Chapter 14

Triana sat in Dominic’s beat-up old Chevy Nova, staring through the rain-covered windshield at the big, white warehouse a couple of blocks down the street, wondering what the heck she was supposed to be looking at.

“How do I know there’s anyone even in there, much less the man who killed my father?” she finally asked. “No one has come in or out the whole time I’ve been here.”

“You’ve only been here a few minutes,” Dominic said from beside her, his sleepy eyes locked on the front door of the Mardi Gras krewe warehouse. “It looks like you’re just going to have to take my word for it unless you plan on getting out of this car and peeking in a window for yourself.”

As terrifying as that idea seemed, it was starting to look better and better with every passing second. She’d already been in Dominic’s Nova far longer than she wanted, certainly more than a few minutes. The interior of the ancient car smelled like booze, cigarettes, oil, and a few things Triana didn’t want to imagine. She was also getting the distinct feeling Dominic was starting to think there was going to be something more to this arrangement than the payment of five hundred dollars for services rendered. He’d already asked twice if she’d like to go out for a drink—in the middle of a hurricane.

“Did you at least get a better look at the guy?” she asked.

He’d given her a rather generic description the other day when they’d met at the bar, so she hoped he could tell her more now.

Dominic regarded her suspiciously, probably afraid she was going to run off and find the guy without paying him the five hundred dollars.

“He’s a big guy—six three, maybe 280 pounds. He looks like a frigging defensive end for the Saints.” Dominic scrunched up his face as if trying to remember what the man had looked like. “He had a shaved head and a tattoo of a snake or lizard running up the side of his neck all the way to his ear. I think I already told you about the tattoo of an anchor on his right arm. Didn’t I?”

Triana nodded. Okay, it didn’t sound like she was going to miss this guy.

Before she could think about whether what she was going to do was a good idea or not, she reached for the door handle. A part of her wished Remy were there. It was hard not remembering how safe she’d felt with him. Of course, if he were there, she probably wouldn’t be doing anything this crazy.

But Remy wasn’t with her right then. If anyone was going to catch the man who murdered her father, it would start with her, and she wasn’t going to learn anything sitting in that car. She’d just snoop around and look for a window, take a quick peek then bail. She’d be able to give a good description to Bodine; then he would be able to take it from there. She hoped. She only prayed she wasn’t taking a crazy risk like this for no reason.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Dominic squawked in his raspy voice, reaching out to grab her arm as she cracked the door and got hit with a gust of wind-driven rain. “Are you crazy? If I’m right, and I am, that guy in there is a stone-cold killer. Which means the people he’s hanging out with are probably just as whacked. Why don’t you just stay in the dry car and wait?”

Triana stepped out into the rain and looked back at Dominic, stunned to see genuine concern in his eyes. “I’m just going to take a quick peek. I’ll be right back.”

“What about my money?” Dominic asked urgently, and Triana had to wonder if perhaps that was where the man’s sudden concern started and stopped. “If you get killed, I’m out five hundred dollars.”

Triana reached into her purse, leaning into the car a bit so her bag wouldn’t get filled with water, and dug out her wallet. She counted out $250 and gave it to Dominic. “Here’s half. I’ll give you the other half once I’ve seen Quinn.”

Dominic opened his mouth to complain, but Triana closed the car door. Turning, she darted across the street and huddled close to the building, hoping the overhang would shelter her from the worst of the rain. She would have used her umbrella, but it was currently on its way to the French Quarter after getting ripped out of her hands by the wind when she’d first gotten out of her car and into Dominic’s. Not that an umbrella helped much in this weather. The rain was coming sideways more than down.

When she reached the big white building Dominic had pointed out, she slowed, wondering how she should do what she needed to. She supposed she could always walk in the front door, pretend she was simply trying to get out of the weather. The problem with that approach was that Quinn might recognize her. If he’d known her father, that was certainly a possibility. That meant trying to peek through the glass in the door was a bad idea too. So instead, she turned down the alley that ran along the side of the big warehouse. While there were windows, they were all positioned too high for Triana to see into.

Ignoring her wet jeans and sodden sneakers, she continued along the building, stopping momentarily at the metal door sheltered under the cover of an aluminum awning. She put her ear to the door to see if she could hear anyone inside, but the rain and wind whipping against the aluminum walls and awning made that impossible. Holding her breath, she slowly turned the knob, doubtful that it would be open but figuring she should check anyway. As expected, the knob didn’t budge.

She slipped out from under the awning, gasping as water ran off the building and poured down the back of her neck and under her raincoat. Damn, that was cold. She yanked the collar tighter, but it did no good. Frigid water slipped everywhere, making her shiver like crazy.

The back of the building wasn’t as well-maintained as the side, with two overflowing Dumpsters, a handful of pallets leaning haphazardly against the back wall, and a bunch of trash-filled and rain-soaked cardboard boxes piled everywhere. Some of the boxes shook and skated around in the wind, and Triana imagined that all of them, and maybe the pallets too, would have blown away if they weren’t on the wind-sheltered side of the building.

She eyed the back door and the wooden pallets leaning against the wall under the windows, wondering which one was the better option. Like the side door, she doubted this one would open either but decided to check it out before attempting to climb the pallets up to the windows. She wasn’t the most graceful and athletic person at the best of times. In this wind, she might be taking her life in her own hands.

She was so surprised when the knob turned and the door opened that she almost fell on her face. Catching herself, she poked her head inside, praying she wouldn’t find a bunch of scary people staring back at her.

When she caught sight of human-sized silhouettes standing there in the darkness, she almost let out an involuntary shriek. But then she remembered she was breaking into a Mardi Gras warehouse and got a grip on herself. Taking a deep breath, she looked around the darkened interior of the warehouse. Relieved no one seemed to be in that part of the warehouse, she slipped inside. She closed the door behind her, careful not to make any noise. Not that anyone was going to hear her. The noise of the rain hitting the metal roof of the warehouse made her wonder if this was what the inside of a kettledrum sounded like.

Triana moved forward cautiously, her heart beating a hundred miles an hour as the gravity of what she was doing started to settle in. She was in a warehouse in the middle of a hurricane with the man who’d most likely murdered her father. She wasn’t a cop, she had no weapon, and the only person who really knew where she was at that moment was a career bar rat who’d probably already left with her money.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

That thought didn’t keep her feet from moving her forward through the darkness, weaving past the Mardi Gras floats with their scary monsters, comic book heroes, and smiling mermaids.

She’d been to a lot of parades in this city and had seen thousands of floats, but being in this dark warehouse with them was just about the freakiest place she’d ever been. She was staring at one of the big demon characters, sure it was following her with its eyes, when she heard a loud voice up ahead. She froze, terrified someone had seen her. But then a second voice reverberated through the metal warehouse, and she realized it was two men arguing.

She followed the sounds of their voices, trying to hear over the drumming of the rain. The argument was getting more heated. She couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed like one of the men was saying that the other had sold them out.

Triana was so intent on hearing what the men were saying that she came around one of the floats and almost walked into the two of them. She pulled back just in time, hiding behind the corner of the float as she stared wide-eyed at the two men yelling at each other.

Without a doubt, one of the men was the guy Dominic had described. There couldn’t be that many shaved-head monsters in this city. He was huge and scary-looking as hell. He looked like the kind of man who twisted the heads off of dolls just to hear little girls cry. She could easily believe he was a murderer.

The other guy was African American, smaller, with close-cropped hair and a couple of gold rings in one of his ears. He was just as tough-looking as Quinn, and his face was filled with rage as he stood toe to toe with the larger man.

“Don’t try to fucking lie to me, Roth,” Quinn said. “You should have realized we were onto you when we came here to break down the meth instead of the place we talked about last night. That’s because we’ve known about you since yesterday.”

Roth looked confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You didn’t think we’d notice there were only three people—Lee, you, and me—who knew which ship the drugs were coming in on and which warehouse we’d be storing them in afterward? Since Mr. Lee obviously didn’t rat us out, that leaves you.”

“Screw you, you fucking steroid freak!” Roth shouted. “Maybe you called the cops on us. Everyone knows you’ve been jonesing to take over Lee’s territory. After running around behind him for years saying Mr. Lee this and Mr. Lee that, maybe you finally grew a big enough pair of balls to try and take him out.”

Quinn went completely still, and Triana decided it was time to get out of there, before they started fighting. She had what she’d come for, confirmation of what this guy looked like. She had no idea what they were talking about or who Mr. Lee was, and she didn’t care.

But before she could move, Quinn whipped a gun out from behind his back and shot the other guy in the chest at point-blank range. The noise was loud in the warehouse, but instead of echoing like she’d thought it would, the rain beating down on the metal roof seemed to immediately swallow it up.

Triana stood there in stunned disbelief as the smaller man slowly slumped to the floor, blood staining the front of his shirt.

The sound of footsteps coming toward Triana abruptly reminded her that she needed to get the hell out of there.

She turned to run but didn’t get more than ten feet before Quinn grabbed her hair and yanked her backward. The pain was so intense, she couldn’t help but scream. But like the gunshot, the sound was quickly drowned out by the rain pounding on the roof.

She struggled, but Quinn ignored her movements and spun her around.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he sneered. “I have no idea what the hell you’re doing here, but you saved me an assload of work. Mr. Lee called earlier and told me to find you. Now I guess I don’t have to.”

Triana had no idea why Mr. Lee wanted this walking pile of muscles to find her, but something told her it couldn’t be good. Panic raced through her chest, threatening to make her heart explode. In a panic, she took a swing at Quinn, aiming for his temple like Remy had showed her, but her fist bounced off his skull like she’d just punched a brick wall.

Quinn laughed, then casually reached out and cuffed her alongside the head so hard her whole body went limp and her vision began to go dark. Before she could fall to the floor though, Quinn grabbed her arm.

“Do you think anyone heard that gunshot?” a man’s worried voice asked from somewhere behind Quinn. “Should we pack up and move the drugs?”

Quinn glanced over his shoulder at the man. “No one heard the shot in this storm. And no, don’t pack up the drugs.”

“What about Roth?” the man asked.

“That piece of shit didn’t have a chance to get a call off to the cops. I kept an eye on him to make sure of it,” Quinn said. “Finish breaking down the ice, then get it to our distributors. Mr. Lee wants the stuff on the streets by the time the weather clears so everyone will have plenty of okie coke for their post-Ophelia parties.”

As Triana stared down at Roth’s body, she thought she saw the guy move…maybe. But she couldn’t be sure because Quinn tightened his grip on her arm and shoved her toward the back of the warehouse.

“Time to get you to Mr. Lee’s,” Quinn said.

Terrified at the idea of going anywhere with Quinn, Triana did the only thing she could think of—she turned and punched him in the sensitive spot right below his sternum. She couldn’t remember what Remy had called it at that moment, but she remembered him saying it could give her a chance to run.

Her fist connected solidly, sinking into Quinn’s stomach so hard he gasped. His grip on her arm loosened and she jerked away from him, running for the back door. She prayed Dominic was still out there.

Triana made it halfway there before Quinn grabbed her by the hair again and yanked her back. She ignored the pain in her scalp, kicking and punching with all her might, aiming for his balls and anything else she could reach.

Quinn laughed. “You’re almost as tough as that mule-headed father of yours. Before the son of a bitch bought it, anyway.”

Hearing this piece of crap talk about her father—whom he’d murdered—made her fight harder, and she reached out and raked her fingernails down the man’s face.

“Bitch!” he cursed.

Swinging her in a big circle, Quinn slammed her headfirst into the closest available object—that damn spooky red demon she’d seen on her way in.

The figure might have been made out of Styrofoam and papier-mâché, but it was still hard as hell. Stars burst across her vision as she felt herself go limp in Quinn’s grip. Oh God, she was passing out. She wouldn’t be able to protect herself if she was unconscious.

Don’t pass out… don’t do it.

Her head didn’t seem to care about that, and Triana felt her legs turn to rubber as everything went black.

* * *

“The back door is already open,” Zane said over the radio headset, his voice barely audible above the rain and wind. “Standing by to enter.”

“Understood.” Drew’s voice was calm in Remy’s earpiece. “Team two, status?”

Remy watched as Brooks wedged a thin crowbar in the doorjamb at the side board, waiting until his teammate nodded at him and the NOPD SWAT officers with them. They needed a crowbar for this breaching job since the heavy metal door was designed to open out. Any attempt to kick or blow the door inward would have likely failed.

“Team two at the side door,” Remy said into his mic. “Ready to enter at your word.”

The drive to this part of town hadn’t been as long as they’d feared in the rain, and setting up on the warehouse had been fairly easy too. Nothing like a torrential downpour to keep gawkers at a minimum. In fact, they hadn’t seen anyone the entire time they’d moved into position around the building.

Zane, Max, and three NOPD SWAT team members would take the back door while Remy, Brooks, and two locals would take the side. Drew and Lorenzo would lead the largest contingent of six SWAT officers in through the main door up front.

Drew was worried the warehouse was already empty, but Remy knew better. Even through the rain and wind, he could hear movement in the big warehouse. He’d tried to get close to the door to see if he could get a whiff of crystal meth in there, but the rainfall had wiped away any trace scents in the area. Hell, between the rain and wind, he could barely smell Brooks, and the other werewolf was standing no more than five feet away.

“We go in three,” Drew’s voice sounded in Remy’s earpiece. “Two…one…go!”

Brooks wrenched savagely on the crowbar, wedging the jamb back and popping the lock. At the same time, one of the NOPD SWAT officers grabbed the door and hauled it open. Remy and the other SWAT officers with him swarmed into the warehouse, moving toward the front of the place, where his nose told him the drugs and people were located. Brooks and the rest of the officers swept around him, fanning out through the float-filled warehouse.

Hearing shouts from the front of the place telling him that’s where all of Lee’s people were, Remy immediately headed that way. But before he could take more than a couple of steps, two unexpected and powerful scents hit his nose and brought him to a complete standstill. One was blood; the other was Triana.

Remy knew he should keep moving toward the front of the warehouse with Brooks, but he couldn’t. Instead, he followed his nose toward the back of the building, even as the other officers he’d entered with disappeared among the insane-looking floats. His heart thumped at a hundred miles an hour as he tried to understand how he could possibly smell Triana in there. It wasn’t trace residue, as if she’d been there a while ago, either. It was recent. He didn’t think the blood was hers, but the two scents were so closely intertwined, he couldn’t know for sure.

Zane was kneeling on one side of a wounded man, calling for an ambulance, while Max was on the other side, slapping a field dressing over a bloody chest wound and applying pressure. Remy immediately recognized him as one of Lee’s lieutenants, Roth. He’d been shot in the right side of the chest, and while the man’s heart was still beating, it was getting weak. From the amount of blood that had been lost, Remy was surprised the guy was even still alive. Clearly, Roth was one tough son of a bitch.

Remy left Zane and Max to their tasks while he tried to figure out what had happened here and where Triana’s scent was coming from. It was more concentrated on one of the floats, more precisely the one with the freaky-looking red demon on it, but she was nowhere to be found. There was at least one other scent he recognized as well, but his olfactory memory wasn’t good enough to pinpoint exactly to whom it belonged. There were a couple of werewolves in the Pack who could ID any scent they’d smelled before, but he simply wasn’t that talented.

Max must have picked up on his anxiety when Remy walked past him for the third time. “What’s wrong?”

“Triana was here,” Remy said. “Recently. Like, ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

Zane and Max tested the air with their noses, then shrugged.

“I definitely smell a woman’s scent, but I can’t tell if it’s Triana,” Max said. “Since you know her a whole hell of a lot better than we do, I’ll assume you’re right. But why would she be here? More important, where is she now?”

Remy didn’t get a chance to answer because Lorenzo chose that moment to come in. The narcotics detective’s eyes widened.

“Shit!” Lorenzo dropped to his knees beside Roth and checked his pulse. “Dammit, Chad. I warned you not to take any chances, but you just had to keep pushing it, didn’t you?”

“This is the informant?” Zane asked in surprise. “One of Lee’s lieutenants? How the hell did you make that happen?”

“Chad’s a cop,” Lorenzo said. “He’s been undercover in the New Orleans crime scene for the better part of six years. He was able to develop a reputation that gave him the chance to slip into Lee’s organization about three years ago. It was risky as shit, but he knew this would be our best chance to put Aaron Lee away.”

Remy suddenly realized why he’d gotten such a closed-off vibe from the guy when he’d seen him a couple of days ago. Chad had been living undercover for six years. The only way cops survived that long in the criminal underworld was by closing themselves off.

“The ambulance is on the way,” Max said, crouching beside Lorenzo. “It’s bad, but he just has to hang on until the EMTs get here.”

Lorenzo nodded but didn’t look hopeful. “In this weather? That could take a while.”

Max and Zane nodded, but Remy couldn’t listen anymore. Triana’s scent was driving him insane, but not nearly as much as not knowing what the hell had happened to her. Why had she been here? Where was she now? Who had her? Was she in danger? The stress of not knowing the answers to those questions, and about a thousand other ones, was enough to make his fangs and claws start to come out.

Not knowing what else to do, he yanked out his cell phone to call her and saw that she’d called him forty minutes ago but hadn’t left a message. Growling in frustration, he dialed her number.

“What the hell, Remy?” Lorenzo demanded, frowning up at him.

Remy didn’t answer. Calling your girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—in the middle of a raid wasn’t exactly standard protocol.

“Don’t ask how he knows,” Max said, “but someone very important to him was in this warehouse right before we got here.”

Lorenzo asked Max how he could possibly know that, but Remy tuned them out. He couldn’t deal with that right then.

Not surprisingly, Triana didn’t pick up. Instead, it went to voice mail. He considered leaving a message, but his gut told him it would be a waste of time.

“She’s not answering,” he growled, shoving his phone away as his stomach did flips and barrel rolls. “Something is wrong. I can feel it in my gut. Triana was right here at the same time your guy was getting shot.”

Remy had no idea how he knew it was true, but he did. That was the only thing that mattered.

“I need to know what the hell happened in this warehouse,” he said, turning toward the front of the building.

Lorenzo got up to follow. “Good luck with that. Those guys we arrested are all professional criminals. They’re going to lawyer up and not say a word to anyone.”

Remy growled as he headed in that direction. “Who said I was going to give them an option?”

Zane stayed with the injured undercover cop, while Lorenzo and Max hurried to catch up with Remy.

He passed between the last of the Mardi Gras floats and found himself in a large open area at the front of the warehouse. Long folding tables had been set up along either side, with a third row running right down the center. From all the tools, paints, stacks of Styrofoam, and craft paper scattered around, this was probably the place new floats were made and old ones repaired. But now all the art supplies had been shoved to the side and the tables cleared. In their place were scales, boxes of plastic baggies, and lots of crystal meth. The crap looked like big shards of rock candy, so clear you could see through it.

But Remy ignored all of that and instead turned his attention to the ten men lined up near the partial wall that divided this area from the entryway and front door. They were all cuffed and seemed to be waiting patiently for someone to come and take them in for booking.

Lorenzo got around in front of him and put a hand on his chest in an attempt to slow him down. “Remy, you need to stop.”

“Get out of my way, Lorenzo,” Remy said in a low voice.

He was damn close to losing control, and he didn’t need some by-the-book detective telling him to back off. He’d done everything he could to push Triana away, even though it had pained her and him, so she wouldn’t get hurt. After all that, it looked like it had been a waste. Somehow, she’d gotten wrapped up with a bunch of scary people anyway. He had no idea what was going on, but she was in danger. He knew that deep down in his soul. He’d do whatever it took to find her and make sure she was safe—even if that meant going through the middle of a NOPD narcotics detective.

He shoved Lorenzo’s hand away and moved to step around the man, but the idiot got in front of him again.

“Damn it, Remy,” Lorenzo said. “One of my very best friends put himself undercover for six years to get Aaron Lee and now it looks like it might cost him his life. I’m not going to let you waste his sacrifice. All the people we arrested work for Lee, and by catching them with all these drugs, we finally have something to pin on him. This is going to get us warrants for his home and every business he’s associated with. We finally have this guy by the balls and I’m not going to let you do something stupid that will get this arrest thrown out of court.”

Remy locked eyes with the narcotics detective, his fingertips and gums tingling as his shift came on. Gage would be pissed as hell, but Remy didn’t care. He was going to get his questions answered one way or another.

“I need to find out what the hell Triana was doing in this warehouse and where she is now, and one of these men is going to tell me,” he said softly, not bothering to keep the rumbling growl out of his voice. “So unless you plan on shooting me, you need to move.”

The detective’s face went blank as he took a step back, but then he slowly reached across his body to grab the pistol holstered under his left armpit. Several of the NOPD SWAT officers who’d been standing there watching the exchange tensed, hands near their weapons. This was about to get ugly.

Remy flexed his fingers. Guess he was going to have to do this the hard way. He could take them all down before they put more than three or four bullets in him.

“Remy, you might want to wait a minute before you do anything stupid,” Brooks’s deep voice interrupted from the entryway. “At least until you talk to these guys outside. I think they can answer most of your questions without anyone getting shot.”

Remy opened his mouth to ask his pack mate what he meant by that, but Brooks had already turned and headed for the door. He gave Lorenzo a quick look, then walked out without another word. The narcotics detective didn’t follow.

Remy found Brooks and Drew standing outside the warehouse with two other guys. The rain had slowed to a slow drizzle at that point, but both men were already soaked.

“This is Marcus Bodine, a local PI,” Drew said, motioning at one of the men. “And this is Dominic, one of his informants. They got here right after we went through the door.” He turned his attention to the two men. “Tell Remy what you told us.”

Remy stood there stunned as the PI told him he was working for Triana, helping her find her father’s murderer. The private investigator talked like a cop, giving a short, concise rundown of the facts, including how Dominic had heard someone bragging about killing a person in a manner consistent with the evidence in her father’s case file.

Somewhere in the middle of Bodine’s story, the ambulance showed up and the PI paused as the EMTs ran past them with a gurney and their gear.

“Triana insisted on talking to this witness directly,” Bodine said after the EMTs disappeared inside. “When I set it up, I never dreamed she’d be stupid enough to try to track down her father’s killer herself.”

Dominic took over the story then, explaining how he found the man he’d heard bragging in a bar and had followed him here.

“I called her so she could get a look at the guy, Shelton Quinn, as soon as he came out of the building, but she got impatient and decided to go take a look.”

Remy’s gut clenched at the mention of Quinn. Shit, that was the other scent he’d recognized in the warehouse near Triana’s. The first time he’d seen the big, muscular bruiser who worked for Lee, his werewolf instincts had told him the guy was no good.

“What happened then?” Remy asked.

Dominic swallowed. “I started worrying about her after a couple of minutes, so I got out of my car to see where she was. When I got to the back door, I figured I’d go in and try to talk her into coming out, when I heard a gunshot.”

The guy’s hands were shaking as he spoke, and Remy realized that going after Triana was probably the only heroic thing the man had done in his life, and it had terrified him.

“I froze for a second,” Dominic said. “The next thing I know, Quinn was coming out the back door with Triana tossed over his shoulder like a bag of wheat. I wanted to do something, but I ain’t no hero—not against a guy that big. So I hid and watched as he tossed Triana in a blue BMW and spun out of here. Then I called Marcus.”

“When I got here and saw the commotion and all the cops, I grabbed the first person I found and told him everything,” Bodine said, gesturing at Drew.

Remy could hardly breathe. “Was she still alive when you saw her?”

Dominic scrunched up his face, like he was thinking hard. “I think so. He was handling her like she was. I mean, he didn’t throw her in the trunk. And I didn’t see any blood on her.”

Remy wasn’t too certain how much faith he had in Dominic, but he breathed a sigh of relief anyway.

“None of this makes sense,” Brooks said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Remy, but assuming Quinn figured out Triana knew that he’d killed her father, why the hell would he go to the trouble of taking her with him? If he shot Roth and left him for dead, why not do the same to her?”

Remy didn’t have an answer to that question. The fact that Quinn had taken Triana instead of killing her outright both gave him hope and scared the shit out of him at the same time. He didn’t even want to think about her being in that psycho’s hands.