Charmed and Dangerous (34 page)

Oh, hell.

Zeke arrived with his colleagues only a second behind him, and he sported a slitty-eyed, sick predator gleam.

“Where does this dome exit?” the agent asked.

Cam looked to SWAT team leader Aaron.

“Beats the hell out of us. We couldn’t find it documented on any map we had. We pulled archival records on our way here when you gave us the location of the shack, just to see what was around here, and that shack wasn’t even on the charts. If they mapped it, it never got scanned into the computers.”

“We need to secure this room, then,” Zeke said. “Cormier will set up somewhere where he can pick us off.”

“No, that’s not his intent.” Cam squatted again near the prints. “Look . . .” He swept the Mag-Lite back and forth, letting the beam rove over the footprints until they stopped and there were several overlapping in one area, like the couple had stood there a moment. Cam ran the flashlight beam up to an antique wall phone, clearly cleaned of salt fluff.

Okay, not what he expected. And weird.

He turned to Aaron. “Put Jason on that line. Get him to run it through the computers and see who was called.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Zeke said. “Cormier’s cornered, he’s going to set up and take us down, one by one. I know this man.”

“Yeah, well, I know that woman. And she’s not stopping.”

“Then she’s going to get in his way, and we’ll be finding her body pretty soon.”

“Aw, you’re starting to sound like you actually care.”

“I feel sorry for any citizen who gets in the way of Cormier.”

“I think you’ve been feeling sorry for the wrong person,” Cam drawled, and the SWAT team grinned. “You can stay here and set up a perimeter, but I’m going after her.”

“You’ll be dead in an hour,” the agent said then, giving Cam a grim shrug.

I’m sorry ma’am, but we can’t fill your propane tank if we are within one hundred and fifty feet of any open flame, a barbeque pit, or Bobbie Faye. Especially around Bobbie Faye. I speak from experience.

—Mike M. Wayne, whose eyebrows and hair are growing back. Finally.

As they reached the other side of the cavern, Trevor pointed out the exit. After a moment, he arched his eyebrows at her. “Bobbie Faye? I need my hand back to be able to climb down.”

She’d been clutching it with such a death-grip, her own ached.

“Sorry.”

They scaled down the salt blocks and when they hit bottom and were on firm ground again, it was everything she could do to keep from dropping and kissing the floor.

“I can’t believe I actually made it across that without breaking my neck.”

“I can’t believe you made it across without breaking
my
neck, either,” he muttered as they ran through the exit.

Far, far away, in a tunnel on the other side of the cavern, dogs barked and men’s boots thudded, running toward them.
She and Trevor kept up an exhausting pace, until something caught Bobbie Faye’s eye, and she went back for it.

“What in the hell are you doing?” he hissed.

“Getting directions,” she snapped, and she ripped off a placard which had been embedded in the salt wall ages earlier. “Look.”

They scanned the faded
YOU ARE HERE
image and Bobbie Faye was just thankful there wasn’t a little icon of Satan and pitchforks. They reversed out of that tunnel, backtracked to one they’d passed up, and turned. A few minutes later, they stood in front of what looked like a much newer elevator.

Bobbie Faye punched the button, and when they heard the elevator car actually moving, she spun and flung her arms around Trevor’s neck, impulsively giving him a kiss.

Holy geez, did the man know how to take advantage of it, once the surprise wore off.

He pulled her tight, leaning into her, his hands hot on her skin, his fingertips caressing her exposed back where her shirt had been cut off. She forgot for a full minute where the hell she was and what she was supposed to be doing. Just feeling his stubble scrape her cheek, feeling the muscles corded in his back, feeling his lips on hers, demanding . . . a couple more minutes, she would have forgotten her name.

The elevator dinged behind her, and she broke away, giving him one of her rare, high-wattage smiles, seeing her smile reflected in his own surprised grin. As the elevator doors opened, she spun around, and Trevor looked past her . . .

At an older man dressed in a guard’s uniform, his gun still holstered. He seemed just as surprised to see them as they were to see him, and his eyes widened and his hands shook as he tried to pull his gun.

Then he squinted, and recognition drove his bushy brows skyward.

“Oh, no no no! You! You’re . . . you’re . . . you’re that Contraband Days Queen!” and he promptly turned to flee, apparently forgetting he was standing in an elevator car and
smacked squarely into the frame of the door, knocking himself out cold. Trevor caught him just before he slammed to the floor.

“Ooookaaaaay,” Bobbie Faye said as they peered down at the unconscious man. “That’s a new one.”

“You’re like some sort of stealth weapon.” Trevor dragged the guard backwards into the elevator. “I’m stunned the governor lets you roam free.”

“It’s not from the lack of trying on his part.”

She stepped in the elevator car and the doors closed.

“Let’s see that tiara,” Trevor said before they pressed the up button. He examined it, running his fingers over the markings and the inscription.

“What does this mean?”

“
Ton trésor est trouvé
? Oh, that just means your treasure is here. You know, found. Like this.” She put the tiara on and motioned, voila. She spun and when she turned back, there was a gleam in his eyes that raked her up and down, and she blushed.

“Um, my great-great-great-Paw Paw said this phrase all the time, apparently. You know, like we should treasure ourselves, what we have.”

“Not that your, er, Paw Paw wasn’t a great guy or anything,” he said, “but maybe he meant treasure, like money treasure. As in the real thing. It would explain why this tiara is so important to the kidnapper.”

“Couldn’t be. My great-grandma said they were really poor. He’d been a blacksmith. She used to joke that there was a sign-up sheet for use of the spoon at supper.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Welcome to my world.”

She took off the tiara and examined it. What the hell had the old great-great-great-lunatic meant by that saying, though? She squinted and turned it to see if she could read the part of the inscription which had worn off over the years, but the letters were too obliterated to make them out.

If there had been real treasure, her family would have already grabbed it and blown it on something completely
insane and inappropriate—something which would have very likely gotten them into more trouble or destroyed their lives in a spectacularly memorable way. She’d have heard about that by now, if it had happened to one of her great-greats. Nah, her family would have scrabbled after any sort of treasure with all of the finesse of a circus clown.

Then again, just the whiff of the idea of a treasure would make some people crazy. What if someone misunderstood that inscription? What if the guy holding Roy thought this crazy tiara was really worth money?

Trevor punched the up button and she drew her gun, aiming it at the door as the elevator lurched upwards.

Everything was going to have to have precise measurements for the spell to work, and Ce Ce needed to be able to concentrate. Amid the snoring from the Social Services worker and Monique’s singing of folk ballads, Ce Ce was a little concerned this might not be the ideal work situation.

She cleared a space on the countertop and sorted out all of the supplies, pulling unlabeled items from her shelves. She had the candles lit, the ingredients ready, her measuring cups and spoons. Boiling water from the kitchenette off her office was nearly ready.

She turned back to her earthenware bowl. It was missing. She knew she’d set it on the counter.

“You know,” Monique slurred, “for a place called a Cajun Outfitter and Feng Shui Emporium, Ce Ce, Voodoo ain’t really Feng Shui. Didja know that?”

Ce Ce glanced over to Monique. Who was wearing the earthenware bowl as a hat. Ce Ce took it back, explaining, “This isn’t Voodoo. It’s more positive, affirming. Getting everything to flow the right direction. It’s . . . Feng Doo.”

“Feng Doo? Doo doo doowhop,” Monique sang.

Ce Ce hoped like hell this spell worked.

When the elevator doors slid open onto a small, industrial gray room, two guards immediately dropped their weapons
and threw their hands up in the air in the face of two guns aimed at them.

Bobbie Faye quickly checked out the room: one large desk, a phone, a TV set (which had a video game hooked up to it), and discarded lunch remnants in the trash.

The older guard, Bobbie Faye guessed him to be about sixty, said, “There ain’t a damned thing here but salt, and you’re welcome to it.”

“But ain’t there a safe in the manager’s office for payroll?” the young guard asked.

The older guard rolled his eyes and his shoulders sagged.

“Kids,” he grumbled.

“I’m not a kid! I’m nineteen.”

The older guard turned to Bobbie Faye. “I promise to say he provoked you if you’d just shoot him.”

“Why don’t you sit down instead?” Trevor asked, indicating their chairs.

He pulled rope from his satchel and cut it into appropriate lengths. As he was tying the older guard, he had the younger one tie up the unconscious guard. The kid kept stealing glances at Bobbie Faye, and then the surprise of an epiphany slacked his jaw.

“Hey! You’re the Contraband Days Queen!”

“What the hell is wrong with all you men, recognizing me without makeup? Looking like something roadkill would turn its nose up over. Don’t you know the least you can do when you see a woman like this is pretend not to know her?”

“You look the same to me.”

“Let me guess. You don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Or a long life expectancy,” Trevor chimed in.

“Hey. Could you autograph my uniform or something?”

Trevor thankfully gagged the boy and Bobbie Faye focused on the markings of the tiara. If someone believed the rumors, if someone had misunderstood the inscription, then they must think the tiara itself was some sort of clue, right? That had to be it, but for it to be a clue, then it would have
had to have been made by someone who knew where a treasure was, and there was only one—

Oh, holy fucking shit.

That really couldn’t be it.

No. No freaking way.

She rattled around the thought, not quite touching it, and she stared off into space, her breathing slowed, her every movement stilled.

Could it?

She looked at the kid. “Am I going to bring down a bunch of guards if I use this phone?”

He shook his head, and the older guard sighed, clearly annoyed that the kid had no concept of what exactly a guard is for.

“You’re onto something?” Trevor asked, moving from tying up the guards to sabotaging the elevator.

She simply turned to the phone, punched nine, got a dial tone, and dialed Ce Ce’s private number.

We now guarantee all of our ferry rides are 100 percent Bobbie Faye free.

—notice on ferry dock in Plaquemine, LA

Ce Ce had a vial of the crushed leaves of a rare orchid held above her measuring spoon. She needed to put exactly one milligram into the bowl, and as she tapped the vial, her private line rang.

She jumped, snatching the vial away from the bowl and spun, yanking the handset from its cradle.

“Bobbie Faye?”

“How the hell did you know it was me?”

“I kept hoping, hon, that you’d be okay and call. Are you?”

“I’m okay, Ceece. Just running real short on time, so no time to explain. I need to know something important.”

“Shoot.”

“Was Jean Lafitte a blacksmith?”

“Sure, honey. Everyone knows that. And his brother, too.”

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything. Look, do you know if he had a special mark or something that he used as a signature?”

“Hang on. Lemme look.”

Ce Ce put the vial down safely away from Monique, who was now decorating the snoring Social Services woman with glitter (where in the world that came from, Ce Ce didn’t know). It took a couple of minutes to find the right book. She blew the dust off the jacket, the pages cracking and some loosening as she slowly opened it, gently turning to the section she remembered.

While she read the text and scanned the drawings, she heard Monique pick up the phone behind her.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyy, there be Bobbieee Faaaaaye,” Monique sang into the handset. “How’ya doin? Yanno, we’re gonna have to change your hair, give you some highlights and such if you end up in jail ’cuz I don’t think orange is gonna suit you all that great with your coloring.”

Ce Ce grabbed the phone away. “Sorry, honey.”

“How many screwdrivers has she had?”

“Five, I think. I still haven’t figured out where she stashes the flask.”

“Did you find the mark in the book?”

“Yeah, honey, it’s in here. Old Marie St. Claire had a real thing for Lafitte, apparently. Thought he was handsome. She wrote all about—”

“Ceece. Just the marking. What does it look like?”

“It’s a lot of cross-hatching. And if you turn it on its side, it should look like a cursive ‘L.’ Sort of.”

“Sonofoafreakingbitch.”

“Honey, you okay?”

“Not yet, Ceece. I’ve got something to do. Have you found Stacey yet?”

“Not yet, hon, but I’m working on it.”

There was silence for a long moment.

“Honey, you’ve got to tell me—”

“I have to go, Ceece. And thank you. For everything.”

The line went dead, and Ce Ce immediately looked at the caller ID: unknown name, unknown number.

Her hand shook as she hung up the phone, and when she turned back to the bowl of ingredients, Monique was playing
with the vial of orchid leaves, her screwdriver spilled onto the counter near the bowl. Ce Ce grabbed the vial back before Monique could pour the entire contents onto the Social Services woman.