Free Charmed and Dangerous by Toni McGee Causey

or death, right?” he asked, interrupting her before she could turn on the patented Sumrall charm. Hetapped the GPS box on his truck as if it was far more interesting than she was and Bobbie Faye gritted her teeth behind her best “charming” smile, fighting the urge to shoot the damned GPS box just for kicks.
    “Not buying it, lady,” he continued. “You’re a magnet for disaster and you’re costing me every single minute you stay in this truck. While you’re cute and all—”
    “I’ll pay you,” she said. “To help,” she added when he smiled. She did not like that smile. That was a very dangerous smile; he could convince someone it was okay to jump off a cliff when he smiled like that. She also did not like that brown curly hair or the scar next to his eye, or how blue his eyes were against his tan. Brown eyes were way the hell more trustworthy. Somehow she had to get the upper hand here, and obviously the gun wasn’t really going to do the trick unless she actually wanted to shoot him, and while that wasn’t totally out of the question, she was already in enough trouble.
    Bobbie Faye eyed the Saab, which had stayed on the same street, getting caught by heavy cross traffic at each red light, clearly afraid to risk running the lights. She tried batting her eyelashes at Trevor, hoping to God she had maybe possibly at some point brushed her hair, and hopefully there was nothing in her teeth when she tried the patented “you-want-to-help-me” smile.
    He shook his head. “How are you going to pay me? You can’t afford a cab, remember? I don’t need this. Get out. Tell the cops you were having a nervous breakdown in the bank because of your . . . was it your brother you mentioned? And they’ll go easy on you.”
    “I am
not
having a nervous breakdown, and if you shove me out, I’m going to tell them the robbery was all your idea. And no one—not you, God, or anyone else in between—is going to stand in my way of helping my brother. Now
drive
.”
    The expression on his face shifted from “no” to “hell, no.” Never try to con a man who was so well-practiced in the art of “no” he had a repertoire of expressions. She had to do something, find some way to crack that armor, because shedidn’t know if there was a way to catch up with the boys once they turned off this street into the busy grid of the city proper.
    She gave up the pretense, itching to just shoot him and get it over with. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
    “Are you planning on kidnapping them, too?”
    “If it would help, yes. Do you?”
    “Three bratty sisters from hell.”
    “No wonder, with a brother like you.”
    “Please tell me there’s a jar somewhere with your picture on it, collecting for therapy.”
    He glanced back in his rearview mirror and frowned.
    “I’ve got to get that thing they took from me, or the people who want it are going to hurt my brother.”
    “This is why random murder was invented,” he muttered as he watched something in his rearview mirror.
    “Don’t give me ideas. C’mon. We’re losing the car.”
    She leveled her gun at him, watching him stare at that rearview mirror, frowning way more than he had when she’d first held the gun on him. She stole a fast glance out the back window and saw a silver Taurus parked at the curb a few car lengths behind them. A yuppie guy whose suit fit nicely across his broad shoulders climbed out of the driver’s seat and went to stand in front of a storefront. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place why. She squinted and realized that the storefront was empty, and the guy seemed to be staring a little too intently, his body half-turned away from where she and Trevor were parked at the curb.
    “Hey,” she asked, “is that guy . . . watching us? Through the reflection in the glass?”
    “Did that guy have anything to do with the other guys who stole your stuff?”
    “No . . . well, not that I know of, why?”
    A helicopter roared