When a Man Loves a Weapon (24 page)

With a glance, Riles stopped her from going to the moaning, groaning, whining kid and reminded her that there was still another of Sean’s men inside, the other “paramedic.”

“I just saved your life,” she pointed out when he hadn’t said anything. “Again.”

“Are we supposed to bond now?”

“I think I’ve met my minimum daily requirement for Hell, thank you.”

“I’m shot over ’ere,” the kid yelled. “Do somethin’!”

Bobbie Faye and Riles couldn’t risk stepping out from their protected position—Riles had chosen a spot mostly inaccessible to shots from other angles inside the barn. Someone would have to come right up on top of them—the way the kid had—to get a decent shot. She had to give Riles kudos for their relatively safe position. Although, if she’d put Riles on the kudos/demerit system, he’d be rivaling the national debt right now.

“Where’s your friend?” she asked the kid.

“I don’t know,” he whimpered. He was sprawled behind the column, which blocked her view of most of his body. “He’s gone.”

“Yeah, and I’m a fairy princess,” she said, “who’s going to pop another one into your ass if you don’t talk.” Her hands shook. She hid them from Riles.

The kid went back to moaning and crying, and she heard a low bird call from somewhere to their right, over by the back door of the barn where they’d originally entered, and Riles gave three taps against the wall and grinned.

Trevor must be back. That meant he was safe. Except for maybe the second moron tooling around inside the barn. She figured the whole code thing with Riles was Spec Ops talk for “bad guy inside, watch your ass.”

Trevor was back. She sat down on the floor, trying to hide the shaking. She just wanted to go home. . . .

Right. No home to go to.

“Chicken Foot,” Riles said, watching for movement in the stables, “are you going to be all girly whiny tiara-wearing now? Because we still have a job to do.”

“Fuck off, Barnacle.”

“Right back atcha, babe. Don’t let that kid get up and leave.”

And with that, he slid out of their little hidey area and into the vast stables, and she couldn’t hear anything, except for the kid moaning and swearing.

Lonan had his gunsights on the woman. She huddled down below a stall door, just on the other side, forgetting, he knew, that the thin two-by-four wouldn’t protect her from a round. The odd green haze of the lights rimming the ceiling caught her white t-shirt and broadcast her position between the slight cracks of the stall.

He had a head shot.

The woman had shot Zimmer.

The woman
shot him
.

Stupid kid. Damned stupid, and it made Lonan sick. He’d hired the street rat two years ago. Gave him a leg up. Trained him.

Told him that he, Lonan, would take out the sniper.

Told the idiot to act as back-up.

Lonan could punch a hole through her right now. Easy. He’d seen the beauty of Sean’s game: the revenge for Mollie and Aiden and Robby, and the revenge against the Fed, for Sean’s arms. Lonan wanted her dead, wanted all of this to be over. They could go home when she was dead. She couldn’t keep affecting Sean’s judgments. His fucked-up choices. She’d be done.

He watched her stay completely still behind that stall wall—her shirt not moving, completely unaware that he had her in his sights. The urge to just pull the trigger anyway, just wound her a little more, clawed for dominance. Then the ambiance of the room changed, softened. In the hush, he knew the other men had returned. They would be circling through the building, trying to see if he was still there, trying to flush him out. He cast her one more glance. She’d pay for everything. Including Zimmer.

And he turned his gun on the kid where he lay crying on the floor and killed him with one head shot.

In the next second, he slipped out of the barn, and ran
into the darkest area of the woods. Dox and the other men would be waiting in a boat not far away on a little bayou that cut through the back of the racetrack property.

Bobbie Faye wavered there, on the floor, having to hold onto the wall of the stall to keep from sliding onto the floor from shock. The kid was dead. The gunshot still echoed in her head and the kid
was dead
. He’d stopped moving and she could see the blood spreading out on the concrete floor but, luckily, not the actual head wound, and it had to be a head wound—the rest of his body was still visible to her past the column.

No way Trevor or Cam or Riles had shot him.

Sean was
insane
. Sure, she’d realized he was vengeful, and hurtful and aggressive and all sorts of adjectives for
bad motherfucker,
but this? Was
insane
. As much affection as he had for his own men, if he was ordering them to be killed if taken, then what the hell chance did she and Trevor stand against him? He’d have no mercy.

The overhead lights flipped on and when she turned, she saw Trevor running across that big barn toward her. He was covered in mud and twigs and leaves and an expression of ragged unshuttered pain permeated through him. She shucked the flip-flops and ran, barefooted across the room and when she got there, she leapt.

He caught her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, wrapped her arms around him, mindless of the mud and the debris, mindless of everything Riles had said, mindless that Cam came into sight, whole and well and safe.

She buried her face in Trevor’s neck, his arms around her, one hand sliding into her hair, thumbing the tension at the base of her neck. She ached. Writhing pain, acid in her heart, she hurt so much, all she could do was hang on.

“It’s okay, Sundance,” he said, as he kept moving, carrying her back to a safer location. “It’s okay. Don’t look,” he cautioned, turning her away from the kid. “Don’t look.”

She wasn’t sure how long she stayed in his arms. He murmured for the longest time, one hand supporting her weight,
his free hand never ceasing to move, to trace over her shoulders, her side, her hip, as if he needed reassurance, too, and found it in their touch. She wasn’t sure how many times he’d said, “It’s okay,” but she knew neither one of them believed it.

It wasn’t okay. Sean was going to make sure it was never okay again.

“Is it a nice jail that we’re in?” V’rai asked her sisters once the footsteps faded away. It smelled like musty files, Lemon Pledge, and Old Spice. And sweat, definitely sweat, but V’rai was having a hard time imagining a cell with Lemon Pledge. Maybe they just kept the bars extra clean?

“We’re in the interrogation room,” Lizzie explained, guiding V’rai over to a chair. “The jail’s full—Friday night drunks—they didn’t want to put us in there.”

“This wouldn’t be happening if he’d’a just claimed her,” Aimee snapped. She’d been at it for the better part of a month, this anger over Etienne’s bullheadedness against Bobbie Faye. “He should’ve claimed her a long time ago.”

“Hush,
bebe,
” V’rai said, smoothing her palms over the cotton of her pants. It was colder tonight than she’d expected. Of course, she hadn’t expected to light out of the RV like a bee on fire and drive the car, after all these years. She hadn’t thought ahead, or she’d have brought a coat.

“You know it,” Aimee continued, and V’rai could hear her pacing. “I know it, Lizzie knows it. Even Antoine knows it, but he’s too chickenshit to say anything about it. He should’ve confronted Etienne when she was a kid. We all should have.”

“We did,
chère
.”

“Not enough,” she said. “It’s our fault that girl is running around out there, not feeling like she’s got family. Scraping by. She wouldn’t have been in this position if Etienne had claimed her like he ought. He could’ve at least kept her from starving all those years.”

Etienne had always had money. He was one of the most successful rice farmers in Louisiana and owned a mill. A
mill that had burned to the ground recently after the last Bobbie Faye disaster, but still, a frugal penny-pincher like Etienne planned for bad years. He drove an old truck, owned the old car V’rai had driven this evening, the house was paid for (slightly burned to the ground, too, but luckily insurance kicked in). He didn’t dress like a successful businessman with his worn shirts and cracked leather work-boots.

No, his disagreement with Bobbie Faye’s mother had never been about the money. He was a cheap bastard, but generally an honorable one who’d have paid child support if he thought he owed it. He hadn’t thought so, though everyone told V’rai that Bobbie Faye was the spitting image of her, so she was clearly a Landry child.

But maybe she’d been Antoine’s kid. Nobody really knew. For years, Etienne flat refused to acknowledge her, but V’rai had her own reasons for believing Antoine wasn’t the father, though she had never taken sides, and as far as she knew, neither of her sisters knew the truth, either.

“I don’t know why Etienne can’t just accept her,” Aimee muttered.

“Well, she
did
shoot him,” Lizzie pointed out. Lizzie could argue either side of any battle and be perfectly happy with the outcome.

V’rai felt woozy, tired, and colors spiraled behind her eyes. She’d had the sight long enough as a child to remember how things looked. But she knew that some of the visions she had now were scarily visually accurate—too accurate to have just relied on a five-year-old’s memories.

“She
should’ve
shot him,” Aimee muttered, but V’rai heard Aimee moving back toward where V’rai sat. “V’rai? You okay?”

The darkness fell away and suddenly V’rai stood in grass. There were bright lights and a lot of screaming. A lot of dead people. Bobbie Faye crumpled at her feet.

She moaned and doubled over, barely feeling Aimee and Lizzie’s hands on her cold, cold arms.

“We’ve started something here,” she said. “She’s in the wrong place. Wrong place. She’s going to die because we can’t send her to the right place.”

Lonan entered the apartment, stepping between the two security guards who couldn’t meet his eye. He’d failed to grab the woman. Twice in less than twenty-four hours. The casino should have been a surprise to her, and should have been easy. Lure her in to find her ex, anticipating one extra man with her—the sniper—but the second man hadn’t been a part of the plan. The state detective was a surprise, and cost them a half-second in decision-making, and that half-second had been what it took for everything to go to ruin.

But the second time, in the barn, meant he’d failed at his own contingency plan. And then he’d lost Zimmer, and Emon in the woods.

He’d been made a fool of, twice. Twice meant he was as good as dead. You didn’t disappoint Sean twice. But Lonan would rather face it, straight on, than run. Running never saved anyone from Sean’s wrath—Lonan had, in fact, made sure of that in the past, and he had no doubt Sean would have someone else who’d do the same to him.

His anger at himself welled up and threatened to spill over into violence against the men around him, but it wasn’t the lads’ fault he’d failed. He did have one ace in the hole. Coming in behind him, with Dox and the men, was the prize that just might keep him alive. The best friend, Nina. She was cuffed, awake, and moving under her own power. Knowing as much as he did about the hellion that was Bobbie Faye, Lonan expected this one to be outraged, mouthing off.

Instead, she was cool. Completely, unequivocally.
Ice
.

Bobbie Faye had been debriefed, derided, discussed, dissected, denounced, decried, and detained, and those were the positives. Four hours after the kid had died, she, Trevor, and Cam were in a suite of the Holiday Inn, which, given the
sheer volume of police, SWAT, and federal agents milling around or stationed on rooftops nearby, was now the safest location on the planet other than the White House. Riles had gone off to check God-knows-what for Trevor. She was just thankful he was not off glowering at her from a corner or reading up on the How To Mummify Your Best Friend’s Fiancée.

Daylight streamed into the room from around the edges of the closed heavy drapes. She stood there, still barefoot, still in the blood-and-mud-covered inside-out
BAMA
t-shirt, watching Trevor and Cam interact with FBI (and ASAC Brennan was on the phone with the UCO, which she’d learned was Undercover Operations, as well as having the Terrorist unit conferenced in). SWAT, State Police, Homeland Security, and the local Sheriff’s Department filled out every other square inch of space in the room. She was sort of surprised that the CIA wasn’t present, but that waiter who kept bringing in coffee and room service seemed to be a little hyper-alert, so who knew?

Paramedics (real ones, this time, she was happy to learn) had finished doctoring her arm (lots of butterfly bandages but, luckily, no stitches).

“Try not to overdo it anymore, ma’am,” the oldest said, country-doc sincere.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” She smiled at him when he chuckled. “Thanks. Think these will scar?”

“Maybe a little.”

Great. She was going to forever look like she’d leaned against a porcupine.

She caught Trevor’s eye and nodded toward the bedroom—the last thing she wanted was to go missing for a minute and give him cause to worry. He had enough on his plate as it was. He nodded, and she knew that if he could, he’d escape in there with her.

She padded away from the noise, the comfort of carpet plush against her cut and bruised feet, and found an average hotel bedroom with bland hotel furniture. She blinked at the loud, ugly-print bedspread, the kind that always made
her wonder if it wasn’t some secret Rorschach test that she was failing.

But finally, there in the room: silence. Well, silence if she ignored the hum of voices from the living area. She sat on the end of the bed with her head down and her arms draped across her knees hugged to her chest, and wished she’d shut the door. Rectifying that now would require actual movement. God, she wanted to lie down, but she was filthy. And sitting there on that big bed reminded her of the one that was now charred remains. Her throat clogged and her head hurt, and she wasn’t going to cry over a stupid bed when so much else was so incredibly bad.

Okay, maybe she’d cry a little.