When a Man Loves a Weapon (15 page)

“I don’t think Bobbie Faye has the hang of this whole “self-preservation” thing yet.”

—Homeland Security expert Rebecca Hinson, in CNN interview

She’d sunk a boat. A whole boat. A boat that was bigger than a house. Bobbie Faye had never sunk something bigger than a house before. Where does that go on a résumé? Hobbies?

Bobbie Faye frowned at the chicken foot bracelet protruding from underneath the towel someone had given her: the foot was orangey brown. If a big-ass sunken boat only rated an orangey brown, she did not want to know what would make the damned thing turn black.

She stood on the bank of the lake, watching the boat continue to sink, its emergency lights still blinking (yeah, that was handy). Overhead, the streetlights cast a faintly yellow glow and the perky red and blue police cruiser lights and the red fire truck lights and the eight billion flashbulbs and lighting for news cameras all made it look like a twinkly demented Christmas card scenario. The Hallmark Apocalypse line: When You Care Enough To Fuck Up The Very Best.

Trevor stood a couple of feet away doing whatever it was agents do when their fiancées destroy things, although she was pretty sure she was garnering her own set of pages in the federal government’s “Employee Spousal Code of Conduct” section. Cam was on the other side of Trevor, talking to his own superiors, arguing the relative merits of putting her
in
the jail versus putting her
under
the jail. Meanwhile, Riles had casually leaned against a cop car and was glaring at her, the kind of accusatory snarl that went far beyond the
garden-variety “you are a menace to society” glare—she’d gotten enough of those to be intimately acquainted with the nuances (everything from “you’re the kind of person who makes someone want to kick puppies” to “eat nails and die.” The latter being the standard glare given to her by the governor.)

Trevor and Cam finished their conversations and Trevor led her, Riles, and Cam away from the crowds until they stood in the shadow of a fire truck, the sound of its running engine masking their conversation in case any diligent agent with a parabolic microphone, or any enterprising bad guy, tried to listen in.

“I want to know what the hell made you two,” he looked pointedly at Riles and then Cam, “lose your fucking minds.”

She stopped Cam from speaking. “We thought your cover was blown.”

“How? I text-messaged you and—”

“We haven’t gotten a message from you since the second day,” Riles interrupted. “I’d never have changed the mission, otherwise.”

“Like you had a choice,” Bobbie Faye said, but she saw Trevor’s surprise and confusion.

“Maybe,” Riles continued, ignoring her, “you need to tell your sister to do a little more R&D on her products before releasing them.”

Trevor frowned.

“What R&D? Which sister?” What did that have to do with—

“So what,” Trevor asked, subtly squeezing her to hold that thought, “pushed this over from mere concern into ‘go fuck up’ territory?” He tensed, a hurricane brewing, a whirl of danger aimed at Riles and Cam, at the same time putting his hand beneath her hair, kneading the tension in her shoulders. It had become a habit, his reaching for her, fingers dancing across her shoulders to make sure she was okay. When she wasn’t, he was so talented at unraveling the tension, she could just slither into a pile of drooling goo and forget, entirely, about vague references to sisters and phones.

Yet, even in that moment when the warmth of his hand felt like heaven, she was aware of how rigid he held himself, how angry he was. He could be a man of stillness, and maybe it was because she knew him so well that she could mark the difference between stillness and tense rigidity. Outwardly, they appeared almost the same.

“I’m sorry,” she said again before either Cam or Riles could answer. For a screw-up this big, she probably needed to have the Goodyear Blimp fly over with some sort of honking huge flag, apologizing. Her luck, the blimp would spring a leak and plunge into a crowd of toddlers. “You said ‘worst-case scenario, three days’ and it has been
seven
. No word, then we get a strange story from Nick—”

“The bookie?”

“Yes, I know. Not a credible source. But there were big bets against me, all of a sudden, and I wasn’t
doing
anything except contemplating the myriad ways I could humiliate Riles at the knife throw and really,
seriously
, you should have given him a shock collar when you let him show up, what
the hell
were you
thinking
?” He raised an eyebrow and a grin twitched at his lips, but he didn’t answer as she plunged onward. “There were also big wagers against
you
and Nick said it was Alex placing the bets. I didn’t know if you were dead or what and I didn’t know what to do because the Feds won’t talk to me, and also? Please tell whoever answers the phone when I call to quit muttering “Demon Spawn” as they hang up on me, it’s getting old, and anyway, I was going to find Alex and beat the living crap out of him and hang him upside down from something upside-downy and find out what the hell he was up to and why you and I were in danger. And then I was all ‘I have a plan’ and one of these days I’m going to learn, and I had no clue we’d be stumbling straight into what you were working on.” He squeezed her shoulders, reminding her to breathe. “I really am very sorry about that.”

He nodded, reassuring. A wealth of relief shivered through her. “I get it.” He eased her closer to him, turning her so that she fully faced him, still subtly working his fingers
into the knots. “But these two,” he glared over her to the two men, “should have known better.”

“It’s not Cam’s fault,” she said before Cam could dig a deeper hole, holding up her hand, motioning for him to stop as she felt herself whiplash with annoyance. “So . . . I’m what? Four? I need a baby-sitter
and
you’re gonna ream them out for something
I
chose to do?” She folded her arms across her chest, giving Trevor the squinty-eyed glare. He raised an eyebrow, looked past her to the hotel-sized boat now lying sloppily in the lake, destroyed, streams of water from the fire hoses meeting in midair to put out the fires, and then he focused back on her.

It was really hard to maintain righteous indignation when she’d sunk a boat.

She sighed. “I dragged them into this. I wanted to know if Cam could find out anything more from the Feds.”

“And you agreed to help her walk into a situation where you,” and he looked at Cam, his voice turning cold, murderous, “did not know if an undercover sting had gone completely wrong or if a federal agent was missing, either of which should have suggested
bad fucking idea
. Why would you two go in there without decent intel? Especially given that you could have been walking into a trap?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Riles drawled, “that he’d have done anything she wanted after they kissed.”

Fury. White. Cold. Coiled.
Fury
. Trevor felt its jagged edges slicing through his veins and he stilled his hands on Bobbie Faye’s shoulders. He glanced from Riles’s smug expression—and he’d have to deal with that later—to the strain of arcing pain lining her face. Her normally luminous green eyes were dark and wide and the pallor beneath them ripped at him. He knew she wasn’t sleeping. Hell, she hadn’t been sleeping when he was there, holding the nightmares at bay. He hadn’t been there for seven nights, but he’d been aware of all of the changes in her the split second he’d seen her on that casino floor.

“You can’t kill him,” Bobbie Faye said, jumping between him and Moreau as Trevor felt his gaze go icy with the challenge.

Wanna bet
? he thought, though he kept silent. He could think of several ways he’d like to kill the detective. Two he knew he could get away with, except for the suspicions of the woman in front of him.

“It’s not what you think,” she said, though he didn’t have to see Moreau’s body language to know it was
exactly
what he thought. “I woke him from a dead sleep,” she continued, guilt radiating off her, “and he was confused.”

“He wasn’t confused when he offered a second kiss,” Riles countered, and Trevor wanted to beat the living shit out of him. Friend or not, this was the wrong time, the wrong place, and the wrong way.

“There was no actual second kiss,” Moreau said, leaving off the
you asshole
end of that sentence directed at Riles, because, Trevor suspected, he had no real room for superiority. “Yet.”

Shredded. Pieces. Alligator bait.

“Shut
up
,” she said to Moreau, and then turned back to Trevor. “You know he’s just doing that to goad you because he’s a total moron sometimes,” which satisfied the hell out of Trevor as Moreau frowned, “and yes, he accidentally kissed me the first time when I was in his bedroom and he was sound asleep and I thought he was dead and then he flipped me over and I would have done some of those self-defense moves you taught me but he was naked and I could’ve really hurt him and he was—
oh
,” her eyes went wide when he speared her with a fury heated to broil. “Shit, I probably should have mentioned the naked part earlier, except that it didn’t matter, because as good-looking as he is—”

“Wow,” Riles interjected, “huge surprise there are
multiple
ex-boyfriends.”

“Shut the fuck up, Riles,” Trevor said without glancing over.

“—he’s not you. God.” She sank her face in her hands. “I probably should’ve slept one of those days you were gone.”
She met Trevor’s gaze again. “But you have to know that he didn’t mean to—”

“Yes,” Trevor said, quietly, keeping his voice even, his eyes on Moreau’s satisfied expression, “he did.” He slid his gaze back to Bobbie Faye, who was one large ball of anxiety and exhaustion. “But you didn’t.”

She shook her head emphatically, exhaling.

“That’s what matters,” he said, pulling her to him.

It wasn’t
all
that mattered, and the hell of it was, the fact that she wasn’t aware of how she was putting their relationship in jeopardy was the thing which could destroy them. As Bobbie Faye buried her face in his shoulder, he seared Moreau with the dead serious
do it again and I’ll kill you
stare Moreau deserved.

And he meant it.

Bobbie Faye sighed. Trevor leaned laconically against the fire truck—as laconically as a giant lion about to pounce and shred the stupid-assed antelope that had just wandered into its sights and mooned it—holding her and, no doubt, glaring at Cam above her head. When she’d sunk the boat, she hadn’t known she could make the day worse, but she had. There were about three thousand things she wanted to say, and another six thousand she wanted to ask Trevor, but after thinking he might be hurt (or worse), the ability to just stand there and listen to his heart beat beneath her ear not only comforted her, it gave her a sudden clarity that cut through the personal hellish loop of
oh, shit, you have so screwed up here
.

“Why,” she asked him, “was Alex there with you?”

She expected Riles to snark with something like, “Ex-boyfriend tic-tac-toe?” but he remained silent.

Trevor’s heartbeat slowed as he held her close. “Bombs,” he said, and she thought she might be sick.

“He’s selling them?” she asked, leaning back to meet Trevor’s steady gaze.

“We were trying to,” he said, and she was lost.

Therapist Beatrice Chan on her blog: “Bobbie Faye as a challenge? Honey, you can’t fix that much crazy.”

“Someone has been buying bomb materials,” Trevor explained. “We’ve heard some rumors that the buyer wanted more detonators, so we put a plan in place. We could do it fast by using Alex, since he’s known on the black market circuit, and there was no need to set up a cover for him. We were putting the word out—subtly—that he had something impressive to sell. A couple of reps of the buyer were at that table. They had seemed interested a couple of days earlier when we traded information, but today, they’d stalled.”

“Because I showed up,” she said.

“No, Sundance, they’d changed the venue twice—we weren’t even supposed to be at that casino tonight. It sure as hell wasn’t my pick.”

“Too many people, too hard to defend,” Cam said idly, and she resisted the urge to peek back at the boat. At least the fire was out. (And except for Hell, dear Sinners, how do you like the weather?) She hoped Suds was okay.

“How’d you know where Alex was going to be?” Trevor asked her.

“Roy. He said he knew where there was a high-stakes poker game, but Alex wouldn’t let him sit in on it.”

“Alex didn’t talk directly to him. We were monitoring everything. We need to find out who Roy talked to.”

“I’m stunned he even answered his phone the first time—he was tailgating at the game. There’ll be too many women
there for him to bother with his phone ’til probably Sunday. Maybe Monday.”

“So you what?” Cam asked Trevor. “Nabbed Alex, threatened him with lifelong prison, offered him a deal if he worked for you, and you weren’t prepared for the asshole to double-cross you?”

“Personal experience?” Riles jabbed.

“Moreau,” Trevor said, “be careful.”

“Like you’ve been? It’s obvious they were going after Bobbie Faye. Alex was placing bets, against
you
—”

“Something we did not know—”

“Cam!” she warned him, but he kept going, pent-up frustration etching lines in his face.

“—and they jacked you around on the location. They wanted you out of the house, away from her, and they wanted her out of the house—”

“Unprotected,” Riles interrupted, nodding in agreement and unhappy to find himself doing so. “Or more so than I could do while we were holed up. That’s why they stalled.”

Her own fury rolled, heavy as lead, in her gut. “You think the whole point of Nick’s confession was to lure me out and away from your protection?”

Just exactly
when
did she become the Universe’s personal chew toy?

“Could Alex have been the original buyer?” Cam asked Trevor.

“Not according to ASAC Brennan.” ASAC stood for Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Bobbie Faye supplied mentally, wishing like hell she had some sort of Bureau crib sheet for their acronyms.