Guns and Roses

by Brennan, Allison; Armstrong, Lori G. ; Tabke, Karin; Causey, Toni McGee; St. Claire, Roxanne; Brown, Josie; Littlefield, Sophie; Griffin, Laura; James, Lorelei; Day, Sylvia

  “She’s kidnapped, Cormier!” Cam shouted. “How the fuck is that working for you?”

  “Who’s kidnapped?” Ce Ce asked from the doorway, panic slashing through her voice and Trevor had to rein in his fury at Cam—they were wasting time. “Is my baby girl kidnapped?” Her lips trembled and tears threatened, and Trevor scrubbed his hands over his face, and when he looked back, she was glaring at him. “I could hear y’all all the way into the church. You’re supposed to take care of my baby girl. I told you that I didn’t care how good looking you are, you don’t take care of her, I’d be comin’ after you.” She whipped out something that looked decidedly dead from her purse and waved it at him.

  Everyone in the room blanched. Except for Alex, Trevor thought, who was still passed out on the floor and might be the lucky one tonight.

  “We have a plan,” Trevor said.

  Riles spoke first. “Please tell me you didn’t let Bobbie Faye help with this plan.”

  “She’s actually pretty damned sharp—” he broke off when he saw Cam turn and bang his head repeatedly on the wall.

  “Well, if that isn’t proof that love is blind, deaf and dumb, I don’t know what is,” Riles said, shaking his head as if Trevor were an accident victim who’d just undergone a lobotomy.

  “Look, she’s smart,” Trevor continued. “She thinks fast on her feet. She knew we might have trouble and she was willing to go along with a master plan for handling it. She’s going to know that I’m coming for her.”

  “She is also,” Nina reminded him, “pissed off, hormonal and pregnant.”

  “Pregnant!?” Ce Ce shouted from the doorway, nearly falling over Alex, still prone on the floor, to get into the room. “She’s pregnant? And you”—she hit Trevor on the arm with her purse—“let her get kidnapped?” She kept smacking Trevor, who had no room to back up.

  Nina stepped forward and restrained Ce Ce, saying, “Ceece. You might wanna stop. We need Trevor alive to get Bobbie Faye back.”

  “You know this is a trap,” Riles said to him, pulling Trevor back into ops mode.

  “Of course it’s a trap,” Trevor answered.

  “Oh, it’s a helluva lot worse than that,” Alex answered, trying to sit up.

  ~*~

  Bobbie Faye reached up and adjusted the gag in her mouth, and her action didn’t even register on the woman holding the gun on her. It took every ounce of willpower for Bobbie Faye not to roll her eyes, or give her would-be kidnappers pointers in exactly how you’re supposed to render someone fully incapacitated. She knew she should be grateful that the woman seemed far more interested in her own manicure than whether or not Bobbie Faye could get out of her bindings and, oh, say, escape, but really, could it have hurt them to have at least watched a movie of the week every once-in-a-while and get pointers? Where was the pride? Where was the professionalism? Where was the attention to detail? Good freaking grief, amateurs just pissed her off.

  “I did,” the young man’s voice said from around the alcove that ran beneath Pirate’s Alley, which lay between the Cathedral and the Cabildo. Bobbie Faye couldn’t see what they were doing or how deep the tunnel was or how many people they had, but she’d seen the young nerdy guy go back and forth, checking various electronic handhelds. Each time the older, suave guy joined him as they both looked at a small screen. Neither looked any too happy.

  “If you turned it on, how is it we can’t see them?” the silver-haired guy asked.

  “I don’t know, RG. Some sort of powerful jammer. I had the room on—look…” He reversed some images they could see, but Bobbie Faye could not, and they watched it intently. A little ping of worry hit the back of her head: they weren’t concerned if she saw them… or knew their names. This was not one of those little details that filled her with joy.

  “I had Josh and the girl on video… we see them leaving… here… and then the room stays empty until you see the outer door open, and then bang, static.”

  That would be the automatic jammer Trevor has built into his phone. Maybe he’ll find the doorway…

  “Is the door still locked?” RG asked, and the nerdy guy nodded.

  Well, gee, Universe, thank you.

  “Good,” RG said, and he picked up a radio. “Josh, report.”

  There was a brief silence, and then non-priest Josh’s voice crackled a bit over the two-way, “They’re holed up in the souvenir room. Lots of gun power in there with guards on the door. We can’t make a move on Cormier ’til they leave the room.”

  RG swore. Thought for a minute. “Okay, change of plans. We’ll alter the directions to lead him into the Quarter. He can’t risk gunplay with all of the people crowding around. You’ll be able to take him and come down the back entrance. If he brings any of his backup, you kill him.”

  “Done. How soon?”

  “An hour. I’m giving his devoted dragon of a mother enough time to get the additional bonds together.”

  “And after she meets you?”

  “Same plan,” RG said, thinking he was being clever.

  It’s not like you or that guy you’re supposed to marry are gonna live anyway.

  Well fuck that. “I need to go to the bathroom,” Bobbie Faye said. Of course, because she was tolerating the stupid gag, it came out uhhh neeee tuu guuh tuuu duuhhh baaa rrruuu.

  “What?” Catalina asked.

  “uhhhhh needddee tuuuuuhh guuuuuh tuuuuuhh duuhhh baaaaaa rrruuuuuu”

  “What?” Catalina shouted, as if Bobbie Faye was hard of hearing and not gagged. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  If life were fair, Catalina would be the first to die. Now would work for Bobbie Faye. She yanked off the gag and snarled, “I need to go to the bathroom!”

  “Oh. Okay. Why didn’t you just say so?”

  Catalina stood up, pointed with the gun toward the bathroom, which enabled Bobbie Faye to notice that the gun had the safety still on. Neither the woman, nor the two men, noticed she’d taken off the gag. She thought, what the hell, and held out her hands. “I need my hands.”

  “Oh, right. Fine.”

  “Go with her, Catalina,” RG said, without looking up from the equipment as his fiancée untied Bobbie Faye.

  “But I don’t need to go!”

  “You don’t have to pee, dear,” RG said, more patiently than Bobbie Faye would have managed, “but you do have to guard her.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  ~*~

  Trevor was quietly going out of his mind with worry, but he kept it tightly held, so reined in, he felt like his limbs would snap off his body. She was somewhere nearby, with kidnappers. She was scared. Pregnant. Hormonal. And he didn’t know where she was.

  He’d failed her. It was killing him and having Cam’s furious glare, accusing him of failing her wasn’t helping one fucking bit. He’d ordered another sweep of the church and he had surveillance moved in on his mother. Izzy was tracking all money going in and out of Cormi-Co since Alex revealed his part in the so-called “plan” his mother had devised to get rid of Bobbie Faye. The next set of instructions were too asininely simple to be believed: wait one hour, go outside, get inside the garden walls. Alone. Unarmed, or else she dies. Wait there.

  He was going to kill someone. Several, probably. They might end up living in another country without extradition for a while. He’d figure out a way for her to see her friends. Family. Or fly those out to her. But someone was going to die for touching her.

  “What is this icon they’re supposedly going after?” Nina asked Alex while Trevor watched Bobbie Faye’s beacon move farther north than should have been possible if she were inside the Cathedral. He pointed that out to Riles, who made more calls, searching the quadrant on the northeast side of the square.

  “The Black Madonna,” Alex answered, wiping the blood from his mouth and glaring at Cam.

  “Ohhhh, noooo,” Ce Ce gasped, and everyone looked her direction. “It’s old. Verrrry old, like fourth century. It’s highly revered. People say that
really spooky stuff happens around it—it’s got some serious mojo.”

  They politely chuckled, and she said, “Seriously. No voodoo, no woowoo, but things happen around it that cannot be explained. There was a thief once who tried to steal it and they found him dead at the foot of the pedestal. No one had been in or out besides him. Another thief tried to destroy it—hit it with a sword, twice. Then he was found dead, next to it, cut by his own sword. Still alone in the room. That icon don’t like being messed with, and it’s right near Bobbie Faye. It could hurt her, thinking she was with the thieves!”

  “Let’s just worry about the gunmen, Ceece, okay?” And Nina grimaced when Trevor glared at her.

  He had hoped to never be trapped in another day when “just worrying about the gunmen” was the calming thing to say. He felt the rings still in his pocket—he hadn’t handed them to Riles yet. He wanted that chance to put that ring on Bobbie Faye’s finger in front of everyone. He knew it was crazy to hope, to wish that they’d have this day, that she’d go through with a big wedding even if it turned out to be just the wedding and not a way to lure his mother out. But it hadn’t worked as planned—none of it. He couldn’t believe this day could come to this. He refused to believe it.

  “They’d have to be pretty smart, to set something like this up,” Riles said, and Trevor nodded, his gut tightening. His mother had outdone herself.

  ~*~

  Catalina held the gun on Bobbie Faye as they walked through the Cabildo’s basement. “It’s the only bathroom,” she explained, “unless we go back to the church, and RG’s not gonna let you do that, since you’re the prisoner.”

  “Won’t the alarms go off over here?”

  “I don’t think so. Evan’s got everything figured out. They closed the museum an hour ago and when the staff set what they thought was the alarm, they’re gonna think it’s all on, but it’s not.”

  “So… how soon are they getting the icon out?”

  “Oh, next few minutes, I think. So you gotta hurry. RG doesn’t like it when we’re running behind schedule.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll hurry.”

  “Good, ’cuz then we gotta get you in there, get your fingerprints all over the display case. You know, you’re the red herring,” Cat explained.

  Okay, that was a new one. “I’m a what?”

  “I dunno. Something red. I think it’s a fish, though I’m not sure why RG thinks you’re a fish. I thought he said you were a pirate. Maybe you’re some sort of pirate fish?”

  “I’ll bet you really loved the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.”

  “I did! How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  ~*~

  Twenty minutes and a lot of griping from Catalina later, Bobbie Faye stepped out of the tiny bathroom carefully; she’d pulled her gun-holster garter down to her ankle, wrapped it three times there to hold the gun tightly against her leg, but now the gun was at least accessible. As long as she walked very softly, it wouldn’t fall out and when she sat down, her hands (assuming they retied them in front of her) would be close enough to her ankles for a fast grab.

  Catalina stood there, shifting foot-to-foot and griped, “It took you forever in there!”

  “Sorry. Lots of skirts.”

  “Fine. I gotta pee now.”

  Bobbie Faye blinked. She was not stepping into that bathroom so the ditz could hold her hostage while she had to watch the woman pee. There wasn’t even room in there for the both of them. Catalina assessed that, looked at the complete lack of any furniture whatsoever in the tiny hallway, and promptly handed Bobbie Faye the gun.

  “Hold that. Wait here, okay?”

  “Sure,” Bobbie Faye said, and the woman rushed into the bathroom.

  She stared at the gun in her hand.

  A plan began to form.

  She recognized this as a bad thing, as the Universe had proven to her over and over again that if she tried to be the planny-type, it would poop on her head. The Universe, it had to be said, was quite an excellent pooper, and yet… here she was, holding a loaded gun, with Dingbat Barbie in the bathroom and guys out there… somewhere… in the Cabildo, stealing one of the most priceless art and religious objects of all time.

  Surely, the element of surprise would be enough to make the difference. She noted that the bathroom door opened outward—old, pre-fire-code thing that it was, which meant she could wedge it so that Dingbat Barbie couldn’t open it. She looked around, looked and looked and there was nothing small enough… nothing that she could move quickly enough… until she looked down at her shoes. Her expensive Jimmy Choo shoes that Nina had insisted that she borrow. The kind of shoes that are pretty much guaranteed to break ankles and cost the same as a small car and a private school education for one pair… but the heels were skinny enough to wedge underneath the door.

  Done. Then she tiptoed out of the little hallway to peer around the corner, hoping to see where the men were.

  There, up ahead… they were coming down a staircase, two at the bottom, one still on the treads, and they were holding the icon… which, somehow, in spite of the dark stairway, practically glowed.

  “Look!” one of them yelled, lifting a gun and aiming it where she was hiding. “It’s the wedding girl!”

  She followed their gaze to the floor at her feet; note to self: it’s hard to hide when the white dress sticks out three feet past the hidey spot.

  “C’mon out,” one threatened, “or we’ll shoot.”

  She thought about not stepping out, until the third one said, “Hey, Ditz, the bullets will go through the wall there at the corner. We can still shoot you.”

  So they were not related to Dingbat Barbie (who was confused and grumbling behind her as to why the door wouldn’t open). Bobbie Faye stepped out into the big storage room, her newly purloined gun aimed at them, and they… laughed.

  “Oh, look! The girlie, she has a gun!” one of them said, pretending to wipe tears of incredulity from his eyes. “Honey, put down the gun before you hurt yourself.”

  “How about,” she said, “you put down your guns before I shoot you.”

  “Darling,” one man said, “you’re Catholic. You’re under the Cathedral. And besides… you’re a girl.”

  She shot all three, all in the legs, rapid fast before they could say another word. They fell like dominoes, their guns clattering to the ground, the icon falling down the stairs, end over end, and bouncing ’til it was nearly at her feet.

  “I’m really not a very good Catholic,” she pointed out amid their screams and groans as she walked over to kick away their guns and to gather up the icon.

  “It would have been better for you if you were,” RG said behind her, and she turned, icon in hand, to see him holding another gun on her.

  She could see it in his eyes, the decision to kill her. She’d seen that look a time or ten, enough to have no doubts. “Hostage here,” she waved. “Remember? You need me.”

  “No. Really, I don’t.” Of all the times she could have been killed by actual professionals, people who knew what they were doing, it just fucking pissed her off that she was going to die by the hands of Scooby and the Gang. RG leveled the gun at her chest, and in that moment, she thought of all of the things she was never going to get to do, to say, to Trevor. It wasn’t fair, for it to be over, like this.

  It could not happen this way.

  The Universe laughed.

  And RG pulled the trigger.

  ~*~

  Trevor could have sworn he heard muffled gunshots from somewhere in the Quarter, but there was no way to tell what direction they originated from; he hadn’t been a praying man before tonight, but he was fast becoming one.

  “Any sign of the fake priest?” he asked. “Or the real ones?”

  Riles shook his head, fielding another call in from one of the guards doing the sweep. “No sighting. They must’ve stuck the safety pin tracker on something else—we’re not seeing her because it’s not on her.”

 
Trevor scrubbed his face again. If they got out of this alive, he was going to kill his mother. Then he noticed the beacon was back in its original position. Weird.

  He looked around the room. “Look for doors.”

  “Huh?” everyone said together.

  “Doors. A secret door. What if she’s below us?”

  “Hellooooo,” Riles said. “New Orleans? Below sea level? No basements.”

  Trevor started tapping on a wall, working his way left. After a minute, Cam started on the opposite wall, and Alex took the third. Nina went into the hallway to tap on the wall that extended past the room to T off against the inner Cathedral wall.

  Every tap Trevor made was rock solid. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing fucking hell, I know she’s in here…

  Hollow.

  He stopped. “Shhh!” Everyone paused as he tapped again, across, across, across… and then solid again. Definitely something hollow behind that panel, like a doorway, or crawlspace. Something. He was sure of it.

  He leapt back to the left side, running his fingers along the seam, trying to find a crack, an opening, a lever, something.

  Then he found the seam. “It’s here!” And Riles and Alex and Cam crammed in the small space beside him, all trying to wedge the panel open while Nina ran back into the room and she and Ce Ce watched, silent.

  They couldn’t budge it.

  “It’s locked from the inside,” Alex said.

  “No shit,” Cam snarled and Alex elbowed him in the gut.

  “Shut the hell up and focus,” Trevor snapped, panic mounting.

  A text pinged with instructions—and he glanced at the phone.

  “They want me in the courtyard behind the Cathedral. Fifteen minutes. Or else they cut her.” He looked at everyone.

  “You’re not going in that courtyard alone,” Nina said. “They’ll be looking for men with guns as backup. They won’t be looking for me.”

  “No,” Riles said before Trevor could answer. “If he goes, I go up on the roof as a shooter. But first—look at this.” He pointed to the way the paneling was nailed to the wall. “We could dismantle it,” Riles suggested. “Take the paneling off the wall from here…” He pointed to a spot about a foot over to the left. “See if we can figure out how to manipulate the lock holding it.”