Her mother sighed. “I understand. But if you change your mind, tell your friends they’re more than welcome.”
Remy thanked her again and assured her he would keep her offer in mind.
Triana knew Remy was simply being polite. He might be willing to stay there, especially after the kisses they’d just shared, but she was betting his friends preferred having their own hotel rooms in the event they needed a place to take any girls they picked up. Considering how her friends had flirted with them at the club, needing the privacy of a hotel room was an extremely good possibility.
Her mom chatted with her and Remy for a few more minutes before announcing she was going back to bed. “It’s good seeing you again, Remy. I hope you make time to stop in a few nights and have dinner with Triana and me while you’re here.”
“I will,” he promised, glancing at Triana. “In fact, I think I might be spending quite a lot of time here.”
Triana couldn’t help noticing the tingle of excitement that ran through her at the thought of spending time with Remy.
“Oh, and you don’t have to rush off, Remy,” her mother said before disappearing up the steps. “You can turn off the lights and look around the shop for a while longer if you like.”
Remy chuckled as they listened to the bedroom door close. “Your mother is amazing.”
“Yeah, she is, isn’t she?” Triana agreed with a smile. She reached out and slipped her fingers into the waistband of his jeans, tugging him closer. “So, would you like to look around the shop for a while longer…with the lights on this time?”
He grinned, wrapping his arms around her and lightly touched his lips to hers. Triana moaned and buried her fingers in his short, dark-blond hair, intending to yank him down for a serious kiss, but before she could, he pulled away.
“You have no idea how much I’d like to spend the whole night kissing you,” he said softly, his eyes blazing with hunger. “But the first day of cross-training starts in a few hours.”
It was the same thing she would have done in his position, so Triana was surprised at how disappointed she was that he had to leave.
She forced herself to be mature and nod. “I understand. I had fun tonight.”
“Me too,” he said with a smile. “How about I stop by tomorrow after training? We can go out to eat or dance or just hang out and talk, if you want.”
She liked the sound of that. “It’s a date.”
Chapter 3
Remy strode down the empty hallway, Max, Brooks, and Zane at his heels in tight formation. When he reached the stout wood door at the end, Remy nodded his head rapidly three times, then quickly moved aside, making room for Brooks to come through with the battering ram.
Brooks slammed the thirty-pound cylindrical piece of metal into the door directly below the knob, shattering the wood and sending pieces of the lock flying. The moment it was open, Zane reached out and pulled Brooks back from the doorway, where the momentum of the ram’s swing had left him a sitting duck. Remy darted into the room, Max right behind him, each of them covering their respective quadrants. It was something they’d done so many times in training that it was as familiar to them as breathing.
By the time Brooks and Zane entered the room behind them, he and Max were already motioning that the space was clear. Remy gestured toward a door on the far side. As they approached it, Remy holstered his standard-issue SIG Sauer .40-caliber pistol and swung his tactical shotgun off his back. If the lock on this second door was as strong as it looked, the battering ram would probably bounce off.
Okay, probably not with a werewolf of Brooks’s size handling it, but the goal wasn’t to draw attention to themselves. It was to get through the house quickly using the most efficient breaching techniques available.
In the SWAT world, if you were worried about the lock being reinforced, you ignored the lock and went after the hinges.
Remy’s teammates took an extra step back as he pressed the barrel of the shotgun against the door, where the lower hinge was attached, and fired three shots into it. Without pausing to check the effect of his first shots, he repeated the process at the top and middle of the door, shredding most of the area along the edge. Pointing his shotgun upward, he kicked in the door, then hauled ass out of the way as Max and Brooks slipped through to clear the room beyond.
Shots immediately rang out as Max and Brooks handled the targets inside. Remy had his shotgun back over his shoulder and was drawing his sidearm when Brooks silently motioned that the furniture-filled room was clear and pointed toward a door on Remy’s right.
This one was heavy-duty metal, like something you’d see on the outside of an industrial warehouse. It wouldn’t normally be an issue for a werewolf to get through it using simple brute force, but he knew Gage would be pissed if they did that, so Remy went for plan B.
While the other guys covered him, he moved toward the door, reaching into the demo bag on his hip for the breaching charge he’d put together before coming into the building. Remy pulled the paper off the peel-and-stick back of the charge and shoved it against the door, in between the knob and the jamb, then unspooled the wires of the electric detonator he’d already hooked up to the firing device and gave Brooks a nod. The big man double-checked to make sure the other three members of the team were safely away from the charge and returned his nod.
Remy immediately flipped the cover on the firing device and pressed the red button, then spun around, putting his back to the door. The sound of the blast reverberated throughout the room, the force of it vibrating through him as plastic fragments peppered the back of his tactical vest and cargo pants. By the time he turned around, the dead bolt had been torn apart and the metal door was open.
Zane and Max stormed into the cloud of acrid smoke left in the charge’s wake, firing at the targets set up in the room beyond. Remy and Max had just followed them in when a voice rang out over the speaker in the top right-hand corner of the room.
“Cease fire! Course complete.”
Silence descended over the shoot house as Remy and the other guys complied with the command.
