“Bobbie Faye, you look different somehow.” Francesca frowned, puzzled. She flinched as a bullet hit the roof above Bobbie Faye’s head. “See,” she said, pulling out a compact mirror to check her makeup, “you have to come with us. If you just stayed with us, nobody would be shooting at you. We’d protect you and then you could find the diamonds.”
What did she mean, nobody would be shooting at her? Everyone was always shooting at her.
Did Francesca know the shooter?
A bullet pierced the compact mirror, a shot that had come over Francesca’s shoulder and this time from a different silo, and Francesca flopped on the ground. “Shit!”
Simultaneous in Bobbie Faye’s mind was Francesca cursed! and Another sniper? Trevor backed her up and she realized he was trying to reach the carport on the side of the house so they could slip away from the sniper’s line of sight.
“Is that just more of Uncle Etienne’s family?” Francesca asked Bobbie Faye as another bullet hit a bush she was scrambling toward.
“Franny, we have really got to define how family is supposed to function for you.”
* * *
From: Simone
To: JT
They’re pinned down. Sniper . . . maybe two. Trying to move in closer without blowing cover.
* * *
* * *
From: JT
To: Simone
I hate my job.
* * *
Trevor and Bobbie Faye eased to the only escape route: the carport. They moved quickly in unison until the moment Bobbie Faye felt the barrel of a gun at the base of her skull.
“Move and I’ll kill her,” a man said, and a hand reached around Bobbie Faye, taking Maimee’s Glock.
Trevor glanced over his shoulder, past Bobbie Faye to the man she couldn’t yet see. With his right hand hidden from the gunman, Trevor hooked two fingers in the waistband of her jeans, as if he was about to yank her out of the way. But he couldn’t spin and fire faster than the guy could pull his own trigger, and as soon as she moved, the gunman would have a dead drop on Trevor. She was too aware, with her left hand on his waist, that he wasn’t wearing body armor. Bobbie Faye saw him eye one of his cohort FBI guys, who was peering from behind a tree, but frankly, there was no way the guy would get a shot until Bobbie Faye was completely out of the way, and that extra second would cost Trevor his life. She felt his fingers tense. It was an insane strategy for a stupid bunch of diamonds, no matter how valuable they were.
She caught his hand, stopping him. “They’re not worth this.”
He muttered something that sounded too much like “you are” and “freaking aggravating woman” as his grip tightened and holy hell, Adrenaline joined Hormones and staged a coup on her brain and she whirled around, facing the gunman.
“What do you want?”
The big, dark “O” of the gun barrel shoved closer to her nose; sweat beaded up on the man’s clammy hand. She barely registered a confused expression somewhere beyond the world of that barrel.
“Did you know you were . . . blue?” the gunman asked. He was a young guy, maybe twenty, still with pimples and dimples and a cowlick of red hair that made him look a bit like a gangly rooster.
“Have you ever heard about how some women get all puffy and splotchy and hormonal just before that time of the month, and they’re so cranky, they completely lose it over the least little thing, and they go all homicidal and could bite off your head in between spoonfuls of chocolate and not even notice?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Well, being blue is much much worse. Get the fucking gun out of my face.”
He actually started to lower the gun, then seemed to realize what he was doing and held it chest high, so close, if Trevor shot him, the kid’s reflex action would probably be to squeeze the trigger and shoot her anyway. “You can’t fool me. Just because I’m an intern, doesn’t mean you don’t have to listen.” He tapped the gun. “This says so.”
“Jayden?” Kit called from behind a tree. “Is that you, honey? How’s the new gig working out?”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Bobbie Faye said. Then to Kit, “He’s one of yours?”
“She placed me last week,” Jayden answered, rather proudly. “And our firm just got hired yesterday. This is my first assignment.”
“He has high potential,” Kit said. “Lots of petty B & E’s, but now he’s ready to step up.”
“That’s what my boss said! That’s why he sent me over here to get the stuff from you.”
“He sent you over here,” Trevor said, “because you’re expendable. And if I shot you, he wouldn’t give a damn.”
“But you’re going to put down your gun because I could shoot her. And I’m kinda nervous, so you probably better hurry.” Sweat dropped from his chin, past his skinny chest and hit the ground. With his finger on the trigger, he’d probably shoot her anyway, but she’d have zero chance if he flinched.
“If y’all move, the other guys are supposed to shoot her dead. But I kinda don’t want to, because my mom’s a real big fan. She’ll get mad at me if I shoot the Contraband Days Queen. But she’ll get madder at me if I’m fired, so please don’t make me shoot you.”
Trevor slowly lowered his gun, and Bobbie Faye knew he had another SIG in a side holster the oblivious kid had completely missed, but as he crouched and before he could reach the second gun, Jayden squeezed off a shot at his arm. It grazed Trevor’s shoulder and he flinched back as Bobbie Faye yelped, and Jayden’s eyes widened. “Oops. Really. I didn’t mean to shoot you yet.” And he pressed his gun deep into her side.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” Trevor said, as he appeared to be checking the flesh wound, but was, instead, easing to a position where he could overtake the kid.
“I need the stuff,” Jayden said to Bobbie Faye as she tried to turn to help Trevor. Jayden pressed the gun deeper into her side and said, “Really. They had one of those listening dishes and they know your aunt gave you something. I have to get it.” He began patting her down.
Reggie thought she might be having an orgasm. “Please, God, tell me you’re getting this?”
DJ grinned behind the eyepiece of his camera. “I’m getting it.”
Reggie watched through a small set of binoculars. The tip-off of where Bobbie Faye had gone that morning was right, and everything Reggie wanted was falling into place. She and DJ weren’t the only reporters on the scene, but they had been the first there and had the best position to capture the events unfolding at the front of the house. She’d get the top story slot for the evening news. Bobbie Faye Sumrall, in action, with a gun on her. Jesus, this was great. Then she squinted, paying closer attention as the gunman patted the woman down.
“Is she . . . blue?”
“Um, yeah,” DJ said. “She’s blue.”
“This just keeps getting better and better.”
Aiden lay belly-down in the loft window of the barn across the country road from Landry’s Mill, aimed his rifle at the woman, and peered through his scope. When he finally registered what he was really seeing, he backed off the eyepiece a second, rubbed his eyes, and then looked again.
“What’s wrong?” Sean said in his ear, staring out the barn’s upper window alongside him.
“She’s . . . I swear, I haven’t been fuckin’ drinking, Sean. She’s fuckin’ blue. See for yourself.”
He handed his boss the rifle and Sean squinted through the scope. “She’s wearing the woad,” he said, referring to the blue dye across Bobbie Faye’s face and arms.
“Do you think she knows who you are?” Aiden asked. “Maybe she’s declarin’ war against you.”
“Not that it’ll do her any good,” Sean said. “Can you get a bead on that bloke pattin’ her down?”
Aiden checked the scope and shook his head. “Not without hittin’ her. Or takin’ out that guy Emile hired.”
“I don’ much care for that one, anyways.”
“Sure. So, plan B?”
“Yes.”
“You don’ think the woman will give you too much trouble?”
Sean smiled that sick smile Aiden had learned to dread; the kind of smile of a man about to hurt someone for the pure fun of it. “I’m countin’ on it, boyo.”
Twenty
Roy sat glued to the little TV in the back of the black stretch limo, tuned into Reggie O’Connor’s news: she whispered into the mic as the camera focused first on her, then on the scene playing out in front of Bobbie Faye’s dad’s house (didn’t she shoot him the last time she saw him?). Roy’s jeans were half on and a very naked and impatient governor’s wife stretched out next to him. Unfortunately, watching a gunman pat his sister down had completely killed off his libido—something he frankly hadn’t thought possible, but there was always a first.
Of course, the heaping mouthful of guilt he felt for having lied to Lori Ann that he would look for their sister might have also diminished his lust; he hadn’t known he could feel that level of guilt and he would really like to not have made that little discovery. His life had rocked along just fine . . . well, with the minor detail of sometimes being chased by husbands and boyfriends intent on murder because they didn’t take too well to him sleeping with their women. Or the people he owed money to. (Those could be really scary.) He wasn’t quite sure where the guilt was coming from because it wasn’t like Bobbie Faye was out there with a gun pointed at her this time because of him. Except that she’d had to deal with a lot of those husbands and boyfriends and money collectors and maybe, just maybe, she had other stuff to do. Like avoid being shot at by someone.
And painting herself blue.
“Oh, thank God,” the very nubile-for-her-age woman said as she sat up and stared at the screen. “It’s a Bobbie Faye day. You know what this means?” she asked, turning to Roy, her ample cleavage distracting him to the point where he wasn’t entirely sure what she’d asked. “This means,” she said when he failed to be able to use language, “that Delano, my idiot ‘tough on crime’ husband, is going to hunker down and cry and hide until the stupid benefit. We have all day.” She grinned, sliding her hand down his chest to his boxers, using her other hand to slap off the TV.
For the first time in his life, he said, “Baby, no,” and then, “I have to make sure my sister’s okay.”
Whoa. That was like, all grown up or something. Bobbie Faye would be so proud. Assuming she hadn’t gone all Xena, Warrior Goddess crazy already.
When Jayden, the kid gunman, had begun patting Bobbie Faye down, Trevor radiated energy, itching to have a go at the guy. She was pretty sure Trevor paused only because the gun was pressed so deeply into her side, one twitch and Jayden could put a hole through her. While she was a big fan of downsizing, that did not extend to internal organs, and she’d like to keep them inside her body, if that was okay with everyone. Jayden pulled the photos from her back pocket and grinned. He checked her tennis shoes and she was pretty sure the only thing that stopped him from checking her bra was Trevor’s murderous expression when he’d made her lift her shirt. Besides, that bra hid almost nothing, a fact that wasn’t lost on either man, or, for that matter, probably the entire TV audience now tuning in thanks to the press just beyond the front lawn. Bobbie Faye was pretty sure she saw Reggie out there high-five her cameraman.
“Could you sign this?” Jayden asked her as he pulled a Contraband Days beer coaster out of his pocket. “My mom would really go bonkers if you signed it ‘Love, Bobbie Faye.’ ”
“Oh, sure, and why don’t I draw a little stick figure with a gun in my side and a heart over it while I’m at it?”
“Would you?”
She grabbed the coaster and the pen he offered as Trevor said, “You have got to be kidding me.” She signed it for the kid and he grinned, then looked sad.
“They told me they were going to kill you anyway,” Jayden said, backing off away from her as she shoved her feet back into her tennis shoes. “I’m not supposed to tell you, but I think my mom would be real upset with me if I didn’t. Though if you die, I think the coaster would be worth more.”
“Gee. Thanks. I think.”
Jayden backed off, waving the gun at her and Trevor, the barrel still shaking enough to force them to wait ’til he was a safe distance from them before Trevor picked up his own SIG. It was then that she registered that the kid really had taken her photos. Did she have a normal brain that went whew or close call or let’s go get drunk? No. No, she did not. Instead, her brain (which clearly needed a good spring cleaning) said those are my photos, and in spite of the fact that Common Sense was down on its knees, begging her to listen, as soon as Jayden stepped around the corner, Bobbie Faye grabbed Trevor’s SIG, said, “Cover me,” and went after her heritage.
If Cam could push the helicopter faster, he would have, but the pilot had a firm grip on the controls and wasn’t about to release them to someone who was damned near frothing at the mouth. Picky bastard. Jason (who was back in dispatch) radioed over Cam’s headset. “We’ve got confirmation from reports on scene that there is at least one gunman. He seems to be holding a gun on Bobbie Faye. Patrol cars in route, ETA six minutes.”
Sonofabitch. The ETA sucked, but the mill was out in the countryside and the sheriffs were spread thin in that part of the parish.
The acid in his gut went into overdrive. This was not going to be the day he found her dead, dammit, because he was going to wring her freaking neck, and anybody getting in the way of that was going to die first.
Bobbie Faye had barely rounded the corner of the house when she heard Trevor behind her, muttering something that greatly featured the words “blue” and “crazy” and seemed to include a plan for her and rope, and not in a good way. She chose to focus on Jayden as he fled for a snazzy, new green pickup truck parked just in front of the complex of grain dryers.
“The other agents?” she asked.
“Pinned down still, too far from the house to make it around the corner like we did.”
At least in her current location, the sniper couldn’t nail her. Well, if he stayed in his original position in the silo closest to the road—from there, he’d had a good, clear shot at the yard in front of the house, but the grain-drying facility blocked his shot toward the back of the house and the closer she could get to the dryers, the safer she was. She could hear shots landing in the front yard, and return fire, with Mitch asking questions and Kit cheering.
Jayden turned and shot wildly at her, and while the first two rounds missed by several yards, the third ricocheted off the dirt near her feet. She dodged behind a big water well pipe as the next bullet bounced off it, just missing her arm when she banged into the valve. She couldn’t even count the bruises starting to show up from the day before (though one slight advantage to being painted blue? Not as many bruises showed. Yay?).
Trevor angled to her right, firing at Jayden as he fled toward the truck; the kid had a good fifty yards on Bobbie Faye, and if he made it to the truck, he’d get away. She ran and aimed at the back tire, her arm wobbling as she squeezed off a shot, and she’d forgotten that the gas tank to this particular model was situated just to the front of the rear wheel. Okay, maybe she didn’t quite forget that and maybe she was just a little bit tired of people telling her what she could and could not do and taking her stuff, like her photos and maybe, just maybe, she aimed that shot, which went through the tire and into the tank. The truck promptly exploded.
It made a very satisfying fireball.
Jayden stopped, his jaw hanging in surprise, then he took off to gain cover behind a tractor.
Trevor joined Bobbie Faye and he eyed the flaming truck. “It’s hard to imagine why every insurance adjuster in the state has had your photo made into a dartboard.”
“I’m just loveable like that, I guess.”
He gave her an unreadable appraisal as they made their way through parked equipment—harvesters, tractors, a front-end loader—trying to sneak up on the kid, but Jayden ran toward the silos. He slowed dow
n long enough to hand off the photos to a small scrappy man dressed all in black. Which is the precise moment a shot—and not from Bobbie Faye or Trevor—churned up loose gravel at his feet, and it was all the invitation Jayden needed to squeal and run away, his arms flailing above his head like errant kite tails. Scrappy Guy, on the other hand, spun and ran between the two nearest silos.
Trevor noted the emptiness of the office building. No workers on a weekday probably meant Bobbie Faye’s Aunt V’rai had “known” something far enough in advance to keep her employees home. It bothered him on a level he didn’t want to think about, especially after she’d warned him Bobbie Faye would die today. He was used to thinking any day was a day he could die. You didn’t crawl on your belly across desert scrub behind enemy lines or slip into an encampment in the dead of night for a snatch ’n grab or disarm a warehouse full of terrorists without being aware of the risks. He was used to knowing his men were well trained, when he was the elite Delta Force.
She would die today, the aunt had said, unless she followed her instincts, and even then, the odds weren’t high she’d live, but it was better odds than if he forced her to stay behind.
And Bobbie Faye, clearly, wanted to follow the asshole who stole the photos.
It was the last fucking thing on earth he wanted right now. He was trained, he’d spent years hunting men, years defending, killing; there was no way she was sufficiently prepared to play cat-and-mouse with a gunman, much less with snipers in the mix. As much as he wanted to treat her like an equal—and she deserved that, she’d earned it—the fact was, he hadn’t had time to train her. She could get hurt. How in the hell was he supposed to let her walk into these silos? Then the echo of her aunt’s warning thrummed through his chest. Was he a complete fool to even allow for the possibility the aunt may have some ability to predict an outcome? If the crazy old aunt had not just told him very detailed things about his missions no one knew, he’d have ignored her. But now? Could he take that risk?
Girls Just Wanna Have Guns Page 19