When a Man Loves a Weapon (11 page)

“Have you called Bobbie Faye?” Aimee asked Etienne, and V’rai kicked her under the table, then realized she’d kicked Aimee’s prosthetic shin.

“Hell, no,” Etienne snapped.

“Hush,” V’rai said to Aimee, who had inhaled, clearly about to take up the badgering. Aimee had been on a tear.

“Tut, Boo, I won’ hush,” Aimee said, “when he’s shootin’ off his foot to spite his nose.”

“
Sacre merde
! Dat’s enough!” Etienne shoved away from the little table, caged in, not having the room to pace and throw a regular-sized rant. “
Je n’apprende un mot
!”

“Well of course you don’t want to hear another word,” Aimee snapped. “You never do.”

But he probably didn’t hear a bit of that as he slammed out the door and the entire RV rattled. It took a moment for the RV to settle as Etienne crunched the gravel, storming away.

Quiet.

“That went well,” Lizzie said.

“The idiot should call her,” Aimee griped.

“Oh,
chère, ma fille
, she is not going to talk to him,” V’rai reminded, “not even a little bit.”

“He’s her dad.”

“Is he?” Lizzie asked, hinting at the old scandal in the family that had caused Etienne to distance himself from everyone; V’rai could not only hear Aimee’s disgust, but feel it, too.

“Don’t you say such things,” Aimee warned her sister.

“She
did
shoot him,” Lizzie pointed out.

Gi
-freaking-
normous
. The new casino boat on Lake Charles dazzled, bright lights against the black sky, soaring above the dark glassy mirror of the lake at night. There were multiple decks, like a wedding cake on steroids, and Bobbie Faye felt an innate hitch of annoyance from the wasted wealth she saw framed in the yellow amber glow of the big picture windows.

Three gangplanks—fore, and aft (the service entrance), and center—rose from the bank of the lake up to the boat in wide, welcoming, well-lit paths like whitewashed roads to Oz. As she, Cam, and Riles strode up the service entrance, Riles’s grumpiness grew by some exponential factor of Stupid, which Cam seemed to think he needed to match in Protective Assholery, and really, if she could kick them both off the pier and into the lake? Incredibly satisfying. Like, deep dark chocolate over strawberries satisfying.

“I’m stunned they don’t have your picture with a slash through it out here somewhere,” Riles muttered. “That’s a class-action lawsuit begging to happen.”

She met Cam’s gaze and then glanced away, grateful he disliked Riles enough not to elaborate on the fact that Bobbie Faye had been officially banned from the entire marina for life. She resisted peering over at the dock that had to be rebuilt after the yacht fell through it from the dry dock crane. It was not her fault the owner had asked her to man
the levers moving the boat when she was supposed to be christening it. And wow, who knew a boat could splinter into so many pieces?

Cam looked away from her, frowning. Technically, he was supposed to enforce the ban, not help her bribe her way onto the boat. Thank God this was going to be a simple in-and-out. Find Alex, a little shouting, probably a few staff members having a heart attack, and she’d leave. Easy.

“Tyrone,” she said, approaching the guard. The man was as wide as he was tall and all muscle, and he managed to appear menacing, if Menacing ambled and winked. He broke into a wide smile at the sight of her.

“Aw, Sugar Girl,” he teased, giving her a hug and a peck on the cheek. “How ’ya doin’?”

“Sugar?” Riles asked. “You have some sort of good twin running around here, right?”

Tyrone frowned, but she waved dismissively at Riles and said, “Ignore the Booger Eater, he’s just got indigestion. Got a gift for ya,” she said, pulling a couple of tiny deep blue vials out of her purse.

Tyrone’s eyes boggled a bit. “Is that what I think that is?”

“It’s the
extra-strength
version,” Bobbie Faye told him. She could see his fingers itched to snatch them out of her hands. “Go on. Ce Ce sent it with love.”

Tyrone picked the vials up, in awe. “This is a whole year’s supply.”

“Yeah. You might need new shoes before it’s over.”

Riles snorted. “You can’t be serious. What is that? Love potion?”

“Tap-dancing potion,” Bobbie Faye said. “Ce Ce’s been supplying it to several of the nation’s best dance companies for years.”

Tyrone dug three badges from his suit pocket—badges which would get them past security into the boat. “I think Suds is in the bar,” he said, marveling over his good luck, so totally thrilled, he’d clearly decided not to remind her that even though Suds liked her, he’d asked for an advance written warning before she ever came back into his bar.

They eased past Tyrone as he held one of the vials up to the sunset, admiring the cobalt prisms of light it cast. Once they were out of earshot, Riles said, “That is the dumbest thing I think I have ever seen.” Then he looked pointedly at Bobbie Faye. “Oh, wait. I stand corrected.”

She waved the chicken foot bracelet at him. “Don’t argue with the juju.”

“Certifuckingfiable.”

She watched as Cam scanned the kitchen and the security staff milling through it, the sheer enormity of the kitchen indicating the vast size of the boat. Which meant several thousand people, minimum, milling around. Drunk, drinking, or agitated by their losses—a complicated environment—and that was before they even took into consideration where Alex was, and how many of his men he had with him. Or how armed they were.

Of course, Alex wasn’t supposed to be armed, much less armed in a bar in a casino. She knew Alex didn’t generally play by the rules, and Suds had tolerated him for years. Kinda like Switzerland. Suds had kept her from killing Alex. He’d also kept Alex from killing her.

It was neutral ground, and Alex knew it.

She also knew Suds, ex-Marine from twenty years ago, was still a crack shot, and no one dared draw down in his bar without ramifications.

“This,” Cam had said, “is a really bad idea.” Which he had, in fact, been saying from the time they’d left his home.

“Classic fuck-up,” Riles agreed as they wove through the service room of the casino, where waitstaff lockers gleamed in a row. “We really shoulda cuffed her at your house.”

“You’d’ve had to shoot her to do it,” Cam grumbled as she elbowed him.

“I’m okay with that,” Riles answered.

“You,” she said to Cam, “just can’t stand it when you’re not in control of the ball. And you,” she said to Riles before he could make ball comparisons, “are just whiny because we’re at round eighty-three and you haven’t won one yet. This is going to be quick and easy: I find Alex, I embarrass
Alex, he steps out of the room to shut me up, we find out why he thinks Trevor’s life is on the line, we leave, we tell the Feds.” When they both gave her what she thought of as the suspicious-professor-gazing-over-the-spectacles look—Riles because he thought she was Satan’s Right Hand and Cam because he knew she wasn’t exactly successful at being the planny type—she added, “It’s not like Alex is going to volunteer this stuff to the FBI and I need specifics for them to listen to me.”

There were three ways for this mission to go wrong this evening, and Trevor watched as all three of them walked through the door: Moreau, followed by Bobbie Faye, who was followed by Riles. Trevor had expected trouble.

He just hadn’t expected to be engaged to it.

The contact had chosen the mahogany-paneled room in the casino bar (appropriately named
Suds
after its owner); Trevor would have never chosen a location with this few exits. It made backup a nightmare and he was mostly on his own until he got off the damned boat. He watched the three as they entered, the clink of glasses and scattering of poker chips, the laughter and voices all humming in the room, drowning out any possibility of him hearing what they’d said to the usher at the door. Crystal glassware caught and reflected the light at the bar, and the player across from him nervously wound a chip through his fingers as the player next to him tapped the table, checking on the river card in a high-stakes Texas Hold ’em game.

Trevor called, not bothering to glance at the cards he held; his plan tonight was to lose gracefully. And lose a lot. He needed the contact happy and interested in what Trevor was selling.

Bombs. More specifically, the C-4 and detonator caps necessary to do a helluva lot of damage.

Bombs that rumor had it the contact wanted for a Louisiana target.

Bombs that Nina had been sniffing out on her part of the investigation as she closed in on the supplier.

Rumor had it that the contact had already purchased a few detonators, that some of the bombs may actually be in place, but the contact wanted more. And that’s where Trevor had hoped to come in—as the “supplier,” to lure the contact out into the public, and not just his lackeys here at the card table.

But all of his undercover work was gone to hell and back the minute that trio had walked in the door. Trevor knew his cover had to have been blown. There was no way Bobbie Faye and the Crewe of Idiots (he expected a hell of a lot better from Riles) would just happen to show up in the casino where he happened to be undercover. He didn’t even need to ask how Riles had completely lost control. That reason was currently interrogating the bartender. Sonofa
bitch
.

And frankly, Trevor expected better of Moreau, expected the man to have some goddamned common sense, but Moreau had been working overtime these last four months to sweep Bobbie Faye back into his corner, and the cop had obviously lost his mind in the process.

“Call,” the man named Brian said on Trevor’s left.

On one level of consciousness, Trevor knew every move, every slight physical gesture made by the men at the table, whether they contemplated their cards, fiddled with the chips, drummed fingers, or simply stared, stone-faced. He knew every detail about what they wore, where they carried the weapons they thought no one knew about. He could judge who could handle themselves, and who’d probably run for the door. He’d known how many people were in the room, who left, who returned, and which women or men they were eyeing.

On another level, though, he focused on Bobbie Faye’s fear. There was a grim set to her mouth and tension in her shoulders, and the fear radiated just beneath the bluster. Moreau, on the other hand, seemed cockier than usual, slightly more possessive toward Bobbie Faye. Trevor saw it in the way Moreau stepped in closer, crowding her slightly, and Trevor knew from the infinitesimally small way Bobbie Faye inched away that something had happened between
them. Something more than just an argument, because Trevor had witnessed plenty of those, and she typically responded with more of an intense desire to drop-kick Moreau into the next week instead of . . . discomfort.

He was going to be damned lucky if he could manage not to kill that man.

Trevor sat with his back to the wall, Alex one man over, to his right, and Trevor knew Alex hadn’t looked up yet, and therefore had not seen the tornado on the other side of the archway, across a very large room filled with people, and completely out of Alex’s line of sight. Trevor wasn’t sure he understood how any man could not be aware of her presence—he’d know if she walked into any room, anywhere, even if she’d been dead silent and he’d been blinded.

No, check that—what he really did not understand was how in the hell Bobbie Faye had gotten past the agent outside at the pier and Yazzy posted inside, undercover. Nobody had warned him, which was a fucking nightmare. They’d had a contingency plan in place. There were ways to have handled this, including arresting anyone who wasn’t supposed to be on that boat.

The subset of which was entirely made up of Bobbie Faye.

Bobbie Faye knew the bartender was lying to her as he wiped the glass faster and faster with the cloth in his hand, in rhythm with his blinking eyes, and she was about to go across the bar and really scare the bejesus out of him when Suds came out from an adjoining room, a genuine smile on his lined face, his white hair still in a buzz cut after all these years.

“You causing trouble, Sugar Girl?”

He rounded the end of the bar as he asked, waving the bartender off, and Bobbie Faye barely reigned in her frustration, resisting the urge to use her purse as a battering ram against the mute bartender.

“Hey, Suds,” she said, still distracted by the guilty expression the pipsqueak bartender had as he ran toward the
alcove, glancing at her over his shoulder. “You’re hiring chickens now?”

“
Sugar Girl
?” Riles said. “Seriously, exactly what sort of hallucinogenic drugs do you give these people?”

She ignored him, turning back to Suds, who picked her up a foot off the ground, hugged her and said, “You aren’t planning on tearing up my bar again, Sugar, right?” Suds had maneuvered them a bit to where they were standing alone, where no one could overhear.

“I promise, Suds. That last time was a total accident.”

“Honey, you took a chainsaw to three booths.”

“They beat up Lori Ann after school.”

“I know, Sugar, I’d have held the idiots down for you, but the
booths
were innocent.”

“I really am sorry about that,” she said, turning away from where Riles was glaring at Cam with the most disbelieving,
I cannot believe you’re letting her walk around in public
stare possible. Riles had an entire repertoire of “skeptical.”

“You paid me back. But if it weren’t for the fact that I was your mamma’s friend,” he glanced over her shoulder and she followed his gaze, “I’d have been a mite upset.”

There, behind the bar, were side-by-side autographed photos—one of her mom in a pink ruffled dress, one of Bobbie Faye in jeans, boots, and a tiny little t-shirt, each wearing the family heirloom tiara made from old iron, each with a “Contraband Days Queen” sash that made Bobbie Faye’s eyes itch, and each signed, “To Suds, With Love.”

“Is that there to ward off evil?” Riles asked.

Suds set her down, his brow quizzical.

“Don’t mind him, he didn’t take a Personality Pill today. I’m looking for Alex.”