Free Girls Just Wanna Have Guns by Toni McGee Causey

relief even while he flinched a little at the
your girl
part. When in the hell was this freaking town going to let him forget they’d once been together?
    “What about the bomb?”
    “Looks real basic from the little bit I’m seeing, nothing fancy, but that’s nothing more than an educated guess at this point, since we’ll have to put divers in the bayou to try to find out if there’s any more evidence below us. I’ll have something more for you by tomorrow.”
    He didn’t have to tell Maggie that this was a priority case. Bobbie Faye–related events automatically got the mayor’s and the governor’s attention and their urgency to make it go away, fast. Maggie went back to supervising the collection of evidence and Cam surveyed the crowd. Somewhere, there was someone who’d seen what happened. The damned frustrating part about investigating anything that the Contraband Days Queen did: most of the town felt a sense of loyalty, as if she were really some sort of crowned royalty of their own, and they wouldn’t rat her out if they thought it would help her get away. Of course, as soon as it was clear she’d gotten away, he’d have fifty peopleclaiming to have been running from the car with her when it blew up, just to get themselves on TV.
    He kept scanning the crowd, looking for an expression of . . . confidence. Of someone who already knew that Bobbie Faye hadn’t been in that car. But most of the people were scowling with curiosity or worry. Then he landed on a familiar face.
    His headache instantly got ten times worse.
     
----
    From: Cam
    To: Bobbie Faye
     
    Where the hell are you? This is my SEVENTH message! Call me.
----
     
    Bobbie Faye pressed her face into Trevor’s back as she rode behind him on the Harley, the wind whipping her hair against her, stinging her face until she had to close her eyes. Which meant she couldn’t see the curves ahead as Trevor sped through them, leaning into the road, going so fast that the terrain was a blur and she was in serious risk of becoming asphalt décor.
    She made a mental list of asses that needed to be kicked, and it was getting freakishly long. Who in the hell did these people think they were? How was it okay for them to just ram into her life and threaten her and her family? She knew Francesca’s dad was a scary guy, well-connected to organized crime if the rumors were anything to go by. (Nothing had ever been proven.) Someone like that probably would order a hit on his ex-wife, to do whatever it took to get something back that he wanted. Him, she understood. But these other people . . . trying to kill her? Who were these people trying to manipulate her for their own ends . . . were they insane? Did they think she’d recoil infear and do what she was told, like she operated on common sense or something. . . .
    . . .
Oh. Wait
. Okay, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she should, but at this point, she was freaking pissed off. And sore. Blood ran down her left arm from scrapes and scratches she’d gotten when she was thrown from the explosion. She could only imagine what the cut on her forehead looked like from that second abduction; she was probably going to be turning purple from bruises at any point.
    The adrenaline must have been subsiding, because her arms felt loose and weak and she had the shakes. She pressed closer to Trevor, and he let go of one of the handlebars and covered her hand with his. Then he turned left off 171 onto Sam Houston Jones Parkway and then a right into a gorgeous neighborhood.
    Marie had moved into this exclusive enclave after she’d left Emile. Mature trees filled the lawns, including stunning live oaks with lush, green canopies and massive limbs that dipped down almost to the ground, colorful crepe myrtles with a riot of pale pink flowers, and stately pecan trees. Each mansion sported at least two stories, many of them, three. Trevor drove to the back of the neighborhood, one of the last streets fully developed. There were