Rhapsody (The Teplo Trilogy #2)

by Ayden K. Morgen

  "I make my own choices, Tristan," she answered flatly. She didn't hate him. God, she wasn't even really sure she was angry at him right then. She just wanted to get out before she started bawling. When she started this time, she wouldn't be able to stop.

  "Beautiful, I ne–"

  "You were right, okay?"

  His mouth snapped closed, his expression turning wary as she interrupted him.

  "I'll never belong in your world. I'm a ballerina." She laughed, trying not to cry. "Not even that anymore, I guess. I'm just…me. Whoever that is. I was stupid to ever think I could help you do this, and I'm sorry. For everything." She stepped from his hold, tears burning like lava up her throat. "Goodbye, Tristan."

  "Lillian, please don–"

  The hole in her chest yawned wider as his expression crumbled.

  "Thank you for letting me try," she whispered.

  "Baby, please."

  "Let's go, Dad." She hurried toward the door as quickly as her leg could carry her, holding her breath, praying for him to stop her. To change his mind. To call her back.

  He didn't.

  Somehow, she made it out of the penthouse and into her dad's SUV. She even managed to tell him she needed to go get some things from her house before the tears started falling.

  "Goddamnit!" Tristan yelled into the silence of the penthouse as the door closed behind her and her father. He dropped his forehead to the wall and groaned loudly. She was really gone. And he'd let her walk out thinking she didn't belong in his world, that he didn't think she belonged in his world.

  "You're so fucking stupid," he cursed himself. He wanted to bolt after her and demand she listen to him. He'd never even explained that he intended to come for her as soon as he eliminated the threats against her. She hadn't even let him tell her that he loved her, that he didn't want her to go, that he was only sending her away because he couldn't leave her with someone that didn't value her life as much as he did.

  He could have put another guard on the door of the penthouse. Hell, he could have demanded Jason give her a shadow twenty-four seven, but it wouldn't have been enough. He knew exactly three other people that he trusted to put her life before theirs without hesitation. Jason, who couldn't drop everything to keep her safe. Kincaid, who'd already proven he would do whatever he could to protect her, but he couldn't exactly watch over her and help Jason, too. And her father, who lived far enough away to make it a little more difficult for anyone to get near her. If something went wrong today, he needed to know whoever had her would defend her life, even if it meant sacrificing their own. Her father would do that.

  Still, he was the biggest idiot on the planet.

  "I love you." He whispered the three words he should have said before he let her walk away. He wasn't sure right then that she'd ever let him say them again because she actually believed what she'd said—that she was only a ballerina to him. That was so fucking far from the truth though. So far. She'd never been just a ballerina to him. She'd been the ballerina. She'd been everything. Still was. He just had to make it safe for her to come home.

  He had no intentions of failing.

  He pushed himself away from the door and got himself together. Weapons, extra ammo, cell-phone, car keys, camera. Anything he could use to bring Vetrov down, he grabbed.

  Half an hour later, he was in the Viper, racing across town.

  He never noticed the dark blue Sedan following him.

  "Mariah Jeffries has ties to Pedro Francisco, sir."

  Jason sat back in his chair and stared across the desk at the same rookie agent who had delivered news of Mariah's identity two hours before. "You're sure?"

  "Yes, sir. She's a distant cousin to his wife. It's in the file." The agent tapped the file in his hands. "She and Elijah Noel are wanted on suspicion of murder in California. Three counts. We were also able to confirm the blond working for Vetrov is the same Elijah."

  "Good." Jason smiled his first of the day, inordinately pleased for the first time in weeks.

  "There's a problem though, sir."

  "What problem?" His smile slipped.

  "According to what we were able to gather, Elijah Noel is deceased," the agent said.

  "Come again?"

  "He reportedly died in a shoot-out with Mexican authorities in Jalisco a year ago." The agent held out the file. "It's all right there, sir. First page."

  No wonder their agents in Tijuana had no clue who Elijah was. They wouldn't have been looking for someone they'd presumed dead. He certainly hadn't thought to check that possibility.

  Jason grabbed the file and began reading.

  Sure enough, Elijah Noel had been declared deceased thirteen months, four days ago.

  Bullshit. Unless the man's ghost had gone to work for Francisco, the fucker was most assuredly not dead. He'd changed his hair color, lost a little weight, and now wore contacts, but the man staring up at him in the picture and the blond at Teplo were the very same.

  Another slow smile spread across Jason's face. Hook. Line. Sinker.

  Thank God.

  "I want an address, a phone number, a driver's license number…anything to track this son of a bitch down. And I need it now." He tossed the file down on his desk and grabbed his phone, bringing up the camera app. "Tell Janet to have everyone in the War Room in half an hour."

  "Yes, sir." The agent was out the door before Jason snapped the picture and finished dialing.

  "Dude, you're worse than a fucking girlfriend. I told you, I'd call you when–"

  "Shut the fuck up, Kincaid," he snapped. "I just sent you a photo. You got it yet?"

  "Let me check." Kincaid mumbled something and then the line beeped. "Where the fuck did you find this?" he demanded half a minute later.

  "Is it her?"

  "It's grainy, but yeah, pretty fucking positive that's her. Crazy redheaded bitch," Kincaid cursed. "We know who she is yet?"

  "Yep and it gets better," Jason laughed…actually laughed for the first time in days. "She was arrested in Jalisco two years ago in the company of an Elijah Noel."

  "Son of a bitch."

  "Elijah Noel was killed thirteen months ago in Sinaloa. Two guesses as to where he's spending his after-life."

  "Teplo?"

  "Yep."

  "Awesome," Kincaid said, laughing. "They are so fucked."

  "With a pole, my friend," Jason agreed, grinning like an idiot. They had enough in that pretty little file sitting on top of his desk to arrest them all on enough charges to keep them in jail for a long, long time. Francisco had sent a dead man to keep an eye on things at Teplo, and that dead man's girlfriend had marched Lillian out of the club at gunpoint. Jason wanted to award the bastard a medal for making his job that much easier. This changed everything.

  All they had to do was find the drugs and this entire nightmare would be over.

  "How long is it going to take?" Kincaid demanded.

  "Three hours, tops." Plenty of time to fill Davis in and get the judge to issue warrants. "When Tristan gets there, you've got to let him know. Knock him out if you have to, but do not let him walk in there until we get on scene, Kincaid."

  "You'll get Davis to drop the fucking partner kick he's on?"

  "I'll tell him to kiss my lily-white ass if you keep Tristan out of that club until we get the warrants," Jason promised, meaning every word.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lillian walked through her house in a daze. Her dad trailed behind her—she was pretty sure he was waiting to catch her if she fell—but she barely noticed. Everywhere she looked, she saw memories of Tristan. In the living room, she saw him fidgeting as he asked her to sit with him…just sit. In the kitchen, she saw him biting his lip as she rode him. In the bedroom, she saw him walking from the bathroom with nothing but a towel low on his hips and a cocky smirk on his face. In the studio, she saw him working through the kata and making her fly apart for him in front of the mirrors as he showed her how beautiful he thought she was. Her entire house was full of memorie
s of him and the way he made her feel. Hopeful. Beautiful. Happy. Safe.

  Right then, she didn't feel any of those things. She felt beaten, defeated. He'd sent her away, refusing to grasp that she was a big girl. That she made her own decisions and took care of herself. Maybe life after ballet wasn't easy and maybe she hadn't done a stellar job of coping in the last year, but this was her life, dammit. And she wasn't made of glass.

  "He cares about you, kiddo," her dad said from behind her as she stood in the doorway of the studio, staring off into space.

  "Not enough to stop treating me like I need to be wrapped in bubble wrap and tucked inside a security box," she muttered, dashing angrily at her eyes and the stupid tears leaking there. She felt ungrateful as soon as the words were out of her mouth, but she didn't call them back. She turned to her father instead, in time to see him holster the gun he'd drawn before they ever left the confines of his Escalade.

  And that was after he'd already assured her that Jason had someone watching the house to make sure no one got in. Tristan hadn't even told her that much, but he'd told her father. That fact sat low on the list of things bothering her at the moment, but it sat on the list nonetheless.

  Her dad stared at her a minute, looking perplexed, and then he sighed. "I'm going to regret this. I know I'm going to regret this," he mumbled.

  "Regret what?"

  "Come sit down." He ushered her into the living room, and then waited for her to get situated on the sofa. He stood in front of her, his hands on his hips and his feet planted solidly on the floor. "The first time you ever danced on stage, you were lit up like a Christmas tree for days afterward. You always lit up like that, every time you performed. When you were accepted at the Pacific Company so young, I wasn't thrilled. You were growing up and I didn't want to let you go, but dancing was what you'd always wanted and there was no way in hell I was going to stand in the way of that."

  Lillian listened, not sure what to say. Her father wasn't the most talkative person. He tended to be the quietly observant type, always listening but not getting involved or telling her what to do. He hinted. He nudged. In the last year, he'd even taken to protecting and watching over her like he had when she was a kid, but he never tried to make choices for her or tell her which path she should take. If he had something to say, it was because he felt strongly enough about the subject to involve himself.

  "You were always a determined kid, too. Even when the other kids gave you hell—and don't deny that they did. I was a cop, I know these things—you never let it wear you down. You got up and did what you had to do regardless of what they said or did. That's always been your way. Didn't matter what obstacle appeared, you found a way around it." He huffed, a thunderous scowl on his face. "And then that son of a bitch attacked you."

  "Dad–"

  "Let me say this first, Lily." He held up a hand, urging her to silence.

  She snapped her mouth closed with a nod.

  "When he broke your leg, he broke your spirit too. And for the first time, I regretted letting you make ballet your life. I thought that maybe if I had done something differently, made you branch out a little, losing your career wouldn't have been as hard for you. I didn't think you were ever going to get over it. Not even when you decided to move back here did I believe you were ready, but I'd have done just about anything at that point to get you living again so I let you go."

  "I was living, Dad," she argued.

  "You were not," he disagreed. "You were going through the motions, Lillian Elise. You laughed in all the right places, smiled at all the right times, but you were miserable and we both know it." He shot her a look, daring her to tell her that wasn't true. She couldn't, of course, because he wasn't wrong. She had been miserable. She'd just thought she'd done a better job of hiding it from him.

  Apparently not.

  "That's what I thought," he muttered when she remained silent. "The first couple of times I talked to you after you moved back here, you sounded as miserable as you were at home. You tried to hide it, but I heard it anyway. I worried that I'd made the wrong choice and you'd be better off at home. And then a few weeks ago, that changed. When we talked, you weren't forcing yourself to sound happy. You were actually happy. Don't tell me that doesn't have anything to do with him."

  She couldn't tell him that so she didn't say anything.

  "I could blame him for getting you mixed up in this, Lil, and believe me, I want to do exactly that, but I know better. I know you. I never wanted to hear that you were tangling with drug dealers, but I can't say it surprised me either. You're as stubborn now as you ever were and you don't half-ass anything. You're in love with him."

  "I am."

  He sighed heavily. "As much as it pains me to say it, he's in love with you, too. I saw the way he looked at you. And I talked to him this morning. I'd love it if you kept making his life hell a little while longer, but I have a feeling you're going to be miserable if you do. He didn't want to send you home with me, and he knew you were going to be furious with him about it. But he cared enough about you to want you safe, and I can't say that's a bad thing."

  "It is when he didn't even talk to me about it," she said, unshed tears clogging in her throat. "He didn't even give me a choice, Daddy. He decided for me that I was going back to Oregon with you."

  "I'm the one who decided you were going back to Oregon, not him. He tried to find a way to keep you here and keep you safe, and I told him the safest place for you was at home with me." He blew out a breath. "You'll probably be angry at me for that, but I worry about you. I always will."

  "I'm not angry," she said, though she wasn't sure if that was true or not. She loved her father, and she loved Tristan, but neither of them should have made any decisions about where she should go without talking to her first.

  "I didn't fight for your real mom," her dad continued before she could gather her thoughts. "She left when you were a baby, and I let her go. Don't make the same mistake I did. I love your stepmom like crazy, but part of me will always wonder if I could have worked things out with Donna. If she'd be in your life now if I'd made more of an effort." He sighed. "That boy cares about you, and he didn't want you to go any more than you obviously want to go. Whatever other issues you two have, don't let this be one of them. If you love the boy, fight for him."

  Lillian stared at her father blankly.

  He was actually encouraging her to fight for Tristan? In a million years, she hadn't seen that one coming.

  "You're not angry at him?"

  "He makes it incredibly hard to be angry at him." Her dad scowled, his eyebrows drawing together. "I wanted to shoot him when he told me you were hurt, but, hell, kiddo, he sounded torn up about it. And now that I see you myself, well, a few bruises seem to be the least of your problems. He's beating himself up over them enough for the both of us, and I actually believed him when he said he'd regret you getting hurt for the rest of his life. How do you shoot a man that says that about your daughter and actually means it?" He looked perplexed, as if it were a puzzle.

  "The first time you talked to him, he told me you wouldn't shoot him," she said, more to herself than him.

  "Cocky isn't he?" he grumbled.

  "No. He said you wouldn't shoot him because it'd upset me." She smiled softly when he snorted, her first smile since the doorbell rang. When he smiled back, things suddenly didn't feel so bad.

  "Get what you need, kiddo," he encouraged, mussing her hair, "and let's get out of here. I might not shoot him, but I can't say the same of any of these Vetrov people if they happen to appear."

  Tristan jerked the Viper to a stop a block from the spot where Seattle's patrol unit found Emma's body. He turned his cell-phone off and slipped it into his pocket alongside his keys. Somewhere in the last hour, he'd reclaimed the sense of calm he'd managed to piece together this morning. He wore it like armor as he double checked the Glock and the Sig in the shoulder holsters and climbed out of the car. He had his guns on, and she was safe.


  God, she had to forgive him.

  He pushed that thought down into a little corner of his mind with every other thought of her. He couldn't think about her right now. Getting her back would come later. Right now, he had to do this. One fucking step at a time.

  Step one: Get in.

  He could do that.

  Jason was certain they were using a sewer or tunnel to get into and out of the lab, believed the lab might even be hidden in the maze of sewer tunnels and drains under the city. Tristan didn't know if he was right, but he intended to find out. Starting here. He slammed the car door and glanced around.

  There wasn't another person in sight. The three houses on the street were spread out and vacant. Traffic through the area was minimal, the few who found their way here usually the homeless looking for a place to crash.

  It was the perfect dumping grounds for a body. And the perfect place to hide a litany of other crimes.

  Get in.

  He started jogging the half-mile toward the ditch where Seattle found Emma.

  Lillian allowed her father to help her to her feet and made her way back toward the bedroom. Once inside, she didn't gather up her things though, she simply lowered herself to the edge of the bed, her mind running through what her father had just said.

  Why had Tristan let her go if he hadn't really wanted that at all?

  Ha.

  Did she really even need to ask herself that question? She knew the answer. This wasn't her risk to take and he'd never wanted her to do so to begin with. He hadn't ever wanted her involved in any of this. She'd asked him if he'd been looking for a reason to send her out of this from the beginning, believed he had.

  And maybe he had. But that didn't necessarily mean he didn't think she was strong enough, did it? Could you really see someone as an equal and still do whatever you could to keep them safe? Hadn't she done exactly that last night? She'd actually gone with the redhead and then Malachi without so much as a fight in order to save Tristan, because she'd thought he was in danger. So why couldn't she accept that he might do the same for her?