Guns and Roses
Page 47
He hung up and Andrea stared at the phone.
It was that woman’s fault for bringing her to this. If she hadn’t already devised a plan to get rid of her, she’d have her killed. That woman was entirely too much trouble for one person.
~*~
It was insulting, is what it was, Bobbie Faye fumed. She’d tromped down a long stairway, having to hold up her gown to keep from tripping, knowing it was getting grimier by the second rubbing against the old, moldered brick walls beneath the grand Cathedral. Clearly, this passage led to some sort of storage room for the priests and God only knew what else—some of it looked to have been there from back in the Underground Railroad days. Trevor had said this church had been here since the 1700s, but it never occurred to her that there was something underneath a church that was, essentially, on a parcel of land that sat below sea level. The levees barely kept the river out of the Quarter. How any of this wasn’t flooded with groundwater was a flat-out miracle.
But that wasn’t the insulting part. And it wasn’t just that they’d kidnapped her and ruined her wedding. No. They had tied her up. With a soft handkerchief. With her hands in front of her. If she sneezed, the stupid handkerchief would come untied. And that? That was just fucking disgustingly insulting. She was having to sit completely still so she’d stay tied up.
The idiots had looked at her in her beautiful wedding dress and had immediately dismissed her as a threat. They’d led her through that stupid storage room, through a maze of tunnels, and into this dank, little room that sat, she grasped from their conversation, just beneath Pirate’s Alley.
Named for Jean Lafitte. Her great-great-great-great-she-lost-track-great grandfather.
So, of course, she’d be kidnapped and held hostage in some sort of dingy dungeon room he’d built waaaaay back when he was the king of pirates and basically ruled New Orleans. She wanted to go back in time and kick him. Hard. In the teeth.
The woman holding the gun on her was gorgeous, but obviously completely bored with this whole “guard duty” thing, as she’d laid the gun in her lap while she flipped through a fashion magazine. There was a little squealy guy who kept glancing Bobbie Faye’s direction and flinching when she glared at him as he worked on some sort of laptop with several other handheld types of machines nearby. Standing next to him was the guy they called RG, who was clearly the leader; a silver-haired guy maybe in his sixties or mid-fifties, who just watched the squealy guy work and barely acknowledged Bobbie Faye was there. She could hear other men talking and moving around just beyond a doorway—a door that entered a room beneath the Cabildo. The Museum.
Meanwhile, Trevor and she had had a plan. They had expected his mother to create a ruckus, try to swoop in and stop the wedding, and Trevor had asked her to play it low key. Helpless. She was supposed to pretend to be weak, should anything as outrageous as an—oh, let’s reach for it… kidnapping—were to occur. It was, Trevor assured her, the very least likely thing that would happen, because he and Riles had covered all of the bases before choosing this church. He had men outside. He had men watching his mother. He had men watching the apartment where they’d dressed. Nothing, he said, is going to happen. You’re going to be in a fancy dress that will stop you from being able to fight or get away quickly. You won’t be armed with much more than your little pistol. That makes you extremely vulnerable. Just play helpless until I get there. He’d made her promise.
Helpless. She could do helpless. It was going to fucking kill her, but she could do helpless. And then she was going to stomp some ass. Very possibly Trevor’s. But these guys? Oh, yeah, they were first.
She glanced down at her torn dress, at the grime that marked it from her hem to her thighs and tears ran down her cheeks. For the love of God. Actual tears. The stress from this stupid wedding that she hadn’t wanted, hadn’t needed, hadn’t been able to convince Trevor was a colossal waste of time had finally broken her and she was freaking leaking.
Someone laughed, low and sexy, and Bobbie Faye turned to face the beautiful woman lounging on the ratty desk chair a few feet away from where she was tied up on an equally ratty sofa.
“So you’re supposed to be the badass pirate girl?” the woman asked, clearly having heard the rumors. “This state must have really low standards for bad-assery.”
“That’s what I keep telling them.”
“See, RG,” she said, “I told you she wasn’t anything to worry about. I don’t know why y’all thought we had to have all those extra guns.”
“Hush, Catalina. She might be silly, but she has ears. Let’s not tell her everything, okay?”
RG was almost gentle with the woman, as if he cared, and then he stroked Catalina’s cheek and tapped her on the nose like a little kid before he walked back to the computer and started working with the computer guy.
“I don’t see why it matters,” Catalina muttered under her breath. “It’s not like you or that guy you’re supposed to marry are gonna live anyway.” Then she brightened and said, “But hey, you look pretty. You know, for when they find you. I always think it’s so sad for people to, you know, die in ugly clothes, like their sweats or their pajamas or something. At least you got to wear the dress!”
“Well, yeah, there’s that bright side, just bouncing all over the fucking place.”
“See? I knew you’d like that. RG thought maybe we should make you change into something that wasn’t as easy to spot at a distance, but I knew you’d rather die looking really pretty.”
Bobbie Faye gritted her teeth. She could probably take the woman right now, and maybe RG, but she didn’t know what the men in the other area under the Cabildo were doing—or how many there were, or if they were armed. If she got hurt, Trevor would kill her. Well, he’d actually kill them, which would probably mean prison, but he’d be livid with her for breaking her promise.
Think helpless… she slumped a little more, trying to look scared and defeated. These idiots didn’t even appreciate the effort she was making. They were soooo going to pay for that.
~*~
“Shit,” Nina said when she opened the door to the small room just off the vestibule. It was a tiny gift shop, not an office like she’d first thought. Trevor and Riles crowded in behind her and Nina felt real fear creep up her spine.
“Her Disasterness didn’t exit this room,” Riles said, relaying information from the men he and Trevor had planted inside and out at all of the exits. “No one’s seen Psychobabe outside, either, though it’s a zoo out there. There’s a huge crowd leaving the Cabildo next door—a big exhibit—and the square is already standing room only—they’re hampering our line of sight. I’ve got men combing through it, now.”
“What’s wrong?” Cam asked from the door as Trevor placed a call.
“Someone took Bobbie Faye,” Trevor said, pointing to a note left behind the counter.
“They have a death wish,” Nina muttered, and Trevor didn’t bother to contradict her.
“Sundance is definitely not answering,” Trevor said, “and I’m the only one with this number on the new phone. If she could answer it, she would. Cam, get Izzy on the phone. Let her know what’s going on, see if she knows if our mother has Bobbie Faye.”
“You don’t think?” Cam asked, and when Cam grasped the cold rage in Trevor’s expression, he paused, nodded, and glanced at Trevor’s phone to get Izzy’s number.
“I know my mother,” was all Trevor answered, and Nina didn’t even have to look at Trevor to know he’d kill every one of the goons his mom had hired if he got his hands on them. And, very possibly, his mom. She was going to kick Trevor’s ass later for not including her in that little tidbit of information. She could have helped. Was this why Bobbie Faye had been so weepy? Was it because this wasn’t a real wedding and she’d wanted it to be? Nina tamped down the fury as she tuned back into the orders Trevor was issuing.
“Riles, get all the security footage we have from yesterday ’til now—”
“Already on it,” Riles said,
operating two cells phones and talking into his microphone as well. It steamed Nina.
She grabbed Trevor’s arm and locked gazes with his own furious one. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me you suspected something like this was going to happen?”
“You were out of the country,” he said, banking his rage to give her that moment. She knew it cost him not to keep issuing orders. “And I knew it was going to be ugly, what you were up against.”
And at that moment, Riles snapped his attention from Trevor to her and drilled her with his own furious stare. Which. She. Ignored. There was nothing to tell Riles. There never would be.
“By the time you got home—three weeks ago—everything was set in motion and Bobbie Faye was afraid if she broke character, she’d slip up everywhere.”
“So this entire wedding is a ruse?” she demanded and Trevor scowled, clearly unhappy.
“Not by my choice,” he answered.
“To catch your mom? You fucking did this to Bobbie Faye to trap your mom?” Cam asked, and Trevor’s brutally angry glare at him for once shut Cam down.
She had talked to Bobbie Faye about wedding plans for weeks. It pissed her off to know that everything had been faked. All of Bobbie Faye’s nervousness… artificial. Nina wanted to be furious with her… except she’d done the same thing to Bobbie Faye, for years. Had been in deep ops without ever telling her best friend what she really did for a living. No wonder Bobbie Faye had been ticked off when she’d learned.
And no wonder she’d just wanted to get this wedding over with—it wasn’t real. Did Bobbie Faye even want it to be real? Nina glanced at Trevor’s own dark scowl and odds were, as unhappy as he was when she asked, the answer to that was no.
“I’m going to go do recon,” she told him, steaming and trying to come to terms with it. “I’ll let you know what I find.”
“You’re not going alone,” Riles said, and she gave him a cold stare.
“You,” she said, “will back off. I’ve handled much, much worse.”
“Not in a dress and heels.
“I believe I was wearing a dress and heels when I shot you and stopped your team from being annihilated. You’ll—”
“We have men in place for this contingency already,” Riles snapped back at her, and she had already spun away, heading for the door when Trevor’s phone pinged. She spun back and they all saw a photo of Bobbie Faye, tied up on some crappy sofa, gagged—big surprise there—and slumped over. Her body language said she was scared. And defeated.
“Riles,” Trevor said, and that was all that was needed. Riles nodded, already on the phone, issuing orders.
“What the hell is wrong with her?” Cam asked.
“She’s following my orders,” Trevor answered, his eyes never leaving that image. “She’s supposed to act scared if anything happened. Helpless.”
“Fuck,” Cam breathed. “Have you ever known her to actually follow orders?”
“Look at her eyes,” Nina warned them, and the men all bent over the phone, enlarged the photo to get a closer look.
“Oh, hell,” Cam murmured as Izzy answered the phone and he said, “hang on.”
“Fuck,” Trevor agreed, because it was plain to see, for anyone who knew Bobbie Faye, that she had just snapped her very last nerve and, God help them all, was about to explode.
“Why helpless?” Nina asked, wondering if Trevor hadn’t clearly lost his mind, planning this wedding. “She can’t even lie about Christmas presents—what in the hell made you want her to try to fake helpless?”
Trevor scrubbed his face with his hands, his rage obviously barely held in check. “Because she’s pregnant, and I didn’t want her to risk the baby if something were to happen.”
And for the first time in her life—including every twist and turn of every black ops game she’d ever run, every scam, every sting—Nina’s poker face failed her. He could not have just said what she thought he just said. No. Way.
~*~
Trevor registered the shock from everyone in the room as if it were a physical blow: neither Cam, nor Riles, nor Nina even blinked.
“Are you freaking serious?” Cam asked, going pale.
“You’re insane,” Riles groused at the same time that Nina said, “No way. She would have said something.”
“I don’t think she realizes yet,” Trevor answered. To more astonishment than even the first announcement had rendered.
“How in the hell could she not know?” Cam asked. “Did you fucking trick her?” As he pushed forward, Riles put up a restraining arm and gave Cam a warning glare.
“Back. Off,” Trevor told Bobbie Faye’s ex. “She was too busy freaking out over the wedding and the potential of disaster that my mother might bring to notice she’s late. There was no point in worrying her more.”
“Right,” Nina said, furious with him, “because it’s much better for her to be completely unaware that she could lose her baby if she gets in a violent fight with a bunch of kidnappers. Brilliant plan.”
Only he and Nina knew that Bobbie Faye’s doctor had told her that she might never carry a baby to term because of the heavy scar tissue from when she’d been shot last year. She’d saved Trevor’s life that night. If she lost a baby, and she knew he hadn’t told her, he could lose her. If I lose her, I’ll die, was all he could think. Until a worse thought hit him: he could lose them both. Their baby. Dear God, what have I done?
“Izzy says your mom doesn’t have her at the hotel, as far as she knows. She’s got monitors on the doors. Apparently, this runs in the family, you guys and surveillance. She said Bobbie Faye hasn’t been brought in. Your mom is tense, though.” Cam listened and then added, “Way more than usual. I’m gathering,” Cam said into the phone to Izzy, “that this is a little like saying Bobbie Faye is only a tiny bit batshit.”
Before Trevor could respond, his phone rang with an unknown caller. He looked up at Cam, who nodded when Izzy was ready to trace the call. Trevor answered, “Cormier.”
“We have something you want, though for the life of me, I can’t see why,” a man’s smooth voice said. “Follow our instructions and everything will be fine.”
“What do you want?”
“You. I’ll text you the instructions.”
And the man hung up.
“Shit,” Cam said. “Izzy says they’re calling from in the Quarter, but she couldn’t narrow it down closer than that.”
“They can’t be far,” Nina said. “She was just here.”
“There are thousands outside,” Riles reminded them. “The guards said it’s getting worse—some big musical act is about to play up on the levee across from the Cathedral and thousands are crammed in the square and all of the sidewalks around it. They’re being forced by our guards and police to create a corridor for your carriage to leave after the wedding, but everything else is locked tight with traffic and pedestrians.”
Trevor kept checking a tracking program app on his phone—a Cormi-Co patented invention Izzy had created. “The location transmitter hasn’t moved,” he said, watching the little red beacon beeping in the Quarter. Even zoomed in, it looked as if it were beeping in this very room.
“She must’ve dropped the transmitter in here,” Nina said, scanning the floor around the counter where the note had been left. “What’s it look like?”
“A slim gold safety-pin. Looks like the real thing—the tracker’s in the head of the pin.”
They all fanned out, and found… nothing. The tiny room was spotless, though filled with souvenirs of the Cathedral, as well as various Catholic pamphlets they liked to give out. But nothing resembling the safety-pin.
Trevor refused to believe it. Couldn’t believe that every alternate safety measure he’d put in place had failed. He couldn’t lose her. He wouldn’t.
“Told you so,” a man’s voice said from the doorway and Trevor snapped his head up to see Alex, Bobbie Faye’s ex and a gun-runner he’d helped capture once and used to infiltrate the terrorists who w
ere hell bent on revenge on Bobbie Faye. Terrorists who’d ended up dead in the middle of LSU stadium, when the lights had gone out, just before they were able to blow the entire site to bits. And Alex had disappeared when all hell had broken loose. Typical pirate.
If there was anyone who took himself too seriously, it was Alex, who, today, was channeling Johnny Depp (if Depp were a little stockier and taller). Long hair, braided now, scruffy beard, worn leather jacket, rings. Leaning in the doorway with one of their guards holding him at gunpoint.
“Found this, sir,” the guard said to Riles, “trying to get into the back of the Cathedral. Said he knew Mr. Cormier, here. Said he had important information you might need.”
“Oh, I do,” Alex said, grinning, looking at Trevor. “Unless you happen to know where your missing bride is?”
“You bastard,” Cam snarled before Trevor could stop him, and he moved slick as lightening, slamming a fist into Alex’s face, nailing the man against the door frame, knocking him out, cold. Cam stood over Alex as he slid down the doorframe into a heap onto the floor.
“For starters,” Trevor said to Cam as he yanked him back and slammed the cop against the wall, “nice shot. But that was my shot to take, not yours, because Bobbie Faye is mine, and if you have any thoughts different from that, then you get the hell out of here, now, because I’m not going to tolerate it. And second, he’s on our fucking side.”
Cam seethed. “You’re out of your mind if you think Alex is on anyone’s side but his own.”
“And you’re out of your mind if you think I don’t know that and haven’t taken precautions to make sure Bobbie Faye is safe.”