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.
Chapter 15
Triana came to with a throbbing headache and the strange sensation of someone tugging at her wet clothes. Her head hurt like hell and she was so out of it that it took a moment to force her eyes open. When she finally did, she saw Quinn’s scratched and ugly mug a few inches from her face like he was going to kiss her. Then she realized he was tugging at her shirt, trying to undress her. She screamed and tried to shove him away only to discover she was sitting in a chair with her hands tied together in front of her and a rope around her waist holding her down.
“Get the hell away from me!” she yelled, twisting her upper body to get his hands off her shirt while clubbing at him with her tied-up hands at the same time.
Quinn laughed and backed away. “Relax. Damn, I was only loosening your wet clothes so you can breathe better. Figured I should make sure you’re comfortable since you might be here a while.”
That’s when everything came rushing back—her stupid plan to slip into the Mardi Gras warehouse to get a look at the man who’d killed her father, Quinn shooting that other guy and roughing her up, then telling her he was bringing her to Mr. Lee.
“What do you want with me?” she asked in a terrified rush, hating to look scared in front of Quinn but too desperate for information to keep quiet. “Why did you bring me here?”
Quinn regarded her in silence, his expression so damn creepy it made her skin want to crawl off and go hide. Finally, he walked over and casually sat down in a chair that matched the one she was trussed up in and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. Triana looked around and realized she was in a study with books all around, a wall of fancy windows to one side and a set of heavy double doors to the other.
