Girls Just Wanna Have Guns

by Toni McGee Causey

  “What?” Cam asked.

  “You know where the diamonds are,” Trevor said, seeing her determined expression.

  “Who the hell is it?” Cam demanded.

  “You can’t go after them,” she said. “You’re too upset. You’ll lose perspective, lose the case, lose your job or get shot trying.” She held up her hand as he started to argue. “No fucking way. I am not, under any circumstances, going to tell you. I’m not about to add you to the victim list. Go see Benoit. He needs you right now.”

  “You damned well better not go after them yourself,” Cam said, with more than just cop bossiness. There was fear. “Benoit’s been shot. They think you shot a cop. You’ll be dead before you can explain anything.”

  “But . . . you and Trevor both know I couldn’t have shot him! I’ve been here.”

  “They’re not going to believe me,” Cam said, pissed off and slamming his hands through his hair. “They’ll assume I’m covering for you.”

  “They don’t know about the casings. You have never covered for me in the past. Why would they assume that now?”

  He cut her a look, a get real expression. Oh. Hmmm. Maybe he had done more in the past to cover for her than she realized.

  “They won’t believe me, either,” Trevor said and she caught his apologetic grimace. “They’ll assume I’m compromised, since we’re dating.”

  Cam seemed to flinch, but Bobbie Faye wasn’t looking at him directly, so she wasn’t entirely sure. “See?” Cam said, “You’ll be killed. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I could tell you that I’m going to hand everything over to Trevor and let the Feds handle it.”

  “You’ve never lied before, so don’t start now. Tell me who you think it is.” He choked up, devastated.

  “Go see Benoit, Cam.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ve got to figure some things out. You’ve got enough to deal with.”

  Cam glared at Trevor. “If she gets hurt, I’m coming after you.”

  Dear God, just this once, just this one time, please please please let her be the planny type.

  Cam walked onto the wraparound porch of the cabin with Bobbie Faye, and he knew he should just leave, climb on that motorcycle and go see his partner. In the late evening light, he noticed something blue at her hairline and without thinking, he held her chin in one hand and lightly rubbed his thumb over the smudge. Whatever it was, it was gone, but he lingered there a moment. She stared at him with those big green eyes, and Cam knew what she was thinking: this change in him was about Benoit, and how upset he was, because Benoit could very easily die. His grief swallowed him, and yet, he’d realized something: at the precise minute she’d rushed to comfort him, at the second that had been her instinct, his headache had simply evaporated. He’d breathed again, without the pain throbbing deep into his shoulders, and he didn’t quite know what that meant.

  He hadn’t realized he still held her chin in his hand; the moment grew awkward and she backed away.

  “You stay safe,” he said, wishing he had used a different tone, less antagonistic. Why in the hell couldn’t he just talk to her—they used to do that so well.

  “I promise. Completely safe.”

  He looked her over as she attempted something that might have been called “completely innocent” on someone else. Now he knew why she never lied.

  “Do me a favor, baby. Don’t take up poker.”

  Lori Ann was about to beat the crap out of Roy; they had stopped for gas and he was flirting with the manager’s wife, which was making the manager extremely unhappy (and the poor man was going to give himself a heart attack sucking in his gut for as long as Roy had been standing at the counter). She marveled at just how very little survival instincts her brother possessed.

  “Oh, the bridge is out, sweetie,” the wife said. “Your sister’s been at it again. I hear it might be another hour before they get it fixed. The police are checking everybody who tries to take a boat over. Unless you can do that flying-squirrel thing, you might have a long wait.”

  Lori Ann stood there with her big fountain drink. (Roy had watched her like a hawk around the liquor aisle. “I am not saving Bobbie Faye’s ass so she can kill me over you drinking,” he whined. Wimp.) She had a pile of candy bars she set on the counter.

  “And who’s this cute little thing?” the husband asked, beaming.

  “Oh, that? That’s my little sister.”

  “Bobbie Faye has a baby sister!” the man said. “Wow, that is so nice.” He leaned toward her. “Can you get me her autograph?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Roy said, flinching, and the man immediately looked wary, caged as he was by his wife and the counter, so that he was within striking distance of Lori Ann. Roy grabbed her shoulders, steering her out as she yanked the bag of candy bars from the wife, who was giving her husband that if you only had a brain glare. “She’s a little touchy about that,” Roy explained as they left.

  Just what she needed, on top of having to be Bobbie Faye’s sister: being invisible.

  When Bobbie Faye reentered the cabin, Trevor stood facing the back windows, which overlooked the lake. She took a couple of steps inside and it hit her: People were dead. Her friend was fighting for his life in surgery. Trevor walked toward where she stood still, doing that whole pillar-of-salt imitation, shock putting her body into lockdown. She’d thought she’d known bad before, but this was the capital city of Bad, the entire empire of Bad. And now she knew the killer had been right in front of her the entire time.

  She started shivering. Volcanic, hi, let’s have an earthquake shaking. Trevor folded his arms around her, holding her, and he swayed a little, almost rocking her. Everything that had transpired over the last two days slammed into her thoughts, a head-on collision she couldn’t veer away from.

  Couldn’t compartmentalize .

  Couldn’t escape.

  Her throat burned and her eyes stung and the ache in her chest weighed a million pounds. It seared like hot metal, too big to fight, too harsh to ignore.

  She leaned into Trevor as he stroked her back and kissed her temple. She didn’t miss the irony that this man, this former spec ops soldier, a man who could kill when needed, this agent, was refuge. She hid her face against his shoulder because if he didn’t see her cry, then technically, she didn’t have to admit to it. She wasn’t entirely sure how long they’d stood there, but after a while, she finally felt calm.

  “Calm” of course being a euphemism for fucking furious.

  “Cam was right,” Trevor said, and she could see he wasn’t happy admitting it. “If he could get across the river and find us, we have to assume others can, too. We should have kept moving.”

  “Don’t.” She put a hand on his chest. She’d lost too much today. She wasn’t going to let regret steal something so important. “We’re not superheroes.”

  “Do I need to remind you about the shower already?”

  “Damn, you’re going to be hard to live with.” Oh, hell. She blushed. “Shut up,” she said, fingertips against his lips to stop him from building on the pun. “Besides, who’s to say we couldn’t have been tracked to any hotel or any other place we’d have holed up in?”

  He seemed reluctant to accept that, but finally nodded. “Ready to kick some ass?”

  “Oh, fuck, yeah.”

  “And would this be Francesca’s ass we’re kicking?”

  “I just put it together. How did you—”

  “The double image Cam described. Whoever killed Sal would have to look enough like you to expect to fool the surveillance cameras, and she obviously planned on being caught on video, given where she lured Sal to stand.”

  “Why drag me out there, why not just plant my DNA? Oh!” she said, before he answered. “The eyewitnesses. She knew my trailer park manager and Mrs. Oubillard would recognize a fake. She needed at least one of them to confirm I wasn’t home or was near the crime scene.”

  “But the double image on the footage Benoit had g
ives away the game.”

  “So she went after Benoit to get it. But she’s reacting there. Sal was planned. Why?”

  They hunted for their shoes so they could leave.

  “It’s classic misdirection. Too many people after the diamonds means—”

  “She needs everyone to believe someone else has them while she gets away. So I’m the fall guy.” The more the shock subsided, the angrier she felt. Furious wasn’t even beginning to describe the white-hot searing rage boiling through her. “I’ll bet she found a second set of the diamonds and needed to know which ones were real. That’s the only thing that makes sense—why go to Sal in the first place? She knew as soon as she asked him questions about the diamonds, he’d tell her mom. So she plans to kill him as soon as she’s asked him, so he can’t talk to Marie. And if she were to suddenly disappear, everyone—”

  “Including MacGreggor—”

  “Would immediately try to track her down. But if I’m the suspect, she’s bought herself some time. That explains the babbling.”

  “The what?”

  Oh, shit. She hadn’t told him. She explained the drugged orange juice and the dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream. “And Sal was babbling when he died about there being fakes. I was so out of it, I thought he meant my boobs. I mean her boobs.” Trevor looked amused. “Hey, hers are smaller and she was wearing falsies. They were crooked! It was a logical conclusion for a drugged woman, give me a break. But he was telling her there were more fake diamonds.”

  “So now we know why she didn’t just leave town after she framed you.”

  “You realize she’s been playing the complete ditz for so many years, everyone has bought it.”

  “I know. And we have absolutely no proof you didn’t commit Sal’s murder, but we can probably put you here for Benoit’s shooting and the new murders.”

  “How? With Crazy Carmen as my stellar corroboration? You and Cam are suspect and no one else has seen me here.”

  “I’ll get you out of the country.”

  She blinked. He was serious.

  “I’m not going to let you sit in jail.”

  She grinned at him, and he began to look wary.

  “You have that ‘I have a plan’ look,” he said.

  “I do have a plan.”

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me.”

  Back in Ce Ce’s office, as the sound of construction repairs echoed around them, Ce Ce and Monique frowned at the plastic container of blue gel. Monique poked at it, but the gel simply lay there. Completely still.

  “I think it’s broken.”

  Ce Ce sank her face in her hands. “She must not have heard the part about not washing it off for twenty-four hours. It’s got to stay on that long for the spell to last.”

  “Ce Ce!” one of the twins shouted from the store front. “Quick, come see!”

  Monique just barely beat her out of the office doorway, using her short, squatty linebacker build to elbow Ce Ce out of the way. They ran into the main store and found the twins and a couple of construction workers gaping up at the TV above the little dinette area. The slick young woman anchor had a very practiced somber expression.

  “As we reported, we do not yet have the details, but it is confirmed that our own Reggie O’Connor and cameraman DJ Millerville have been shot and killed while on location. We believe there are two other shooting victims, both in critical condition. The state police have put out an APB for our own Contraband Days Queen, citing her as a ‘suspect’ and not just a ‘person of interest’ in this case. If you see Miss Sumrall, you are encouraged not to try to bring her in yourself, but to call the state police, as it is assumed she may be armed and dangerous. We have the state police hotline number listed at the bottom of our screen.”

  The anchor moved on to the next story and Ce Ce reached for the remote and turned off the TV.

  “Man, the Bad Ju Ju has really got it in for that girl,” Monique said as they all stared at one another, construction workers included.

  “Kinda like global warming,” one of the construction workers said. When they all looked at him like he was crazy, he explained, “They warn you about it and you think you’re doing stuff to help, and no matter what you do, the universe is gonna fry your ass anyway.”

  “Hmph,” Ce Ce muttered, “we’ll just see about that.”

  Bobbie Faye dug through her purse as she made the phone calls she needed to make, and she pulled out the cards and miscellaneous junk she’d been packing around since Marie’s. As she shook it all onto Roy’s little kitchen table, a small round disk fell out and rolled halfway across the enamel finish like a penny, only it was black and a little thicker.

  “Sonofabitch,” Trevor muttered, and grabbed it up and turned it over. It looked like a very expensive high-tech gizmo, and from Trevor’s expression, she was going to go with the wild-ass guess of “tracking device.” “We dumped everything out of your purse earlier.” She nodded. “When in the hell?”

  Bobbie Faye thought over the morning. “Fuck. The blonde in the gas station—asked me for a light. I think she might have been the same woman as the redhead that was with MacGreggor later at the silo.”

  They heard footsteps on the pier out front and Trevor had his SIG ready, flanked the door, and peered out the window beside it. “Goddamnit.”

  “MacGreggor?”

  “Worse.” He opened the door as Roy was reaching for it, and a very sour Lori Ann fumed behind him.

  “How did you get across the river?” Trevor asked, scanning out the window for other movement.

  “I’ve got lots of escape routes and contingency plans,” Roy explained. “Hidden cars, couple of boats, places I know I can land that no one knows about.”

  “You need a safer dating life,” Bobbie Faye told her brother.

  “Yeah, like you’re the big expert there.”

  Trevor grew unhappier by the second. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

  “What the hell are y’all doing here?” Bobbie Faye asked her siblings, and then to Lori Ann, “Please tell me you did not just walk out of there without permission.”

  Lori Ann’s little pert bow-shaped lips formed a line so thin, they almost disappeared.

  “I don’t think she’s speaking to you, yet,” Roy said. “But she made me come so we could—oof.” He doubled over, as Lori Ann elbowed him. “We came to help.”

  “You turn around and take her back. She’s got to finish this stint or they won’t let her out at the end of the month.”

  “You’re my sister,” Lori Ann said evenly. “Not my boss, not my jailer, not my conscience.” She stomped up to Bobbie Faye, so short that she barely came to Bobbie Faye’s chin. “So just shut up and listen.”

  “We don’t have long,” Trevor interrupted, bouncing the GPS unit in his palm.

  “He’s the agent guy?” Lori Ann asked Roy, and Roy nodded. “You,” she said to Trevor, pointing at him, “stay out of this.”

  “I,” he said, gently, to Bobbie Faye’s surprise, “care too damned much for your sister—I am trying to keep her from getting killed.”

  “Well, okay, then, good plan. I’ll speed this up.” She turned to Bobbie Faye. “You don’t get to keep bossing me around, telling me that I should have come to you for help with the drinking and with Stacey and then you just go run around, blowing up half the state!” When Bobbie Faye started to interrupt, Lori Ann held up her palm. “And then you were blue! And being shot at! And then the silo! And the fire! I’m not completely incompetent, you know. I could help.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt!”

  “So it’s okay for you to get hurt? It’s okay for the Great Almighty Bobbie Faye to never have to ask anyone for anything?”

  “I . . .” Fuck. She wanted to be angry. Hell, she was an expert in Angry, and probably could get certified in Immature, too, but she saw the tiny tremble of Lori Ann’s lips, and realized, holy shit, she mattered to Lori Ann. Really mattered. And her sister was afraid of losing her. She pulled L
ori Ann into a hug, and her little sister hugged her back . . . hard.

  “I hate to break this up,” Trevor said, and walked to the back door, about to toss the GPS unit into the lake; Bobbie Faye stopped him, grinning. She had an idea, and he gave her his sternest FBI worried look.

  “Trust me,” she said, and she held out her palm.

  “Trusting you doesn’t mean I think you’re sane,” he groused, but he dropped the unit into her hand. “We have to get moving. You have everything set?”

  She turned to hand the GPS unit to Lori Ann, about to fill her siblings in on where to go and what to do, when she suddenly wondered aloud, “Wait—how’d you know I was here?”

  Roy turned a deep red and pointed to the mounted fish that had fallen to the floor earlier and said, “Um, I like to be able to check and see if anyone’s been here while I’m gone, because, um, you know—some guys get a little bent—and I had one of those little cameras installed in Henry over there . . . I can pick up the images on my cell phone.”

  “Oh. My. God,” she said, when she realized what he had seen of her and Trevor earlier.

  “Yeah. I gotta go dig my eyes out with a spoon now.”

  “I’ll help.”

  Cam rushed into the antiseptic corridors of the hospital, sprinting past chiding nurses, hurdling over carts, and dodging around wheelchaired patients until he rounded the corner where a large number of fellow cops milled about, drinking bad coffee and looking glum, but stoic.

  “Any word?”

  “No, not really,” one of the officers, an older, tired cop named Amon said. “They’re working on stabilizing him and there’s a neurosurgeon that came out a few minutes ago just to tell us that they’re going to be operating soon. He’s got one bullet very near his spine and one in his shoulder.”

  Cam didn’t think it was possible to grow colder, but his hands went icy. “Spine?”

  “That Bobbie Faye bitch shot him in the back,” the man said. Then realizing who he was speaking to, “Sir. Sorry.”