He reached out a hand toward her and she instinctively scrambled back on the floor away from him. She hated herself for doing it, hated the pain she saw in his eyes even more, but she couldn’t have stopped herself if she’d tried. She was too confused to understand what was happening right then.
Triana wanted to say something, but no words would come. Outside, gunfire erupted, and she flinched. It took her half a second to realize the shooting was coming from the front gate.
“Mom,” she breathed.
She pushed herself to her feet, but before she could take more than two steps, Remy was at her side, scooping her up in his arms. The next thing she knew, he set her on her feet beside Max.
“Keep her here with you,” Remy ordered. Then, he and Brooks raced out of the room toward the sound of the gunfire.
Triana considered trying to dash around him for the door, but then remembered the blur of movement that had come right before Lee’s goon had crashed into the TV. Was Max like Remy? Some kind of freak with fangs and claws?
Afraid to think about it, she stood there as the shooting intensified outside, thinking about what she’d seen and praying her mother would be okay.
Chapter 17
With the power knocked out from the storm, it was as dark in her mother’s shop as it was outside, but Triana barely noticed. She was simply too exhausted, physically and mentally, to care by the time they finally got home. She wasn’t sure what she thought about having Remy and his SWAT teammates there, even if they had saved her life and her mother’s. She felt horrible for even thinking like that, but she was so confused by everything she’d seen and needed time to figure it all out.
Not that how she felt seemed to matter at the moment, since not only had Remy refused to leave them on their own, but her mother had also firmly stated she wouldn’t stand for any of the men driving back to their hotel at that time of night, not with the way the wind and rain was kicking up right then.
So the guys stayed downstairs in the shop, making sure the windows weren’t going to blow in and water wasn’t going to come rushing under the door, while Triana went upstairs with her mother, hoping to get her head around everything.
She sat at the kitchen table while her mom bustled around the kitchen, heating up soup on the gas stove and getting all the flashlights and emergency lamps out. Triana had no idea how her mother did it. The events at Lee’s house had drained her like a battery. She couldn’t even put in the effort to change out of her wet clothes.
Half of her exhaustion came from all the questions the police had asked her after the shooting had stopped. Triana was a little surprised the cops had even shown up, considering the storm was so bad, but she supposed a shoot-out involving automatic weapons didn’t happen every day in Kenner, so police, detectives, and politicians had come out of the woodwork.
Following her mother’s suggestions, she’d kept her statements brief and vague. Quinn had lured her to a warehouse in the Marigny by saying he had information relating to her father’s murder. When she’d gotten there, she’d seen Quinn shoot another man; then, Quinn had knocked her unconscious and taken her to Lee’s home. Lee and Quinn had confessed to arranging the murder of her father because he refused to sell drugs through his club. Lee had lured her mother to his home to clean up any loose ends; then, the SWAT officers had stormed the place and rescued her.
She stayed away from any mention of werewolves or questions that veered outside the boundaries of her narrow story line. Of course, those were the questions the Kenner PD were most interested in. Why had Quinn told her about her father’s murder? Why had a team from New Orleans and Dallas SWAT come to her rescue? Where were Lee and Quinn now? Why were the men in custody claiming they’d been attacked by glowing-eyed monsters?
Triana’s answer to those questions and all the others just as impossible to explain was a plain and simple “I don’t know.”
She didn’t realize she’d been sitting at the table that long, but the next thing Triana knew, her mother set a big bowl of steaming soup in front of her, with a ham and cheese sandwich on the side. She didn’t feel like eating anything, but her mom shoved the bowl toward her and pointed at it.
“Eat.”
Her mother set a battery-powered lamp on the table between them, then sat across from her and began eating. “I’m guessing you have a lot of questions about everything you learned and saw today.”
Triana dipped her spoon in her soup, then took her time nibbling on her sandwich as she tried to figure out where to start. It wasn’t like she had to worry that her mother hadn’t seen what Remy and the others were. According to the guards at the front who’d been arrested, the SWAT cops had tackled cars and thrown men through the air like they were horseshoes.
“Lee and Quinn said some really crazy stuff about Dad,” she finally said. “I thought they were off their rockers, but then I saw…things…inside the house when Remy and his friends came to get me. Things I can’t explain.”
Her mother set down her sandwich and regarded Triana for a moment. “Finding out werewolves are real can be a shock for most people.”
Triana wanted to tell her that she was talking crazy, that werewolves weren’t real, that there was some other explanation. But she knew the time for doubt was over. Even though she was a scientist who liked her feet firmly planted in fact, she knew what she’d seen.
“So Dad was a werewolf?”
Triana couldn’t believe those words had just come out of her mouth. If anyone at the crime lab back in Houston heard her, they’d have tied her up in her own lab coat.
Her mother gave her a small smile. “Yes. In fact, it’s how we met.”
Triana couldn’t even begin to make sense of that statement, but since she’d already climbed fully aboard the crazy train, she figured she might as well find a seat and get comfortable.
“What did his being a werewolf have to do with you guys getting together?”
“You remember that your grandma ran the shop before you were born, right?” her mother asked. At Triana’s nod, she continued. “Well, your grandma had a reputation for helping a lot of unusual people in her day. As she got older, she passed that responsibility on to me. When people stopped by looking for help, I did anything I could to help them. Your father was one of those people.”
