Free Girls Just Wanna Have Guns by Toni McGee Causey Page B

necessary, but Reggie was hinting at something bigger, something that brought out the feral, competitive reporter in her.
    So what in the hell was Bobbie Faye up to?
    The first thought Bobbie Faye had when entering Marie’s all-pink living room was that she was going to have to bleach her eyes. Every single item in the room was some shade of pink, peach, rose, or blush. Even the plastic casing on the large flat-screen TV had been somehow painted pink, which was an affront to TVs everywhere. She’d barely had time to blink and adjust her eyes from the bright noon sun when three men stepped into the room from the kitchen.
    Emile. Great. She’d apparently missed the fact that today was
Rat Bastard
day
.
    Bobbie Faye swallowed the distaste that automatically flooded her as her uncle stood flanked by two bodyguards. Clearly, her uncle had a no-neck, “must be the size of a small planet” hiring policy when it came to his goons. Sandwiched between them, Emile seemed almost tiny, though he was nearly as tall as Trevor. His dark, exotic looks were still handsome; only the crinkles around his eyes indicated he was closer to sixty than a first glance would have indicated.
    Bobbie Faye could imagine him as he’d been in college when Marie met him: bright, funny, beautiful, and rich. But somewhere along the way, he’d grown into a man who ran a multimillion-dollar Mardi Gras bead business, which, by allegations the federal government had never been able to prove, had also given him access to a wide organized crime network—a network he joined back then and now led.
    “What,” he said, grinning, white teeth bright against his darker complexion, his arms spread wide. “No hug for your uncle?”
    She tamped down the anger and fear she felt as she held up her zip-tied hands in front of him, blocking his hug; she wasn’t fooled. She hadn’t ever been fooled, not even as a kid, when Emile would bring along sacks of candy and ostentatious presents the few times he ventured into Cajun land when picking up Francesca from her grandmother’s in order to drag her back to New Orleans for the school year. He was the kind of guy who bought a watchdog, then shot it for barking and waking him up. Or so the rumor had gone.
    “I don’t think uncles send pit vipers to pick up their nieces, but I could be confused by this whole
family
concept.”
    Emile chuckled, glancing at Trevor, who’d taken up a stance on the opposite side of the room from the bodyguards. Trevor folded his arms across his chest. His biceps bulged, the tattoos on his shoulders above them flexed justa bit, almost imperceptibly. He looked chiseled out of stone and she got distracted for a second there, wondering where he got those tattoos—and if she could forget those, what else did she not know about him? Then his forearm flexed, and she felt the tension radiate off him, in spite of his practiced, calm demeanor. That was the first time Bobbie Faye registered that somewhere along the way, he’d put on a shoulder holster—and his right hand, tucked into the crook of his elbow, was probably resting on the butt of his gun. He wasn’t exactly inspiring her to relax.
    “Oh,
chérie
,” Emile said, nodding toward Trevor, whose expression was that of a stone-cold killer, “he’s an insurance policy, nothing more.”
    “Somehow, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t work for State Farm.”
    “I want my diamonds back, Bobbie Faye.” Emile’s voice had gone soft and deadly. She had to blink away images of poisonous snakes slithering across the floor, but her skin crawled with apprehension, just the same. “So you can stop playing your little game and tell me where they are.”
    Game?
Game?
She could see the headline now:
Woman’s head explodes, takes out city
. She gaped at her uncle with complete incredulity, and didn’t even bother to hide her rage.
    “You have lost your mind, along with the rest of the idiots from today. I have . . . had . . . a car with duct-taped