“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.
