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.
