“I want to be a part of things tonight,” he protested. “If I can get the car fixed and get it to you, can I go in with you?”
I shook my head. “You can be our driver.”
That was pushing things far enough. Corbin was reckless as hell. I didn’t even know how many cars he’d totaled over the years, but acting as our driver would let him take a small role while keeping him outside. I did not trust him in our enemy’s home.
“I want more than that.”
I was losing patience fast. “Then you’re going to have to prove yourself.”
“You think I’m just a kid, but—”
“No, I think you’re arrogant and spoiled.”
“Fuck you.”
“Get the goddamned car.”
I called Lance as soon as I hung up on our younger brother. “Corbin wants in on tonight.”
I barely finished the sentence before Lance responded. “No way.”
“I told him he could drive, but that was it.”
Lance groaned. “Why did Pop and Marjorie have to spoil him so fucking much?”
“I wish to hell they hadn’t, but that’s not going to change anything. Are you comfortable with him in the driver’s seat?”
“Yeah, but what are the chances he’ll follow us in?”
Not as low as I wanted them to be. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“How?”
I was still figuring that out. “I have my ways.”
“You keeping secrets from me, big brother?”
“Always.”
“Asshole.”
We both hung up.
22
Henri
I spent the whole day on my own. I napped and watched several movies and made myself lunch in Remy’s beautiful kitchen and ate an obscene amount of cherry and cream cheese king cake—my favorite flavor so far. I ended up ordering a salad for dinner.
As I ate, I wondered what Remy was doing. How much danger was he in? What would I do if he never came back? I didn’t even know his last name. I knew he had a brother named Lancelot, and I knew he had a father and stepmother and another brother, but that wasn’t anything to go on. Why would any of those people want to help me even if I could find them?
When I tried to sleep, I tossed and turned, imagining horrible scenarios and asking myself why Remington had ignored me all day. He was busy. He needed to work. He’d told me his work took up all his time, and we’d just spent the day together, so why did it feel like he was deliberately avoiding me?
I paced his bedroom for a while, then wandered downstairs and out into the courtyard. The night was chilly and damp, and the lights of the city blocked most of the stars. I didn’t stay out there long, but before I went in, I tested the iron gate. It was locked. No doubt there was a key somewhere, but if I wanted to leave, I might as well go out the front door.
Did I want that? Where would I go? Back to my street corner? There was no way I could be with some random stranger after what I’d felt with Remy. I had to find a job that didn’t involve selling myself, and the money he was offering me would give me the time I needed to do so.
Of course, it seemed most jobs involved selling yourself in one way or another, and it wasn’t like I was qualified for anything that would help me get out of the mess I was in. If so, I would have found a job back in Birmingham.
As I was about to head back inside, I saw someone on the other side of the fence. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked like he was watching the house. There was something familiar about him. I hurried back inside and locked myself in. As I tried to catch my breath, I realized where I’d seen him. He was a regular customer of one of the women who worked a street over from me, or at least he looked like the same guy. I’d mention it to Remy, but it was probably nothing, just my imagination.
I headed upstairs. Eventually I’d get tired enough to fall asleep, wouldn’t I?
When I reached the top of the stairs, my gaze landed on the office door. What was in there that he didn’t want me to see? Heart pounding, I approached the door and reached for the knob. I’d taken his word that it was locked and hadn’t touched it. I could always check. I grasped the handle and tried to turn it, but it didn’t move.
Could I get in anyway? I’d gotten a lock-picking kit back when I was in middle school. I wasn’t planning a life of crime, but I’d always loved puzzles, and locks were just another kind. Maybe, just maybe, I could get the door open.
I knew how wrong it was for me to invade Remington’s privacy. There was no reason I needed to know what was behind the door, but what if he didn’t come back? What if…
I raced down to the kitchen and looked around for anything I could use to open the lock. When I got lucky and found a large paperclip in a drawer, I ran back upstairs before I lost my nerve.
It took me far longer than it would someone who was truly skilled at lock picking, but eventually, I heard the satisfying click I’d been waiting for, and the door opened. The office looked much like the rest of the house. It was decorated in the style from the early twentieth century. The walls and antique furniture were dark greens and blues, and the room contained more bookshelves, the kind with glass doors that lifted and slid into pockets.
A laptop sat on the desk. It was open, but the screen was dark. There were papers scattered on the desktop. Did I dare investigate further? I had no idea when Remington would be home. He could come in any minute, and if he caught me… I remembered him telling me he expected me to do what he said and threatening to punish me. What would he do if he found me here? Killing me was a real possibility. Was it worth that risk to know his secrets?
Without making a conscious decision, I took the few steps I needed to reach the edge of the desk. I picked up an envelope addressed to Remington Theriot. Why did that name sound familiar?
Oh shit. His family had been suspects in the brutal murder of three men a year or so ago. It was even in the news up in Birmingham. I always paid attention to news from Louisiana, a habit I’d picked up from my mom who’d grown up in Lafayette. Theriot was a common name, but I doubted there were that many Remington Theriots.
He and his relatives had been acquitted, but most people still believed they’d done it. Shit, what had I gotten myself involved in?
I sat down in the desk chair. It was amazingly comfortable, but I wouldn’t have expected anything less. I touched the keypad on the laptop, sliding my finger across until the screen lit up and I was confronted with a box asking for a password.
Was I really going to try to guess his password? It was probably some super secure jumble of letters and numbers that I would never come up with. But I might as well try. I’d already gotten my fingerprints on the laptop. Would they disappear if I wiped it down? What was the chance anyone would check? This wasn’t an episode of CSI. I needed to calm down.
No, I needed to get up, walk away, and never enter this room again.
I typed in Remington. Of course that didn’t work. It was way too obvious. I didn’t know his birthday, and I doubted he’d use his brother’s name or Tony the monkey’s, but I tried those options anyway. Wrong.
I thought about what I knew about him and suddenly had an inspiration. I quickly typed in Bayou Melody, the name of the piece of music on the stand by his cello. This time instead of the immediate error message, the lock screen went away, and I was in.
I looked on the desktop and saw a folder labeled Projects. What if I opened it and discovered he was an architect or a marketing analyst or something equally benign?
I laughed at myself. No way in hell was that the case. If it was, why wouldn’t he just answer me when I asked him what he did?
I clicked on the folder as I tried to listen carefully for any sign of Remington’s return. I’d have to run if I heard the door open.
There were lots more folders inside the first. As I read their names, I saw one that made a knot form in my stomach. It was labeled Bob Gayle.
The man had been charged wit
h multiple counts of murder. He had duped hundreds of elderly people into purchasing prescriptions they needed directly from him. He sold them cheap drugs, but most of them were placebo or far lower strength than advertised. Numerous people died or had chronic conditions worsen. He was also suspected of being connected to other drug rings in Louisiana. Surely Remington hadn’t been working with him. He couldn’t be that evil.
When I opened the folder, there were several documents inside. One was filled with notes and records of conversations. There was another that was password protected. I shivered as I contemplated what could be worse than the things I’d already seen. If he put the information I’d already found where anyone who got into his computer could see it, what could be scary enough that it needed to be hidden behind yet another password?
As I continued to explore, I didn’t find anything to indicate Remington had done business with Gayle. Everything I saw simply recorded things that had happened, but how did Remington know about those things?
Maybe he was a true-crime aficionado, but looking at the dates on the files, they were all before Gayle’s arrest, before he’d even been a suspect. I needed to know more, but there wasn’t anything else I could learn from the documents.
I looked at the other folders, and a wave of nausea hit when I saw one that clearly had to do with the three men the Theriot family had been suspected of killing.
I clicked on one of the files inside. There were notes there and a list of names. Three of them were crossed out and the word eliminated was written next to them. Remington was part of a powerful mob family. He was a murderer, but he’d been kinder to me than any other man I’d ever been with. I shouldn’t stay there knowing what I did, but I still wanted to, and I clung to the hope that there was a good explanation for the file on Gayle.
I was staring at the screen, willing it to tell a different story, when I heard footsteps on the stairs.
23
Remington
Corbin had shown up on time with the car, but on the ride to Metairie to pick up Lance and Dax, he bitched constantly about Beau and how he’d treated Corbin like a kid.
“You are a kid.”
“I’m twenty-two, and I don’t want to be treated—”
“Then don’t act like you’re fourteen.”
He slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Why are you so fucking hard on me?”
“Because somebody has to be in order to keep you alive.”
He sighed but didn’t say anything else. When Lance climbed into the car, Tony was on his shoulder. “No. Hell no. I’m not going to be involved in another operation with that fucking monkey.”
“Tony’s my good luck charm,” Lance insisted. “I can’t leave him. Besides, he gets lonely.”
“I’m sure he can survive for a few hours tonight,” Dax said.
“No way. I’m not leaving him.”
I would’ve told Lance and the damn monkey to stay home, but Lance was much better at finessing his way into a house than I was. I needed him to be involved.
“Tony can sit in the car with me,” Corbin said. “You’re not going to let me go inside, so I might as well have Tony to entertain me.” The monkey leapt onto his shoulder and started playing with his hair.
“At least somebody appreciates Tony,” Lance said.
I might kill them both before the night was over. Surely no one would blame me if they knew how fucking obnoxious the two of them were.
“Watch out, guys,” Dax said. “Much more of this and Remington’s going to explode.”
I glared at him. “Are you trying to get on my bad side too?”
“You have a good side?” Lance asked.
“Not around you and Corbin.”
Corbin huffed. “I think we’re a lot of fun, and it would be even more fun if I went inside with you.”
Lance and I simultaneously said, “No.”
“When are you going to realize I’m all grown-up?”
“When you start acting like it,” Lance said. At least I didn’t have to repeat myself.
The drive back into the French Quarter seemed to take forever, but eventually, Corbin was parking in an alley behind Clark Landry’s house. Lance gave him a bag of snacks for the monkey and far more instructions than necessary. I told Corbin to call us immediately if he saw anything suspicious. If that damn monkey distracted him from his job, I didn’t care how lonely he got, he wasn’t coming on another mission.
Finally, we hopped the back fence of Landry’s property and made our way slowly through his wetlands garden. When we reached an open expanse of lawn, Lance brought out his night vision binoculars and took a look at the house.
“Can you get us in?”
He nodded and motioned for me to follow him.
Dax waited outside while Lance got us in through a first-floor window. We heard voices coming from a room down the hall. The men’s words were slurred, and their laughs were too loud, letting us know they were drunk. Hopefully they would keep arguing with each other and never know we were here. Just in case, though, I had several weapons stashed on me, and I would do whatever was necessary to protect us.
I followed him, wincing when one of the steps we were climbing creaked. Lance pointed to it, indicating I should avoid it and I did. We made it upstairs and quickly found Clark’s bedroom where we searched for the safe our intel said should be there. A few moments later, I located it in the floor of the closet. Lance made quick work of cracking it. The first thing he removed was a small notebook. As he flipped through it, I could tell he was fighting back a laugh.
I raised my brows and mouthed, “What?”
He turned the notebook so I could see. The damn fool had written down all his passwords.
The sounds from downstairs grew louder. Knowing we had little time, Lance grabbed all the papers from the safe and shoved them into his backpack.
As we reached the window we’d used to enter, one of the drunk men, maybe Clark, shouted, “Hey, did you hear something?”
We froze.
“Hear what?” a second man asked.
“I don’t know. Some kind of creaking noise?”
“This old house makes sounds all the time.”
“No, it sounded like footsteps.”
“Creaky footsteps?” The other sounded annoyed.
“Yeah, or… I don’t know.”
“Are you saying you think someone is in the house?”
Please say no. “Maybe.”
“Shit. Let’s get ’em.”
I used my flashlight to signal to Dax so he would know trouble might be coming, and I hoped to God he would tell Corbin because I didn’t have time to send off a text.
We heard the two men fumbling around as Lance opened the window, not bothering to be quiet.
Lance motioned for me to go first. I wanted to argue, but there wasn’t time. He jumped through after me just as I heard someone shout, “There they are.”
Heavy footsteps clomped across the room, but we didn’t wait to identify the pursuers; we just ran.
I didn’t see Dax, but I felt sure he’d taken cover. The crack of a gun had me grabbing Lance’s arm and pulling him into the alley. I hoped to hell Corbin had gotten out of there. We told him to leave if things went south and we’d contact him about where to pick us up, but who knows if he’d actually listened. I never should’ve brought him.
When we reached the street, I was glad to see Corbin and the SUV were gone. Hopefully he had more sense than to drive straight home in case he was followed.
Lance and I darted in and out of alleys, snuck through a brothel, and ended up on Bourbon Street where we easily melted into the crowd waiting to get into one of the city’s most notorious strip clubs. I grabbed a drink from a man who was so drunk he just stared at his empty hand. I pulled sunglasses from my pocket and put them on. Lance stood behind me, and I was thankful he didn’t have Tony with him, not that I really thought a couple of drunk Landrys were going to find us in the Saturday-night crowd.
After several minutes had passed with no sign of pursuit, Lance and I checked in with Dax and Corbin.
My youngest brother was a few blocks away. He’d pulled into a hotel parking garage. Dax had gone the opposite direction from us and lured the pursuers into an alley where they’d been confused about how they lost him, not seeming to understand how easily he’d been able to climb over a wall and drop down into some unsuspecting tourists’ courtyard. He’d apologized and raced off before the men and women could even comprehend what had happened.
We agreed that Lance would contact Blackjack to see what we could learn with the passwords we’d acquired. I told the others I’d walk home. Lance and Dax went to meet Corbin, but I was anxious to get back to Henri after forcing myself to stay away from him all day.
I needed to stop being afraid and enjoy the time we had. When someone saw as much death and destruction as I had, he learned to indulge himself when and where he could. That was exactly what I intended to do. I had a hell of a lot of ideas for how Henri and I could spend the rest of the night. I was still hopped up on adrenaline from our escape, and I needed to let some of that energy out, which meant I could either fight someone or fuck Henri into the mattress. We’d all be better off with me choosing the latter.
I remembered how I’d contemplated pushing right into Henri’s body as he slept, waking him up with the delicious stretch. I hoped he was asleep now because that was exactly what I wanted to do.
I had to force myself to walk slowly, but finally, I reached home. When I stepped inside, the house was quiet. That didn’t necessarily mean Henri was in bed, but he better be. If not, I was going to put him there as fast as I could. I didn’t want to wait.
I started up the stairs and immediately had the sense something was wrong.
When I reached the landing and saw my office door standing open, hot anger rushed through me. I reached the doorway as Henri was closing my laptop and scrambling away from the desk.
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