Girls Just Wanna Have Guns (2 page)

There was something definitely . . . bloodlike in her hair. She’d sleepwalked a couple of times as a kid, mostly wandering aimlessly through the house. She had a vague sense of having done it again last night. An almost-memory of having heard something in her sleep—had she gotten up to check? Then banged into something? Her closet door was open, so it was a possibility. She glanced down, dreading what she’d find, but no, she still had on the same t-shirt she’d worn to bed, but there were a couple of bruises on her left arm and a cut on her right that she didn’t remember having the night before.

So it
had
been a dream. A way too realistic bad dream. Probably best to ease up on the chocolate suicide cake after dinner.

She sprang up to a sitting position as she felt the weight of cold metal in her right hand, a weight she recognized and instantly wished she didn’t. It was her Glock. She froze, her body running cold and clammy. It was supposed to be locked up. It was always locked up, especially with Stacey living there now. Bobbie Faye gingerly checked the magazine: five bullets were missing.

Clearly, the Universe thought it was payback time.

Four days later, the memory of the freaky-assed dream hadn’t faded, but at least she’d managed to push it out of her mind. Her temporary amnesia would have come in handy while she dealt with the Crazy, Inc., portion of society which believed it absolutely had to be armed and dangerous at 10
A.M.

Bobbie Faye wasn’t entirely sure if it was the ninety-five-degree heat searing the June morning, or the fact that Ce Ce’s air conditioner had gotten in a snit and shut down for the day, but it felt like the oppressive warmth had the nutjobs out in force; she hadn’t been at work fifteen minutes and she was already itching to plunge her head through the nearest wall. Or strip naked and go skinny-dipping in Bundick’s Lake. With her luck, she’d end up on the five o’clock news like last year when little high-school senior Aubrey Ardoin caught her completely naked, sinking into the lake, using his spanky new digital recorder, the underaged rat bastard. (He’d financed his techno-geek habit through selling “Bobbie Faye debris” on eBay.) Of course, it was the fact that he’d hacked into the LSU Purple and Gold preseason game and aired her naked self on the JumboTron that had gotten her on the national news. Again.

She wouldn’t ditch Ce Ce in spite of how much she wanted to escape the oppressive heat and insistent customers. She loved her boss, so she stuck it out, breaking a sweat while doing her dead level best
not
to sell a compact
Glock to older-than-dirt Maimee Parsons, a Baptist pillar-of-the-community. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. Or not do, rather. As the person in charge of the gun and knife counter at Ce Ce’s Cajun Outfitter and Feng Shui Emporium, Bobbie Faye was supposed to sell to anyone who’d passed the state-required security check. Maimee, eighty-five, had just aced that sucker. Not exactly a red-letter day for gun safety.

Bobbie Faye should have known something was wrong when Maimee had shown up in baggy slacks, a mismatched striped shirt, and a baseball cap shoved atop her pert white curls instead of being well coifed and wearing her usual church dress. The old woman frowned down her nose over silver-rimmed bifocals, the glinty look in her eyes incongruent with the sweet round doughy “O” of her face.

The gleam in Miss Maimee’s eye was usually because Maimee had long been in charge of the Lord’s Supper at the main Baptist church in town and therefore felt she had a lock on exactly who was going to Hell, and she reveled in the knowledge. But today, the gleam seemed slightly maniacal, and Bobbie Faye wondered if Maimee wasn’t tilting toward the
husband of fifty years gambled away their retirement and needs a-killin’
manner of thinking. Just her very Baptist presence in Ce Ce’s shop—where it was well known that Ce Ce practiced a little voodoo as a sideline business—suggested Maimee had clocked in on the
psychotic break
side of the equation. Maimee wasn’t big on second chances unless the Lord Himself granted them and it looked like Edgar Parsons, recent big loser at the gaming tables, was about to come up on the short end of the prayer stick.

Maimee’s ability to suss out any remotely minor sin intimidated even the most unrepentant person (her nephew, the governor, included). In spite of that, Bobbie Faye liked her. Maimee had been one of those rare people who had actually helped Bobbie Faye’s mom get food on the table, back when most people thought her mom was halfway to certifiable, before they knew she was taking painkillers for the cancer.

As Maimee peered down the barrel of an empty Glock, her spindly legs spread in a stance that would have made Dirty Harry proud, Bobbie Faye scanned the old rambling store, dusty and cram-packed with every imaginable doo-dad and whatchamacallit on the planet. Maybe Maimee could pray over someone instead of buying a gun, but when Bobbie Faye looked around for victims, the store seemed eerily devoid of customers. It was as if the crowd of sinners, knowing Maimee’s reputation for her . . .
enthusiasm
. . . in laying-on-of-the-hands prayer mode, had migrated way the hell away from the gun section of the store.

“Miz Maimee, you don’t really want a Glock. You want to go home and talk to Mr. Edgar and work out some things.”

“Nonsense, girl. This isn’t about Edgar. I feel the need for protection.” She plunked the Glock down on the glass countertop. “I have the right to buy a gun and you have to sell it to me.”

Bobbie Faye rankled at being called
girl
, but she let it slide. It was probably best not to annoy soon-to-be-armed customers. “You don’t know how to shoot.”

“Well, I heard that you’re a crack shot and you give lessons here, so sign me up.”

“They’re kinda expensive.”

“Not a problem. How many lessons will it take for me to be able to pick off an intruder at night?”

“Doesn’t Mr. Edgar come in late sometimes?”

“Here’s my credit card. Run it on through. And add some ammunition. I’m not sure how much a person needs to defend themselves. A lot, I imagine. Ring that up, too.”

This was going to get ugly. Bobbie Faye knew it, knew she was going to be on the blaming end of things if Mr. Edgar should suddenly meet his untimely demise, just as sure as she’d known a couple of months earlier that she had to hijack a truck in order to save her brother who had called with the teeny-tiny problem of being kidnapped and held for ransom. She was sorry about destroying nearly half the state while rescuing Roy. Really.

She had a feeling not everyone believed her, though, which made her think briefly of her ex, Detective Cameron Moreau. Sure, he was sexy and he could be charming as hell when he wanted to be (he hadn’t been an SEC Championship Quarterback for LSU without gaining a little public relations savvy), but for every ounce of gorgeous, he was also pound-for-pound the bossiest human being on the planet. (Well, okay, slight exaggeration. There were a few people she hadn’t met yet and it was statistically possible at least
one
of them was bossier.)

Cam meant well, sure. He had a good heart. She knew that—knew, as they were growing up best friends, that he just wanted what was best for her, even though they butted heads about her choices. There was a moment there at the end of the last chase where she knew he’d been torn between choosing to shoot her and choosing to help her. For about two seconds, she’d thought they might have had a possibility of being friends again when he decided to help, but true to form, as soon as the crisis was over, he’d reverted back to being ticked off that she hadn’t called him for his advice, hadn’t let him control her every move.

Yeah, she was really beginning to empathize with Maimee’s gun purchase.

She picked up the gun Maimee had set on the counter, palming the weight of the sleek metal. An ill feeling gnawed at the pit of her stomach as she flashed back to her weird dream, seeing herself shooting that schlumpy guy. She could practically feel the vibrations of the impact as the man hit the ground.

“Bobbie Faye,” Maimee huffed, tap-tap-tapping her credit card on the glass countertop, snapping her back to attention.
It was just a dream. Only a dream
. “Go on now. Ring it up. I’ve got to get to a prayer meeting.”

The word
meeting
hung in the air above Maimee’s head just as the front door of the old Acadian-style building yanked open, bell jangling, and in flounced one royal pain-in-the-ass: Francesca Despré—all five-foot-five of her, an inch shorter than Bobbie Faye and slightly flatter-chested
(something Francesca had never accepted and used push-up bras to mitigate). Francesca’s short auburn hair framed a perfectly tanned complexion and her couture clothing shrieked
Wannabe Diva!
She teetered on black four-inch stiletto heels and carried a fluffy shockingly pink feathered purse that she clutched in one hand and an alligator-clad makeup sample case in the other. It was the shredded and practically nonexistent black micro-miniskirt which was the
piece de resistance
—a skirt made of such gossamer threads barely strung together, Bobbie Faye suspected there was a dumbfounded spider who woke up that morning wondering where in the hell its web had gone.

Francesca headed straight for the gun counter. No hope that the impending doom of Francesca showing up was unintentional. She sashayed through the store, weaving past the camo gear and fishing tackle, the tents and Coleman lanterns, rerouting at the last second to avoid the screened-in boxes of live crickets and overstacked shelves of “Feng Shui” crystals Ce Ce hadn’t quite managed to unload.

“Fuck,” Bobbie Faye muttered, eyeing the nauseatingly perky Francesca crossing the store.

“Bobbie Faye!” Maimee reproached. “Watch your language!”

“Miz Maimee, you’re buying a gun. I’d be willing to bet you just upped Mr. Edgar’s life insurance. You don’t get to take the high road today.”

“Hi, Bobbie Faye,” Francesca bubbled when she reached the gun counter. “We have a problem.”

Encryption code in: ***********

From:
Simone

To:
JTyp

Confirmed: BF is inside, F has entered.

Encryption code in: ***********

From:
JT

To:
Simone

All plans are go.

Bobbie Faye scanned past Francesca and realized that every male customer over the age of two had suddenly found the aisle to the gun counter absolutely essential for their shopping needs. Francesca, for once, seemed not to notice the attention she drew. (Once Francesca went through her
boy-crazy
phase—oh, wait, she was still in that phase—she’d morphed from a partner-in-crime prepubescent tomboy, breaking into the neighborhood “male-only” clubhouses, into a beauty-pageant attention-seeking missile, treating makeup application with the same reverence other people would give to CPR.) Francesca propped her purse and sample case on the counter and immediately proceeded to give Bobbie Faye the earnest expression.

“Oooooohhh
no
,” Bobbie Faye said, having seen that wobbly helpless wide-eyed
please-oh-please-help-me-with-my-homework
pout one time too many. “We,” Bobbie Faye leaned forward over the counter, gesturing between the two of them to emphasize the point, “do
not
have a problem.”

“Bobbie Faye, you have to help. I told them you would.” Francesca worked the big doe eyes and pouty lips.

“Nice try. Not happening.”

“Wait,” Maimee asked Francesca, her shrewd gaze narrowing beneath the brim of her baseball cap, “you’re that Lady Marmalade woman, aren’t you?”

“Why yes,” Francesca preened, turning the makeup sample case to show the Lady Marmalade logo on the front.

Maimee dug into her oversized handbag. “You sell to hookers and pole dancers and big-breasted women who frequent gambling parlors, don’t you?”

Before Francesca could answer, Bobbie Faye put a hand on Maimee’s arm as it heaved out a Bible the size of a mini howitzer. “I don’t think we have time for you to pray over her today. It would take hours.”

The old woman gave the Bible a little backswing shake. “I was thinking more along the lines of smacking her with it.”

Bobbie Faye wanted . . . oh, how she wanted . . . to move out of Maimee’s way and let her have at it, but she gently guided the Bible down to the glass counter, and said, “Miz Maimee, have you considered anger management classes?”

“She knows what she’s talking about,” Francesca said to Maimee. “Bobbie Faye’s had to take it three times already. They even give her discounts now.”

“Not helping yourself one bit, Frannie. You should be leaving.”

“I can’t, Bobbie Faye. They’re coming!” Francesca nodded toward the door, as if that was self-explanatory. “And if you don’t hurry, you’re gonna be in trouble.”

“And just exactly
why
would I be in trouble?”

“Because I told them you would know where they are. Or how to find them. So now they think you do, or that you can, so you have to or they’re gonna kill people.”

Aiden Stewart threw the rest of the soggy chips—what these bloody Americans called fries—into the paper sack and cursed the blasted fast-food drive-through. With a place as big as the U.S. he’d have thought there’d have been someone who’d mastered the art of frying a potato.

What he wanted was a whiskey, but Sean MacGreggor, who could be a right sour bastard of a boss, frowned on drinking while at work and had been known to permanently retire a guy or two when he’d caught ’em at it. Aiden had secretly maintained that it was the Scots side of MacGreggor’s Scots-Irish DNA from his Presbyterian mother that had ruined him, because no decent Irishman would have blinked over a wee drink or ten.

They had been parked for nearly an hour in a vacant lot located diagonally across from the strangely named store where this Bobbie Faye woman worked. Aiden glanced around the interior of the box truck they’d leased for the job. Sean, their boss, stretched out, looking about as relaxed and friendly as coiled razor wire. The barbed wire scars pocking the left side of his face should have rendered Sean repulsive, but Aiden was damned if it didn’t seem to have the opposite effect, especially on the women. Aiden had known Sean since they were kids growing up, scrabbling for existence in Tallaght, west of Dublin. He could no longer remember the first person Sean had killed, but
he remembered it had been to help them eat, and they’d followed him ever since.