Guns and Roses (67 page)

“Told you so,” a man’s voice said from the doorway and Trevor snapped his head up to see Alex, Bobbie Faye’s ex and a gun-runner he’d helped capture once and used to infiltrate the terrorists who were hell bent on revenge on Bobbie Faye. Terrorists who’d ended up dead in the middle of LSU stadium, when the lights had gone out, just before they were able to blow the entire site to bits. And Alex had disappeared when all hell had broken loose. Typical pirate.

If there was anyone who took himself too seriously, it was Alex, who, today, was channeling Johnny Depp (if Depp were a little stockier and taller). Long hair, braided now, scruffy beard, worn leather jacket, rings. Leaning in the doorway with one of their guards holding him at gunpoint.

“Found this, sir,” the guard said to Riles, “trying to get into the back of the Cathedral. Said he knew Mr. Cormier, here. Said he had important information you might need.”

“Oh, I do,” Alex said, grinning, looking at Trevor. “Unless you happen to know where your missing bride is?”

“You
bastard
,” Cam snarled before Trevor could stop him, and he moved slick as lightening, slamming a fist into Alex’s face, nailing the man against the door frame, knocking him out, cold. Cam stood over Alex as he slid down the doorframe into a heap onto the floor.

“For starters,” Trevor said to Cam as he yanked him back and slammed the cop against the wall, “nice shot. But that was
my
shot to take,
not yours
, because Bobbie Faye is
mine
, and if you have any thoughts different from that, then you get the hell out of here, now, because I’m not going to tolerate it. And second,
he’s on our fucking side
.”

Cam seethed. “You’re out of your mind if you think Alex is on anyone’s side but his own.”

“And you’re out of your mind if you think I don’t know that and haven’t taken precautions to make sure Bobbie Faye is safe.”

“She’s
kidnapped
, Cormier!” Cam shouted. “How the fuck is that working for you?”

“Who’s kidnapped?” Ce Ce asked from the doorway, panic slashing through her voice and Trevor had to rein in his fury at Cam—they were wasting time. “Is my baby girl
kidnapped?
” Her lips trembled and tears threatened, and Trevor scrubbed his hands over his face, and when he looked back, she was glaring at him. “I could hear y’all all the way into the church. You’re supposed to take care of my baby girl. I told you that I didn’t care how good looking you are, you don’t take care of her, I’d be comin’ after you.” She whipped out something that looked decidedly dead from her purse and waved it at him.

Everyone in the room blanched. Except for Alex, Trevor thought, who was still passed out on the floor and might be the lucky one tonight.

“We have a plan,” Trevor said.

Riles spoke first. “Please tell me you didn’t let Bobbie Faye help with this plan.”

“She’s actually pretty damned sharp—” he broke off when he saw Cam turn and bang his head repeatedly on the wall.

“Well, if that isn’t proof that love is blind, deaf and dumb, I don’t know what is,” Riles said, shaking his head as if Trevor were an accident victim who’d just undergone a lobotomy.

“Look, she’s smart,” Trevor continued. “She thinks fast on her feet. She knew we might have trouble and she was willing to go along with a master plan for handling it. She’s going to know that I’m coming for her.”

“She is also,” Nina reminded him, “pissed off, hormonal and
pregnant.
”

“Pregnant!?” Ce Ce shouted from the doorway, nearly falling over Alex, still prone on the floor, to get into the room. “She’s
pregnant?
And you”—she hit Trevor on the arm with her purse—“let her get kidnapped?” She kept smacking Trevor, who had no room to back up.

Nina stepped forward and restrained Ce Ce, saying, “Ceece. You might wanna stop. We need Trevor alive to get Bobbie Faye back.”

“You know this is a trap,” Riles said to him, pulling Trevor back into ops mode.

“Of course it’s a trap,” Trevor answered.

“Oh, it’s a helluva lot worse than that,” Alex answered, trying to sit up.

~*~

Bobbie Faye reached up and adjusted the gag in her mouth, and her action didn’t even register on the woman holding the gun on her. It took every ounce of willpower for Bobbie Faye not to roll her eyes, or give her would-be kidnappers pointers in exactly how you’re supposed to render someone fully incapacitated. She knew she should be grateful that the woman seemed far more interested in her own manicure than whether or not Bobbie Faye could get out of her bindings and, oh, say,
escape
, but really, could it have hurt them to have at least watched a movie of the week every once-in-a-while and get pointers? Where was the pride? Where was the professionalism? Where was the attention to detail?
Good freaking grief
, amateurs just pissed her off.

“I
did
,” the young man’s voice said from around the alcove that ran beneath Pirate’s Alley, which lay between the Cathedral and the Cabildo. Bobbie Faye couldn’t see what they were doing or how deep the tunnel was or how many people they had, but she’d seen the young nerdy guy go back and forth, checking various electronic handhelds. Each time the older, suave guy joined him as they both looked at a small screen. Neither looked any too happy.

“If you turned it on, how is it we can’t see them?” the silver-haired guy asked.

“I don’t know, RG. Some sort of powerful jammer. I had the room on—look…” He reversed some images they could see, but Bobbie Faye could not, and they watched it intently. A little ping of worry hit the back of her head:
they weren’t concerned if she saw them… or knew their names
. This was not one of those little details that filled her with joy.

“I had Josh and the girl on video… we see them leaving… here… and then the room stays empty until you see the outer door open, and then bang, static.”

That would be the automatic jammer Trevor has built into his phone. Maybe he’ll find the doorway…

“Is the door still locked?” RG asked, and the nerdy guy nodded.

Well, gee, Universe, thank you
.

“Good,” RG said, and he picked up a radio. “Josh, report.”

There was a brief silence, and then non-priest Josh’s voice crackled a bit over the two-way, “They’re holed up in the souvenir room. Lots of gun power in there with guards on the door. We can’t make a move on Cormier ’til they leave the room.”

RG swore. Thought for a minute. “Okay, change of plans. We’ll alter the directions to lead him into the Quarter. He can’t risk gunplay with all of the people crowding around. You’ll be able to take him and come down the back entrance. If he brings any of his backup, you kill him.”

“Done. How soon?”

“An hour. I’m giving his devoted dragon of a mother enough time to get the additional bonds together.”

“And after she meets you?”

“Same plan,” RG said, thinking he was being clever.

It’s not like you or that guy you’re supposed to marry are gonna live anyway.

Well
fuck
that. “I need to go to the bathroom,” Bobbie Faye said. Of course, because she was tolerating the stupid gag, it came out
uhhh neeee tuu guuh tuuu duuhhh baaa rrruuu.

“What?” Catalina asked.

“
uhhhhh needddee tuuuuuhh guuuuuh tuuuuuhh duuhhh baaaaaa rrruuuuuu
”

“What?” Catalina shouted, as if Bobbie Faye was hard of hearing and not gagged. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

If life were fair, Catalina would be the first to die.
Now
would work for Bobbie Faye. She yanked off the gag and snarled, “I need to go to the bathroom!”

“Oh. Okay. Why didn’t you just say so?”

Catalina stood up, pointed with the gun toward the bathroom, which enabled Bobbie Faye to notice that the gun had the safety still on. Neither the woman, nor the two men, noticed she’d taken off the gag. She thought, what the hell, and held out her hands. “I need my hands.”

“Oh, right. Fine.”

“Go with her, Catalina,” RG said, without looking up from the equipment as his fiancée untied Bobbie Faye.

“But I don’t need to go!”

“You don’t have to pee, dear,” RG said, more patiently than Bobbie Faye would have managed, “but you do have to guard her.”

“Oh. Right.”

~*~

Trevor was quietly going out of his mind with worry, but he kept it tightly held, so reined in, he felt like his limbs would snap off his body.
She was somewhere nearby, with kidnappers. She was scared. Pregnant. Hormonal. And he didn’t know where she was.

He’d failed her. It was killing him and having Cam’s furious glare, accusing him of failing her wasn’t helping one fucking bit. He’d ordered another sweep of the church and he had surveillance moved in on his mother. Izzy was tracking all money going in and out of Cormi-Co since Alex revealed his part in the so-called “plan” his mother had devised to get rid of Bobbie Faye. The next set of instructions were too asininely simple to be believed: wait one hour, go outside, get inside the garden walls. Alone. Unarmed, or else she dies. Wait there.

He was going to kill someone. Several, probably. They might end up living in another country without extradition for a while. He’d figure out a way for her to see her friends. Family. Or fly those out to her. But someone was going to die for touching her.

“What is this icon they’re supposedly going after?” Nina asked Alex while Trevor watched Bobbie Faye’s beacon move farther north than should have been possible if she were inside the Cathedral. He pointed that out to Riles, who made more calls, searching the quadrant on the northeast side of the square.

“The Black Madonna,” Alex answered, wiping the blood from his mouth and glaring at Cam.

“Ohhhh, noooo,” Ce Ce gasped, and everyone looked her direction. “It’s old. Verrrry old, like fourth century. It’s highly revered. People say that really spooky stuff happens around it—it’s got some serious mojo.”

They politely chuckled, and she said, “Seriously. No voodoo, no woowoo, but things happen around it that cannot be explained. There was a thief once who tried to steal it and they found him dead at the foot of the pedestal. No one had been in or out besides him. Another thief tried to destroy it—hit it with a sword, twice. Then he was found dead, next to it, cut by his own sword. Still alone in the room. That icon don’t like being messed with, and it’s
right near Bobbie Faye
. It could hurt her, thinking she was with the thieves!”

“Let’s just worry about the gunmen, Ceece, okay?” And Nina grimaced when Trevor glared at her.

He had hoped to never be trapped in another day when “just worrying about the gunmen” was the
calming
thing to say. He felt the rings still in his pocket—he hadn’t handed them to Riles yet. He wanted that chance to put that ring on Bobbie Faye’s finger in front of everyone. He knew it was crazy to hope, to wish that they’d have this day, that she’d go through with a big wedding even if it turned out to be
just
the wedding and not a way to lure his mother out. But it hadn’t worked as planned—none of it. He couldn’t believe this day could come to this. He refused to believe it.

“They’d have to be pretty smart, to set something like this up,” Riles said, and Trevor nodded, his gut tightening. His mother had outdone herself.

~*~

Catalina held the gun on Bobbie Faye as they walked through the Cabildo’s basement. “It’s the only bathroom,” she explained, “unless we go back to the church, and RG’s not gonna let you do that, since you’re the prisoner.”

“Won’t the alarms go off over here?”

“I don’t think so. Evan’s got everything figured out. They closed the museum an hour ago and when the staff set what they thought was the alarm, they’re gonna think it’s all on, but it’s not.”

“So… how soon are they getting the icon out?”

“Oh, next few minutes, I think. So you gotta hurry. RG doesn’t like it when we’re running behind schedule.”

“Sure thing. I’ll hurry.”

“Good, ’cuz then we gotta get you in there, get your fingerprints all over the display case. You know, you’re the red herring,” Cat explained.

Okay, that was a new one. “I’m a what?”

“I dunno. Something red. I think it’s a fish, though I’m not sure why RG thinks you’re a fish. I thought he said you were a pirate. Maybe you’re some sort of pirate fish?”

“I’ll bet you really loved the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.”

“I did! How’d you know?”