When a Man Loves a Weapon (28 page)

He scruffed his hand over his short cropped hair and then rubbed the back of his neck. He wanted to pour another Scotch, but he needed to be able to think.

He had confirmed that all seven bombs were in place at the rental company at the precise moment they needed to be to be checked in and properly re-routed to the next job. He’d checked and double-checked with the precision he’d learned in the military to make sure each purchase order for the rental of that equipment was correctly executed. He’d made plans for every contingency. He’d checked to make sure each piece of equipment had actually gone out on delivery—he didn’t want a stray hanging back at the rental company by mistake.

But when he fired up the GPS tracking system today, it was blank.

He rebooted his system and, while he waited, he walked the Scotch over to the shelf where Chloë’s urn sat—the one sure thing to keep him from going near it again. The computer beeped its welcome screen and he turned back to business. He had seven bombs to blow. He had not worked this long and this hard not to succeed.

*  *  *

“She’s freaking everybody out,” one of the cops said to Etienne, who stood at the front booking desk signing a bond for V’rai and Lizzie and Aimee. Although when Aimee had seen Etienne storm in, she’d protested that she’d rather stay in the jail than deal with him.

Staying in the jail was not an option, however, since V’rai had upset several of the command staff. She’d only mentioned a few things from the various cops’ experiences as children that she could see. Nothing from the future; she knew better than that.

“She was only telling them stuff they already knew,” Lizzie said.

Etienne hadn’t said a word. Bad sign.

“Yeah,” the releasing officer said, oblivious to the little family war of glares and the undercurrent of anger between Etienne’s and V’rai’s silences. “She scared the hell out of Erin and Bea back in Records.”

Another voice from a few feet away—V’rai thought it was the booking officer—chimed in, “Well, I think Erin wanted to shoot her.”

“All V’rai mentioned was how Erin had three lovers in college,” Lizzie pointed out.

“Yeah, well, she was married to one of ’em at the time,” the cop answered.

Oops
, V’rai thought.

Although V’rai had suspected that telling some of the cops’ secrets would speed the whole get-them-out-of-here mentality along a little. With the paperwork signed, Lizzie took her hand and they followed Etienne out to his truck.

“Get in,” Etienne said, snapping open the door to the cab and the single bench seat.

“We won’t all fit,” Aimee griped.

“Squeeze in and make do.”

“It’s not a long trip,
chère,
” V’rai said to Lizzie. “Just an hour to the house. I’ll sit in your lap.”

They crammed in, and the old truck rumbled to life. V’rai held onto the dash, relieved. Until Aimee gasped and Lizzie stiffened.

“This isn’t the way home,” Lizzie said.

“Etienne!” V’rai cried. “
Mais non, chèr
! You’ll get her killed.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You have to take us home.” All she’d wanted to do was catch Etienne before he’d made it to Baton Rouge and prevent him from interfering—and getting Bobbie Faye killed. Now they were plummeting down the interstate, straight toward her niece, and V’rai could feel the foreboding increase with every passing minute.

The truck swayed abruptly to the right and Etienne pulled over to the shoulder of the road; V’rai heard the crunch of gravel and they bounced along bumpy roughness of ground instead of asphalt for the second time that day. “You don’t want to come? Get out.”

All three sisters sat in hushed silence, knowing full well Etienne meant it. He’d make them walk home if they so much as squeaked disagreement. Finally, after a full five minutes and what V’rai suspected had been a staring war between Aimee and Etienne, she heard the gearshift engage and the engine roared again, accelerating back into the traffic.

“This is a very bad idea,
chèr,
” V’rai said.

“Yeah,” Etienne agreed. “So was havin’ a kid.”

“Mmmmmmmmmmaaarrrrrrgarrrriiitaaaaaaaassssss,” Monique said, pouring another portion into Ce Ce’s glass from the gargantuan stainless-steel thermos she’d hauled to the tailgating party.

“Goooooooood,” Ce Ce agreed, clinking her glass to the thermos. She’d had no idea four or five of those suckers could be so happy. Happy-making. Making with the smiling. Smiling with the . . .

Oh, no
. Ce Ce looked at the chicken foot bracelet and blinked to make sure she was seeing the blurry image correctly. She pulled it closer to her nose, whoa, too close, nearly had that claw in her eye, and she squinted. Maybe she’d had about six drinks. Margaritas, she thought. At some point, they’d switched to margaritas. She hoped she was
drunk and imagining things, because if she wasn’t, that chicken foot was striped red and black. Striped really could not be good.

She’d never seen striped before, not even stone-cold sober. She knew somewhere deep down inside there was a warning alarm blaring, but the rest of her was all warm and fuzzy and—

“How ya doin’, darlin’?” The hunky man who’d been grilling when she and Monique had joined the tailgating party smiled at her. His name was Brand. Brett? No, no, it was definitely Brand. Or Briggs. She was pretty sure she’d already asked him a couple of times. He talked so sweet, a man that gorgeous should not know how to say things with all that glowy prettiness.

“Oh, I’m just fiiiinnnne,” she answered, smiling back at him.

She took another sip of her margarita, trying to concentrate on that chicken foot, trying to think what it was she needed to do about it being striped now, trying to remember . . . something.

Brand handed her a plate of food. He seemed to always be handing her a plate of really good food. Last night and then breakfast this morning and ohmygoodness, was it already lunch? Her glass was empty. How on earth had that happened?

“Monique, hon, I need a refill to go with this gorgeous man, I mean, food,” she said, and watched Brand-Brett-Briggs beam again.

Oh, yes, Ce Ce very much loved football now.

Too much too much too much
her brain babbled as Trevor held on tightly to her hand, leading her out of the conference room, his fingers laced through hers. Bobbie Faye could have sworn her heart beat hard enough to make the earth bounce off its axis, and her pulse throbbed straight from her palm to Trevor’s as he guided her down the hall, past the armed agents standing guard and a couple of SWAT guys who milled around in the lobby.

She flashed back to the video image of Nina in the background behind Sean, and her heart double-clutched, gears grinding, pain stabbing because
this just could not be happening
.

And the one person she wanted comfort from was the one person who had hidden himself from her. Hadn’t told her the truth.

How in the hell do you build a real relationship without trust?

Just that thought—just that shard of the lack of trust wedging into her heart—made her double over, pain lancing through her limbs. Trevor squatted next to her in the lobby as she fought to get her breath back, trying to squeeze air into her lungs past the ache in her chest. He didn’t say anything; he just watched her, holding onto her hand. Though he was close enough, he didn’t run his hands up her arms or knead her shoulders or brush his lips against her forehead. There was no expression on his face, nothing but shuttered anger in his gaze. He didn’t murmur reassuring words, didn’t even volunteer that he’d explain. He might as well have been across the fucking universe.

She forced herself to pull in air, and the room smelled faintly of stale bagels and syrup from the brunch served earlier that day at a credenza on the other side of the lobby. She closed her eyes, refusing to meet Trevor’s expression. It did surprise the hell out of her that Cam and Riles were silent, because if ever there was a time for absolute peacock-level strutting of “I told you so”s about her and Trevor not working as a couple, it was now. Cam could rattle on about how she didn’t know this man she’d promised to marry and Riles could gleefully parade all of the sorority girls he thought would be good enough for Trevor. She ought to just have t-shirts made up so that when she met anyone new, they’d be forewarned with: “The Apocalypse is here now.”

And overlaying all of Bobbie Faye’s devastation Trevor’s superior lack of faith in her: Nina turned out to be an agent of some sort. Her best friend, and for many years, her only
friend, had been living a dangerous double life, and now was tied up in that monster’s hands.

Anger throbbed through Bobbie Faye: living, swarming, biting, stinging
rage
.

Betrayal.

She’d believed in Trevor. In Nina. She’d believed she really knew the two people in this world she loved the most.

She thought she’d known them. She’d trusted them more than she trusted gravity to hold her down onto the earth every single day, and then to suddenly find out that there were all of these things she actually did not know? Things they hadn’t trusted her to handle?

Ripped her guts out.

She stood and Trevor stood with her, watching, and she wondered if he even realized he was playing with her engagement ring again. She couldn’t speak to him. Not without the anger coursing, burning through her, and she walled the angry words in. All she could manage was to nod that she was ready to go.

Cam and Riles followed them out, and as soon as they cleared the glass doors of the hotel, Trevor glanced expectantly at Riles over his shoulder; Riles tossed a set of keys over her head and as Trevor snagged them he turned to where Riles had indicated the car was. Police and agents hovered everywhere in the parking lot, though a bigger group clustered near the building.

Then Trevor stopped short ahead of her and his hand tightened on hers, holding her closer to his side. He laced Riles a glare of pure, unadulterated venom and she spun to see what had made him so unhappy.

“Your job was to grab us a couple of cars,” Trevor snapped at Riles, fury riding every word.

So that’s where Riles had disappeared off to when she and Trevor were in the shower.

“I did,” Riles answered, defiance in his shrug.

“You just had to make a fucking point about the money, didn’t you?”

She couldn’t see what they were referring to—they were
tall enough to see over a gaggle of cops gathered in the parking lot.

“My job is to watch your back, LT, whether you like it or not.”

A car? Trevor was pissed off at a . . . oh.
Shit
.

An Audi R8.

It was sex on wheels and it looked like money. Lots and lots of sleek, low-slung, predatory, purring
money
. The kind of money people like her didn’t have. She remembered a man, once, who’d driven a fancy car, who had that kind of money. He’d worn a suit and had tossed a hundred-dollar bill at her when she was mopping up Boudreaux’s, an expensive eatery that catered to the execs at the chemical plants. “Get something nicer to wear,” he’d said. “You look like shit.”

She’d thrown the money back at him. “Get a brain,” she’d said. “You need one.”

She looked from the Audi to the grim, hard lines of Trevor’s jaw, the muscle working overtime, and she tried to reconcile this kind of money with the man who’d fixed two toilets in their home, who’d done all of the grocery shopping while she recovered, who’d gone to sleep every night with his hand splayed against her scars. The man who’d gotten down on one knee and had gotten so choked up he couldn’t speak, he just gave her the ring with tears in his eyes.

The man who hadn’t told her everything, who hadn’t trusted her.

“There are bombs,” he said now, seeing her hesitate at the sight of that car.

“Sbobbie Faye drinkingsss gamesh!”

“You already called that a while ago.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, that’s why you’re on the floor with twelve empty shot glasses.”

“Oh. At leash there’s a reason thish time.”

—Michele Bardsley and Renee George, new Bobbie Faye fans

It was amazing how much they could
not
talk about on their way to Baton Rouge. They could not talk about the weather, not talk about the rampant addictive evil that was HGTV (she’d caught him—twice—watching the macho Saturday glorified tool porn), not talk about the fact that certain celebrities reminded her of those skinny, shiny lizards whose sole proof of any discernable brain cells was the ability to change color, though “orange” didn’t seem terribly wise. They could also not talk about the fact that Bobbie Faye’s head was about to fling itself from her shoulders in complete psychic meltdown while she sat wrapped up in the all-leather cockpit of the Audi as Trevor hurtled them through space and time. (NASA should really talk to the Audi people. They’d be landing on Jupiter right about now if they had.)

Trevor’s damned phone rang the minute they’d hit the interstate, and he bit off terse agenty mumbo-jumbo as two cop cars escorted them so that their police lights could clear a path through the Baton Rouge pre-game traffic. Someone had stalled in the right lane; the cop cars swooped past on the left without any real warning and Trevor downshifted, the engines screaming, as he forced Riles—who’d followed with Cam in a suspiciously spiffy new Porsche—to back off. Trevor took the left lane, nearly kissing the cop cars’ bumpers, and she had a brief appreciation for the fact that the air bags probably worked in a car that cost more than most
people’s houses, and she didn’t have to rely on duct tape to hold the front right fender on as they slung past a couple of eighteen-wheelers.

Not that it was going to matter, since her heart quit beating when one of the trucks switched lanes and the Audi nearly slid
underneath
it.

Trevor hung up the phone in a cradle charger thingie and really, the fact that the car didn’t know to anticipate having a robe, slippers, and pipe ready showed a clear level of slackery. There was enough silence in the car to fill the Superdome. If she clenched her arms any harder, she’d have bruises. She didn’t know what emotion to deal with first. And even the fact that she had something other than her best friend getting kidnapped and, hello,
bombs,
to deal with just fucking pissed her off. Where the hell do you start with something like that?