Girls Just Wanna Have Guns (32 page)

“I’d complain, but I’m thinking this is going to work in my favor.”

“Very smart woman.”

She relaxed into him, the warm shower water washing over them both, and she was a little stunned that she was happy he understood her so well, when just that morning it had freaked her out. But he did know her well—something he’d gotten from more than mere observation—because God knows, other people in her life, who’d known her for years, didn’t get her. She wished she was as up-to-speed on his past, though. A frame of reference, a—wait.

She stiffened. The photos. Point of reference. She thought she knew what V’rai had wanted her to see.

Roy had experience in sweet-talking nurses, so he felt pretty confident about being able to break Lori Ann out of rehab. The trick was finding the right-aged nurse. Someone too young would be too nervous if she were questioned later, and someone too old wasn’t going to buy that he was “security” sent by a judge who wanted to put Lori Ann into protective custody until this Bobbie Faye thing blew over. He’d planned out everything he’d say, how he’d say it, how he’d smile. It seemed that dimples were a big deal, and while he had no idea why, he had two and knew how to put ’em to good use. If that failed, he’d do the stretch and muscle-flex thing—that usually wore down any resistance.

He looked at the seat next to him at the security badge he’d purchased at the local cop shop on his way to the rehab hospital. It had cost him a few extra minutes, but he’d flash it, and the nurse (assuming he got lucky on the age) would barely glance at the badge; she would probably be checking out his ring finger (he would hold the badge with his left hand) and realize there was no ring, no mark of there ever having been a ring, and for some reason, women seemed to think that meant he was a “catch” and they’d be thinking more about getting him into bed than whether or not he was legitimately a security guard.

So when he pulled up to the rehab center to find Lori Ann casually sitting on the curb, waiting for him (annoyed, as usual), he was actively disappointed. No reason to hit on
the nurses now. Damn, but his sisters worked hard at making his life miserable.

Lori Ann was a tiny sprite of a thing, barely came up to his shoulders, and her blond hair was fixed perfectly. She looked every bit the former cheerleader she’d been, except for the annoyed part—that part looked like she was going to do a back-flip on someone’s head any moment now. He liked her better when she was drinking. She climbed into his car, slamming the door a little too hard.

“How’d you get out?”

She turned and plastered on that
you want to do something for me
smile that all three siblings shared. “Easy. I told my counselor that if I didn’t get a furlough, I’d have to explain to Bobbie Faye why I wasn’t able to help her, and I would then give her his home address so that she could pay him a visit. I’ve never seen a man race through paperwork so fast.”

“Wow. I’m gonna have to use that one.”

“Get your own, that one’s mine.”

“So what makes you so hot and bothered to help her? You’re still not speaking to her.”

“I tried calling her back and she didn’t answer. The only time that happens is when she’s being almost-killed. And nobody kills my sister except me.”

Bobbie Faye wrapped a towel around herself and hurried to her jeans crumpled on the floor. Trevor stepped out of the shower as she retrieved the photos. She glanced over at him and her brain shifted into neutral.

After a minute, he tapped her on the forehead and she met his gaze.

“Huh?”

“Photos?”

“Oh. Oh! Right. Can’t think when you’re naked.”

“Good to know,” he said, smiling. “And should I be insulted that you are already over the aftereffects?”

“I think I really like that whole overachiever thing you’ve got going on,” she said absently, focusing back on
what she was seeing. “I think better when I’m—” She suddenly paid attention to what she was saying and looked up to where he waited.

“Satisfied?” he asked. There was a shadow of something behind his poker expression that pulled her to him, and she put her arms around him.

“Happy,” she said, and she kissed him. He held her, lingering on that kiss, which trailed to her shoulder. She waved the photos at him. “Hold that thought.”

He glared at the photos as if they were his enemy. When she raised an eyebrow, he looked from her to the photos and acquiesced. “Damn. You managed to make me forget all about work. That never happens.”

She beamed. “Maybe that’s my superpower.”

“I thought blowing things up was your superpower.”

“Hey! A girl can have two superpowers.” She thwacked him on his bare and oh-so-fine ass.

“I’m just glad I get the naked one.”

He kissed her again, and just like that, the heat between them flared, insatiable. If she hadn’t had the damn photos in her hand, she would have forgotten about them for yet another hour. Or ten.

But she was holding them and she sighed, waving them at him. “We gotta focus.”

And to do that, they needed to not be nekkid.

Bobbie Faye had clothes stored at the camp from various trips there in the past. Digging through Roy’s stuff to find jeans to fit Trevor was a challenge—Trevor was Roy’s height, but a lot more muscle—still, they found a pair. The whole domesticity of the action made her smile. Which is when they heard someone pound on the front door . . . and then it creaked open.

Benoit parked behind the Capitol Lakes near the Governor’s Mansion; the heat of the day had chased most of the tourists inside their hotels. Only a tiny smattering of hardy souls dotted the banks of the lake, picnicking a late afternoon meal under the pines and the oaks. The white Greek
Revival–styled mansion shone in the sun, the reflection nearly blinding him where its anterior antebellum verandas faced the lake on the bank opposite him.

Why in the hell would Bobbie Faye choose this spot? Sure, as seniors, it was revered. Several of them had swiped Catholic High’s bear mascot ahead of one particularly vehement rivalry game and tied it up to . . . he looked around . . . that sculpture. And had gotten in huge trouble for it, now that he thought about it. Cam and he got put on probation with the football team for that game (and they lost), Francesca was sent back to live with her dad, Jordan and Jeremiah were grounded so long, they practically needed introductions once they were free again, and Bobbie Faye, whose idea it was, had gotten a week of suspension from school and her trailer was rolled with TP every night for a month. Of course, after a couple of years had passed, the myth had grown—and the way he heard it, they’d stolen a live bear mascot and Bobbie Faye had wrestled it, had lost an arm (which was reattached), but then scared the bear so much, it would only curl up in a fetal position and whimper.

He saw a flash of movement and recognized her. She’d hidden across the clearing, keeping to a more protected area. Was there some other danger here? What was she being wary of? Surely not him, unless she, too, had heard the rumors of the surveillance footage, but she had to know he’d have talked to her before hauling her in, right? He slowly canvassed the area, and then radioed ten-oh-seven to dispatch, giving his location, and then climbed out of his air-conditioned truck. An . . . oddness, something wrong . . . pricked at the back of his neck. He pulled his gun from his holster, aimed at the ground, ready.

He could not believe he was having to pull his gun against Bobbie Faye. How in the hell was he ever going to face himself in the mirror if he killed her? Or worse . . . Cam?

“Bobbie Faye?” he called as he eased toward the sculpture and remembered that was one of Marie’s. There had
been a huge controversy back when it was first installed. The governor had been a state senator then and had pushed it through Congress as “support for a local artist” while neglecting to mention it depicted a couple having sex. It was an instant hit with every high-schooler and still offended all of the church crowd, who tried every four years to have it removed.

“Bobbie Faye?” he called again. “I’m here to talk, like you asked. No need to hide,
chère
.”

“You didn’t bring anybody, right?”

“No,
chère
, just me. I need to talk to you. I think someone is trying to frame you.”

“Someone is,” she said from almost right behind him, and it struck him the instant the bullet did that he’d been had. He slammed forward to the ground, cursing himself for such a stupid mistake. He should have known. He needed to shoot, he needed to stop her, and he tried to lift his gun, but his arm wasn’t working right and then the second bullet hit. She leaned over and peered into his eyes as the world drifted down into blackness.

Bobbie Faye and Trevor sprinted toward the kitchen—each grabbed a gun off the counter—only to see the front door opening and Cam filling it with six-foot-four-inches worth of pure annoyance. He tossed Bobbie Faye his spare key when she made muffled “how?” and “locked” noises.

“Twice in one day, Detective,” Trevor said, his voice like finely edged steel. As Cam took a moment to glare at Trevor (only in jeans) and then gaze at her (jeans and a very lacy bra—she hadn’t quite gotten to the shirt yet), Trevor added, “Maybe next time, we’ll have some hors d’oeuvres set out for you. Were you followed?” He went to the front window, nudged the curtain over, and peered out.

“No. But if I can track you, someone else could, too,” Cam answered without looking at Trevor. Bobbie Faye could see how he catalogued her appearance—the bruises, the cuts, the way she probably looked thoroughly kissed . . . and oh, Lord, there were probably hickeys, though really,
at this point, she was one big bruise so how would he know? She shook herself—didn’t matter. If she didn’t know better, didn’t know that he hadn’t wanted to be with her, she would have sworn he looked gut-kicked, but then he rubbed the back of his neck and pinched the bridge of his nose and she knew he was, instead, still fighting a headache. “Get dressed,” Cam snapped, and then realizing how he’d barked it out as an order, he amended, “please.”

She still clutched the camisole in her left hand—she must have picked it up before they’d run for the kitchen—and she set the gun down to put it on. She moved to Roy’s kitchen cabinets and dug out the headache meds she’d once kept there.

“What are you doing here?” Trevor asked. She looked back at him and knew he was livid, though the only thing that gave it away was the tiniest tic in a muscle in his jaw. Anyone else would have only noticed the nonchalant, unworried stance as he leaned casually against the wall at that window, his arms crossed at his chest. She noted he still held his gun.

“That’s what I came to ask you,” Cam said to her, ignoring Trevor. “The silos? Shooting? And now the drawbridge—which fucked up traffic for hours. Was that really necessary?”

“If we wanted to live, it was,” Trevor said.

She grabbed a glass, filled it with water.

“I knew I should have locked you up earlier,” Cam griped, “for your own damned good. You don’t have sense enough to stop, and you’re going to get yourself killed.”

She held out the meds and the water to him. “Do you want to take these orally, or should I just shove the bottle up your ass? And I have sense, you jerk. I just didn’t have a choice.”

He gulped down the medicine and handed her back the glass. “You
do
have a choice. You could have turned this over to me. Or the Feds,” and he said that last word like someone else would say
maggots
, “and we would have investigated. Instead, you damned near got yourself killed
three times
—it’s only a matter of time before you end up in the morgue.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

He ignored her, speaking to Trevor. “This is
your
fucking job, not hers.”

She thumped Cam in the chest with her index finger. “If you don’t stop talking about me like I’m not in the room, I’m going to drop-kick your ass into tomorrow, with or without that badge, and I don’t care if you have a headache. This wasn’t just a job—people in
my family
are going to be killed. I have to find those diamonds.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re not trained for this,” he seethed.

“Whose fault is that?” Trevor asked, deadly calm. Too calm. She cast him a worried frown and he met her gaze, settling down a fraction. “You could have made sure she was trained.”

“And I suppose that’s what you’ll do now,” Cam said, and she knew they were talking about way more than her knowing how to throw a punch.

“Yes.”

Although knowing how to really throw a punch—a knockout kind of punch—would come in freaking handy right about now.

“They’re just fucking
diamonds
,” Cam said to her, “and he”—he jabbed his finger toward Trevor—“if he cared about you at all, he would know better than to let you put your life on the line for some stupid rocks. I don’t care
how
valuable they are.”

Bobbie Faye leapt into rant mode, all set to tell Cam how she wasn’t some pet whose actions could be dictated, when she felt Trevor’s palm on the back of her neck, beneath her hair, stroking his thumb there. She wasn’t sure if he did it to calm her, or himself, and he’d moved so fast, she hadn’t heard or felt the motion until he was there.

“You have no idea how much I care about Bobbie Faye,” Trevor warned, and Cam’s eyes slitted down to hatred.

“Why don’t you tell me what it is I don’t know, Cam,” she said, “because you didn’t come all this way to yell at me.”

When he looked at her, there was so much pain behind his eyes, she wondered just what could be so bad . . . because this pain? This was more than a headache.

“First, you’re going to tell me why the Feds are so hot over some stones,” Cam said to Trevor, “or else I haul her in right now.”

“No,” Trevor said, very quietly, “you won’t.”

The two men glared at each other and Bobbie Faye was certain that if testosterone poisoning was tracked by the CDC, it would throw up its hands and run around like a freaked-out Chicken Little at the epidemic proportions of the disease. She plopped down on a dining chair and before she’d even exhaled, Trevor had taken the chair next to her, forcing Cam to sit opposite.