Charmed and Dangerous

by Toni McGee Causey

  She was going to use common sense, dammit, if it killed her.

  “I think you have a really unhealthy attachment to that truck. I mean, seriously, it’s just a truck. No doubt you’re divorced.”

  He was wading down the bank behind the dead tree, looking for a safe place to emerge from the water without being seen from across the lake, and he paused long enough to glare at her, the muscles in his jawline tensed.

  “The divorce was the best part of the marriage. And believe me, after today, my attitude about women has gone seriously downhill.”

  “How anyone would be able to tell the difference is beyond me.”

  He turned back to the task of finding them a place to emerge.

  “You could’ve kicked me out earlier,” she said, surprising him with the subject change. When he didn’t answer, she eyed him suspiciously. “So why didn’t you?”

  “Temporary insanity. Curiosity. That must’ve been one helluva valuable thing they stole.”

  “It’s really not. At least, not monetarily. But it’s important.”

  They waded through scratchy reeds and big flat water lilies floating on the surface, easing into a little inlet which gave them cover until they could climb the muddy bank into the forest.

  “They want something that’s not valuable or they’ll hurt your brother? Did you stake out full-on crazy, or what?”

  “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s go back to you muttering and me ignoring you.” Then she noticed his empty hands as he directed her toward a safer spot in the woods. “Wait! Where’s the gun?”

  “Bottom of the lake.”

  “Are you nuts? We might need that!”

  “You really want to be carrying around the gun that was used in the bank robbery?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

  She tried to think of a logical argument, and giving up, said, “Fine. Be one of those boring people who always have to make sense.”

  “Let me guess: you were one of those kids who had a chair dedicated to you in detention in school.”

  “Was not. They retired my chair after it sort of accidentally caught on fire. There’s a plaque there now.”

  He grinned. “C’mon, Sundance,” and they moved deeper into the woods.

  Cam stood on the hot asphalt road, heat shimmering up in waves as he surveyed the mess from the wreck. He kept an outward appearance of complete professionalism. He was good at that, where Bobbie Faye disasters were concerned. Normally he had Bobbie Faye standing nearby looking all doe-eyed and confused and innocent, even though he was fairly certain she had never been innocent since the day she was born. In fact, in all of the years they’d known each other—been friends, then dated, then became enemies—he had never seen her anywhere near the same zip code as innocent. But at least at times like these, she was usually standing within strangling distance, which meant that the disaster was (mostly) over.

  Right now, he didn’t have a clue where the hell she was and that was very likely a bad thing.

  The EMS crew had pulled the unconscious truck driver out of the crumpled cab, amazed that he was relatively unharmed other than being out cold. The patrol officers who’d searched the truck didn’t yet see the paperwork which would indicate what his load had been. From the state of the broken bindings, it had been something big and it had cut a swath through a couple of old oaks and saplings at the lake’s edge. None of that explained the utter lack of tire marks from the red truck or where the truck could have gone. The helicopter crew assured him that the truck had not shown up at the other end of the road, heading toward the marina, nor, he knew, had they turned back, and damned if he could figure out what had happened. He was starting to get a very sick feeling in his gut that whatever had plowed down to the lake had taken them with it, and he already had divers on their way to investigate.

  When he heard a tonal change in the chatter of the officers behind him, Cam glanced up. Over by the eighteen-wheeler’s cab, he saw what he instantly knew was a Fed without the man even bothering to flourish his ID. The man was blond, short (but then, most men were short to Cam, who was six-foot-three), lean, and wore his authority with a sense of entitlement that automatically grated on Cam. The Fed had just stepped out of a government-issue silver Ford Taurus; he was wearing a suit blazer out in this spring heat (already ninety-five in April). The man had the pasty moon glow of an accountant too long behind the adding machine. Cam inwardly chuckled at the man’s loafers and the sweat pouring into his white collar. He thanked his last promotion once again (gotten in spite of a Bobbie Faye disaster); wearing jeans and boots and a casual shirt was more of a necessity than a pleasure—as a detective, he needed to blend in, of course—but the casual attire sure as hell made chasing through the swamps after some perp one helluva lot easier than loafers. One of the patrol officers had pointed the Fed toward Cam, who muttered a fuck under his breath. Just what he needed.

  “Special Agent Zeke Wright,” the man said, flashing his FBI badge by way of introduction when he arrived near Cam, and Cam introduced himself back with a brief handshake.

  “We’ve been keeping an eye on this Bobbie Faye Sumrall woman,” Zeke began.

  “Yeah? You know where she is now?” he asked, suppressing a grin.

  Zeke looked around and nope, no clue. “She seems to have disappeared.”

  “Good job, then,” Cam said.

  “We believe,” Zeke continued, squaring up with Cam and trying to stare him down, “that she’s in a lot of danger.”

  “Bobbie Faye’s always in a lot of danger. You’ll have to be a little more specific.”

  “I’m here to assist.”

  “Well, I hope you have hazard pay.” Cam noted the sidestepping of the question and let it go, for now.

  “She’s just one woman,” Zeke said, as if just and one woman actually applied to Bobbie Faye.

  Cam almost felt sorry for Special Agent Zeke Wright in that moment.

  “I graduated from the same high school as Bobbie Faye. In one month alone, she caught the school on fire with her home-ec project, then in 4-H, she caused cattle to stampede over the principal’s car, and she helped cook the fish for the football state championship pre-game dinner, giving us . . . the entire squad . . . food poisoning. And those were her good days.”

  “Whatever.”

  Zeke scanned the opposite bank of the lake, dismissive of any light Cam might be able to shed on what they faced.

  Cam simply shrugged. Some people have to learn the hard way.

  Eight

  You know, when Bobbie Faye gets ticked off, she makes a bobcat with a toothache look like a day-old kitten.

  —Jessica Cole, the sister of one of Bobbie Faye’s former boyfriends

  Hives of dread thrummed up Roy’s spine as he waited, still tied to the chair situated in the middle of the blue tarp in Vincent’s office. He watched the TVs—as did Vincent, Eddie, and The Mountain. Aerial footage focused on the wreck.

  “We still don’t know,” one older female reporter intoned, “the whereabouts of the alleged red getaway truck rumored to have been driven by an unidentified man who was joined by Bobbie Faye Sumrall, according to witnesses in the bank at the time of the robbery.”

  A news anchor from the local station cut in. “Dana, is there speculation that the truck may now be at the bottom of the lake?”

  “Yes, Robert, that’s what we’re hearing now, though I haven’t been able to get confirmation on that. So far, we haven’t seen anyone surface.”

  Roy stared at the TV. He couldn’t hear anything but blood pumping in his ears. It was so loud, it drowned out whatever Eddie was saying (to Vincent? Roy wasn’t sure).

  Roy couldn’t believe Bobbie Faye was gone. It wasn’t possible. He’d lived so long with her being indestructible, the prospect that one day she might just not make it hadn’t occurred to him. He had to shake his head to force the sound back in, and the glaring audio from the TV startled him. Had it been on that whole time? He oh-so-casually glanced at Vincent, his fingers
steepled again, the predatory expression gone, exchanged for one much, much worse. Roy hadn’t known there could be a worse, and when he saw it, his stomach did its dead level best to exit his body any way possible.

  “Too bad, dear Roy,” Vincent said. “We don’t really need a hostage, if Bobbie Faye isn’t around to bring me the tiara.”

  Roy gulped. He wouldn’t let himself turn to look at Eddie. He’d seen, instead, the light from the windows glint off the knife blade Eddie had withdrawn again, and that light bounced off the wall behind Vincent.

  Then The Mountain said, “Huh? Who’s that?”

  Vincent sat very still and tensed ever-so-slightly as the camera from one of the news helicopters zoomed in to a heavily wooded area adjacent to the lake, focusing on a couple standing there. More accurately, there was a man trying to haul a woman back into the woods, while she gestured wildly toward the crowded bridge that spanned across the lake and led to the marina on Lake Charles.

  Roy hung his head and exhaled.

  “Are you nuts?” Trevor exploded under his breath near her ear as he yanked her back into the cover of the woods. “Of course you’re nuts, why am I even asking?” His expression currently had all of the warmth of barbed wire. A definite “be careful what you wish for” moment.

  “What’s your problem now?”

  “They. Saw. You,” he seethed, jabbing his finger toward the massive buildup of people on the other side of the lake.

  “I saw the Saab. I’ve got to get to it. What do you care?”

  She tugged away from his hands on her body and strode deeper into the woods, parallel to the lake, and she could practically feel his frustration battering the air. She knew it had been a mistake to let herself be seen; she saw Cam face her across the lake, hands on his hips in his classic “I’m gonna so fucking throttle you” stance. It was dumb and she certainly didn’t need Trevor telling her so.

  “I care,” he said, keeping pace with her, “because we had a shot at a head start. They didn’t know where we were, but you might as well have taken out a big neon ‘come and get me’ sign! I don’t get my ass out of this until we get your ass out of this. And you just made it fifty times as impossible.”

  “I’m sorry! I really didn’t freaking mean for them to see me, but I saw the Saab and forgot for a minute where I was.”

  “Typical!” he muttered, and she spun on him.

  “Excuse me? What’s ‘typical’ about that?”

  “The whole not-thinking-ahead! Women like you—”

  “Whoa. Right there.” She stepped closer to him, staring hard, her skin flushed. “I have spent this morning becoming homeless, finding out my brother was kidnapped, killing my car, getting robbed, chasing the one thing that might save my brother’s life only to get nearly flattened and then drowned, and you’re saying that I should have somehow thought ahead? It must be nice to live in your universe where people apparently have ESP, but right now, it pretty much sucks in mine and I didn’t see any of it coming.” Her voice grew more emphatic with every word. “I’m tired, I’m soaking wet, and I’m wearing a ‘Shuck me, Suck me, Eat me raw’ T-shirt, which, I will guarantee—because this is the way my luck runs—will end up on the freaking five-o’clock national news for the rest of my stupid life, along with my really bad hair, and still I’m managing not to be homicidal. Yet. That’s about as far ahead as I can handle. Don’t. Freaking. Push. It.”

  She turned and stomped in the general direction of the bridge. Trevor riveted all of his attention on her. She ignored him and kept going until he grabbed her by the back of her shirt and snagged her backwards so hard, she crashed into him.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He studied her a long moment, as if making some decision, and finally said, “Where are you going?”

  “Duh,” she said, pointing toward the bridge. “To the marina.”

  “You won’t get to the marina, with the police and helicopters knowing where you are now. I’m betting they saw you pointing and now they suspect that’s where you’re heading. They’ll have the road completely covered already.”

  “Yeah, well, if the geeky boys jump a boat before I can see where they’re going on the lake, I’ll never be able to track them.”

  He nodded, agreeing with her. “I know a guy who works at the marina. He’ll know what boats have gone out and roughly which direction. We’ve got to get to another boat and contact him.”

  “We? So we’re a ‘we’ now?”

  “My registration is in that truck. I’m an accessory until we get your brother back safe and can prove your story. I know where there’s a boat we could borrow. Maybe we can get to it before the cops figure out we aren’t heading to the bridge.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. Trevor started off at a forty-five-degree angle from their original destination, and Bobbie Faye wanted to protest, just on principle, because she wanted to be the one with the plan, dammit. Nina always had a plan, and it always worked. Ce Ce always had a plan, and it always worked. She could be a planny type. Then she remembered she’d had a plan and look where she’d ended up. So for once, and geez Louise, she hated to do it, she shut up (which was so painful, it made her elbows twitch) and she followed him deeper into the woods, where the trees were so plentiful, the sunlight only filtered through in dappled patches.

  They were moving away from the marina. She loathed having to put so much faith in some random pissed-off guy she’d hijacked just an hour ago. But the whir of the helicopters overhead (growing more distant as she and Trevor moved away from the bridge) told her she didn’t have a helluva lot of choice at this point. If this Trevor did have his name on a registration in that truck (and of course he would, as much as he luuuvved the damned thing), then he might have a point. She knew Cam would take one quick appraisal of this guy and know, without a doubt, her “hostage” could have removed her from his truck any time he’d wanted, so he must be helping her of his own free volition. Which made him an accessory.

  Was he telling the truth? Or was he using the accessory bit as cover to try to find out what she was after? He had asked about the “valuable” thing the geeky boys took. He clearly knew how to handle a gun. And improvise solutions, something most really good criminals knew how to do. He had that soldier’s air about him—part confidence, part street smarts, part “I’ve killed people, don’t annoy me, you could be next.” She was going deeper into the woods with a guy who could help her find the tiara, but who could just as easily improvise his way into taking it away from her.

  Damn. This was insane. And she had no other choice.

  Trevor set a fast pace. Bobbie Faye stayed close behind him, careful to follow as directly in his footsteps as possible, which wasn’t easy when she was hyper aware of the gigantic spiderwebs strung between trees and the enormous wood spiders, wider than the palm of her hand, dangling in the center of their webs. All around her were beetles and bugs and animals bigger than a breadbox. She thought it wise to keep as close as she could to this strange, angry man. If nothing else, if they encountered anything hungry, maybe it would eat him first.

  Cam didn’t recognize the guy with Bobbie Faye, but he could sense from Zeke’s satisfied smile that he did. Cam had ordered the WFKD news helicopter to stay above the bridge area in case they came out from that direction. He eavesdropped as Zeke pulled out his cell and ordered his own FBI helicopter to pick him up.

  “Yes,” Zeke said as he walked away from Cam. “Definitely Cormier. Just get here; we can’t afford for him to have too much of a head start.”

  Zeke flipped his phone closed and glanced at Cam, who waited, arms crossed, to see if the Fed was going to pull “need to know” bullshit territorial crap. Instead, Zeke reached for a folded piece of paper his inside breast pocket.

  “He used to be an agent.”

  “Used to be?” Cam asked, opening the paper Zeke handed to him. On it were two photos of a man named “Trevor Cormier”—one from when he was a clean-cut agent
, and a more recent surveillance photo where he looked exponentially shabbier, seedier. More dangerous. He was taking what appeared to be a thick envelope of money from men who looked, if possible, even more criminal. Cormier had a steely gaze that would have unnerved most people. The man who’d yanked Bobbie Faye back into the woods had cleaned up some since this photo, but Cam was certain it was the same man. Below the photos, there was a grocery list of crimes, and Cam didn’t think this Trevor had left off any of the biggies: there was murder, fraud, grand theft, kidnapping, smuggling . . . Cam looked at Zeke to get the rest of the story.

  “It took us a couple of years to realize he was on the take,” Zeke explained. “He’d tip off people we were tracking and they’d escape, just one step ahead of us arresting them. Always a lot richer from whatever scam or money laundering scheme or theft they’d planned. Once he knew we were onto him, he went underground. Now he mercs out for a pretty hefty fee. A few weeks ago, we heard rumblings with your Ms. Sumrall’s name—”

  “She is definitely not my Ms. Sumrall,” Cam interjected, mostly under his breath.

  “—and some sort of moneymaking scam.”

  “Bobbie Faye? Make money?” Cam shook his head, refraining from the laugh he’d felt at the thought.

  “Well, either she’s an innocent bystander who somehow got caught up in Cormier’s trap, or she’s helping him. And he’s sharp. He reads people extremely well and knows how to play them.”

  “You don’t know Bobbie Faye. Manipulating her is a little like manipulating a live grenade. In the dark. You don’t play Bobbie Faye.”

  “You don’t know Cormier like I know him. He’s not only a chameleon, I’ve seen him con the un-connable. If she’s with him, then it’s because he wants her there, alive. And before he’s done with her, she’ll have handed over whatever he wanted, willingly.”