Charmed and Dangerous (40 page)

“Yaaaaaaaaahoooooooo, we got it Bobbie Faye,” the cameraman shouted back. “All of it! Live!”

Bobbie Faye looked directly at Cam then, acknowledging his presence there, signaling that’s all she had, and he stepped out, aiming at Zeke while she aimed at the other FBI agent.

“We’ve got it, too,” he said, and Zeke spun.

In a flash, Zeke turned back as if to shoot Bobbie Faye. Before Cam could plant a slug in him, Cormier disarmed the agent and had him on the ground, aiming Zeke’s own gun back at the prone agent.

Without looking away from Zeke, Cormier said, “You’re Cameron Moreau, right?”

“And?”

“Call your Captain. I’m FBI, undercover. He’s already had the information confirmed; we couldn’t tell you until we’d flushed out this asshole once and for all.”

Bobbie Faye squeaked a little when she asked, “You’re—you’re FBI?”

Cam glanced at her and she looked a little woozy.

“Ohmygod. I kidnapped an FBI agent. I am so going to jail.”

Cam placed a call to the Captain while his SWAT surrounded Cormier, Zeke, and the other agent, and disarmed them all.

Zeke’s neck had started breaking out in horrible hives.

“Please, for the love of God, let me move so I can scratch. Are there oranges around here? I’m allergic. I swear, I’m going to have seizures. I need a doctor!”

Roy stumbled out from behind one of the mountains of metal, his face nearly swollen shut. Bobbie Faye ran to him.

She hugged Roy first. Then yelled at him. Then hugged him again, tears running down her face.

They had all been through hell and back, and Cam was convinced
it hadn’t needed to be that way
.

She wouldn’t have had to go through any of it, if she’d called him first. It made him livid. She put herself and everyone else in danger because she was too damned pig-headed to ask for help. To admit she might need something.

From him. Especially from him.

His veins grew cold and the iciness seeped into every pore, every heartbeat. He was furious with her for having put her life on the line. Every scrape she had, every cut, every bruise assailed him and taunted him with the clear indication that she didn’t need him. Never did. Never would.

He made sure the ambulance was dispatched and he turned his back on her and walked away, knowing Aaron could handle the rest of the details.

Ce Ce and everyone who could cram themselves into her Outfitter store stood in front of her little TV, completely slack-jawed and gobsmacked as the live coverage spun across the screen from the scrap yard in Plaquemine. There were ambulances there, a body being carried out by the Medical Examiner, and more cops than anyone could count, including SWAT and FBI.

And there was Bobbie Faye, in living color, looking like she’d almost been beaten and pureed, but alive.

“Where am I?” a muffled voice asked from the storage room, and Ce Ce nearly jumped out of her skin at the realization: the Social Services woman. They’d forgotten all about her in the excitement of seeing the live footage.

Ce Ce quickly conferred with the crowd and they all knew their parts to play. Maybe, just maybe, they could stay out of jail.

She’s alive. It’s over. Now we can all get back to our own normal lives.

—first comment on the record after any Bobbie Faye event by Detective Cameron Moreau, Ms. Sumrall’s ex-boyfriend, as told to WFKD

Bobbie Faye watched Cam walk off, and everything in her ached with fury. Tears welled up and she flat refused to let them slide. For a brief moment there when he was watching her handle Zeke, when he saw what she’d been up against and what she’d deduced, she thought she’d seen something akin to pride aimed in her direction. But no, he’d walked off, without a backwards glance, anger radiating off him in a too-familiar way. So as she stood there watching the paramedics do a preliminary check on Roy and get the wounds bandaged, and as another set worked on her, it surprised the hell out of her to feel Trevor’s palm soothe the back of her neck, kneading the knots of tension from her shoulders as if he’d been the one she’d known all her life and had dated.

“I’ve called the agent protecting Stacey,” he said, “and she’s fine. She might be a little hopped up on sugar. I think she conned him into buying her every snack this side of the Mississippi, but she’s in great spirits. I’m having him meet
you at your home; I know it’s destroyed, but I suspect you’ll want to go back there first?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Good. I’ve got a thousand reports to fill out.”

And with that, he, too, walked away.

“Let me get this straight,” the groggy Social Services woman said to Ce Ce’s crowd while they all stared at her, wide-eyed and a little too innocent. “First, I fell asleep on the box over there?”

They all nodded in unison.

“Then I walked in my sleep and offered to dance the tango with, let me understand this, that gentleman over there?”

She pointed to tall, quiet Ralph, and everyone nodded in unison.

“And after that, I suggested we all go to a stripper bar? Where I was going to ‘bust a move’?”

They all nodded in unison, Monique a little more enthusiastically than the rest.

“And I’m supposed to believe this?”

“Well, honey, I don’t know what on earth makes people do strange things when they sleepwalk,” Ce Ce offered. “But maybe you should see a doctor about that.”

The woman glared at her and Ce Ce smiled as innocently as possible.

And everyone nodded in unison.

The view of her trailer from the aerial footage had not prepared Bobbie Faye for the carnage that had been her home, and she would have lain flat on the ground from the weight of the depression, had a big black Ford not driven up at just that moment and out hopped Stacey, blond pigtails askew, Popsicle stains (several colors in fact) all over her face and hands, and something that looked remarkably like ice cream sprinkles all over her cheek. She was dragging a stuffed elephant that was slightly bigger than she was, and Bobbie
Faye scooped her up and held her so long, so tight, she was pretty sure the sprinkles were permanently implanted in her own cheek, and she didn’t care a bit.

“Aunt Bobbie Faye! It was so much fun! Me an’ Uncle Baker—”

The new agent nodded a greeting.

“—we went to the zoo and the pony rides and the merry-go-round and the planannniiinium—”

“Planetarium?”

“Uh huh, and then we went to McDonald’s and—whoa.”

Stacey’s attention focused on the trailer lying on its side in several pieces.

“It’s okay, Stace. We’ll figure something out. Okay?”

“Uh huh. Can Uncle Baker come back again tomorrow?”

She turned her little pig-tailed head his direction, beaming at him, and Bobbie Faye tried to hide her laugh as he blanched and nearly ran back to his car.

“Stace, honey, I think Uncle Baker might need a little while to recover.”

Twenty-four hours later, Bobbie Faye was still pulling the little rug rat off the counters and the back of the sofa. She was beginning to wonder if the kid had mainlined the sugar instead of just ingesting it.

She looked at that kid, and her heart squeezed in her chest, and she couldn’t let herself think of how close she’d come to losing Stacey. Or Roy. As much as she wanted to knock him in the head herself, it had all been too damned close. She didn’t know if she was ever going to recover from it all. They’d just returned from seeing Roy at the hospital, where the doctor had said he was going to be fine. And Roy was already hitting up on the nurses, so clearly he was feeling better.

Now Bobbie Faye sat outside her small trailer lot, watching the mobile home company move in her new (used) trailer. They had agreed to give her a good deal on it, with payments she almost could afford, in exchange for her occasionally
appearing in a TV ad touting that their brand of trailers were tough enough to withstand a “Bobbie Faye” day.

Nina moved away from overseeing the trailer installation and sat next to Bobbie Faye in a lawn chair someone had loaned them.

“Any word on whether or not the reward from the stolen crap in the kidnapper’s office will pay for all the damages?”

“Not yet. Benoit told me they’re putting a detective, Fordoche, on it. She’s supposed to be very good, honest, and anal up the wazoo, so hopefully, half of it won’t disappear.”

They sat in companionable silence a few minutes, watching the chaos of the trailer being moved in with three different men all trying to be the boss and giving five different sets of directions to the driver.

“Oh, by the way,” Nina laughed. “I heard where Dora went.”

Roy had filled Bobbie Faye in on just where he’d been when the day had started.

“She went to her mom’s, all freaked out because she didn’t want to deal with Jimmy coming home after the kidnappers had taken Roy. So Jimmy comes home, sees she’s run home to her mom, thinks it’s because she found out about him and Susannah the loon, so he goes over there to apologize and try to win Dora back. It’s a good thing Roy’s protected in the hospital right now, because Dora told Jimmy about Roy and the two of them turned Dora’s mom’s into a regular
Jerry Springer
show, especially when Susannah showed up.”

Bobbie Faye whiplashed, as she turned to catch Nina’s wicked gleam.

“Yup. And Susannah thought he was divorced already.”

Bobbie Faye tried not to feel too evil about smiling right then.

“Oh, brace yourself, here comes ‘Just Call Me Sunshine.’ ”

Bobbie Faye looked over to the driveway where a car had pulled in. Cam. Looking distinctively peeved. She met him
halfway between her chair and his car. From the way he slammed his car door, she thought he was about to lecture her.

Instead, he was cold. Stone fucking cold.

“I’ve spoken with the Department of Social Services,” Cam said, barely looking at her. No ‘how are you?’ or ‘glad you’re okay’ or ‘fuck you for not coming to me,’ which she suspected was the thing eating him. “They’ve agreed to accept that you’re providing Stacey with a good home, and they’re going to drop the new charges of putting Stacey in danger during this fiasco. You can keep the kid.”

“Seriously?” She was shocked. Ce Ce’s description of the completely furious Social Services worker after she’d awakened from being drugged was not pretty, and Bobbie Faye expected them to try to take Stacey from her permanently.

“Your Cormier guy put in a call for you. Said he’d been trying to catch this agent for more than a year, and if you hadn’t done what you did, not only would Roy have been killed, but he would have lost both Vincent and Agent Zeke Wright, both of whom were responsible for your cousin’s death and quite a long list of other crimes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

This had to have impressed him, that she’d made the right choices. He kept his stony expression.

“And?”

“And, nothing, Bobbie Faye. I told them I agreed you had no choice and they’ve dropped the charges. I thought you’d like to know you’ll be able to keep Stacey.”

She didn’t know what to say. At that moment, everything seemed possible, and it hit her like a tidal wave just how much she loved her niece. She looked at Cam, his arms crossed, his glare stoic.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for the kid. She’s been through enough.”

“Wait. Let me get this straight. You just said I had no choice, you vouched for me, and you’re still furious with me?”

“Damned straight.”

“
You’re
the one who
chased
me, who nearly got me killed, more than once. And you’re pissed off at
me
? You’re nuts!”

“
I’m
nuts? You put everyone in danger, including yourself. You nearly get yourself killed and in the chaos, did more than a couple of million dollars worth of damage, all because you wouldn’t fucking call me and ask for help.”

“Yeah, because the last time I did that, it worked out so well for me.”

They both seethed, breathing hard, heat radiating between them. He had come through for her, she reminded herself. He had shot out the lights when he couldn’t have known the FBI agents were the bad guys; he’d broken his own rules to help her.

He spun to leave and she reached out for him and he pulled his arm away.

“Don’t, Bobbie Faye. Just. Don’t.”

And just like that, he walked away.

Her throat burned with fury and words logjammed there. Then she turned and rejoined Nina at the lawn chairs.

“What the hell is with the two of you?” Nina asked. “You know you still love him. And he still loves you. I swear, if any more electricity passed between the two of you over there, we’d be putting out brush fires. Why can’t y’all get over yourselves and have a life together?”

Bobbie Faye watched Cam slam into his car and back out of the drive, never looking in her direction, not even once.

“He doesn’t want to be in love with me.” She faced her friend. “And that makes all the difference in the world.”

Later that night at the Contraband Days Festival fairgrounds, Bobbie Faye sat in a lawn chair positioned in a makeshift throne made from a bateau. Twinkling lights dressed every tree and shrub and lamppost, crowds mingled and swirled to music from a terrific local band, and a
fais do do
was in full swing. Just about everyone had on pirate gear with eye patches, fake swords, and brightly colored shirts. There was
barbequing, and the beer and soft drinks flowed freely. Bobbie Faye was amused to watch Old Mr. Zachary get drunk enough to get up the courage to ask Old (widowed) Mrs. Ethel to dance, while Stacey and four or five other kids about her age were running amok, shrieking with joy and Popsicles, all of their tongues a disgusting blue from cotton candy known as the “Bluebeard.” There was also a suspiciously significant exchange of money as bets were paid off, and Bobbie Faye was treated to enthusiastic waves from the crowds.

She shrugged her shoulders, trying to let go of the sadness and tension. Several riverboat captains in attendance at the festival had conferred over her tiara dilemma and informed her that finding the tiara was virtually impossible, though a few offshore divers hovering around volunteered to try. When Bobbie Faye had learned about Lafitte’s journal, which Vincent had bought after the Professor had been forced to sell it, she’d had hopes of reconstructing the tiara and using the journal information to decipher the map. Unfortunately, the FBI held Lafitte’s journal for evidence, and no telling what was going to happen to it or if it would ever be given back to her family.