a fine silt dust—created when the rice hulls were dumped into the silos from the conveyors at the top of the buildings—settled over everything in sight. Even the trees and the house set much farther back and on the opposite side of the driveways looked muted and bland.
Trevor stopped in front of the house, and she stared at the one place she’d sworn she’d never set foot in for the rest of her life: a plain brown-brick ranch-style home, its low-slung roof shadowed by the oaks surrounding it. There was—well, there had been—a swing set in the backyard. A slide that was already rusted all those years ago, though Old Man Landry made plenty with his successful farm and mill. Or so Bobbie Faye had heard when she was a teenager.
As the memories flooded back, she mostly remembered knees. She’d been young, small, and kept occupied digging for odd treasures in the furniture cushions (a pocket watch, the tires off a toy truck of one of her cousins, a nail file, and more spare change than she’d typically see in a month). She remembered the smell of coffee strong enough to get up and walk, the thrum of overhead fans beating a rhythm against the summer heat, and the always-full candy dish on the kitchen counter that she could reach on her tiptoes.
Mostly, she remembered the arguing of her mom and the man she’d sort-of known was supposed to be her dad, though he’d never claimed her and seemed to resent the hell out of her presence when they did attend Sunday dinners. Her mom had said at the time that they had to try to maintain family—that family was everything, even though she and Bobbie Faye’s dad hadn’t worked out. Her mother never explained the yelling, only that she wasn’t supposed to worry about it, but it was kinda hard to ignore when she heard her own father say he’d never wanted a brat. She’d flat refused to go back with her mom after that lovely day.
When she climbed out of her memories, she realized Trevor stood on her side of the car, holding her door open, his hand out to her. She wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been standing there. Or where the hell his double shoulder holsters and SIGs had come from. Yeah, nothing said “meeting the family” quite like being decked out in semi-automatic weapons. He waited here, his hand still out, trying to tamp down an amused grin, but not entirely succeeding. She put her hand in his and as he helped her up, she’d bet he could feel her shaking. That earned her a full grin.
“We’re not visiting a guillotine,” he reminded her.
“At least that would be more fun.” They heard a rifle ratchet a round into a chamber, that d
istinct slide of metal against metal, and then there were two more. She and Trevor looked at the house, where rifle barrels poked out of the two front windows as well as the slightly opened front door. “Yeah, there’s no place like home.”
The front door cracked open another inch.
“Hi, Aunt V’rai. It’s Bobbie Faye. I need to talk to you.”
The door swung out to reveal a woman in her sixties. Bobbie Faye gaped, startled. She hadn’t seen V’rai since she was eight, and now it was like looking at an aged version of herself. Even Trevor seemed awed by the shocking mirror image. V’rai’s once brunette hair was shot through with gray, and she had laugh lines creasing her eyes—eyes which didn’t focus on anyone or anything. V’rai could make out light and dark, Bobbie Faye knew, but was mostly blind . . . something that made her holding that rifle just a tad scary. She was about an inch shorter than Bobbie Faye and slightly stoop-shouldered, and she tilted the bolt-action rifle toward the ground.
“I figured you’d be showing up, bebe,” V’rai said, her Cajun accent light—but then, she’d lived all the way over in Baton Rouge, “but that circus isn’t coming in with you.”
“What circus?” Bobbie Faye asked, and then heard a loud vehicle turn off the highway into the drive and when she turned around, she saw the Hummer. “Oh. Hell.”
“I’ll second that,” V’rai said as the Hummer stopped and all four cousins bailed out and jogged (Francesca in purple stiletto heels) toward the front door. “Hold on, Missy,” V’rai said, aiming her gun toward Francesca, who clutched her hideously pink purse to her chest. Feathers clung to her clearage. The purse was molting.
“Good grief, Frannie. Somewhere, there’s a really embarrassed naked flamingo,” Bobbie Faye said. “How’d you find me?”
“Oh! That was easy. Aunt V’rai told Aunt Aimee that she thought you were coming by today and Aunt Aimee told her hairdresser that she couldn’t come in today because she had to be here, and her hairdresser told her sister, who told her mom, who lives next door to Kit’s mom, who called Kit, who told me.”
Bobbie Faye looked at Trevor. “GPS has nothing on the Southern Gossip System.”
“How’d your Aunt V’rai know?” Trevor asked her and she had to smile. So his research hadn’t told him everything. The poor man just did not know what he was getting into.
“You’ll see.”
“Hi, Aunt V’rai,” Francesca called over Bobbie Faye’s shoulder. “I came to help, too.”
“Mais non,” V’rai said. “You and your cousins need to climb back into that contraption and go on back down that driveway. You’ve caused enough trouble for your mamma as it is.”
“But I’m trying to help!” Francesca whined.
Trevor moved between them, back in fine form as an asshole mercenary as he grabbed Bobbie Faye’s elbow and steered her toward the door.
“Go in, now,” he said, and to Francesca, he threatened, “You, go home. Your dad’s warned you: he’ll put a hit out on you if you interfere and I’ll be happy to give him a discounted rate if you get in my way.”
“I’m supposed to shoot someone,” Mitch said helpfully.
“I think it’s her,” and he pointed to Bobbie Faye.
“Not Bobbie Faye,” Donny said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Donny, your mamma’s going to be real upset with you.”
“She’s gonna be proud of me, Aunt V’rai. Just you watch. I’ve got agents already interested in taking me on.”
“Get your butt in here, chère,” V’rai said to Bobbie Faye, and as she stepped over the threshold, she motioned to Trevor. “And bring him.”
“But Aunt V’rai!” Francesca griped. “Mamma’s your baby sister! You can’t let him in there. He’s one of Daddy’s thugs!”
“Hmph,” V’rai said. “I can do whatever I want. You go home.”
* * *
From: Simone
To: JT
Damn it. We lost them. Any sign of the cousin, Francesca?
* * *
* * *
From: JT
To: Simone
Sending coordinates now.
* * *
Lori Ann stood at the pay phone in the rec room of the rehab hospital, tucking and untucking her short blond hair behind her ear. She’d gotten Roy’s voice mail three times in a row, and wanted to reach out and smack him. She knew he was sleeping at some bimbo’s house. When he finally answered with a muffled “ ’lo,” she didn’t know whether to be relieved or pissed off that he was barely awake. She’d had to wake up at freaking 7 A.M. because the state wanted to wring out every single second of torture that they could in a day of sobriety.
“Have you talked to Bobbie Faye?” she asked him, once she was certain he was alert enough to comprehend language.
“Why on earth would I do that this early?” he asked. “I don’t have a death wish.”
“I meant since yesterday.”
“Again—no death wish. She’s still ticked off at me for last month.”
“She’s still ticked off at you for trying to date the mayor’s wife when the woman came in for out-patient surgery on the day you were recuperating in the hospital, you moron. Bobbie Faye already had enough grief from the city and state as it was.”
“Since when do you care? You and Bobbie Faye haven’t talked since you got arrested.”
“Just because we’re not talking doesn’t mean I don’t care. Besides, she didn’t call here last night or this morning. She always calls.”
“I’m confused,” he said, and she could tell he was waking up a little more. “Y’all don’t talk, but she calls?”
“She calls and I say ‘hello’ and then ‘good-bye’ and then I hang up on her. It’s a thing. We have a thing. And we do it every day. Except for yesterday, when she didn’t call.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do about it?”
Lori Ann knew Roy would be about as enthusiastic about finding Bobbie Faye as a mouse would be to snuggle up to a python. “I want you to start asking around and see if she’s okay.”
“No way. I might find her. I kinda owe some people some money and I think they got it from her, and I don’t have it to pay her back, yet.”
“Roy,” Lori Ann sighed, staring at the graffiti on the wall above the pay phone, “let me put it like this: I have learned everything I know about annoying the living hell out of someone from our big sister, and I’m sober with nothing else to do but concentrate on you.”
He swore, hesitated a moment, and finally said, “I’ll look for her. But it’s your fault if she kills me.”
“I can live with that.”
The ancient parquet floor creaked as they made their way into a living room which had remained firmly ensconced in the early seventies. Bobbie Faye remembered the green Naugahyde sofa and the gold starburst clock above it, though about half of the gold had flaked off since she last saw it. What she didn’t remember was the kitschy artwork adorning every wall, nook, and surface. She had seen some of Marie’s artwork in the now-demolished workshop, of course, and there were a few pieces of Marie’s work hung in corporate offices and galleries around town. Some of the pieces V’rai had were retro-modern, and Bobbie Faye found herself liking them.
“You remember your Aunt Aimee,” V’rai asked, pointing to her older sister, who was sitting with her rifle aimed out the dining room window. Aimee waved to Bobbie Faye and then went back to staring out at the cousins in the front yard.
“We’ll talk later, sweetie,” Aimee chirped. “I’ve got brownies in the kitchen if you want ’em.”
Just like when Bobbie Faye was five. Aimee had never married and had always lived at the homestead-turned-grain mill. V’rai had moved back when her husband died years ago.
“You’ll have to go say hello to Lizzie in the bedroom, and Antoine’s out guarding the back deck.” V’rai felt her way through the living room/dining room. They passed the metal-and-Formica-topped dining room table, which held a two-foot tall mound of rifle shells
, handguns, bullets, magazines, and their own reloader.
Trevor looked from the table to Bobbie Faye. “It scares me to think you might be the calm one.”
“Bite me.”
He grinned and she ignored him. She was not going to be charmed back into his good graces.
V’rai turned her unseeing gaze in Trevor’s general direction. “Go ahead, son. I know you’re itching to.”
He narrowed his eyes, and glanced at Bobbie Faye for clarification. He’d been doing his best glowering, scary, menacing-presence routine.
“She means it’s okay for you to check out the place.”
“How does—” He stopped, then turned to V’rai. “I work for Emile.”
“He’s one of Emile’s hitmen,” Bobbie Faye added cheerfully, and he rolled his eyes.
“Hmph. My ass he is.” She nodded toward Trevor. “Go on.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He was a real polite menacing presence.
V’rai gave him a dismissive wave and Trevor eyed her a bit like one would a very strange alien who just might possibly lunch on his brains, though he took the opportunity to move around the living area, looking out every window.
“Your daddy wants to have a word with you,” V’rai said, and Bobbie Faye stiffened. “He’s on his way here now.”
“I don’t have a dad, V’rai.”
The old woman snorted. “Child, you don’t get a say in that one. And I believe this visitor is here for you.”
There was a knock at the door, which startled Bobbie Faye. Trevor had his gun out just as Ce Ce burst in, sweat gleaming off her dark skin. She waddled to Bobbie Faye, carting a huge satchel-purse that looked to be nearly as heavy as she was. Trevor glanced between V’rai and the door and then to Bobbie Faye, looking confused, but before she could explain how V’rai had known Ce Ce was there, Francesca had stomped toward the open door in an attempt to follow Ce Ce inside. She stopped when Aimee raised her rifle.
Girls Just Wanna Have Guns Page 16
