Charmed and Dangerous (39 page)

Then she heard Vincent climbing again, threatening, “Bobbie Faye, dear girl, I want that tiara. I will get it, my dear, if I have to invite everyone in your family, and every friend you’ve ever had, to a private little get-together in your honor.”

Zis . . . Louisiana governor . . . the one they say is crazy . . . he says he offers us a new weapon, a woman. Claims she can destroy any country we wanted. He’ll trade her for money to repair his state. Zis is good, no?

—(possibly) the Russian prime minister to his secretary [translated from Russian]

Cam had chosen to track the WFKD helicopter with Bobbie Faye inside, knowing she hadn’t thought about the fact that the craft had a transponder signal and would be easy to find. He arrived just as Jason called in the WFKD pilot’s report of what had transpired and where they’d dropped Bobbie Faye. Cam saw the FBI helo on his way in, already on the ground, which meant Trevor had to be here as well.

Gunfire erupted and he could hear shouting, but was too far away to distinguish who was speaking. It sounded like Zeke.

The return fire was sporadic. He and the SWAT team had to spread out and circle around, being careful to not only not get caught in a cross fire, but not be in a position where they had to fire without seeing who they were shooting.

It conjured his worst nightmare: going on a “Bobbie Faye” disaster call, firing at someone to protect her, only to find her body, his bullets the cause of death.

He shook it off. He couldn’t be thinking about that now.

More gunfire. He was closer.

For a brief moment, he thought he saw Bobbie Faye climbing up the gantry crane, but then he blinked and maybe it had been the light playing tricks on him. No way in hell would she ever willingly climb something that tall.

Bobbie Faye ducked underneath a control panel inside the cab as she heard Vincent climb onto a precariously small foot ledge where the ladder terminated. He shot into the crane’s side window and she scrunched down as small as she could, trying to hide as the bullets bounced around the steel walls of the cab.

She heard him laugh.

Then he was quiet.

Too quiet.

Moving around that foot ledge had to be difficult, especially dressed in a suit, but he made no noise, and she itched, antsy and anxious. She whipped around to see where he’d gone, forgetting she still wore the tiara. It caught in the wires that hung beneath the control panel, and her hair was knotted in the tiara’s curves.

She tried to disentangle herself from the tiara, and it from the wiring, being careful of the electrical connections . . . when she realized the cab had grown perceptibly darker. Someone was blocking the streetlights from shining in the cab’s window.

Vincent.

He’d moved around to the front of the cab where a crane operator would view the boom and control the loading, and from the look of satisfaction, she knew the sick bastard saw her. He shot the front window, raking out the glass with the butt of his gun. She tried to twist to pull her gun from her waistband while still trying to navigate the wires.

The tiara tangled even more in the wires.

Vincent stepped carefully over broken glass, one foot on the control panel, one foot still outside the cab, and she knew she had to move, had to do something. She yanked,
hard, on the tiara, and it pulled wires, short-circuiting the controls. She broke free of it while it dangled there, and sparks flew, electricity arcing across to the metal portion of the cab, electrifying it. Bobbie Faye flattened herself onto the rubber floor mats while Vincent held onto the metal ceiling of the cab for stability, and the jolt surged through him.

He spasmed, letting go, falling out of the window and as the shorting wires caught fire, a nasty, rust-colored, violent-looking smoke filled the cab. It smelled moldy and nasty and, somehow, like rotten oranges, as the rubber from the wires melted and flames arced across the control panel. She expected to hear Vincent shout as he fell, expected to hear a horrible thud as he landed, and instead, there was silence except for the crackling of the arcing wires.

The gantry crane lurched and she held onto the operator’s seat in front of the control panel, which finally seemed to have stopped arcing. Though the crane’s engine was now somehow
on
.

Vincent wasn’t at the window.

The crane swung, slowly to the left. She didn’t have a clue what it was doing, but it seemed to have a mind of its own as it swung hard to the right and then back to the left. The crane’s boom extended out with a hard pitch, and then slammed out to its maximum length, nearly thirty feet out, jerking the crane in the process.

The tiara swung hard in the knotted wiring and she was afraid to let go of the seat to grab for it with the crane careening to the left and back to the right, faster and faster, a broken metronome speeding up out of time. She eased up on her knees, hung onto the armrest, and peeked out the window

There was Vincent, out on the end of the boom.

Clinging. Slipping. About to fall.

He dropped his gun.

She didn’t know how to stop the crane. There was an Alaskan-sized part of her which wanted to be evil and twirl her moustache and let him fall, but she didn’t want to kill
him. She wanted him punished. For a very long time in really awful ways, but she didn’t want to kill.

Bobbie Faye pushed at controls, trying to understand which knob did what, but nothing seemed to work as the boom lurched from side to side.

The crane shimmied so violently on the last swing, it catapulted Vincent off the boom . . .

. . . and slung the tiara so hard, it broke loose of the wires, bounced against one cab wall, flipped midair just past Bobbie Faye’s outstretched hands, and fell . . .

. . . out the shattered window.

Tumbling down, bouncing off the gantry crane with a thudding clunk in one direction while Vincent flew through the air.

She didn’t know which horror to watch.

The tiara took one last bounce, sailing out over the dock, heading for the deep Mississippi. She glanced back at Vincent flying through the air and then averted her eyes as he landed, impaled on a metal spike protruding off the conveyor.

She was going to be sick.

She bit down, gritting her teeth against the bile rising in her throat, and then looked out over the churning Mississippi waters, no sign of the tiara to be had.

It was gone.

The Mississippi, with its ever-shifting muddy bottom and churning waters, rarely gave back anything it had sucked into its black heart.

Leave it to her to lose an heirloom passed down for a couple hundred years. Perfect. Just perfect.

She could picture her mom on the last parade float, wearing the tiara, waving, waving, waving to the crowd. Handing it down to Bobbie Faye, telling her how important it was to keep for the family. For tradition.

Bobbie Faye buried her face in her hands.

The shooting had stopped.

She was so tired, so worn, she wanted to lie down and go
to sleep, but she needed to find her family. She climbed down into the darkening night and the stillness was oppressive, the heat and dust seemed to hang and form a wall to push through.

As soon as she stepped off the ladder, Trevor moved out of the shadows, followed by the FBI agent now holding him at gunpoint.

“I ran out of bullets,” Trevor said, keeping a light, amused expression for her.

“I can’t take you anywhere,” she quipped back.

“Stop right there, for your own safety,” the FBI agent said. “I’m Special Agent Zeke Wright, Ms. Sumrall. If you’ll please turn over the tiara, I can take this scum in and get him out of your hair.”

Bobbie Faye had her gun drawn on him before he could move, but he didn’t seem terribly concerned; another FBI agent stepped out of the shadows to her right, his own gun trained on her.

Cam found one of the FBI shot; he was alive, but unconscious. In his SWAT ear-com, he heard Aaron, saying, “Cam. We’ve got a wounded guy in a suit over here. Face is all kinds of ugly. And another big-ass guy sitting on the ground next to him, holding more than twenty brass doorknobs, and he’s crying.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Just that they’re beautiful and perfect, and now he’s not going to get to have his Guinness entry. Whatever the hell that means.”

“Okay, get them out of here. I see something happening underneath the gantry crane. I’m coming up from the south end.”

“Meet you there.”

When he got there, his blood drained to his feet: there was a face-off between the agents, Cormier, and Bobbie Faye, with Zeke apparently holding a gun on Cormier. There was blood on Bobbie Faye’s hands, her legs, her hip. It was
everything Cam could do not to just shoot everyone around her right then and there and get her to a hospital.

What he didn’t understand was why Zeke wasn’t just arresting Cormier. Or why Bobbie Faye had her gun drawn on a federal agent. He studied his ex’s expression, and knew she wasn’t buying the cajoling spiel Zeke was giving her. Why, he wondered, was she suspicious?

And then it hit him. The cell where Benoit had put the Professor . . . it was the one with a view of the desk sergeant’s TV. Not a good view, but a view. The Professor had flipped out over the name “Cormier” in the interrogation room. Then drugged, poisoned, the Professor had babbled: “Not corn. Right.” Cam would bet his next paycheck the Professor was trying to say, “Not Cormier.
Wright
.” Agent Zeke Wright. Could the Professor have seen the agent on the news coverage and learned Zeke’s name and so had been trying to tell them? Zeke had claimed to be hunting down Cormier as if he had the authority to do anything to get his man, but the Captain had told Cam to bring Cormier in unhurt.

Cormier must be undercover. Zeke was the rogue agent. And Zeke clearly wanted something from Bobbie Faye.

Sonofabitch.

He’d led the man to Bobbie Faye all damned day long.

Cam moved slightly and put himself in her line of sight so she’d know he was there and he could back her up. She did the damnedest thing. She gave him the little ear tug sign they’d had for years. It meant, “Wait. Something’s going on and I can handle it.”

She had clearly lost her mind.

“You were at the bank,” she said to Zeke, who twitched a little, and looked oddly antsy. “When I ran out of the bank, I saw you there, waiting in your car. And now you’re here. Wanting the tiara. Why don’t I think that’s a coincidence?”

“Look, Ms. Sumrall,” Zeke said, his voice smooth as if talking to a child while he scratched at his upper arm and chest with his free hand.

That wasn’t going to go over really well.

“This man,” Zeke continued, “has been trying to double-cross you. He’s a mercenary, and he’s been after the tiara all along. Now I’m arresting him, and I need the tiara for evidence.”

“Evidence? So it can conveniently disappear later on?”

“Quit being ridiculous, Ms. Sumrall. Hand it over.”

Cam watched her lower her eyelids and give Zeke the expression he’d come to know as the “slitty glare.” Cam caught himself grinning, even though Bobbie Faye could still see him.

Bobbie Faye looked down at the ground, glancing around her as if something had fallen.

“What are you doing?” Zeke asked.

“Well, you must think my brains have fallen out of my head if you think I’m going buy a crap story like that. Trevor could have taken the tiara from me at pretty much any point today. If he was double-crossing me, he’d be long gone. Which leaves us you. I’m sort of amused that of all the people who are interested in the tiara, you happened to be in the parking lot at the time of the robbery. Was that your idea? Steal it from Roy’s kidnapper? Did you know what was going on and decide to take it for yourself?”

Cam caught Bobbie Faye’s eye and nodded.

The muscles in the back of Zeke’s neck tensed and knotted and he scratched more emphatically at his neck and arms. Zeke’s colleague seemed washed in a sudden sheen of sweat, and Cam could smell the fear from where he stood.

Then Cam pinged on the fact that she’d said, “kidnapper.” And “Roy.” No wonder she’d pushed like the Terminator hopped up on steroids.

“Look, bitch,” Zeke snapped, “you’re just a stupid girl who’s about to get herself and her whole family killed. This isn’t funny.”

“Oh, really? You know what
is
funny? When you lose the ‘whose dick is bigger’ contest to a ‘girl’ like me. You’re never going to get that tiara.”

“You should concede now, Zeke,” Trevor said. “This could get embarrassing.”

“No ignorant set of tits is going to beat me.” Zeke’s voice curled with satisfaction in spite of him rubbing an ever-reddening blotchy cheek against his shoulder. “Especially when I have her niece.”

Bobbie Faye froze, and Cam couldn’t catch her eye. He could tell she was calculating, when Zeke laughed.

“Exactly. Let’s just say she’s in
protective custody
. So you give me the tiara, I shoot Cormier here, who is the bad guy as far as the cops are concerned, and then you get your niece back.”

“You bastard,” Bobbie Faye seethed. “Where is she?”

“With an agent of mine.”

“Would that be Baker?” Trevor asked, sounding even more satisfied than Zeke had. “Because he isn’t an agent of
yours,
Zeke.”

Cam could see Bobbie Faye assessing Cormier, and when she looked back at Zeke, it was clear she believed Cormier.

“You’re not that stupid,” Zeke snapped. “You’re not going to risk her life on what this mercenary says. He’s played you all along, and you’re too fucking naïve to realize it. Hand over the tiara.”

“How about, instead—” she said, lifting up her shirt, and Cam flinched, wanting to cover her, feeling protective, until he saw what she’d done: there was a microphone wire attached to the center of her bra and a little sending unit under her arm.

“—you wave to the pretty camera over there in that pedestal crane,” she finished, pointing toward a crane nearer to the entrance of the scrap yard. She smiled, big, and said, “You got it, boys?”

And sonofabitch if the helicopter cameraman and pilot didn’t wave to them from the pedestal crane, and the streetlight glinted off their TV camera.