Wolf Hunt

by Paige Tyler

  “The ambulance is on the way,” Max said, crouching beside Lorenzo. “It’s bad, but he just has to hang on until the EMTs get here.”

  Lorenzo nodded but didn’t look hopeful. “In this weather? That could take a while.”

  Max and Zane nodded, but Remy couldn’t listen anymore. Triana’s scent was driving him insane, but not nearly as much as not knowing what the hell had happened to her. Why had she been here? Where was she now? Who had her? Was she in danger? The stress of not knowing the answers to those questions, and about a thousand other ones, was enough to make his fangs and claws start to come out.

  Not knowing what else to do, he yanked out his cell phone to call her and saw that she’d called him forty minutes ago but hadn’t left a message. Growling in frustration, he dialed her number.

  “What the hell, Remy?” Lorenzo demanded, frowning up at him.

  Remy didn’t answer. Calling your girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—in the middle of a raid wasn’t exactly standard protocol.

  “Don’t ask how he knows,” Max said, “but someone very important to him was in this warehouse right before we got here.”

  Lorenzo asked Max how he could possibly know that, but Remy tuned them out. He couldn’t deal with that right then.

  Not surprisingly, Triana didn’t pick up. Instead, it went to voice mail. He considered leaving a message, but his gut told him it would be a waste of time.

  “She’s not answering,” he growled, shoving his phone away as his stomach did flips and barrel rolls. “Something is wrong. I can feel it in my gut. Triana was right here at the same time your guy was getting shot.”

  Remy had no idea how he knew it was true, but he did. That was the only thing that mattered.

  “I need to know what the hell happened in this warehouse,” he said, turning toward the front of the building.

  Lorenzo got up to follow. “Good luck with that. Those guys we arrested are all professional criminals. They’re going to lawyer up and not say a word to anyone.”

  Remy growled as he headed in that direction. “Who said I was going to give them an option?”

  Zane stayed with the injured undercover cop, while Lorenzo and Max hurried to catch up with Remy.

  He passed between the last of the Mardi Gras floats and found himself in a large open area at the front of the warehouse. Long folding tables had been set up along either side, with a third row running right down the center. From all the tools, paints, stacks of Styrofoam, and craft paper scattered around, this was probably the place new floats were made and old ones repaired. But now all the art supplies had been shoved to the side and the tables cleared. In their place were scales, boxes of plastic baggies, and lots of crystal meth. The crap looked like big shards of rock candy, so clear you could see through it.

  But Remy ignored all of that and instead turned his attention to the ten men lined up near the partial wall that divided this area from the entryway and front door. They were all cuffed and seemed to be waiting patiently for someone to come and take them in for booking.

  Lorenzo got around in front of him and put a hand on his chest in an attempt to slow him down. “Remy, you need to stop.”

  “Get out of my way, Lorenzo,” Remy said in a low voice.

  He was damn close to losing control, and he didn’t need some by-the-book detective telling him to back off. He’d done everything he could to push Triana away, even though it had pained her and him, so she wouldn’t get hurt. After all that, it looked like it had been a waste. Somehow, she’d gotten wrapped up with a bunch of scary people anyway. He had no idea what was going on, but she was in danger. He knew that deep down in his soul. He’d do whatever it took to find her and make sure she was safe—even if that meant going through the middle of a NOPD narcotics detective.

  He shoved Lorenzo’s hand away and moved to step around the man, but the idiot got in front of him again.

  “Damn it, Remy,” Lorenzo said. “One of my very best friends put himself undercover for six years to get Aaron Lee and now it looks like it might cost him his life. I’m not going to let you waste his sacrifice. All the people we arrested work for Lee, and by catching them with all these drugs, we finally have something to pin on him. This is going to get us warrants for his home and every business he’s associated with. We finally have this guy by the balls and I’m not going to let you do something stupid that will get this arrest thrown out of court.”

  Remy locked eyes with the narcotics detective, his fingertips and gums tingling as his shift came on. Gage would be pissed as hell, but Remy didn’t care. He was going to get his questions answered one way or another.

  “I need to find out what the hell Triana was doing in this warehouse and where she is now, and one of these men is going to tell me,” he said softly, not bothering to keep the rumbling growl out of his voice. “So unless you plan on shooting me, you need to move.”

  The detective’s face went blank as he took a step back, but then he slowly reached across his body to grab the pistol holstered under his left armpit. Several of the NOPD SWAT officers who’d been standing there watching the exchange tensed, hands near their weapons. This was about to get ugly.

  Remy flexed his fingers. Guess he was going to have to do this the hard way. He could take them all down before they put more than three or four bullets in him.

  “Remy, you might want to wait a minute before you do anything stupid,” Brooks’s deep voice interrupted from the entryway. “At least until you talk to these guys outside. I think they can answer most of your questions without anyone getting shot.”

  Remy opened his mouth to ask his pack mate what he meant by that, but Brooks had already turned and headed for the door. He gave Lorenzo a quick look, then walked out without another word. The narcotics detective didn’t follow.

  Remy found Brooks and Drew standing outside the warehouse with two other guys. The rain had slowed to a slow drizzle at that point, but both men were already soaked.

  “This is Marcus Bodine, a local PI,” Drew said, motioning at one of the men. “And this is Dominic, one of his informants. They got here right after we went through the door.” He turned his attention to the two men. “Tell Remy what you told us.”

  Remy stood there stunned as the PI told him he was working for Triana, helping her find her father’s murderer. The private investigator talked like a cop, giving a short, concise rundown of the facts, including how Dominic had heard someone bragging about killing a person in a manner consistent with the evidence in her father’s case file.

  Somewhere in the middle of Bodine’s story, the ambulance showed up and the PI paused as the EMTs ran past them with a gurney and their gear.

  “Triana insisted on talking to this witness directly,” Bodine said after the EMTs disappeared inside. “When I set it up, I never dreamed she’d be stupid enough to try to track down her father’s killer herself.”

  Dominic took over the story then, explaining how he found the man he’d heard bragging in a bar and had followed him here.

  “I called her so she could get a look at the guy, Shelton Quinn, as soon as he came out of the building, but she got impatient and decided to go take a look.”

  Remy’s gut clenched at the mention of Quinn. Shit, that was the other scent he’d recognized in the warehouse near Triana’s. The first time he’d seen the big, muscular bruiser who worked for Lee, his werewolf instincts had told him the guy was no good.

  “What happened then?” Remy asked.

  Dominic swallowed. “I started worrying about her after a couple of minutes, so I got out of my car to see where she was. When I got to the back door, I figured I’d go in and try to talk her into coming out, when I heard a gunshot.”

  The guy’s hands were shaking as he spoke, and Remy realized that going after Triana was probably the only heroic thing the man had done in his life, and it had terrified him.

&nb
sp; “I froze for a second,” Dominic said. “The next thing I know, Quinn was coming out the back door with Triana tossed over his shoulder like a bag of wheat. I wanted to do something, but I ain’t no hero—not against a guy that big. So I hid and watched as he tossed Triana in a blue BMW and spun out of here. Then I called Marcus.”

  “When I got here and saw the commotion and all the cops, I grabbed the first person I found and told him everything,” Bodine said, gesturing at Drew.

  Remy could hardly breathe. “Was she still alive when you saw her?”

  Dominic scrunched up his face, like he was thinking hard. “I think so. He was handling her like she was. I mean, he didn’t throw her in the trunk. And I didn’t see any blood on her.”

  Remy wasn’t too certain how much faith he had in Dominic, but he breathed a sigh of relief anyway.

  “None of this makes sense,” Brooks said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Remy, but assuming Quinn figured out Triana knew that he’d killed her father, why the hell would he go to the trouble of taking her with him? If he shot Roth and left him for dead, why not do the same to her?”

  Remy didn’t have an answer to that question. The fact that Quinn had taken Triana instead of killing her outright both gave him hope and scared the shit out of him at the same time. He didn’t even want to think about her being in that psycho’s hands.

  Chapter 15

  Triana came to with a throbbing headache and the strange sensation of someone tugging at her wet clothes. Her head hurt like hell and she was so out of it that it took a moment to force her eyes open. When she finally did, she saw Quinn’s scratched and ugly mug a few inches from her face like he was going to kiss her. Then she realized he was tugging at her shirt, trying to undress her. She screamed and tried to shove him away only to discover she was sitting in a chair with her hands tied together in front of her and a rope around her waist holding her down.

  “Get the hell away from me!” she yelled, twisting her upper body to get his hands off her shirt while clubbing at him with her tied-up hands at the same time.

  Quinn laughed and backed away. “Relax. Damn, I was only loosening your wet clothes so you can breathe better. Figured I should make sure you’re comfortable since you might be here a while.”

  That’s when everything came rushing back—her stupid plan to slip into the Mardi Gras warehouse to get a look at the man who’d killed her father, Quinn shooting that other guy and roughing her up, then telling her he was bringing her to Mr. Lee.

  “What do you want with me?” she asked in a terrified rush, hating to look scared in front of Quinn but too desperate for information to keep quiet. “Why did you bring me here?”

  Quinn regarded her in silence, his expression so damn creepy it made her skin want to crawl off and go hide. Finally, he walked over and casually sat down in a chair that matched the one she was trussed up in and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. Triana looked around and realized she was in a study with books all around, a wall of fancy windows to one side and a set of heavy double doors to the other.

  “Maybe I wanted to spend a little quality time with you, since you obviously went to so much work to find me and all,” Quinn said. “That’s why you were at that warehouse, right? Because you figured out I was involved in your father’s murder?”

  At the mention of her father, Triana was nearly overwhelmed with a wild urge to charge out of the chair and attack the monster in front of her. The only thing that stopped her was the fact that she was currently tied down to the aforementioned chair. Well, that and the knowledge Quinn could swat her down like a fly anytime he wanted. So she swallowed her anger and fear, and realized that while he hadn’t actually answered her question about why he’d brought her there, he had let one thing slip.

  He said that he’d been involved in her father’s murder, not that he’d killed him. If he was as much of a braggart as Dominic had said, wouldn’t he take credit for it, especially since he had her right in front of him?

  “How’d you find me?” Quinn prompted when she didn’t say anything. “Did someone help you?”

  Triana knew he was fishing to see if there was anyone who might know she’d been kidnapped, and for a moment she didn’t know how to answer. If she admitted there was a private investigator involved, would he kill her now and get rid of her body quickly? Or would he hesitate, afraid her disappearance would be traced back to him?

  She had to say something though, or he’d simply kill her to be on the safe side. So she went with what she hoped was the least threatening answer and prayed Dominic had stayed around the warehouse long enough to see Quinn grab her, then called the cops. Part of her even hoped Remy and his SWAT teammates might be on the way to her at that moment. It was an insane thought, but she was scared and needed to grab hold of something to give her hope.

  “I found you on my own,” Triana said. “I spent months looking and finally talked to someone in a bar who said they remembered hearing a man brag about killing my father. They described you, so you were easy to find after that.”

  Quinn laughed, and she thought she saw relief on his face. “Yeah, I guess I am kind of easy to spot. Still, it’s impressive you tracked me down. You really are like your father. He was too damn stubborn for his own good too.”

  The way Quinn looked at her as he spoke made her insides turn to mush.

  “Are you going to kill me?” she asked, steeling herself for the answer.

  He shrugged. “Probably at some point, but Mr. Lee has something he needs out of you first, so it’s really up to him.”

  It was hard to sit there and not flinch at the casual way Quinn dismissed her death as a foregone conclusion. But she forced herself to focus on something else, anything other than what this man was planning to do to her.

  “Who is this Mr. Lee and what does he want from me?”

  “My boss wants that damn wolf necklace your father used to wear,” Quinn said. “He tried to use a middle man to buy it from your mother, some stupid-ass lawyer named Murphy, but she wouldn’t sell it.”

  Triana blinked. Quinn’s boss was the rich client who’d hired that lawyer to harass her mother? All because of some necklace? That didn’t make any sense.

  “Murphy must have thought there was going to be some big payout if he got Mr. Lee the necklace because he sent some local muscle to your mother’s shop to steal it last night. That didn’t work either, so I picked the guy up at his house and drove him out to the river, where I put a bullet in his head.” Quinn’s lips curled. “As they say in baseball, three strikes and you’re out.”

  Triana gasped. This psycho had killed Kenneth Murphy because he’d failed to get a necklace? He really was insane.

  “Mr. Lee decided he was done playing around and told me to go pick you up,” Quinn continued. “He figures your mother will trade the necklace for you. Between you and me though, after she shows up with it, I doubt either one of you will be leaving.”

  Triana refused to think about this man hurting her mom, knowing it would just make her fall apart. Instead she scoured her memories, trying to figure out if she’d ever heard of Lee before, but the name wasn’t familiar.

  “Why would Mr. Lee want my father’s necklace?” she asked.

  Quinn gave her a funny look, then shook his head. “Shit, you don’t even know, do you? You have no idea what your dad really was?” When Triana regarded him in confusion, he continued. “Mr. Lee is a powerful man who’s getting a little long in the tooth. People are starting to nip at the edges of his empire because they don’t believe he’s strong enough to defend it himself anymore, and that pisses him off. He wants the necklace so he can turn into a werewolf.”

  Triana stared, not sure she’d heard right, but then she saw the serious look on his face and realized he actually believed what he was saying.

  “You’re insane, you know that, right?”
she said. “There’s no such thing as werewolves.”

  Quinn shrugged. “I used to think that too, until I saw your dad in action.” He stood and paced in front of her. “I got so damn tired of hearing all those old stories about your father and what a badass he was, about him being strong and fearless. I knew most of the stories were bullshit. Like the one about him getting stabbed and yanking the knife out of his own stomach, or the one Mr. Lee used to tell about your father taking a bullet right in the chest for him, then chasing after the shooter for a mile until he caught him.” Quinn stopped to look at her. “To me he was just another old man who ran a jazz club.”

  None of the stuff Quinn was saying made any sense. It sounded like the babbling of a crazy person. But one thing was obvious.

  “You knew my father before you helped kill him?”

  “Mostly by reputation,” Quinn admitted. “He used to work for Mr. Lee too, before he decided to get married and start a family. I have to admit, he must have been one tough son of a bitch back in the day because he helped Mr. Lee build his criminal empire.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Mr. Lee let him be for a long time—some kind of respect shit, I guess. Then the boss decided he wanted to sell drugs out of your father’s club. But old Rufus said no, which put Mr. Lee in a difficult situation. He couldn’t have people thinking he was losing control or getting too weak to deal with some club owner. So, my crew and I went down to your father’s place late one night, planning to break some bones and teach him a lesson.”

  Quinn began pacing again, leaving Triana to track his movements.

  “It didn’t quite work out the way we expected,” he said quietly, as if remembering that night. “Your father frigging changed in front of us. I’m not shitting you. I’m talking fangs, claws, glowing eyes, the whole nine yards. He turned into a fucking monster. I’ve never seen anything so impossible in my life.” Quinn shrugged. “I was one of the lucky ones. I got tossed through a window and halfway across the street outside. I only cracked a few bones and sliced up some skin. My boys didn’t manage so well. Your father tore them apart—literally. And Mr. Lee had a front row seat to the whole thing. Hell, he should probably be dead right now, but your father must have had a soft spot for him. Told him to drag his ass out of there and never come back.”