“You need sugar or anything?” he asked, swirling the doped glass in his hand, presumably giving whatever he’d slipped her time to dissolve.
“You’re sure enough not from the South,” she said forcing a smile. “It’s sweet tea. The sugar’s already in it.”
“Oh, yeah.” Benavides winced. “Of course.”
Camille continued to play naïve while her mind raced for the next move. She was stupid, stupid, stupid to let this guy in her house. Whatever she did, she had to do it in a hurry, before he realized she knew anything. Jacques always said most people lost a fight while they’re standing around deciding what to do. Maybe the pill was a vitamin or something, and he meant it for himself. Maybe…
She made up her mind when he held the doped tea glass out for her to take.
Her paring knife caught him where his thumb met his forefinger, just behind the glass. Bringing her left arm across, Camille used both hands to drive the blade downward, screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Porca Vacca!” The Italian curse was one hundred percent fear, but it had the startling effect of a war cry.
The glass of sweet tea crashed from Joey B’s hand as her knife pegged him to the wooden cutting board. His own gurgling screech rose above hers when he looked down and saw blood pouring from the wound.
“You biiiittchh!” he shrieked. “I’m—”
She cut him off with a quart jar full of green beans to the side of his head. Sinking like a sack of sand, he fell to the kitchen floor in a pile of blood, beans, and broken glass. The heavy cutting board, still attached to his hand with the knife, followed him down and bashed him in the head.
Her mind racing to figure out what Jacques would do, Camille bent quickly to snatch the pistol from a holster on the man’s belt. She took a step back with trembling knees. She’d just stabbed a federal officer — maybe even killed him with the jar. Then she thought, maybe she should kill him. He had tried to drug her, but there was no going back from what she’d done.
“Mama?”
Her oldest son’s voice nearly sent her out of her skin. He was twelve, and already sounded a lot like his father. She spun, biting her lip to keep from breaking down right then and there.
“Mama,” the boy repeated. All three of her older sons had come in from the yard and stood wide-eyed in the doorway to the kitchen.
Denny, the third in line at eight years old, had gone pale. “You’re bleeding…”
She glanced down to see blood running out of her hand and dripping off the point of her elbow. The jar must have cut her when she hit Benavides in the head. She grabbed a paper towel and pressed it to the wound. It was not as bad as it looked, but it might take a while to stanch the blood.
“Help me, boys,” she said, as if she’d just asked them to bring up some laundry. “We need to get this bad man into the bedroom and tie him up.”
Dan, the second oldest nodded. “Want me to call 911?”
She shook her head. “This man is a policeman,” she said, wrapping her hand with a towel as she spoke. “But trust me, he’s a bad one. He was trying to hurt your mama.”
All three boys bristled at that and looked ready to stomp Joey B where he lay.
“Come on,” she said, “he’s a big guy. It’s going to take all four of us to move him.”
Ten minutes later, Camille Thibodaux and her sons of twelve, ten, and eight had dragged, rolled, and lifted Joey Benavides onto her bed. She’d considered using the guest bed, but her four-poster had strong oak rails at the head and foot, giving her something to chain his arms and legs to. Jacques’s grandfather had been the sheriff of Terrebonne Parish, and Camille had been able to find two pairs of his old handcuffs in the drawer where Jacques kept what he called his “important tactical shit.”
She used ropes and duct tape to secure Joey’s ankles, sure it cut off his circulation, but she didn’t really care.
Satisfied Benavides wouldn’t be able to escape when he woke up, Camille stepped back to try to work out what to do next. If he’d told anyone he was here, she was screwed. Help would be along anytime. But considering the fact that he’d tried to drug her instead of arrest her, she hoped his visit was unofficial and off the books.
The three boys stood behind her, flushed and glowing that they’d be able to tell their dad about being men of the house while he was gone. Jacques had instilled in them from birth that “protector of the mama” was the highest of callings.
Camille handed Dan the keys to Joey B’s sedan, holding up the ignition key so he’d know which one it was, and told him to drive the car around back so it was off the street and out of sight. At ten, he was the best driver of all the boys and often took the wheel when they went to their grandpa’s farm in Louisiana. Besides that, she wasn’t about to leave them alone in the house with this creep, even if he was tied up.
She sent the other two boys to clean up the glass in the kitchen and picked up her cell phone with trembling hands to make another futile attempt at calling Jacques. He rarely spoke of it, but she knew his life was full of stabbing and head bashing. He would surely know what to do. Benavides had said that Ronnie Garcia was in custody. Though Camille didn’t know everything, she was smart enough to read between the lines and see that if IDTF agents had found Ronnie, everyone she was associated with was in mortal danger.
She got Jacques’s voice mail, listened to all of it just to hear his voice, then tried again, holding on to hope while it rang. Still nothing. Cursing under her breath in staccato Italian, she paced back and forth, her eyes locked on the unconscious man tied to her bed.
“Come on, Jacques,” she said, barely holding her sobs at bay. It was all over the Internet what these IDTF guys did to their prisoners. The thought of it made her sick to her stomach. Jacques and Jericho were both AWOL so they would be no help. It was up to her to figure out what to do to help Ronnie. She was smart and relatively fit, but she knew she couldn’t do this by herself — whatever it was she was doing.
With no one else to call, she scrolled through her list of contacts and took a deep breath before punching in the number to the last person on earth who should want to help Veronica Garcia.
Chapter 34
It was dark by the time Quinn rode the Toaster Tank Beemer up the cobblestone road in front of the Bursaws’ inn. From the looks of things, the party had been going on for some time.
Petra’s father played raucous folk music on his accordion beside two men about his age on a wooden stage they’d dragged up under the canopy of the beech tree. One man played the violin, another a long-necked stringed instrument called a tamburica that sounded to Quinn much like a mandolin.
Song sat on the back of the bike for a long moment after Quinn rolled to a stop and lowered the side stand. Arms locked around his waist, she seemed frozen in place, her eyes glued to the musicians. The end of a number broke the spell and Quinn felt her shake herself as if shooing away a stray thought. He steadied the bike while he waited for her to swing a leg off and step back.
“I need to make arrangements,” she said, removing her helmet and running a hand through her hair as she started for the door. “I’ll be down in a moment.”
She bounded through the milling crowd as if she couldn’t wait to get away from Quinn now that she was out of her stupor.
Kevin Bursaw stood chatting with a small crowd of men under a string of white and red lights, the colors of the Croatian flag. Nibbling from a paper plate piled high with food, he looked up and waved at Quinn, motioning him over.