by Paige Tyler
Triana stood there, stunned to complete silence. In one night, her confused, hurt, and devastated best friend had been transformed into a completely different person after simply spending an evening with a handsome guy she’d just met. Triana had been trying to console her since getting into town and hadn’t gotten anywhere.
“What about you and Remy?” Kim asked.
Triana shrugged. “We’ll probably grab dinner someplace, then walk around the French Quarter. Maybe go dancing.”
Kim smiled. “Sounds like fun, but that’s not exactly what I meant. I was asking if you’re going to sleep with him. You know, make up for lost time and all that.”
Triana opened her mouth to reply, but then realized she didn’t have a clue how to answer what should have been a simple question. She was attracted to Remy. Okay, understatement there. She’d come damn close to dragging him up to her room last night. The intensity of the sensation would be scary if it wasn’t so intoxicating at the same time.
But now that she was out of his hypnotizing presence—and thinking more clearly—she was glad nothing had happened last night. She wasn’t the type to jump into something with a guy without thinking it through. She had her love of all things scientific to thank for that. It made her cautious, linear, and kind of practical. None of those made a woman want to jump in the sack with a guy she’d crushed on in high school, especially one who was only going to be around for a week.
“Earth to Triana,” Kim said, waving her hand in Triana’s face. “I wasn’t asking you to do calculus in your head. Stop thinking so much all the time and just go after the guy you’ve wanted since you were old enough to have those kinds of thoughts. From what you just said, you and Remy had it bad for each other all the way back in high school, and if what I saw last night is any indication, it’s obvious the spark is still there. Why don’t you take a leap of faith and see where the heck it takes you?”
Triana gave her a look. “You’re honestly saying you think I should jump in the sack with him and not worry about what happens when he goes back to Dallas and I go home to Houston?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Just treat this next week as a chance to make up for all that time you wasted back in high school.” Kim grinned. “Worst case, you have a week of unbelievable sex. Because trust me, after watching that man move on the dance floor, there’s no chance in hell he isn’t an Olympian between the sheets.”
“And best case?” Triana prompted, figuring she already knew where Kim was going with this.
Kim’s smile broadened. “Best case, you two fall madly in love and figure out the three-and-a-half-hour drive from Dallas to Houston isn’t that much of an obstacle to overcome. Heck, who knows? Maybe you get so swept up in each other that you chuck it all and run off to live with Remy in Dallas.”
“Or he could chuck it all and run off to Houston to live with me,” Triana countered with a laugh.
“Exactly!” Kim said. “Now you’re talking.”
All Triana could do was shake her head. After everything Kim had been through with Shawn, she was thinking Triana and Remy were going to have some kind of storybook romance. Her mother would be thrilled if that happened. She hadn’t said as much, but Triana knew her mother wanted her to find something special, like her mother had found with Triana’s dad.
Triana wasn’t sure if Remy was that guy, but maybe Kim was right about going with her feelings and seeing where it led. Like Kim said, worst case, there’d be some great sex involved. What kind of girl turned her nose up at that?
She opened her mouth to tell Kim she’d let things take their natural course with Remy when the bell on the door to the shop tinkled.
Triana turned to see an older man in a white linen suit and fancy dress shoes shamble into the shop. He looked around the store with an air of disdain, but his expression brightened when he saw her and Kim. Triana wasn’t fooled for a second. She knew a bullshit facade when she saw it. This guy was full of it.
He walked over and extended his hand. Even though she didn’t want to, Triana shook it nonetheless. She regretted the decision when she got a palm full of cold, clammy hand. Ick, she hated men with limp, sweaty hands. Then she caught sight of the man’s buffed and polished nails. Crap, his manicure probably cost more than her shoes. That was the final nail in the coffin as far as she was concerned.
“Kenneth Murphy, attorney with Taylor and Burr,” the man said in an officious tone. “Is your mother in?”
A shiver ran down Triana’s back. She’d never seen this man in her life, yet he obviously knew her. How else had he known to ask for her mother?
She opened her mouth to ask him as much when her mom stepped out of the back room and leveled a piercing stare at the man.
“You didn’t need to come here, Mr. Murphy. I already told you over the phone that I couldn’t help you.”
The man gave her mother another fake smile. “I completely understand, Mrs. Bellamy. But I thought that if we talked in person and you took a look at the offer I’m making, it might change your mind.”
Reaching into the inside pocket on his suit jacket, Murphy took out a sheet of paper, unfolded it, then held it out. It was a drawing of a necklace in the shape of a wolf’s head. “It’s a copper pendant, and the eyes of the wolf are made of yellow topaz.”
Her mother didn’t say anything. Instead, she stood with her arms crossed over her chest, an irritated look on her face.
“As I mentioned when we talked on the phone, my client is offering a very reasonable sum of money for a trinket such as the one I’m describing,” Murphy said.
“And who is this client of yours, Mr. Murphy?” her mother asked in an icy voice.
Triana frowned. Her mother was never abrupt or cold with anyone. If her mom didn’t like this guy, there was a reason.
The man gave her a syrupy smile. “He prefers to remain anonymous in this transaction, but I can assure you, Mrs. Bellamy, I’m fully authorized to negotiate on his behalf. As I said, five thousand dollars is a very reasonable offer.”
Triana did a double take. That wasn’t chump change for a shopkeeper who sold voodoo merchandise to tourists and some of the locals. That kind of money could pay the taxes on this place for a year, maybe more.
“That’s very generous,” her mother said. “But as I told you over the phone, I don’t have any necklace like that in my shop.”
“Of course you don’t,” Murphy said in a tone that made Triana think the man thought her mother was lying. “But perhaps you know where my client could find one exactly like it—and I do mean exactly.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Murphy, but I can’t help you,” her mother said in a tone that brooked no compromise.
Triana was confused. She remembered her father wearing a wolf-head pendant just like the one Murphy was looking for. She’d even played with it as a child when he’d held her in his great big arms. He’d never taken it off. And she did mean never. No way had her mother gotten rid of it.
“Perhaps if the offer was more substantial, it might help your memory?” Murphy proposed sweetly.
Her mom smacked that idea down like a june bug. “Apparently I haven’t made myself completely clear. Let me do so now. There is no necklace like that anywhere in my possession, but even if I did have it, I would never sell it to you or this anonymous client of yours. Please leave and don’t come back here again. Good day, Mr. Murphy.”
The man’s face turned red as he glowered, but her mother returned his glare with one of her own. Triana thought for a moment she might have to step in and do something, but to her surprise, Murphy sullenly gave her mother a nod, then turned and walked out of the shop.
Triana opened her mouth to ask what all that had been about, but her mother had already disappeared into the back room and closed the door.
“That was weird,” Kim said.
“That’s one word for it,�
� Triana agreed.
Chapter 4
Remy’s back thumped against the interior wall of the operations van as the vehicle made a right turn off the main street, then bounced a little as it crossed some train tracks. He closed his eyes and visualized the map that had been taped to the whiteboard during the tactical mission briefing. Crossing those tracks meant they’d just turned off Chartres and were only a couple of blocks from the river. In a few minutes, they’d reach the docks, the cargo ship, and the warehouse owned by a man named Aaron Lee.
Remy had already been familiar with the name before sitting through the briefing that Drew and the lead detective from the narcotics squad, Lorenzo Claiborne, had conducted earlier. Remy had run across Lee’s name more than a few times when he’d worked in the sheriff’s office years ago. The man had been a long-standing criminal fixture in the city, a heavy hitter in nearly every illegal activity going on along the Mississippi River. Drugs, prostitution, gambling, fencing stolen property, protection rackets—the man was into all of it. Remy thought for sure someone at the local, state, or federal level would have been able to pin something on the man a long time ago, but clearly Aaron Lee was too good a criminal for that.
If the informant Detective Claiborne and his narcotics crew had inside Lee’s operation was right, all that was about to change. Because they were about to serve a warrant on one of Lee’s ships just in from Mexico, which was supposedly carrying over three hundred pounds of high-quality crystal meth. If they found that stash of drugs, Aaron Lee was finally heading to prison.
Serving search warrants on drug operations was always a risky job, which was why SWAT was so frequently asked to go in the door first. Going up against a man who’d been running his drug operation for decades made it even worse. With a shipment of “ice” having a street value of close to five million dollars, Lee was bound to have dozens of heavily armed men covering the ship and the warehouse. The chances of this operation turning into a shoot-out were extremely high. But with the memory of that young girl on the ambulance gurney from last night still fresh in his mind, Remy knew there wasn’t any other way to do this. They couldn’t let a shipment this big make it onto the streets of New Orleans, or the girl he and Triana had seen would be just one of many people ending up in the hospitals—and the morgue.
Remy watched as his pack mates and the NOPD SWAT officers checked their gear and weapons again, then went over the plan one last time. As they murmured softly to each other, his heart began to beat faster. Around him, everyone else’s did too. But while Remy’s and his pack mates’ did so out of excitement, that wasn’t the case with the cops on the NOPD SWAT team.
The officers he and his pack mates had spent the morning training with knew they were going up against people who had no qualms about shooting cops. To be blunt about it, the men and women on the NOPD SWAT team had no way of knowing if they were even going to be alive an hour from now. Their adrenaline was pumping because they were nervous, even a little scared. Remy didn’t hold that against them. They were only human.
That limitation didn’t apply to Remy and the other members of his pack. Getting shot wasn’t that big of a deal for them. Werewolves could survive just about any kind of wound imaginable, as long as it wasn’t to the head or the heart. Getting shot hurt, sure. But knowing you weren’t going to die from it tended to give the Dallas SWAT team a completely different outlook on danger—it probably wasn’t an outlook a mental health professional would approve of, but it was definitely unique.
Remy and his pack mates were amped up because this was the shit alpha werewolves lived for.
He knew he’d never be able to explain the concept to a normal person, but feeling that surge of adrenaline when his werewolf senses went on hyperalert, experiencing the tension that rippled through his body as his inner wolf attempted to come out to protect itself… There was no better feeling in the world. For an alpha werewolf like him and the Pack, it was the feeling of being alive.
“We’re approaching the west gate. Thirty seconds out,” Detective Claiborne’s voice came through over the radio in Remy’s ear. “Drew, you ready on the east side?”
“Roger that,” Drew replied. “Gate personnel in position. The operation is a go. Move in.”
“Weapons hot,” Brooks murmured.
As one, the charging handles on eight M4 carbines were yanked back and released, loading the weapons with a familiar and soothing clatter. At the same time, Remy felt the operations vehicle accelerate. He pulled down his ski mask along with everyone else.
Lee’s warehouse complex had a tall fence around the entire property, with two gates, one to the east and the other to the west. Both of them were normally secured with locked chains. Now that Drew had given the word, two other members of the team dressed in plain clothes would be heading toward the gates with small explosive charges ready to blow the locks. The timing would have to be perfect, though—too early and they’d alert the people on the ship they were coming, too late and the operations vans would smash into the gates.
The driver of the operations vehicle Remy was in backed off the gas a little. No doubt he was worried the gate wouldn’t be open when they got there. But a moment later, the driver floored it, and they were racing through the gate so fast Remy bounced off the seat as they crossed over the entrance bump.
Remy tensed, ready to move the moment the operations vehicle came to a stop. It was only about a hundred feet across the west gate parking lot. Any second now, the driver would swerve to the side and they’d exit out the back of the van. Then, he and the other members of the Dallas SWAT team, along with the NOPD officers, would head for the cargo ship moored at the dock. While Remy and his pack mates began sweeping the ship, NOPD SWAT would head to the ship’s bridge to make sure no one tried to start the engines.
While all this was happening, Drew’s team would move into the warehouse from the east and gain control of the structure. Lorenzo and his men from the narcotics squad would hang back until the whole area was initially secured; then, they’d come in with dogs and personnel to do the detailed search for the drugs.
Remy was still visualizing exactly how much ground he and the others would have to cover to get to the ship when the truck slid sideways and Brooks shoved the doors open. Then he stopped thinking and started moving, jumping out of the truck and running for the southwest corner of the building and the ship docked just beyond it. He told himself to hold back a bit, so he wouldn’t blow past the NOPD SWAT officers, but that was damn hard to do when every instinct he had screamed at him to go as hard as he could, to attack ferociously before Lee’s people had a chance to react.
Off to Remy’s left, the warehouse was a giant metal structure with lots of rust and even more dents. Outside of it, pallets of steel oil pipes and heavy-duty equipment for drilling platforms out in the Gulf were scattered haphazardly along their path. It was almost as if someone had gone out of their way to convince people this was a legitimate warehousing operation.
Just ahead of him, Remy could make out the wide, slow-moving expanse of the Mississippi lined almost entirely with docks along this part of the river. He reached out with his senses, straining to pick up any sight, sound, or smell that would indicate Lee’s people were about to start shooting at them. To be truthful, he’d expected to run into resistance by this point. That they hadn’t didn’t make him feel any better. In fact, it worried the hell out of him. You could never trust criminals who didn’t play their proper roles.
As he raced around the building, Remy got his first real look at the coastal merchant vessel tied up at the pier. It wasn’t as huge as some of the container ships that plied the waters of the Mississippi, but it was still large enough to hide a football field in, not to mention a buttload of armed thugs.
Still not running into a single person—armed or otherwise—he and the others reached the metal gangway attached to the side of the ship and raced aboard. Remy’s gut told h
im something was off here, but they had no choice except to keep going.
The four NOPD SWAT officers peeled off and headed toward the rear of the ship and the elevated bridge positioned there, while Remy and his pack mates split up into pairs and headed down into the cargo hold. Even though they moved fast, they covered each other the whole time. While they weren’t worried about getting shot, it was a standing wager in the Pack that the first wolf who got hit would have to buy the beer for the next team cookout. The pain of getting shot might not be a big deal, but the pain of buying beer? Now that was excruciating.
Remy ducked through a rounded door, then moved down a flight of stairs, Max on his heels. Somewhere off to the right, he heard Brooks and Zane moving along an adjacent set of stairs. As they descended, he let his eyes shift to see in the rapidly darkening depth of the ship. One level down, and it was already getting dark as midnight.
Coastal vessels like this one were true multipurpose workhorses, with some parts of the hold set aside for neat pallets of anything from computers to clothing to food, other areas designed for loose storage of grains or coal, and still other spots where tractor-trailer-sized containers could be placed and locked down. Down in the hold, a regular human could quickly get turned around in the dark, bewildering maze of partitioned spaces and the confusing corridors created by the cargo itself.
Remy wasn’t worried about that for himself or his guys, no matter how dark it was. Their werewolf senses made up for their lack of experience in places like this. His biggest concern was that they’d get into a running gunfight in the middle of a ship full of who knew what kind of hazardous cargo. Having the ship burn down to the waterline because some idiot accidently started a fire in a hold full of coal wasn’t what they were looking to do today.