“That was the last mistake your father ever made,” a man’s voice interrupted from the doorway.
Triana turned her head to see a big man in his midfifties standing there with a hard expression on his face.
“You don’t piss on an enemy and let them walk away,” the man said as he stepped into the room and walked over to stand in front of her. “The funny thing about it is that it was your father who taught me that lesson.” Lee studied her thoughtfully. “You look exactly like your mother when she was younger. You definitely have your father’s eyes, though. And apparently his stubborn nature.”
Triana didn’t say anything.
“I thought it would be difficult to find the right kind of people to do the job I needed,” Lee said. “But they aren’t that tough to find if you’re willing to spend the money. You just have to look for people who know how to take down someone who’s hard to get rid of. If you want to kill a particular animal, you merely have to find the right hunter.”
That’s when Triana realized she was in even more trouble than she’d thought. Quinn might be a deranged murderer, but Lee was even worse. The man seemed as cold and dead inside as a vampire.
Suddenly, she hoped with everything in her that Remy and his teammates didn’t come looking for her. She didn’t want these people getting their hands on Remy or anyone else she cared about.
* * *
Remy stood just inside the front door of the warehouse, staring out at the rain coming down again. Another band of the storm was moving through, bringing even more rain and wind than the previous ones. The weather report said it would be like this most of the night, as the eastern edges of the storm slowly passed over the city, though at some point the intermittent crap would be replaced with a nonstop downpour.
Lee’s minions had been hauled away nearly thirty minutes ago, while the techie types had left just a short time ago with all their evidence, including the hundreds of pounds of crystal meth. Remy was glad to get all that crap finally under lock and key. If nothing else, keeping it off the streets represented a couple hundred people who wouldn’t end up in the hospital or the morgue.
Remy rubbed his temples, trying to ease the worst headache he’d ever had in his life. The pounding was so intense it felt like his eyes were going to pop out of his head. Unfortunately, even that pain didn’t distract him from the fact that he had no idea where Triana was or how he was going to locate her.
He wanted to go find her as soon as he’d heard Quinn had kidnapped her, but Lorenzo and Drew stopped him, pointing out that Lee owned property all over New Orleans and even more outside the city. There was no telling where Quinn might have taken her.
“What about his home?” Remy asked. “You said he has a big plantation home near the lake, right?”
Lorenzo nodded. “Yeah, up in Kenner. But that’s just one of his houses. What are the chances Quinn took her there? Hell, for all we know, this thing with Triana might not have anything to do with Lee. It might just be Quinn covering up the trail of a murder he committed on his own.”
Remy didn’t even want to think about the part of that Lorenzo had left unsaid—that Quinn might have killed Triana already. He refused to contemplate that, because if he did, he didn’t think he could keep going. He would find Triana and get her back.
A voice in his head asked him what he’d do then regarding the way he felt about her.
One problem at a time.
“Dammit, you shouldn’t have moved without a warrant!”
The shout came from farther back in the warehouse, sending an ice pick of pain lancing through his head. Remy growled, trying to tune out ADA Russo’s incessant whining. The prick had shown up ten minutes ago, losing his mind over the fact that Lorenzo had moved against Aaron Lee without his involvement. Remy had known the man had only gone after Lee for the political gain, but it was like the lawyer couldn’t accept that he’d finally won, even with the evidence on the way to lockup.
Russo was shouting again, some crap about probable cause this time. Remy did his best to shut out the rest. He’d heard the lawyer’s complaints at least ten times already. How the courts would throw out the drugs and everything found in this warehouse due to a lack of probable cause. How that would destroy the link to Aaron Lee and prevent any sane judge from issuing search warrants for the man’s home and businesses. How this had all been nothing but a big waste of time.
Remy was so tired of hearing the man’s crap, not to mention Lorenzo’s and everyone else’s patient attempts to convince Russo the informant’s tip was more than enough to support probable cause.
“Do you really think a judge like Thibodeau, or any judge for that matter, is going to accept the word of a career criminal like Chad Roth over Aaron Lee’s?” Russo let out a short laugh. “Roth will simply come across as a snake who betrayed his own boss, thinking he could take over the operation once Lee was in prison. You’ll get nothing based on that guy’s word.”
Remy’s head was pounding so hard at the moment that he didn’t care what Russo thought about nearly anything, but something about what the man had just said bothered him. Without being sure exactly what it was, he left the doorway and walked toward the back of the warehouse.
When he got there, Russo was babbling on about some stupid idea of not even attempting to pin the drug charges on Lee, insisting it would instead make more sense to charge the men they’d arrested at the warehouse and hope one of them flipped on Lee. Lorenzo must have thought that was insane because he was looking at the ADA as if the man had just grown a flipper out of his head. Drew’s expression was pretty much the same, while Max, Brooks, Zane, and the local SWAT officers that had stayed behind were regarding the lawyer with frowns.
“How did you know Roth was the informant?” Remy asked, his concern with Russo finally taking shape.
Everyone, including the ADA, turned and looked at him in confusion.
“What?” Russo said.
Remy moved closer, gazing down at the lawyer. “You said that no judge would ever take the word of Chad Roth over Lee’s, implying you knew Roth was the informant. It’s a simple question. How did you know Roth was the informant?”
Russo continued to look confused for a moment, then shrugged. “I heard it on the scanner on the way over. The ambulance crew said Chad Roth was the informant and that he’d been critically wounded prior to the raid.”
Remy eyed Russo for a moment, then glanced at Brooks. His pack mate simply gave a slow shake of his head, his eyes deadly serious. Just as he’d thought. Russo was lying. Remy opened his mouth to point that out, but Lorenzo spoke up first.
