“She will be,” Remy said firmly. “Be ready to go in ten seconds.”
“Roger that,” Brooks confirmed. “On your mark.”
Remy motioned to Max, making sure the younger werewolf knew what they were doing and that Remy wanted him to focus on the man by the TV. Turning back to the entryway, he dropped to one knee and forced himself to relax. The man standing right next to Triana would be his responsibility. When the door charge blew on the left side of the room, the man would instinctively turn and throw up his hands to protect himself—it was a reflex reaction that couldn’t be overruled. That would give Remy the time he needed to get to the man before he hurt Triana.
But for his plan to work, he needed to get Triana’s attention—and pray she remembered those hand signals he’d shown her a couple of days ago. Because if either of those two things failed to happen, Triana would get hit by the door debris. The thought of the damage that would do to her was simply something he refused to think about.
* * *
Triana’s pulse raced as she sat on the couch in Lee’s living room. She was scared to death for her mom. What was happening outside at the front gate? Would the next ring of a cell phone mean these insane bastards had killed her mother and were about to do the same to her? With her hands still tied and four big, armed men surrounding her, she doubted there was anything she could do to stop any of this, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to sit here and wait for it to happen.
She glanced down at the big coffee table in front of the couch, her eyes coming to rest on the decorative wooden bowl full of shells, glass beads, and colored sand. It seemed out of place. Lee didn’t strike her as the kind of man who was into decorative anything unless it was arm candy. If she dumped out the stuff inside, the wood bowl might be heavy enough to bash someone’s head in.
She turned her head slightly, trying to see exactly where the guy behind her was standing. If she moved fast, she could grab the bowl, swing it around, and hit the jerk with the gun. If that worked, she could get the weapon and use it against the other three.
It was insane, especially since she wasn’t sure she could fire the weapon with her hands tied, even if she was lucky enough to get it. But it was a plan, and right now, she was ready to try anything.
As she reached toward the bowl in front of her, the strangest sensation she’d ever felt in her life came over her, almost taking her breath away. One second her heart was thudding in her chest and her whole body was shaking in fear, and the next, a feeling of deep calm washed over her.
Not understanding why she was even doing it, Triana glanced over her shoulder at the arched opening that led toward the back of the house. There, in the shadows of the leftmost side of the entryway, she saw something that made her eyes widen.
Remy was down on one knee, most of his face and body hidden by the frame of the entryway and the dark shadows cast by the lights in the living room. But she knew it was him. Even without seeing his face, she knew it was him. Relief swept through her, making her dizzy.
But at the same time, she felt a stab of fear. Was he here alone? Was he going to try to save her all by himself? Was he going to get himself killed charging into a room full of psychos? That thought was more terrifying than facing death herself.
Her first instinct was to shout at him to run, to save her mom and get out of there. But then she saw his hands move. At first she had no idea what he was doing. He had one hand up, his fingers splayed wide, while the other hand was horizontal to the floor. As she watched, one upraised finger went down, leaving four still up. Then another dropped, leaving three.
Her mind was transported to a happier memory, of the two of them walking through the French Quarter and him telling her how his SWAT teammates communicated with each other while on a raid by using hand signals.
Three fingers, now two.
He was counting down to something. The hand flat to the floor meant…oh crap, what did that mean?
As another finger dropped, she remembered.
Hand flat to the floor means get down!
Triana had a half second before the last finger closed into a fist to throw herself to the floor.
She’d barely hit the expensive wood when the room above her exploded in sound, smoke, and whistling debris. She heard grunts of pain and people falling, but then there was movement near her head, and even though the force of the blast had stunned her, she still turned around to see the man with the gun coming at her. There was blood running down the side of his face and he looked furious.
She tried to scramble away, but he was too close. He grabbed her hair and yanked her to her knees, the force of the motion twisting her neck so much she thought he might break it. She saw the gun coming up toward her head and realized she was going to die. She struggled, refusing to go like this with Remy so close and her mother in danger, but she knew it wasn’t going to make a difference.
Then a snarling growl ripped through the room, making the man with the gun freeze. Triana twisted her head toward the sound, ignoring how much it hurt.
Remy charged toward her, covering the distance across the room in a blur as he moved faster than anyone she’d ever seen. Then she saw the claws, the long white fangs, and the glowing, yellow eyes, and a part of her mind insisted it couldn’t possibly be Remy.
The guy with the gun hesitated for a moment, as shocked as Triana by what he saw. He seemed to be unsure if he should shoot her or the thing coming at him like a freight train. Finally, after a split second, he made up his mind and turned his gun on Triana.
That indecision provided Remy—or the thing she thought was Remy—all the time he needed. Triana screamed and tried to duck as the thing with the fangs and claws leaped straight at her, but the man still held her fast.
As Remy jumped completely over her, she heard a heavy thud and felt a slight tug in her hair as the man with the gun went down. There was another crash as Remy and the man hit the floor, then chaos reigned as the entire room seemed to go insane.
There was a loud pop of the man’s gun going off, a blur of movement to her left as one of Lee’s other men flew sideways through the air and smashed through the TV, and a huge shape at the far end of the living room that looked like Brooks throwing two men around like they were dolls. The man who’d been about to shoot her hit a bookcase, slamming into it so hard that part of the shelves collapsed.
Then Remy was down on his knees in front of her. The fangs and eyes she’d told herself must have been a construct of her fear-shredded imagination were still there, an unmistakable part of the man she’d spent the past five days with.
As they gazed into each other’s eyes, the room around them grew quiet. His eyes glowed gold, making her wonder if all those flashes of light she’d seen so many times hadn’t actually been a reflection at all. But even though they were a different color and were somehow lit from within, she still recognized them as Remy’s eyes. She even saw the worry and concern there in their strange depths.
