Abruptly, the sensation of Triana moving farther away hit him. This is taking too long, dammit. No matter how terrified Lee’s henchman might be, at some point he’d get his act together and put a bullet through Remy’s head.
As if reading Remy’s mind, the man squared his shoulders and came closer, pointing the suddenly much steadier weapon right at his forehead.
With his feet on the floor now, Remy wasn’t nearly as defenseless as he looked. He brought his right leg up, catching the man’s arm with his booted foot and sending the pistol flying. The man was so busy trying to see where the weapon went he never saw Remy’s boot come up again and catch him under the jaw.
Remy slipped out of the hoist chain and hit the floor at the same time Lee’s goon did. He immediately jumped to his feet, ready to go at the guy again, but the man was out cold.
Turning, Remy headed for the stairs, but barely made it two steps before his legs gave out as the wolf completely took over his body.
Remy wasn’t sure if it was the urgent need to go after Triana, or if he was simply more accepting of the transformation this time. Either way, the full shift came fast, bones breaking and reforming, muscles tearing and reshaping to cover a new, sleeker shape.
Getting out of his pants proved to be a challenge since wolves didn’t have opposable thumbs, and he was forced to roll around on the floor like a drunk puppy to get out of the things. Luckily, his boots and socks just fell off.
Finally free, Remy raced for the stairs, amazed at the acceleration he was able to get out of this four-wheel-drive version of his body. Then he hit the steps and nearly broke his frigging neck as his legs went out from under him. It was a lot easier to speed up in this body than it was to slow down, but he got his long legs back under him and scrambled up the stairs, through the serpentine maze of corridors and out onto the deck.
Triana was already in a car speeding away from the dock by the time Remy got topside. Ignoring the shoot-out between Lee’s men on the deck of the ship and his pack mates on the shore, he headed for the gangway, slamming into anyone who got in his way. His presence freaked the hell out of Lee’s men, and several of them jumped overboard to avoid him.
Remy leaped off the gangway and headed for Chartres Street, veering east as he quickly covered ground. He wasn’t following any of his usual senses because he couldn’t see where they were taking Triana and he couldn’t smell her. But the connection he had to her told him he was headed toward her.
A wolf of any size running down the middle of New Orleans was sure to gain attention. A wolf his size was going to make people lose their minds. But he couldn’t do anything about it. He only hoped the darkness and the rain would keep people off the streets.
He’d just turned and headed toward the bridge that would take him to the Lower Ninth Ward when his ears picked up a quiet rapid-fire thumping sound. He turned his head to see what the hell was coming up behind him when he smelled Cooper.
A moment later, the team’s demo expert—also in his wolf form—raced up beside him. Remy would have thanked his pack mate for the backup if he could speak. But since he couldn’t, he concentrated on catching up to the car taking Triana farther and farther away from him.
* * *
Triana gripped the door handle with one hand and the seat belt strap with the other, holding on for dear life as the big Cadillac swerved around the vehicle in front of them and almost slammed into the side railing of the bridge over the Industrial Canal.
“Slow the hell down,” Lee shouted from the front seat as he bounced off the door. “There’s no one behind us. We’re fine.”
The man driving didn’t seem so sure of that, but as they came off the bridge into the Lower Ninth Ward, he slowed down a bit. He still kept checking the rearview mirror every five seconds though.
“Stay on Forty-Six until it crosses Thirty-Nine,” Quinn said casually from his place in the backseat beside her.
The jerk had gone out of his way to cozy up close to her from the moment he’d thrown her in the backseat at the dock. Triana had tried to push him away more than once, but all he did was laugh and move next to her again.
“There’s a yacht waiting for us in slip eighteen,” he told the driver. “We’ll be in the Gulf and beyond the reach of the police an hour after we get on board.”
Triana’s stomach clenched. The thought of being trapped on a boat with these men, especially Quinn, for any length of time terrified her. But that wasn’t going to happen. Somehow, some way, Remy was going to find her before it was too late.
She’d almost lost that hope when she heard the gunshot down in the hold of the ship when Quinn had been dragging her away. She’d thought for sure Remy was dead. He was strung up on a chain, unable to move more than an inch or two, so there was no way he could avoid a bullet. And yet something inside her refused to believe Remy was dead. She would have felt it if he were. She knew it in her heart.
So, until she knew otherwise, she was going to believe Remy was still alive and coming after her.
In the front seat, Lee cursed. Twisting in his seat to look at her, he held up his arm. Blood had seeped through the makeshift bandage he’d wrapped around it. “My arm still hurts as much as it did when that mutt first bit me. When will the pain stop?”
Hopefully never, Triana wanted to say but didn’t. She had to keep Lee believing all the crap she’d been telling him about becoming a werewolf until Remy showed up.
“Soon,” she said. “The pain is a good sign. It means the change is already happening.”
Lee studied her for a moment like he was trying to figure out if she was lying to him. He must have decided she wasn’t because he nodded and turned back around in his seat, a small smile on his face.
Triana was still shocked she’d been able to talk Lee into letting Remy bite him. She’d been playing for time when she’d started the whole werewolf story, praying she could delay things long enough for Remy to get loose. She never dreamed Lee would agree. He must have been even more desperate for power than she thought.
She was scooting closer to the door when she felt Remy somewhere nearby. A split second later, she caught a blur of movement in the darkness to the right of the car. Pulse racing, she turned her head to look out the window as something slammed into the front passenger door so hard the window shattered. The big car rocked on its suspension, one side of the vehicle nearly coming up off the road. Crap, it was like they’d been hit with a wrecking ball.
The driver swerved the car away from the impact, crossing over a narrow, grassy median and into the double lane of oncoming traffic before ending up on a side street, taking them deeper into the Ninth Ward.
