Bobbie Faye turned on the palm-sized Geiger counter and slowly waved it over the pieces of art stacked in the safe.
“What is she doing?” Francesca asked.
“Figuring out which of the diamonds are real. The originals have a slight radioactive signature that a Geiger counter will pick up.
“Your mom had a bunch of copies made. I think she knew she couldn’t trust you.”
The Geiger counter’s meter pinged to the right as she moved the unit over a stack of gorgeous chocolate-brown alligator handbags. Polymer handles embedded with stunning jewels sparkled, even in the light from the safe, and Bobbie Faye knew everyone was watching as she paused there. She clicked the meter’s button and the static of the counter crackled through the room, and she picked up the bag she needed.
“Bingo.” She smiled at Francesca.
“So,” Cam said, dead threat carving through his voice, “she killed Sal.” And, by extension, Bobbie Faye knew he’d realized she’d also shot Benoit.
“I did not! Bobbie Faye did that!” When everyone looked at her like, duh, she stomped her foot. “Everybody’s heard about that surveillance footage by now. I’m not the only one who thinks she did it!”
“You probably should’ve used a little more of the roofie drug, Frannie.” Bobbie Faye saw an almost imperceptible change in Francesca’s expression. Jesus, the woman was good at self-control. All of those years living with Emile had trained her well. “Yeah, I remember. You were good, Frannie. But really, not good enough. And pretty soon, everyone’s going to know it was you.”
“You’re making up stupid stuff, Bobbie Faye, and that’s just mean, especially when I tried to help you with your makeup and hair. Which really needs help, by the way.”
Just as Cam turned to Francesca—and Bobbie Faye wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t to kill her—one of the cop’s radios blared out a notice that Bobbie Faye had been spotted at the Old State Capitol and was considered armed and dangerous.
Bobbie Faye held up the gorgeous alligator purse and wagged it toward Francesca. “You lose.”
“The state police are gonna fry you, Bobbie Faye,” Francesca said, waving her phone back at them all. She must have tipped off the police.
“They’re not going to find me. The cops certainly aren’t going to check the governor’s car as he drives me out of town and then Trevor will take over from there.”
“What? Me?” the governor said, and he pushed away from the table so fast, his chair fell. “I am not getting in a car with you.”
“Fine. Then you can explain to the federal government just how you came to have all of these stolen diamonds in your safe,” Bobbie Faye said, smiling sweetly, holding up the purse.
“I hate you,” the governor said.
“Yeah, the six memos you sent out to the newspapers last year pretty much covered that.”
Cam was pretty sure Bobbie Faye had lost her mind, but then, he might not be thinking all that clearly himself. Between Benoit being shot and learning the details on Francesca, knowing he’d been near the person who had shot his partner and he hadn’t been able to snap her into cuffs, had frayed the last tiny bit of logic he had left. It did not help one bit that the governor was leading them to his limo by way of a tiny, cramped secret staircase that Cam couldn’t defend and couldn’t maneuver in.
They had no evidence of Francesca’s involvement. No minor slip back there in the poker room would be admissable or damaging enough. She didn’t lose her cool the way Bobbie Faye had hoped.
“Do you think you can get her to crack under interrogation?” Bobbie Faye asked, and he wasn’t sure if she was asking him or Trevor. They’d left Francesca in the custody of the two state troopers. It had been hell to convince the men to hold Francesca instead of Bobbie Faye, and Cam grudgingly acknowledged that Trevor had helped. He wasn’t sure what the agent had said to the troopers, but it had worked. He had to console himself for now that Francesca was cuffed and on her way to jail for questioning. For now, though, they had to get Bobbie Faye to safety before someone got trigger-happy, avenging Benoit.
“When she knows you’ve gotten away with the diamonds, I think she’ll be so livid, she’ll trip herself up,” Trevor answered.
Cam knew Trevor was going to call for backup as soon as they got out of the stairwell and he had cell reception. They exited the top of the staircase, which opened into the main Senate room. The large space had a soaring ceiling and stained-glass windows, and it was located opposite from the other large House Chamber, where the gala was in full swing.
Aiden and Sean moved to the rotunda in the old castle building, the black-and-white checkerboard floor polished to gleam. They saw Bobbie Faye when she and the other men exited the stairwell and they both did a double take—the woman, the dress, the general glowing quality stunned them for a moment.
“Got her,” Aiden whispered into his Bluetooth transmitter.
“I told you it would help to track the cousins, too,” Robbie answered. There was going to be no living with him now.
Ignoring the guns the special ops guy and cop had, Aiden and Sean moved as a unit. As quick as the special ops guy was, he couldn’t hurdle the governor, who’d accidentally blocked him in the same moment that Sean had a knife to the woman’s throat. The cop was at a disadvantage taking up the rear; he moved a step and Sean tightened his hold and a thin line of blood appeared at the knife’s edge.
Everyone stopped.
“I’ll be takin’ the diamonds, darlin’,” Sean said, and as the ops guy eased just a hair to his left to get a better shot at Sean’s forehead, Sean grinned. “I wouldn’t be doin’ that, unless you want to have my people blow the other room.” He nodded toward the big gala just on the other side of the double doors. “I don’t get the diamonds, a lot of people get killed, including herself, here.”
“He’s bluffing,” the cop said to the ops guy.
“He took out an entire restaurant in Lisbon last year,” the ops guy said.
“I’d like to vote we believe him,” Bobbie Faye volunteered, and Sean chuckled.
A lanky lad bobbed around a corner and came to a complete dead stop. “Sonofabitch, I was trying to find you to tell you we never saw the guys you were looking for.”
“Found ’em,” Bobbie Faye answered. “Sean, I’ve got to move to hand you the stuff.”
Sean relaxed the knife a fraction so that she could slowly turn to face him, and instead of looking afraid, like any sane woman would, she smiled. She not only smiled, she beamed such a high-wattage, come-hither attitude, even Sean was taken aback. She was radiant. That was the only word Aiden could think of, and he could tell she floored Sean’s senses—tough, thug, kill-or-be-killed Sean, who smiled back at her.
Bobbie Faye draped her left hand holding the purse over Sean’s shoulder, and dropped her right hand to her thigh. She wasn’t sure where her courage came from, but her instincts said to run with it. She eased up the short, swingy skirt a half an inch at a time, drawing it out, implying the diamonds were beneath the skirt, and then two things happened: Lori Ann burst through the double doors, thoroughly confounded by the sight of people with guns all aimed at one another, and Francesca stepped out of the stairwell, having somehow gotten away from the two cops.
There was a moment where everything was suspended—the entire gala paused on the other side of those open doors behind Lori Ann, and though they couldn’t see Sean’s knife at Bobbie Faye’s throat, they could see the guns. News cameras swung their direction, the band stopped, Francesca cursed, and the governor fainted, all as Bobbie Faye leaned forward a bit and said, “Welcome to my world, Sean,” and pulled the small knife she’d strapped at her thigh and threw it, nailing the fire alarm a few feet away.
The alarm blared and the gala audience ran screaming out every doorway. Francesca sprinted toward Bobbie Faye (leave it to her to be able to sprint in heels), which is when a sniper round crashed through one of the gothic arched windows of the ballroom. It angled down just rig
ht and sliced through the tiny skirt of Bobbie Faye’s dress—she’d be dead if Sean hadn’t yanked her to his chest when he had.
The gunshot elicited more screams and panic from the crowd, more running, and Trevor and Cam tried to break through the rushing sea of people to get to Bobbie Faye, but they had no shot. Mitch and Kit arrived, Mitch asking, “Now?” and Francesca nodded. Mitch fired on Trevor and Cam, laying down a hailstorm of bullets, ratcheting up the panic, and like a tidal wave in reverse, the crowd changed directions, cutting Trevor and Cam off from following. Sean and his good-looking cohort rerouted out the front door of the building and onto the spreading, sloping lawn, dragging Bobbie Faye with them.
A helicopter hovered, down the steep hill, and Sean, his accomplice, and Bobbie Faye started toward it on a dead run until sniper bullets ripped up the lawn next to them and Sean pulled her behind a tree.
“You are out of your mind,” Bobbie Faye said as she saw Sean try to calculate the best angle to get from the tree to the helicopter with the least amount of exposure to the sniper. “I’m not going out there. He’s shooting at me.”
“Love, have you noticed how every fucker’s shootin’ at you?”
“It’s a talent,” she said. A sniper bullet cut close to the tree and they squeezed together a little bit, each of them craning to see where the sniper was. They could see the rifle barrel silhouetted against a turret in one of the towers. “You know, if you give me a gun, I could make that shot.”
“I know,” Sean said, grinning, “which is why you’re not gettin’ a fuckin’ gun. It’s not like you’d be givin’ it back, would you, darlin’?”
His grin was, as Trevor had said, extremely charming. It lit up his otherwise deadly amber eyes, and she found herself smiling back at him.
“Probably not.”
Then she heard him laugh and say something in Gaelic that made his henchman guy with the Hollywood looks gape a bit, then study Bobbie Faye like she’d just wrought a miracle. The guy looked to Sean for permission and then translated: “He said you’re his kind of woman and he thinks he’ll keep ya.” When she blanched as Sean dialed someone on his cell phone, tall-dark-and-clearly-worried suggested, “It’s better than a hole in the head.”
Bobbie Faye wasn’t so sure of that.
Trevor and Cam took a moment to assess the situation: everything was fucked six ways to Sunday. No sign of Homeland Security, and the state police had their hands full with the madhouse of screaming people trampling one another (and the cops) in an effort to leave the gala. Sean’s other two cohorts were moving along the perimeter of the lawn, trying for a shot at the sniper, who forced them to take cover. An older woman slipped out from behind an enormous fountain located on the outer edge of the lawn, stepping out right behind the little rat-faced weasel of Sean’s. Trevor was almost certain that was the old woman from the store yesterday—the one who’d tried to buy a gun from Bobbie Faye. She pulled a huge Bible out of her enormous purse and smacked the living hell out of the man. She beat him several times, then walked off. The rat-faced guy was on the ground, shaking his head, dazed.
Sean, however, looked adamant about getting to the helicopter, with his men covering him and an unarmed Bobbie Faye. They were too far away for a clear shot.
“I can stop the sniper,” Cam shouted above the wail of the sirens, “but that’ll give them freedom to get to the helicopter.”
“You can’t get a shot from here,” Trevor shouted back, studying the angle up to the tower. They were hunkered down just inside the front doorway.
“I’m not going to shoot him. Just don’t fucking let that asshole get her on the helicopter.”
They looked out at Bobbie Faye and both men froze. Sean had thrown his head back, laughing at something she said . . . and then grabbed her and kissed her. Thoroughly. She pushed away, but he didn’t let her go and she was directly between them and him.
“He dies,” Cam said.
“Oh, yes, he dies,” Trevor agreed, and they split up.
Twenty-nine
John almost had her. He could see just the slightest bit of red that had to be the outer edge of her skirt, but the oak tree trunk was so fucking big, he couldn’t get an angle.
They couldn’t stay there forever, though. Not with the cops getting the crowd under control, and more sirens blaring toward them from the city streets—oh, yeah, he had a good view of that. It was going to be a fucking cop convention in a minute, and she’d move to get the hell out of there. Then she’d be dead, everyone would fucking boo hoo and freak out, and he’d be out of there, collecting his fee. He’d have to let go of getting those diamonds, but really, when he thought about it, killing her like this was much much better.
Cam made it to the fourth floor in record time, taking some of the back cypress stairs. He had to shoot the lock to get past the heavy cypress door and into the office space, then another to get into the specific office he needed, the one that faced the front towers, and he looked out. He couldn’t see the sniper in the dark . . . but he could see the gun barrel where it rested on the turret of the tower. These towers should have been guarded. There was no way a sniper should have gotten up there, and yet, there he was.
At best, he only had a minute. Maybe less. Sean wasn’t going to wait long to make his move toward his helicoptor. Cam’s heart beat in his ears. He yanked the extension cord off the printer and out of the wall; with his pocket knife, he sliced off the “outlet” end, separated the wires, and peeled the ground back out of the way.
Two more shots spit out from the sniper rifle, and Cam cursed. He eased over to the exterior door and slid out quietly, his movements covered by the noise outside, with other gunfire down below.
Please, God, let Bobbie Faye be okay.
Cam slipped out onto a catwalk that spanned the roof and found the cabled wire that ran around the perimeter of the towers to the main building. This was the ground for the building’s lightning rods. He shot it, splitting it apart, hooked his extension cord’s exposed wire to one section, and sprinted. Back inside, he plugged the extension cord into the wall. The electricity now electrified the cable, needing a way to go to ground. As the sniper leaned forward to aim, he leaned onto the cable and then screamed as blue electricity jumped through him and lit up the turret. Now that was one fried sniper who’d never take potshots at the woman Cam loved, ever again.
Cam thought for a brief moment that he recognized the shooter—the guy reminded him of that creepy bastard Bobbie Faye had gotten a restraining order against years ago. He didn’t have time to confirm it—the helicopter below had swooped lower, heading for what he’d known Bobbie Faye’s last position to be.
When the electricity spiked on top of the Old State Capitol’s turret, Bobbie Faye thought for a split second that she saw Cam’s face in the opposite office window, and dear God, please let him and Trevor be safe. The bright blue-white flare dimmed the klieg lights washing over the castle wall, and then dissipated as quickly as it began. What the hell?
She didn’t have time to figure it out as Mitch picked that moment to pop up from behind an oak tree and shoot at them, not looking the least bit befuddled and confused, and the little smidgeon of her brain still operating realized she’d been had. Yet again. So much for Mitch having short-term memory problems—he seemed more than fine now. Determined, and alert. It had all been a fucking act. And then she flashed back to Sal’s murder and finally remembered who’d helped Francesca. The man who seemed to know her, but she hadn’t been able to place why.
Sonofafuckingbitch.
Mitch fired on Sean’s crew as they dragged her over damp grass toward the helicopter hovering down the lawn.
Cop cars blared in from every direction. The news crews who’d been inside the gala crowded around the perimeter, getting every single thing on tape.
Holy fuck. So much for being the planny type. It had all gone to hell so fast, she had to have broken some kind of fuck-everything-up land-speed record.
She did he
r dead level best to “fall” and slow Sean and his crew down, but for the record? She was never ever wearing a stupid dress, ever again, no matter how Trevor looked at her. Sean kept a gun in her side, so falling was trickier, but she managed to slip and he adjusted, pulling back just enough not to actually shoot her (yay) but he recovered way faster than she’d expected and yanked her back up (bastard).
“I might want t’ keep you alive, darlin’, but that don’t mean you can’t have a few holes in you. Stay on your feet.”
A new barrage of bullets erupted and Bobbie Faye could see Francesca’s group shooting at Lori Ann, who’d ducked down behind a big-ass column, and Sean’s redhead taking dead aim at Roy, who was such a crappy shot, he couldn’t hit a target if it stood perfectly still two feet in front of him. Luckily, he’d learned to drop and roll in kindergarten, and now he tumbled toward a big stone planter. The redhead moved steadily on, determined to nail Roy, and not in his preferred way, and it was all too damned much, to hell with Sean and his gun in her side, she just couldn’t get dragged around like a damned ragdoll.
She slid off the heels on the pretense of being better able to run and instead, spun, heels out in each palm, using the stilettos as a weapon and clocked Sean and his movie star–looking thug. The Power of Cute Shoes, indeed.
Both men staggered back from her at the same time the redhead went spastic, blood mushrooming from her back and leg; she dropped onto the hilly lawn as Sean and tall-dark-and-angry gaped.
“Mollie!” the good-looking guy shouted, anguished, but the woman didn’t move.
Kit had made the shot from the opposite side of the building from Mitch, who nodded to her, a plan in motion. They both took aim at Bobbie Faye and Sean, and in that second, Bobbie Faye heard, “Sundance.”
She saw the glint of metal in the air as Trevor tossed her one of his SIGs and he was already moving, already a blur, and bam, Kit was down, Trevor having caught her center mass, but he had no shot at Mitch. The SIG flew and she wasn’t sure how she snagged it out of the air, but she felt the weight hit the palm of her hand and as she landed, she dropped Mitch, blink, to the ground.
Girls Just Wanna Have Guns Page 30