Cam stared at Trevor’s photo and when he glanced up, Zeke fixed him with an unblinking gaze.
“I will catch Cormier. I have an order to pick him up. If he resists—and I assure you, he will resist—then I am to stop him. Period. If she’s anywhere near him . . .” Zeke let the end of his sentence hang in the air between them.
“Knowing Bobbie Faye, she’s just a bystander,” Cam said, not quite able to add “innocent” to that.
“Well, then, your bystander is about to have a very short life because Cormier will take her out when she ceases to be useful to him.”
Nine
Bobbie Faye would be a force of nature, if she weren’t so unnatural.
—Lucy Swimmer, Red Cross disaster director, Southern Region
As she tromped through the woods, she took mental inventory: she was soaking wet, annoyed, grimy, itchy, pissed off, gritty, irritated and oh, throw in aggravated for good measure. And now she could add feeling inundated and disoriented by the saturation of lush greens in the canopy of the trees above them. The leaves danced and sunlight dappled and mottled them, every undulation teasing and hypnotizing. The shifting vibrant colors plunging into her consciousness so soon after the dark of the lake made her woozy. She kept her eyes down or on Trevor’s back to stay focused on every step, trying to avoid stumbling into thorny brambles grown shoulder high. Maybe adrenaline had made her hyper aware of the light in the trees, the periwinkle blue beyond the awning of crisscrossing limbs, the loamy smell of old earth and new growth, the Spanish moss dripping from the tress like gray wax from melted candles. Maybe it was the adrenaline which inspired all her thoughts to swirl and hopscotch subject to subject, so random that nothing made sense.
Had she just been in a truck inside a pipe in a lake?
So she stared at Trevor’s back, trying to focus, trying to pull herself back into reality. Instead, all she managed to do was to notice the way his muscles were very nicely toned, the way the triceps were defined when he lifted his arms to move a branch out of the way, the way his confidence in every move he made just oozed sexiness and for crying out freaking loud, she needed to be interested in a man right about now about as much as she needed to grow a third boob, although, think of the money she could make in the freak show.
Geez. Focus.
He was a jerk, she reminded herself, with very questionable motives. Although he was also a jerk whom she’d hijacked and whose truck she’d shot (um, several times) and then destroyed . . . and, okay, maybe he had a teeny tiny bit of a right to be in a bad mood. Didn’t matter. She had instituted a no-new-boyfriend rule. Well, a no-dating rule, because she’d hardly call the idiots she’d dated after Cam real honest-to-goodness boyfriends, although that had been the plan.
She was noticing a theme here on the whole “planning” aspect of her life.
No, Cam was a major effing fiasco. The ones that followed were just more or less a parade of losers, and seriously, she’d had her quota of jerks. More than her quota. So no more dating until she had her life a little more together.
At the rate she was going, maybe she’d be capable of dating someone normal once she was in a nursing home.
She decided to avoid staring at Trevor’s back and opted to concentrate on his feet while following him, which meant she didn’t quite realize when he was about to pause, and when he did, she ran smack into him.
He scowled at her after the third time.
“Did you flunk ‘walking in line’ in kindergarten or what?”
“Hey, at least I passed ‘plays well with others.’ ”
“Only because you hadn’t figured out how to blow them up, yet.”
“I haven’t blown anything up,” she protested. “Lately,” she amended.
He muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t hear, which was probably a good thing.
She followed Trevor as he hurried through the woods, crossing small muddy creaks and boggy marshes. Bobbie Faye had to hug her bare arms tightly to her body in order to avoid the sharp edges of the thick-fingered palmetto fronds sprouting in clusters which had grown to shoulder height. Trevor used a large stick to knock down the spiderwebs and check the stability of what appeared to be hard soil, but which might turn out to be deep soupy muck with a dried crust. Of course, neither of them thought about doing that before Bobbie Faye’s boot broke through just one such crusty spot and she had sunk down to her calf in mud.
As she stomped to dislodge the mud, she had let out such a string of expletives, Trevor laughed, shaking his head.
“What?” she asked.
“I saw three mother squirrels cover their babies’ ears, they were so shocked at your mouth.”
“Fuck the squirrels. They get to climb,” she said, continuing with the stomping, slinging mud onto his jeans.
“Are you finished being Lord of the Dance?”
“I don’t know what scares me more . . . that you made a joke, or that you know about the Lord of the Dance.”
He chuckled then, and she felt the energy of his grin surge through her. Wow. It was the first quiet moment she’d had to really look at him, beyond just registering the general hottie factor, and she liked the crinkles around his eyes, the not-perfect face with the lopsided grin, the calm he radiated. That man really should smile a lot more often. She had to mentally shake herself to keep from touching the scar just below his eye.
They stood like that a moment, grinning, and then turned together to head deeper into the woods, keeping up a brisk pace, dodging around thickets of briars, avoiding overgrown blackberry bushes full of thorns, and walking carefully around deadfall to avoid snakes lying in the crevices. She saw deer tracks and then a few minutes later, an area of flattened grass where several doe had bedded down together the night before. Above her, resurrection ferns had leafed out after the recent rain, covering the broad curved limbs of the live oak trees, ruffling in the small breeze like a thick, decorative fringe. The colors and smells soothed her and the calm gave her hope.
Trevor paused near a pine tree, cocking his head to listen to the whir of a helicopter . . . check that, helicopters. There were at least two. So much for hope. She watched his face and had the eerie feeling that he not only knew exactly how many there were, but could have told her the model, the payload, and how many people were on board just from the sound. It puzzled her all over again, why he’d let himself get roped into her disaster, because she knew now more than ever that he wasn’t a man to get roped. It worried her.
Just as she started to ask him, Bobbie Faye saw something move in her peripheral vision. She grabbed his arm.
“Stop,” she said, sudden and sharp, and he froze.
She looked around carefully without moving; she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d seen at first, but something inexplicable had seized that animal instinct part of her brain, that survival part. To her surprise, Trevor watched her and waited.
And then she saw it.
“Cottonmouth,” she whispered to Trevor and he stayed immobile. It was coiled at the base of the nearest pine tree, its jaws wide as it weaved, undulated, preparing to strike. Chills slalomed across her goose bumps, and she tensed, staying perfectly still. The woods around lakes and swamps were full of all types of snakes. This was a deadly water moccasin which they hadn’t seen in their speed through the underbrush.
“Striking distance?” he asked, and she nodded. The really bad news about a cottonmouth was that, unlike other snakes which would, if given the option, flee an intruder, the cottonmouth would go after an invader, following it and still striking, even when the invader was trying to leave its territory; simply moving away wasn’t so terribly easy. She wasn’t sure what to do since the snake was mostly behind Trevor, and at roughly four feet long with an ability to jump nearly its length, the cottonmouth could easily strike Trevor even if he tried to move out of its way. Or strike her, if he moved fast enough.
That’s when she saw what she needed out of the corner of her eye—the knife sheathed
at Trevor’s hip. A Ka-Bar. Ce Ce sold them. The one many military and ex-military favored. The blade alone was seven inches and with the leather-wrapped handle, it was nearly twelve inches long. She eased her right hand to his side and unsnapped the sheath.
“What the hell are you doing?” he muttered.
“Just be still,” she whispered, never taking her eyes from the cottonmouth. She slowly lifted the knife, thankful that side of Trevor was hidden from the snake, and she balanced its weight in her palm. Trevor started to protest, but something stopped him and she could feel his intake of breath and she knew he was surprised at how she handled the knife. Well screw ’em all, they were always surprised.
She measured the timing of the snake’s rhythm against some internal metronome, and she went calm, moving liquid fast, throwing the knife with perfect accuracy, seeing the knife impale the snake’s head on the pine tree with a sharp ssschhhtkkk sound—
“Oooh, gllrch,” she said, slapping her hand over her mouth, shuddering hard, her body wanting to crumple as she turned away from the impaled snake and tried not to throw up.
“You’re kidding me,” Trevor said, his gaze moving from her to the dead snake. “You throw like . . . a guy, but you—”
“Will totally puke if you don’t get that knife and move that thing,” she said, shivering again.
She heard him move and grab the knife and she kept her back to him until he came to stand by her again. She knew he was observing her, and she swallowed the bile rising in her throat, willing herself to quit being grossed out, since she had so much more to do in order to get to Roy.
“Let’s just get going. And watch for those,” she said, waving in the general direction of the dead snake. “I can’t keep saving your ass over and over.”
“You are a real piece of work,” he said, muttering more to himself than addressing her.
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” she answered.
Cam watched Zeke jog over to the FBI helicopter landing on the roadway just clear of the eighteen-wheeler wreck. Another FBI agent stepped out of the cabin, handing Zeke warm-weather fatigues, all nicely folded and pressed. Cam snorted at the army boots, all shiny and new, probably never broken in. The man was going to have blisters.
The FBI agents conferred while Zeke changed right there in the street, and the colleague pulled out maps and drew trajectories. It didn’t appear to Cam that they had a clear projection as to where Bobbie Faye and this Cormier guy may have headed. It was clear, however, that they either knew or suspected what this Cormier guy wanted and why Bobbie Faye was along for the ride.
Detective Benoit, a dark, wiry Cajun, strode up behind Cam and stood companionably there for a moment, observing the FBI agents as they prepped for God knows what.
“You’re not exactly having a stellar day,” Benoit noted, and Cam chose to ignore the chuckle in his friend’s voice. “They tell you anything?”
“Probably less than half what they ought to have,” Cam said, his arms crossed, his fingers drumming against his forearm. He noticed Benoit’s glance at his hand and he stilled it. “They’re specifically after the guy,” Cam said, and then filled Benoit in on what little he knew about Trevor.
“Aw, mon ami,” Benoit said, lapsing deeper into his Cajun accent, “you know there’s gonna be hell to pay if you let the Contraband Days Queen get killed.”
“Fucking tell me about it.”
“Hell, you had little church ladies kicking you and altar boys trying to beat you up last time when she was just in the hospital with a concussion.”
“Shut up, Benoit.”
“And remember that priest trying to make you do Hail Marys?”
“Shut up, Benoit.”
“And the altar boys threatening to grow up and beat you to a pulp if she didn’t pull through?”
Cam scowled at Benoit, who’d amused himself into full-blown laughter. It had been bad enough around town outside of the so-called sanctuary of church. Not that he was big on going, though after what he saw all week long, sometimes it helped to go to a place of goodness; Bobbie Faye had managed to invade even that sliver of peace.
“You on the theft thing?” Cam asked.
“Yeah. I’m on it.”
“Who’s working up background?”
“Crowley and Fordoche.”
“Call me when you find the weird thing.”
“How do you know there’ll be something weird?”
“This is a Bobbie Faye case.”
Benoit chuckled. Then, “You going out there?” Cam nodded. “You wearing a vest?” Cam glared at him. “Hey, can I help it that you dated a woman who can shoot better than you can?”
“Get back to the fucking station,” Cam snapped, and Benoit laughed again as he headed back to his car.
Cam watched the FBI helicopter lift off, and then turned to one of the officers working the wreck.
“Tell Kelvin it’s clear to bring the dogs,” he said, and the officer nodded and spoke into his radio to dispatch.
Cam had already ordered his district’s helicopter, which would coordinate with the dogs on the ground. He had also ordered a boat to bring the dogs to the opposite bank. It was just a damned shame the FBI had taken off before asking if he had any way to track Bobbie Faye.
The dogs arrived a few minutes later in cages in the back of a truck. The group was a mix of Catahoulas and Redbones and Cam thought them the best trackers in the state. He greeted their handler, Kelvin, a compact, sandy-haired, laid-back man a few years older than Cam’s thirty-two.
“You got something for scent?” Kelvin asked, adjusting his baseball cap and chewing on the corner of a toothpick. Cam nodded, walking around to the trunk of his squad car.
He’d meant to throw it away. It was a good thing he hadn’t, because he really didn’t have time to go to Bobbie Faye’s trailer to get something. He opened the trunk and dug into a satchel and Kelvin looked a little surprised when Cam pulled out a nicely folded man’s flannel shirt.
“Don’t even fucking ask,” Cam said. Kelvin laughed and took the shirt.
Cam watched Kelvin get back in his truck and drive over to the boat that would take him and the dogs across the lake. Kelvin would wait until he got to the other side before he’d let the dogs smell the shirt, marking the scent in order to track Bobbie Faye. Meanwhile, Cam had one call to make if he didn’t want some sort of voodoo hex on his ass. Not that he believed in that stuff, because he didn’t. Not a single whit. He wasn’t even sure that Ce Ce believed in it, and instead, wasn’t just that shrewd of a businesswoman. No matter. He had to make the call. Having Bobbie Faye in his life was bad enough; he didn’t need Ce Ce gunning for him, too.
Ten
We ask Bobbie Faye to come to the ball games as an ambassador to the visitors. She sits on their side of the field. We have a four-year winning streak.
—Collins High School Coach Jake Daniels
Ce Ce had the phone pressed to her ear while she stared up at the TV.
“She robbed what?” Nina said, cracking the whip, and Ce Ce watched her on the small screen, hearing the snap and echo as a couple of would-be pillagers backed away from Bobbie Faye’s things.
“A bank, honey. That’s what they’re sayin’ on the news. And she’s on the run, and they’re sayin’ she’s with some guy no one can identify.”
“Damn. She said something about taking a hostage, but I thought it was just a normal hostage thing.”
“Honey, the fact that you think there’s a normal hostage thing means you’ve been runnin’ that business of yours too damned long.” She preferred to stay blissfully naïve of what Nina really did at her S & M Models, Inc. business. “But sweet goodness, she took a hostage?”
“That’s what she said. He didn’t seem to mind, though.”
“Maybe you can make a few phone calls? Some of your . . . clients . . . might know some gossip about what’s going on. I’m not getting specific details from the cops and I can help her better if I know what’s up.”
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“I’ll see what I can do,” Nina said, cracking her whip again and hanging up.
Ce Ce stood in the little makeshift dining area, a place which typically felt inviting and peaceful, where the early morning sportsmen paused for biscuits and gravy, or deer sausage and boudin balls, a Cajun dirty-rice concoction rolled into a ball and fried. Her Outfitter store was the place where a few early bird customers enjoyed having one last glimpse of the weather forecast and news before disappearing into the Atchafalaya or the woods to the west. Right now, though, every hunter and fisherman who’d come in during the last hour hadn’t left and had, instead, stood gaping at her TV at the newest Bobbie Faye disaster. Stood, because the three creaky chipped red Formica dining booths she had constructed ages ago were crammed full of the earlier arrivals and now the store was standing room only. A few customers were just gossiping. She pointedly ignored the cluster of people in the back of the room who were quietly taking wagers on potential damages, or worse, Bobbie Faye’s survival. She also ignored the incessantly ringing phone and focused on the TV.
Ce Ce watched the aerial footage of the catastrophe that used to be Bobbie Faye’s home. The trailer rested flat on its side; lots of junk aired out on the lawn, a huge crowd gawked, and Nina stood in front of the trailer, wielding her whip. Ce Ce laughed. Thank God for Nina. If it was anyone else out there, Ce Ce would have sent reinforcements. But she suspected that Nina not only didn’t need help, but that they would cramp her style.
Then she snapped back to reality.
Bobbie Faye was running for her life.
Ce Ce didn’t even know why. That girl was a damned fortress, never letting anyone in, never telling when she needed help. Ce Ce was reduced to being on the sidelines, hoping and praying and trying to conjure up what little magic she knew.
She closed her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck beneath her heavy braids. It was at moments like this she could remember things in fine detail—so fine, it smothered her like a thousand layers of silt. She could still see Bobbie Faye, all of sixteen years old, scrawny, tired, dead broke, half-starved, standing in front of her near closing time, having waited until there were no customers so she could ask Ce Ce a favor in private.
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