When a Man Loves a Weapon (41 page)

In principle, Dox liked the plan. He had his finger on the trigger and he waited. Three pounds of pressure, and the man was a paraplegic, at best. With the vibration of the helo, the rhythm of the rotors, the velocity of the wind, the exact distance (his spotter had it measured), he knew exactly where to place his sights to achieve his shot. He’d been doing this too many years not to know the calculations by heart. Three pounds of pressure and all he was waiting on was Sean’s signal. He breathed, even. Slow. Calm. A simple job.

*  *  *

There was no way Sean was going to abandon his plan for revenge just because someone threw money at him, and Bobbie Faye knew it. She knew Trevor knew it. Hell, she could go ask the third-grader in row seventeen, the one with the purple ’fro and tiger stripes painted across his face, and that kid would know it. If all Sean had wanted was money, he wouldn’t be here right now.

No, this was about a helluva lot more than money. There was a helicopter in front of her on the field, and one hovering behind her, but the one that had Bobbie Faye barely able to breathe was the one still hovering behind Trevor, the propeller wash whipping at the crowd below—who seemed to be oblivious as they joined the woo-woo dance, throwing their hands up in the air in rhythm with the drums. The rhythm swayed her, filling her with dread and anticipation and she felt as if fire licked across her arm and down her chest, curling in her fingers.

She felt stranger and stranger as more people in the stands joined the dance, and it was as if . . . power . . . coursed through her, threatening to take her over.

“Sundance,” Trevor said, low, almost a whisper, as he watched her while Sean, on the line, rattled off a Swiss bank account number to the world’s scariest woman.

She shuddered, electricity rippling through her. Her arms flinched and jerked and she felt light-headed. The crowd swam, the drums pounded and filled her head to the brim, and from far away, she heard him say, “Sundance?” again.

“Bad juju,” Bobbie Faye answered Trevor, feeling her body swaying. Swaying. On its own.

She stood in the middle of freaking Tiger Stadium with a couple hundred photo cameras, a few dozen TV cameras (no doubt still recording), God only knew how many cell phone cameras, and she was
swaying
. Twitching and swaying and starting to gyrate with all the grace of a drunk pole dancer stepping on tacks.

In her borrowed too-small underwear.

With her future mother-in-law watching.

Dear Universe:

Hate you. Hate your shoes. You have bad breath and I hope your hair falls out.

—the girl wearing the STUPID CHICKEN FOOT

And as if from a zillion miles away, on another planet, Trevor’s mother repeated the number Sean gave her, and then she said, “You realize the Feds are tracking everything you’ve just told me.”

“No worries, luv.” His Irish accent blended into the drums, slid into them and became a part of them as the rhythm filled Bobbie Faye. “You make sure the fifty is in there in the next five minutes and your son’ll live. The money won’t lie long enough for the Feds to touch it.”

“Half now, the other half after you leave,” she reminded him.

“Meanwhile,
àlainn,
” Sean said, and Bobbie Faye saw him shove Nina to the doorway of the second helicopter, using her as a shield, “you’re comin’ to me.”

“Give me Nina,” she said, her voice slurred as strange lightning ripped the sky overhead, and the air crackled around her. Crackled and danced and seemed to live and she kept moving. Undulating to the hypnotic rhythm of the crowded stadium.

“What are you doin’? You don’t have the power to negotiate,
àlainn
. Look up.”

She had to force her body to obey, to look up at the JumboTron, and an image of Cam and Suds facing off appeared, the tension in their faces obvious in giant grainy detail. Then Bobbie Faye realized what she was seeing: the side of a big monster truck and inside it, Lori Ann and Stacey.

Lightning crashed down onto the field, not far from where she stood, and the crowd oooohhhed and the chanting grew louder, as if this was some demented halftime show: Almost-Fricasseed Bobbie Faye.

“Oh, God, it hurts,” she moaned, and she didn’t realize she’d keyed the mic until Trevor and Sean both said her name. How was it that the drums were so loud, so
loud
, so
constant, beating into her? She had the dimmest idea that she was still moaning, that people were saying her name over the mic, but she wasn’t entirely sure what language she was hearing anymore.

Because all she was, was the drums. Electricity snapped away from her in sparks. She was freaking
radiating
fireworks like a deranged Roman candle. Heat speared off her and she could feel the rush of the crowd’s adrenaline. Her hips jerked, sliding to the right, drawing out the rhythm of the beat, the beat that pounded into her. She fought it, dammit. She reached for the chicken foot but just
thinking
about pulling it off her arm made it pulse with an electrical shock as her body convulsed forward, doubling over, and a grunt kicked from her gut. And then it forced her up again, and the fucking thing
took over
. Suddenly she longed for when she had simply looked like she was stepping on tacks, because now? Now she was dropping into a low stance and bouncing on one leg to the rhythm of the drums, and then the other leg, spinning, arms reaching for only God knew what, electricity shooting off her fingertips, burning, burning, the chicken foot screaming in her head, and she swore, if she lived, she was personally hauling her ass to Kentucky Fried Chicken and eating every damned drumstick they had.

Up in the control room, Kyle gaped. Next to him, Colby gaped. All of the sound techs gaped. The SWAT guy gaped. Not a single one of them could take their eyes off the . . . what would you even
call
that? Happening in the center of the field. Then the woman made some sort of move and they all dropped their mouths a bit more.

The entire stadium was getting into the act, but nothing was as . . . fucking
hot
as Bobbie Faye right now. It was like watching one of those belly-dancing women do a dance with scarves. Kyle suddenly realized he’d missed out on a helluva lot in life if this is how women danced here in the South.

“What the hell is she doing?” he asked Colby, not able to take his gaze off her.

“Winning us an Emmy.”

*  *  *

The drums pounded.
Pounded
. And she hopped on one foot. In a circle. Gyrating.
On one foot
. There were too many ways to die of humiliation right then, so apparently the Universe felt the need to give her the Sampler.

“Bad . . . juju . . .” she gritted out through clenched teeth.

“Sundance,” Trevor said now, alarm lacing through her earpiece.

“Lass,” Sean said, equally confused, “what the fuck are you doin’?”

“I . . . don’t . . . know . . .” she said, fighting for control as her body jerked and swayed with the roll of the drum. “Can’t . . . stop . . .”

The drum line thundered, the bass pounding through her every heartbeat, every single fiber of her body. She felt her hips sway and her arms slide up her body, twining overhead, and cheers went up from the crowd as sparks flew from her fingertips and rained down around her, bouncing off the field at her feet. A river of sparks. The drums beat deeper into her, the chicken foot burned, and she closed her eyes, feeling the wash of the waves of the crowd pulse over her soul.

“Show me the helicopter moving away from my son, Mr. MacGreggor,” Trevor’s mother commanded, and within a couple of seconds, the helicopter hovering behind Trevor swung forward, above the field now, though the rifle inside still aimed in his direction.

Bobbie Faye registered somewhere in the back of her mind that she was distracting Sean from the helicopters and his plans. The lizard part of her brain that was all about survival wanted to focus on this, and focus on Trevor’s plan, but the waves of the crowd—of the whole stadium—cascaded through her and she couldn’t fight it. Didn’t want to fight it. There were too many of them, and it burned too much. She thought she might turn white hot with flames and be ash any moment now, and still she moved.

“The money is now . . .” Bobbie Faye heard a clicking noise, computer keys, “. . . there, Mr. MacGreggor,” Trevor’s
mother said, smoothly, calmly, not even giving the slightest indication of concern that she’d just sold off her future daughter-in-law or, apparently, that said future daughter-in-law had just turned into a Lite-Brite Barbie.

“Aye,” Sean said, “the money is there, luv. Now,
àlainn
, cut it out, whatever you’re doin’, you’ve run out of time.”

“I’m . . . trying . . . bad . . . juju . . .” But she couldn’t move toward him. She was pinned there, in the center of the field, and behind her closed lids she saw flames, the center of a bonfire, circles of flames around her, and she danced. Wild wild lightning sparking through her, she danced, the drums and the crowd’s noise screaming in her head. She knew without opening her eyes that the crowd danced with her.
With abandon
. This was what it felt like to be split apart into a million pieces and jammed back together again, electrified, a current running through her. The drums throbbed, the crowd roared, and she heard Sean’s cell phone pick up Nina’s words, dim against the crashing noise in her own head.

“She’s wearing a bad juju bracelet—voodoo, MacGreggor. She can’t control it.”

“How are you makin’ those lights, lass?” Sean asked, and there was trepidation in his voice. She didn’t know
what lights
, with her eyes closed; she couldn’t open them, didn’t understand the heat shimmering inside her.

“It’s a trick,” another man said. “A fuckin’
trick,
Sean,” and Bobbie Faye sensed . . . felt . . . Sean usher Nina out of the helicopter and climb out behind her along with three gunmen who fanned out in front of them, guns aimed into the crowd.

Drums. Rolling, biting, deep, burning. And there she was, flailing around like a deranged, drunk flamingo. Unable to stop. Drums . . .
drums . . . lost in the drums . . .

“Now,
àlainn,
you’ve got a choice to make. Sixty seconds. What will it be?”

“Does . . . Nina . . . have . . . the . . . codes?” she bit out, her body bending to the beats.

“You’ll lose the second half,” Trevor’s mother reminded
him, her voice crisp as a knife slicing through a head of lettuce, “if you kill the people in the stands or my son. Take the girl and go.”

“Twenty seconds,
àlainn
,” Sean said, and then, apparently, to Trevor’s mother, “and thank you, luv, for the extra fifty million. I’ve got no intention of lettin’ people go.”

Sean reached out and grasped her arm.

She opened her eyes, saw every one of Sean’s men flinch at what they saw there, and she gazed down at his hand circled on her forearm just above the bracelet. With a twist of her wrist, her palm clasped his forearm, the chicken foot bracelet throbbing between them.

She looked into his eyes and saw the insanity there, saw the raging lust fed by mindless power, by revenge and lack of control. He could still blow the bombs—still shoot Trevor—and a pure raw raging inferno swelled from the crowd, rolling over her from all sides, as if she were standing in Hell’s front door, and she leaned toward him and said, “
Very
bad juju.”

Lightning cracked the night sky, clouds rolling as if the earth itself recoiled from the bad juju of the man standing in front of her, and then it reared back and slammed forward again, spitting rain as lightning and wind whirled around her.

“Got it, Trev,” another woman’s familiar voice said on the line. It was as if that voice was from another lifetime, a thousand lifetimes ago, and Bobbie Faye only dimly remembered that voice, remembered she was supposed to know what
got it
was about, that it was a part of something important. . . .

Except all she knew, breathed, and understood, was her connection to Sean and the utter
want
in his expression—the greedy abyss of black desire, the determination to blow those stands. She would end it, put an end to the two of them, right where they stood in the middle of that field, end
whatever
she had to end to take him out, and she reached deep, reached into the center of who she was and
found herself again, that hard, glittering tenacity, that strength of knowing herself. Confidence.
There you are
.
Welcome back
.

She grinned. “
I win
.”

“
Now
,” the unknown woman on the line snapped.

“
Go
,” Trevor commanded, and that’s when the entire place went black.

Suds noted the second the uplink disconnected from the bomb. Cam was holding a gun on him, which would blow them all to fucking pieces if he pulled the trigger. And for reasons he did not understand, the stadium lights had slammed off, but the lights in this bay remained on.

“The link’s down,” Suds shouted at Cam above the crowd noise, which had swelled to a roar that rivaled any thundering hurricane Suds had ever heard. “If it comes back up, if the server reroutes it, MacGreggor can pull the trigger on both these bombs instantly. We’ve got to get them out of here.”

“You fucking
built
these bombs?” Cam seethed.

“I never meant them to be used like this. And we don’t have time, Cam. You know I’ve always tried to help Bobbie Faye. You know I helped her mother. And those two—” He pointed to Lori Ann and Stacey. “You know I’m the one who called you when she was driving drunk with the kid. I did not mean this to be used this way. You can shoot me later. Lock me up, blast my head off, I don’t care.” He choked on the tears. “Let me fix this! We’re running out of time.
We’ve got to get the bombs out of here
.”

He saw Cam battle with the devil’s bargain: risk that Suds would pull the trigger on the bombs himself or pull Suds out of there—with no other bomb tech nearby—and risk the whole place going up.

Cam glanced over at Stacey, whose big blue eyes stared at Cam’s gun, and Lori Ann, who shook violently. He holstered his gun and eased open the door to the truck, so very carefully, and cautioned, “Move very very soft, Lori Ann.”
He took Stacey in his arms. Then he looked back at Suds and said, “I will follow you to Hell if this thing blows. The people I love are out there.”