When a Man Loves a Weapon (14 page)

One of the windows next to Cam shattered as he held his gun above the water flow—and more gunshots snapped into the wall near them as the boat tilted more and more with the rushing weight pinning them, flooding over them. Lake water raced in through hatches and doorways and things water should never race into on a boat. The wall was fast becoming the new floor, down was the new up, and one of the giant crystal chandeliers broke away from the ceiling, plummeting straight for Riles, who was battling the water and floating debris as Bobbie Faye yanked him clear and glass razored into the wall next to him.

They were capsizing. The gunmen had disappeared. No way to know where they’d gone, big turtle swimming by; holy shit, was that a baby shark? Couldn’t go back—or forward—since either shooter could be lying in wait.

With a look shared between them, Cam, Riles, and Trevor aimed at the large clerestory windows on the outer wall of their balcony, firing, creating a hole at the same time the boat lurched again, throwing them forward.

Bobbie Faye slid into the blackness of the lake.

The boat pressed down, still sinking, the now-broken windows letting in more water to finish swamping it, and it bobbed up, then rocked downward on top of them, pushing them deeper into the lake, no air, fighting the damned coat jacket, sliding out of it while she looked around for Trevor.

She couldn’t see,
couldn’t see
, couldn’t find him, couldn’t
tell which way was up, couldn’t hold her breath that long, and then Riles tapped her, pointing. She followed him out, away from the boat, and up, where Trevor was swimming back down to find her. The casino rose for a moment, wobbling on the lake, a pendulum fighting a losing battle as Bobbie Faye and Trevor and Riles broke the surface . . . to Cam shouting and pointing as the boat groaned, slamming back down toward them and they dove and swam, hard. Inky blackness, muddy churned water, claustrophobia, lungs bursting, holy fucking
crap
she was going to drown, and then Trevor’s lips pressed hers, air shoved into her lungs as he pulled her away from the sinking boat and upward, back toward the surface, this time out of the footprint of the dying boat.

They treaded water there for a moment, Trevor’s arm around her. Lights of the fire trucks and police cars ricocheted along the bank of the lake as they stayed in place for a moment, waiting to see if any gunmen surfaced nearby.

Nina pulled the black silk form-fitting t-shirt over her head and smoothed it down her body; she’d already ditched the dress, and had donned her black skinny jeans and black boots.

Gilda paced the office in the penthouse, tense and rigid, phone plastered to her ear. Nina listened to her assistant’s end of the conversation while she finished lacing up the boots. Gilda shook her head as she hung up the phone.

“They can’t reach Trevor,” Gilda said. “Apparently, he’s a part of that incident at the casino boat.”

“No fucking kidding.” Nina clicked on the TV where there was a fuzzy shot frozen there of Bobbie Faye and Trevor, both soaking wet, leaning against a fire truck. The police had kept the paparazzi at a distance, but the photo was clear enough, and she’d paused it. “You were making the calls when it popped up.”

“Oh!” Gilda said, stepping closer to the TV. “Wow. That’s him? His hottie factor is much higher than his file photo indicates. And that’s Cam, I recognize him.” At Nina’s questioning glance, she elaborated, “From the Bureau’s background
on Bobbie Faye.” She studied the screen again. “Who’s that?” she asked, pointing to the man who couldn’t really be seen as he leaned against the cop car.

“That’s Riles.”

Gilda’s
holy shit
expression was classic fan-girl enthusiasm. “Seriously? Doesn’t he have, like, the most kills, ever?” Then she caught Nina’s frown. “Sorry. Second most?”

Well, that depended on if Nadir counted as one kill (one event) or twenty-three (number of dead individuals), and if the latter, then Trevor—who’d had to take out the hostiles alone on that mission—technically edged both her and Riles out in the “total number of kills” department. Nina wasn’t going to enlighten Gilda since that was light years above her clearance and pay grade.

Gilda realized her error and waved off the question as soon as she asked it. “Never mind.” Her gaze strayed back to the TV and Nina’s normally professional assistant was practically drooling. “Have you ever met him?”

Dear God, she was a groupie
. Nina would have thought Riles’s reputation as an asshole would have superseded that of his prowess in the kill department and would have deterred such google-eyed adoration, but apparently not.

“No, we’ve never met. We shouldn’t be meeting now, if he’d done his damned job.”

Technically, that was the official story—official, as in, for Bobbie Faye. Because how in the hell would Nina explain having once met Trevor’s buddy, the sniper? Riles wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who’d hang out on photo shoots in Italian villas or French bordellos, where Nina’s S&M magazine would often shoot layouts. She hoped like hell Riles had one freaking brain cell working that remembered the official story. When she’d debriefed him once, he’d had a couple of bullet holes in him (one from her, his own damned fault, being in the way), and he had a startlingly asinine competitive streak that would just get him killed.

Gilda flicked a glance to the cameras located in the corners of the room. There were the obvious cams, and the ingeniously hidden ones, pretty much guaranteeing that no one
entered or left work without proper reasons, without documentation filed and approved. Nina knew how rigid the company was. “The Company” because they were a deep-end-of-nothing, off-the-books little team that worked for NSA on loan to Homeland Security or whoever wanted them that week. Nina had worked for The Company since freshman year of college. They’d recruited her straight out of high school.

Nina had worked alone, mostly, all of these years, but she was a part of a hierarchy. She’d begun suspecting they had leaks. That last Italian job she’d done? Someone had known she was coming. Her main target had outmaneuvered her three times before Nina caught up to him. It cost her days, and the man did more damage—moving funding around for terrorists—before Nina could finish the job.

“They’re going to be upset with you that you’re leaving,” Gilda warned, her worried frown marring the round lines of a face so free of worldliness and experience that it should have been on a twelve-year-old.

“Tough.”

“We haven’t been able to input this new intelligence through proper channels.”

“This is the field, kid.” She strapped on a black leather belt with hidden utility items. “I don’t have time to sit around while this goes in coded, gets deciphered on the other end, they talk about it and brainstorm and then code in a plan of action.” She put on her shoulder harness. She preferred her modified 1911 Colt with its precision sights. She wasn’t quite the marksman Bobbie Faye was, but she wasn’t far off. Too bad she’d never shot with Bobbie Faye on the range. It would have been great to have been able to share that love, that elation of nailing a target and beating one’s best score, but Nina had been covert since she first went off to college. Bobbie Faye was supposed to think she was into antiques, decorating, men, and S&M. “By the time they make up their fucking minds what to do,” she continued her rant to Gilda, “the bombs will have been detonated and a lot of people killed.”

“You can’t fix this by yourself.”

“No, but I know one person who hasn’t been compromised and who I can trust to have the resources to fix this.”

“I’m not compromised!” Gilda exclaimed, innocence spilling from her like tub overflow.

Nina snorted as she checked her weapon: magazine, ammo, the chamber, spare magazines. All in working order. She didn’t holster her weapon and Gilda’s sharp eyes hadn’t missed that cue.

“Kid, I don’t know who exactly sent you and set you up here. Maybe it was our direct boss, and he’s telling the truth—we have a leak in our computer software and you’ll be able to find it and fix it. Or maybe you’re a plant and are running something covert for someone else in the Company—or who knows, someone on the outside. Maybe you’re part of the leak and you intend some nefarious harm. Or maybe you’ve been sent to keep me out of the action, or slow me down. Here’s what I know: I’m going out that door and I’m helping Bobbie Faye. You’ve got a decision: help me or get out of my way.”

Gilda’s worry frown increased, and she looked like a put-out toddler. Nina bit back a laugh, reminding herself that this young woman was definitely much older than she appeared and, to be at the level of clearance Nina knew her to be, well trained.

“They’re going to know you left,” Gilda pointed out. “That you didn’t wait for orders.”

“I rarely wait for orders. You should know that by now.”

They faced off, the computer monitor showing the room where their bomb-talking guest still resided, between them. The man was asleep—from exhaustion, first, and then the drugs Nina had administered.

“You know they’ll track you,” Gilda said, her voice pitched low. “You leave here with information about bombs—and our friendly overseas buyer—that you didn’t wait to call in, and they’ll assume you’re the leak. That maybe you’re helping the bombers—that you talked our boss into this S&M clubhouse cover as a way for you to set up an elaborate attempt
to keep The Company from finding out exactly who the seller was.”

The detonator parts. Extremely high-tech. Sold by her white-haired gentleman in room three to none other than Sean MacGreggor. The information they’d needed . . . weeks ago. Now was almost too damned late.

But Gilda wasn’t just spouting party line—she was thinking.

“Here,” Gilda said. “I think I have a workaround.”

She nudged Nina out of the way so that she could get to Nina’s computer; she pulled up a security checkpoint program and began typing something in rapidly. Nina watched and holy
hell
, the kid was good. Too good. She’d turned off security, keyed to Nina’s thumbprint, and made it appear to be a cascading error in the program, not just Nina overriding it.

“Now,” Gilda said, “with a system error and override, you couldn’t trust anything that came or went out on the computer for another couple of hours, at least. It’ll look like you had no choice but to go out with the information you’ve got, to get to the best person you know.”

Nina reappraised the young woman standing before her, and saw in the eyes of an eager-to-learn young agent that Gilda was telling Nina just how much she trusted her. A young agent with the ability to slice and dice one of the most expensive and complex security systems The Company could buy.

“Who the fuck are you?” Nina asked.

“A friend,” Gilda answered, and Nina knew that’s all she would get.

Nina assessed her for a few more seconds, and then realized: “You’re supposed to be my replacement.” Gilda didn’t deny it. “A little forced retirement?” Still nothing. Nina laughed. Oh, holy hell. “What changed your mind?”

“I think you’re who you’re supposed to be, and I think The Company’s wrong to doubt you.”

“Or you could just be giving me enough rope to see if I hang myself.”

Gilda grinned. “Well, yes, there’s that, too.”

“I could just kill you,” Nina said, subtly shifting position.

Gilda’s light brown eyes twinkled and Nina wondered again just how old she really was. “Well, ma’am, you could try.”

“Ma’am? That’s just mean.” Nina chuckled. “I wish I’d have known sooner. I think we could have had a lot more fun.”

Then she left. Hopefully, she’d be in time.

Ce Ce stared at the TV news: the casino boat listed on its side, slowly sinking into Lake Charles. She didn’t even have to see the headlines that an “unidentified woman” had been seen running through the interior, or hear the news update about the gunshots, to know Bobbie Faye had been involved. Ce Ce wore the twin to Bobbie Faye’s chicken foot bracelet. Right then it was pumpkin brown. At least it wasn’t red. Or black. Brown was way better than black.

Maybe she should sprinkle a little bit more of the anti-juju juice on it and double up on the spell, just to be safe.

“Oh, my
word
,” Monique babbled behind her. “I won?”

Ce Ce turned to see her friend on her cell phone, dancing the Snoopy Dance, if Snoopy were freckled, demented, and had really bad rhythm.

“I won! Ceece,” she said, moving the phone away from her mouth a little, “I
won
.”

“Won what, hon?”

“LSU tickets. To the game! Tomorrow! They’ve been calling for a week and I keep forgetting to check my cell phone! They were almost gonna give my tickets away!” She stopped to listen to something on the phone, then in a rush, said, “I have two! Oh,
oh
, oh! And Russ can’t go, he’s got to work and I can’t pick one of the boys and not the other three so you get to go with me! Isn’t that
wonderful
?” Back to the phone, “Thank you! We’ll pick them up.”

“Football?” Ce Ce asked as her friend hung up. “Where people run around, banging into each other? Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“You’re not looking at this with the right perspective. Let me s’plain: men in very tight pants bending over. Running around. And bending over some more. And lots of men. In the stadium. You’re always saying you don’t meet any good, hunky men, and we’re going to be in a stadium with ninety-three thousand people. There’s apt to be at least one or two cute ones there.”

“You had me at the bending over,” Ce Ce said, and Monique squealed and jumped back on the phone, calling every person she knew under creation to brag about those tickets. Sold-out game; impossible-to-get tickets.

This could be a lot of fun.

Ce Ce snapped the twin bracelet on her wrist. No reason why she couldn’t protect Bobbie Faye while at the stadium. Her gaze wandered to the vials she’d been finishing up. Some of the love potion vials sparkled under her office light. No reason why those things had to sit around all weekend, lonely, either.

Hell, she might as well make a super-strong batch, since she happened to have all of the ingredients handy. It would be a damned shame to let this stuff go to waste.