Charmed and Dangerous

by Toni McGee Causey

  At the same time, Vincent followed her gaze and saw the same figure. He exhaled a brief, low expletive, and in a very quiet voice, said, simply, “Zeke.”

  Forty

  Sir, we do not draft civilians into our foreign service, even if you think she’s of the devil and would make a good spy. Please do not offer her to us again.

  —Elizabeth Smith, CIA undersecretary in a memo to the governor of Louisiana

  Ce Ce put the finishing touches on the foul-smelling concoction, looking up to see that most of the gawkers had either edged to the hallway so as to not have to breathe in the stench, or passed out. Only Monique remained happily ensconced next to Ce Ce at the storage room’s counter. In fact, Monique stood peering into the bowl, a loopy grin Ping-Ponging amongst her freckles.

  “Monique, I need you to stir. Do you think you can do that?” Ce Ce wanted to add, “while you’re smashed,” but decided not to invite negativity into the room.

  “Ohhhhh, surrrrrrrrrrrrre,” Monique sang, and she plucked the spoon from Ce Ce’s hands and began stirring.

  Ce Ce needed to grab the candles and the ingredients to be sprinkled across the top of the bowl as she said the spell. It took longer than she’d hoped to find everything (probably due to the fact that she kept glancing back at Monique to make sure she didn’t get distracted and start leading an imaginary band or, God help them, stripping to her own hummed version of burlesque music like she did the last time she’d had that many screwdrivers). Finally, the items were set, the concoction was stirred to the right consistency, the candles were lit.

  Ce Ce sure hoped a good, stout protection spell was going to be strong enough for this situation.

  God apparently pushed the fast-forward button from what Bobbie Faye could tell in the blur of movement. Shots bounced, snapped, and ricocheted from the FBI as everyone on the ground ran, seeking cover. The yellow glow from the street lamps dotting the recycling yard emphasized the shadows and screwed with her perspective, and she wasn’t entirely sure who was shooting at whom.

  Vincent hauled Roy with him as his two guards returned fire on the FBI. Bobbie Faye kicked the groin of the ugly pug-faced bastard holding her; when he doubled over, Trevor grabbed her and dragged her away from the line of fire. They were barely around the stacked metal when she kicked his shin, and he flinched.

  “What the hell was that for? Are you nuts? Why am I asking that? Of course you’re nuts.”

  “Me? You’re calling me nuts? Who the hell are you? How’d you get here? And give me that!” She yanked the tiara from his hand.

  “I stole a truck and then one of those helicopters that ferry the guys out to the rigs, like I told you, but what’s more important is that the guys shooting at us? They’re FBI.”

  “I know that, I can see. Who are you? And you were working for that asshole scum all along.” She stepped as if to kick him again, but he neatly blocked her and pinned her arms to her sides.

  “Look, you can kick me later. I promise. I can explain more when we aren’t under fire, okay? I’m here. You have the tiara. We’ve got to move. Zeke—that’s the lead FBI guy—is going to circle around.”

  “I have to get to Roy.”

  “I know.”

  “And I sure as hell don’t trust you.”

  “No, really? C’mon, let’s go.”

  “What makes you think—”

  He jerked her out of the way just as a bullet whizzed by, a little too close for her comfort.

  “Coming,” she said. They moved past a giant shear, its mammoth blade stilled instead of slicing large chunks of metal onto a conveyor. Farther into the yard, they wove around rusted metal stacked stories high, all sorts of recycled objects, from household items to industrial pipes and tools from the local chemical plants.

  “Where the hell are we going?”

  “To the dock on the Mississippi. Vincent probably has a boat there in case he needs to get away.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He hates to fly.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Good grief, you had to have been the most annoying third grader on the planet.”

  “It is not my fault Mrs. Carmella had to take a leave of absence. She was twitching funny before I even had her for a teacher.”

  He stopped a second to sweep her with an amused grin.

  “Sundance, you are a helluva lot of fun.”

  “Most guys don’t have that reaction to being shot at with me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not ‘most guys.’ ”

  And then he kissed her. Quick, hot and sweet, then he touched his forehead to hers.

  He had a point.

  “I’m here, Sundance. For you. I told you that you could count on me.”

  Huh. Words failed her and he grinned, enjoying her shock.

  “Give it up, Cormier,” the FBI agent’s voice echoed off the metal piles. “I know you have the tiara and the girl hostage.”

  “What is with this girl crap? I’ll show him girl,” she muttered, though she followed Trevor around to a slightly better-sheltered area.

  To their left, the big shear loomed silently, and to their right, long, high embankments of recycled materials waited to be loaded onto barges. In front of them, there was an enormous gantry crane, several stories tall, its belly high enough above ground, and its tracks set so wide apart, that two train cars could run beneath it, side-by-side. The gantry crane straddled two sets of rail tracks that dead-ended at the waterline of the Mississippi River. Once the shorn metal was dumped into train cars, the crane loaded the rail car filled with sheared metal onto a barge in the canal.

  Near a barge which was waiting to be loaded, Bobbie Faye and Trevor spied an expensive looking mini-yacht. They glimpsed Vincent dragging a mostly hog-tied Roy along in that general direction. The mammoth-sized guard and pug-faced guard were planted between them and Vincent and Roy.

  “We need to go over those two to get to Roy,” Trevor explained, nodding upwards to the conveyor extending out from the shear. She looked up to where the large metal conveyor contraption ran from the shear to a rail car on the other side of both of Vincent’s guards and her heart sent out a memo: no fucking way, or I quit.

  “You want me? To go up there? Near that big knifey thing? With my track record?”

  He looked up at the shear, then back at her.

  “Good point. I’ll go up and distract everyone. You run around that end,” he pointed to his right, “and then beeline it for the gantry crane. There’s a ladder up to that cab up there, and you can lock the cab once you’re inside. It’s probably the safest place on this yard. I’ll get to Roy, but stay there where you’re safe.”

  “Why on earth should I trust you?”

  He handed her his gun, then pulled another from his boot.

  “If I don’t bring your brother back, you can shoot me.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  “Look, the ladder’s on the other side, so it’s relatively protected from the shooting. The train car underneath should keep anyone over here from getting a lucky shot underneath the belly.”

  “I’m not that girl that has to run off and hide and be safe. I’m a better shot than you.”

  “True. But are you willing to kill them, Bobbie Faye? Because that’s what you’re going to have to do if they get close. I doubt maiming them will do the trick. And what about your niece? Who’ll take care of her?”

  Ugh. Dammit, she hated being the girl, running off to hide, but he had a point.

  He kissed her on the forehead and then climbed up the side of the shear, picking his way slowly and carefully up the mountain of metal, keeping large pieces of to-be-recycled debris between himself, the agents, and Vincent’s men.

  Ce Ce moved the candle over the bowl counterclockwise as the old spell instructed, and chanted the words whose meaning had been lost more than a century ago. As she finished with a flo
urish of the candle and a last tipping of the candle’s wax into the bowl, Monique yelled, “Kick butt!” and shoved her flask forward as if to “toast” with the candle, sloshing a little drop of her screwdriver into the center of the bowl.

  Ce Ce froze, watching the gunk bubble and change from the expected bright cherry red to a nasty, malevolent rust color. It gave off an acidic-smelling smoke, which rose and formed a small cloud above the bowl.

  “Wow, what a funky color for a whaahozie cloud,” Monique said.

  “It’s supposed to be red,” Ce Ce whispered, afraid of what was about to happen.

  “I don’t t’ink it much likkked, lickered, likedid. Liked”—Monique hiccupped—“my screwdriver. It looks ver’ ver’ angry.”

  Ce Ce pulled Monique away from the cloud, which really did look angry as it grew and boiled and bubbled in midair, doubling in size every few seconds. It turned, almost as if to look at her, and then it dissipated.

  “I don’t think it worked.”

  “Aw, we could try it again. Maybe it needs more screwdriver this time!” Monique poured more from her flask, stirring it into the gunk, which bubbled and roiled, but stayed put in the bowl.

  Ce Ce didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what she may have unleashed, so she was uncertain if she should do more, or if she did, could it make everything worse for Bobbie Faye?

  She slapped her palms over her mouth, worried she’d said that out loud. Cardinal spell rule #1: never suggest anything around a magical spell. You never know what it might do.

  Bobbie Faye watched as Trevor climbed debris until he reached the conveyor apparatus, and then he hunkered down, running across the conveyor belt while shooting both down at Vincent’s guards and across the piles of debris where the FBI agents had holed up. The flurry of the sounds of the gunshots filled Bobbie Faye’s mind with raw fear, and she crawled across the metal, cutting her legs and her hands as she eased around the hill farthest away from her current position and then ran for the gantry crane.

  It was a terrible idea, this gantry crane thing. She’d wanted to argue with Trevor, but she had no words left, only fear. Fear of climbing that high, fear of staying down low where the FBI agents or Vincent’s gang could wear her down and pick her off. She didn’t have enough ammunition for a prolonged fight with them, and maybe Trevor understood that, too. Mostly, she didn’t want Stacey to have to go to her funeral. Which meant she had to trust someone to help her.

  It was a hard thing to let go and trust him.

  Once she got to the ladder, she shoved the gun into her waistband again and anchored the tiara on her head so that her hands were free. The blood running down her arms from the metal cuts should have freaked her out; her adrenaline was such that she couldn’t feel. Finally, adrenaline was useful for something.

  She thought, briefly, how that was such an apt analogy for so much of her life, bleeding and not feeling, too busy surviving to stop and assess, and as this idea pierced the fog of her thoughts, something grabbed her foot.

  Vincent.

  “I’m sorry, m’ dear, but I’ll be taking that tiara now.”

  The bastard had climbed up behind her, and she’d been so lost in musings, she hadn’t heard him or felt him jar the ladder. He held her foot with one hand, and the other arm, looped as it was through the ladder, pointed his gun in her direction.

  “Where’s Roy?”

  “Oh, safe for now.”

  It was the self-satisfied grin that finally snapped her instincts to life. The smug expression of an asshole used to getting his way just because of his penchant for hiring very expensive thugs ticked her off. She kicked the ever-loving crap out of his face, slamming the heel of her cowboy boot down into his pointy chin.

  “Bite me.”

  He fell backwards, snagging a rung of the ladder on his way down, but it bought her enough time to beat him to the cab and lock the door. As she slammed it shut, she had one last glimpse of the dock area and saw Trevor pulling Roy out of the yacht.

  Whaddaya know. He could be trusted. This might be some sort of anomaly. At least she was finally safe.

  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.”

  Forty-One

  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 ac
ross 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.