Charmed and Dangerous (22 page)

Cam made a mental note to sweep his house and office for bugs if he ever pissed Jason off. He could hear computer keys clicking and Jason humming the way he did when he was hyped up on technogeekism, and then Zeke’s voice broke into the silence.

“If I know Cormier, he’s after it.”

“You think he knows?”

“It’s Cormier. Of course he knows.”

“You think she’ll give it to him?”

“I think she won’t know what the hell just happened. I know Cormier. He’ll charm it straight out of her hands and make her think it was all her idea.”

“If she gets it.”

“Oh, he’ll make sure she gets it.”

“So . . . what happens if he gets it first?”

“Game over.”

Jason cut back into the line. “The channel switches there and I lost ’em, but just as they’re switching, the first guy asked something. It’s too scratchy to understand, and I washed it through the computer a few times. The best I could come up with was something about a ‘piece.’ I don’t know what they’re referring to. Maybe the same thing Bobbie Faye’s supposed to give to this Cormier guy?”

“Thanks. Do you think you can track down their frequency and listen in again?”

“I can try. I’ll call you if I get anything else.”

Jason hung up, and Cam tried to imagine Bobbie Faye having something of such great value she’d not only risk going to jail, or dying, trying to get it, but clearly other people
were willing to risk as much as well. Aside from one decent car she’d had (used, high mileage), the most expensive thing she’d ever owned was a used laptop computer refurbished by the guys down at the Computer Barn, and even then, it was so far out of date, it barely ran Windows. She had no fancy jewelry (he was not going to think about the ring at the bottom of the lake . . . not going to think about it, not not not not, dammit, and how it would have looked on her), and she had no knickknacks that came from anything except garage sales and flea markets. Anything else of value she’d once owned, she’d hocked, he heard, to pay for Lori Ann’s rehab.

He’d offered to pay for that, in spite of Bobbie Faye loathing him, but she’d made it crystal clear she wanted absolutely nothing from him. Ever.

Cam climbed back into the cockpit, directing the pilot to fly south of the rig fire, away from any logical roads out of the area. Anyone wanting to escape would have gone east or west to get to the closest roads out. But clearly, Bobbie Faye didn’t just want to escape. She was after something.

Even with the air-conditioning cranked on high, the crowded, humid conditions in the Outfitter store where many people stood or sat, chanting, made the customers look a little too much like dozens of Easter eggs drowned in a pot, coming to a boil. Sweat clustered across their brows as Ce Ce fussed around each one, handing some a crystal, tucking talismans in others’ pockets, sprinkling odd spices and ingredients around them all.

“What’s that?” Maven asked, his attention dragged from the knife case to the odd blue strings she tucked in his pocket. “Yarn?”

“Sure, honey. Yarn.”

Maven squinted at her, suspicious, but she patted him on the arm and continued down the matrix line. No way in hell she was telling him exactly what kind of yarn that was.

The energy seemed to be flowing through the matrix exceptionally well. Quite a few of the customers were looking scads more robust than they had prior to joining in the
matrix. They seemed to be feeling, as Miss Rabalais had put so delicately,
tingly,
if Ce Ce could judge by the smiles, the body language, the flirting. She noticed the scores of crystals she had hung around the room seemed to waft toward the door, the same direction she’d focused the positive energy. Sure, some people would say that was probably just the air conditioner jostling the crystals, but Ce Ce knew better.

This was good.

No, this was
very
good.

The phone rang for the billionth time and Allison scrunched her forehead in concern and handed it to Ce Ce.

“Ms. Ce Ce?” It was a youngish woman’s voice, tremulous, soft. “This is Mrs. Gareaux, Stacey’s kindergarten teacher. We met last open house?”

“I remember, honey. Is Stacey okay?”

“I think so. Well, I mean, yes, she’s fine, but I thought I probably should have called you before I let them take her, but it was all official and everything, so I really didn’t have a choice.”

“Let who take her?”

“The FBI. There was a special agent who came here a few minutes ago. He said he had to take Stacey and put her in protective custody until her aunt Bobbie Faye was found. I know you’re the emergency contact to pick Stacey up if something happens to Bobbie Faye—I mean, now, while her mamma’s drying out, bless her heart. We just, well, we never talked about what to do if something like this should happen.”

“That’s okay, honey, I don’t expect you’d have that sort of conversation handy.”

“True, Ms. Ce Ce, but this
is
Miss Bobbie Faye we’re talking about and I just feel terrible that I didn’t think to ask this sort of question before.”

“Not to worry, honey, I’m sure they were just trying to protect her.”

“Yes ma’am. I suppose you’re right. It just seemed . . . I don’t know. Odd. I just thought you ought to know.”

“Thank you, honey. Did you get the agent’s name?”

There was a brief pause, a slight intake of air. “Oh, dear, should I have? He had a badge and everything.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Ce Ce said, and then rang off. Surely, it would be fine, right? She just had to find that child, make sure they were keeping her safe. Get a name. Not a big deal, really. She ignored the gnawing in her stomach. It really couldn’t be a big deal. She wasn’t sure if she had a spell for that.

I’m sorry, Governor, but “her mere existence” isn’t grounds enough to register Bobbie Faye as a controlled and dangerous substance to be locked up.

—Louisiana State Supreme Court Justice Tara Sedalek, to a former Louisiana governor after his run-in with Bobbie Faye put him in a full-body cast for two months

Bobbie Faye groaned at the incessant busy signal on her cell phone; Stacey’s school still wasn’t answering. She waited in Marcel’s boat while he and Trevor sank the life raft, hiding it from the police.

“What the hell do you mean, you’re not coming with us?” Bobbie Faye demanded of Marcel as he and Trevor stepped from the lake shore back into Marcel’s boat.

Marcel waved his own cell phone at her while she hit redial.

“I done tracked ’em to a shack, Bobbie Faye. I gotta get outta here. This place is gonna be crawlin’ with Feds, and I ain’t exactly on their Christmas list. ’Sides, if those kids move from there, we’ll know it and I’ll call you. I’ll take you far as another boat,
chère
. That’s it.”

Bobbie Faye smacked the cell phone closed after yet another busy signal, staring at it as she asked, “What could they be doing over there?”

“They’re probably getting a lot of calls from parents, which is tying up the lines.” Trevor suggested.

That didn’t exactly make her feel better.

Marcel guided his boat through small bayous where the trees overhung the stagnant water to the point of obscuring the view from above and the five (at last count) helicopters circling the oil rig fire. She had to give him credit; he was going to great pains to help. He and Trevor seemed to have hit it off well. A little
too
well? This was, after all, a guy who knew exactly where a gunrunner’s hideout was. And knew where the guns were stored. And how to use them. And seemed way too familiar with getting into and out of trouble. And . . . wow, her head hurt just thinking about what he could be up to. His procurement business? Was it guns? Or stealing valuable things? Was she leading him straight to the tiara?

Geez. She had enough to worry about.

The bayou they were on curved sharply to the left, but Marcel seemed to be ignoring the curve and was heading straight for a clump of trees and brush.

“Marcel, what the hell are you doing? Intentionally grounding us?”

“Aw,
chère
, you worry too much. Just ’cuz you dumped me for Alex, don’t mean I hold a grudge.”

Trevor glanced at her, the mockery clear in his eyes.

“Marcel.
We
did not date.”

“We did too. It was a very good date.” He turned to Trevor. “We went to a tractor-pull.”

“Ha,” she snapped. “Y’all tricked me into going, and I ended up covered in beer, cotton candy, and mud!”

“Yeah,” Marcel said, smiling, fond of the memory. “It took four men to hold you down so I could hose all the mud off you so you could get in the truck.”

“I bet that went over well,” Trevor noted.

Bobbie Faye ignored them both, worrying instead over the looming trees, until they suddenly divided in half, swinging open on an electric gate. Marcel held a remote control and grinned, smug.

“Holy crap, no wonder the Feds never find you guys.”

“Well, they find the gates sometimes. We’ve got ’em rigged with alarms and we’ve got surveillance cameras all over the lake, so we know if one’s being staked out or tampered with. Most of ’em, though, are still hidden.”

Trevor looked quite appreciative of this creativity. Marcel clicked the remote after they’d passed through, and the gate closed behind them, cutting them off from the bayou and lake. They were floating on an even tinier bayou, one too small for the speedboat and its big Mercury engine to navigate safely.

“This is where y’all switch to the bateau,” Marcel announced, and he pointed out a bateau which was tied to a tree a couple of feet away. “There’s a trolling motor in good condition, some gas in there, and a couple of paddles. That should get you all the way to the shack.”

“Your map is pretty convoluted,” Trevor said, reviewing it as Bobbie Faye climbed into the bateau.

“Yeah, well, I could draw you one straight to the shack, but you’d have to cross out in the open in a couple of places or go near a few of the spots where I know the Feds have set up surveillance. This way, you can stay hidden. It’ll take you longer, but you’re probably a lot safer.”

Marcel handed their satchel of stolen guns and supplies over to them. “You’re gonna need this more than me,” he said. “But Bobbie Faye? Please give Alex his stuff back. I dunno what you’ve got, but he sure gets real moody when he thinks about it.”

“I would imagine a moody gunrunner is a scary thing,” Trevor observed, and Marcel nodded.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Marcel,” Bobbie Faye said, wrapping her fingers around his forearm, surprising him. “If I get all the way to this shack and those kids aren’t there? I’m going to hunt you down.”

Trevor eyed Marcel. “I’d suggest you move to Texas, but I don’t think it’ll do you any good.”

Marcel laughed. “It’s not too late to save yourself.”

“She owes me a truck.”

“Oh good freaking grief, it’s just—”

Trevor held up his hand, and she shook her head, annoyed.

“Right, right, I forgot. It’s never
just
a
truck
.”

“I’m sticking to her ’til I get another one, or die trying.”

“If you stick around Bobbie Faye too long, the emphasis is gonna be on ‘die trying.’ ”

She smacked the gunrunner on the arm and he laughed, then gave her a good-bye peck on the cheek, which seemed to entertain the hell out of Trevor when she realized she’d just been slimed by tobacco juice.

“Dammit, Marcel!”

He laughed again, and said, “
Chère
, try not to blow up the swamp.” And then he was off, using a push pole to maneuver his big boat down the fork in the bayou, taking the easy, wider path to the left.

Trevor sat at the front of the bateau, one hand guiding the trolling motor as he eased them along the narrower passage.

The sunlight barely washed through the tangle of trees laced above them to reflect off the brackish water, which was nearly hidden beneath a layer of duckweed; when she looked farther downstream, the water seemed to disappear under a layer of green to the point where it looked like mossy-covered land instead of the small bayou that it was. From what little she could see of the sun’s position, they were heading south, deeper into a vast network of bayous and streams and lands still nearly as virgin as they had been when the country was being explored. Bobbie Faye closed her eyes a moment and listened: birds, bullfrogs, crickets, the rare splash of a mullet jumping in the lake nearby. The boat beneath her glided smoothly through the water, rocking slightly, and a tiny breeze brushed against her face. When she opened her eyes, it was as if she’d moved backwards in time, hundreds of years, to some primordial place where people were insignificant.

How on earth was she supposed to get the tiara to the
kidnappers and prevent them from killing Roy or her once they no longer needed either of them? Why on earth did they want her tiara? It was crazy. She wasn’t anyone special. She was just a girl whose nicest home had been a trailer; who didn’t know, sometimes, how she was going to put the next meal on the table. How in the hell was she supposed to win this?

She shuddered, then hoped Trevor hadn’t seen. When she glanced his direction, he seemed to be studying the map. She hit redial on the cell phone. She had to start somewhere, and step one was to get Stacey out of that school and someplace safe.

The Mountain escorted Roy to the bathroom, an area defined more by the stains and mold coating the walls than any actual partitions. There was an awful lot of rusty-colored stuff on the floor and splattered on the walls and Roy decided to pretend that it was some new painting technique gone bad.

“This here’s the john,” The Mountain said, shoving Roy forward. Roy clamped his jaws against the bile rising in his throat; the stench of something rotting assaulted him and his eyes streamed.

“I figured Vincent woulda had a nice bathroom on account of how his office looks.”

“He does. It’s on the other side of the building by his office. He don’t let the vics use that one. That’s what this one is for.”

Roy turned to the urinal, trying to ignore the mammoth psychopath behind him.