Rhapsody (The Teplo Trilogy #2) (34 page)

Tristan dropped the phone and grabbed his Glock. He had it aimed before he spun, falling into a crouch as his eyes landed on the man standing in the shadows of the building, a smile on his face and a pistol in his hand.

"You."

"Agent Riley," the blond, Elijah, said, making it clear he knew far too much about Tristan. He stepped forward, out of the shadows of the warehouse, wearing jeans and a faded gray t-shirt. "Wondered when you were going to show up."

"Sorry to keep you waiting," Tristan snapped, keeping his aim steady. The phone was right by his left hand, so close. "I've been otherwise occupied."

"Ah." Elijah smirked and then licked his lips. "The ballerina. So sorry I didn't get to meet her last night."

Don't fucking shoot him,
Tristan coached himself.
Don't fucking shoot him
. He couldn't help the bolt of relief shooting through him at the reminder that Lillian was gone though. Two minutes before, he'd hated that reminder. Right then, he was more grateful for it than he could possibly say. She was gone. Safe.

Thank God.

"I'm a little surprised you didn't find this place earlier." Elijah took another step forward. "Then again, you have been busy haven't you?" He laughed. "She is
beautiful
, isn't she?"

Tristan snarled wordlessly at his admiring tone.

"I really was disappointed that Malachi fucked up last night," Elijah continued, ignoring Tristan's warning growl. "I really wanted to meet her. No worries though." He came forward another few steps. Three feet separated them now. Tristan was dying to pull the trigger. "This works just as well."

"Who are you?"

"Me?" Elijah's expression morphed from amusement to mock horror. "You mean you don't know?" He shook his head and laughed when Tristan merely stared at him. "I'm just a figment of your imagination, Riley."

Yeah, he had no clue what that was supposed to mean, but it didn't really matter.

"And you are DEA." Elijah tsk'd and shook his head.

"How'd you figure it out?" Tristan asked, glancing at the phone out of his periphery. He doubted the bastard would attempt a shoot-out, but he didn't believe for a minute that they were alone out here. He needed to turn the phone on before any more of Vetrov and Francisco's people showed up. Since he hadn't shown at the debriefing, Jason was probably watching the tracking app like a hawk, waiting to get a bead on his location.

"One too many coincidences, Riley. First, I found you waltzing out of the mop room like you owned the place. We would have let that go once we got a name for you, but then you moved in with the ballerina across the street. Her daddy's a former cop. We like to know these things." Elijah smiled. It didn't meet his eyes. He actually seemed annoyed.

Good. Fucker
, Tristan thought.

"We decided to keep tabs on her. Nothing came of it, but hey. You can never be too careful. Or too thorough." His eyes gleamed.

"Emma," Tristan growled, itching to pull the trigger.

Elijah rolled his head on his shoulders and smirked again. "Was sadly unhelpful."

Oh, the sorry son of a bitch.

"We'd decided that neither of you were a threat—just another couple of dumb kids—but then there you were, breaking into another storage room," Elijah laughed abruptly. "You really are stupid, you know that? Only the fucking cops would attempt that."

"Attempt what?"

"The door, Riley, the door." He shook his head. "Fucking stupid going for it with another cop in the building. You really thought no one was watching you?"

"Actually," Tristan retorted. "I was hoping you were watching."

"Oh?"

"Got you to make a move, didn't it?" he lied. "You tried to kidnap someone under our protection with DEA agents all over the place. Not a smart move, you dumb fuck."

Irritation flashed through Elijah' eyes and then his expression smoothed out. Tristan wanted to throw his head back and laugh in genuine amusement. The jackass actually believed the DEA had planned for them to swoop in on Lillian. His hand inched toward the phone as something shifted behind him. The noise was nothing more than a faint rustle, but that was all he needed to confirm what his instincts were screaming at him. They weren't alone.

"Now Malachi is rotting in jail. No worries though," Tristan mocked, ignoring the rustle for the moment. "He won't be alone much longer. You gave us exactly what we wanted."

"Oh?"

"Oh." He felt calm, completely fucking serene, as his pinky came up against the casing of the cell. Whoever was behind him was creeping closer, but he couldn't afford to look now. He had to get that phone turned on so Jason could find him and Vetrov's lab. "You didn't really think I came here alone, did you?" He motioned with the gun, keeping Elijah's attention on the weapon instead of on what he did with his free hand. "Fucking stupid," he snorted, depressing the button to turn the phone on as whoever was behind him made his move.

"That makes two of us then, Riley." Elijah grinned, showing teeth. "Because I didn't come alone either."

The butt of a gun cracked against the back of Tristan's head.

He swayed and fell.

Chapter Seventeen

By the time Jason arrived, Lillian had traversed the emotional spectrum from panic to anger—at herself and Tristan—to horror and back to panic before finally settling into a semblance of calm. She felt nowhere near true calm, but she couldn't afford to panic right now. Tristan was out there somewhere, and she had to believe he was fine.

When he'd gone to the morgue and she hadn't heard from him, she'd been so scared that something had happened to him, or that he was going to do something reckless. She'd been unable to do anything though and that had been hell. She wasn't traveling that route again. She'd been there, done that, and it had gotten her nowhere. There wasn't much she could do to help, she knew that. She wasn't trained for any of this, but she'd signed that NDA, and she'd agreed to help. Regardless of what anyone said now, she
was
going to help get Tristan out of whatever he'd gotten himself into.

Anything else wasn't an option.

And when he was safe and she could breathe, then she'd deal with him. She absolutely refused to entertain the notion that they wouldn't find him. They would, he'd be fine, and then she was going to have Jason hold him down while she strangled him. She'd told him not to do this. She'd told him that she didn't want this and he'd done it anyway.

Worse, he was doing it alone.

There was no time for panic. There was no place for fear. And there was no room for doubts that he'd be anything other than fine. She would crack apart under the strain if she gave fear a foothold. Tristan needed her. The rest could wait. The rest
would
wait because she wasn't going to let him get hurt. Not because of her.

"Have you found him?" she demanded as soon as Jason stepped into the penthouse.

"Not yet," he said, locking the door behind him. "When's the last time you heard from him?"

"I haven't talked to him since I left around eleven. He called my father." She couldn't hide her angry growl.

"He wanted you safe, Lillian."

"Don't, Jason," she warned him. "He sent me out of the way so he could do this, and I was stupid enough not to question it. We'll deal with that later. Right now, we need to find him. Anything else is moot until then."

Jason eyed her for a minute and then nodded.

She took a deep breath and sent up another quick prayer. "Where do we start?"

"I put a call out to Warner to look for his car. Kincaid is at the club. Tristan hasn't been there yet."

Something about the way he said that was less than reassuring to Lillian. She had to fight the sudden urge to gnash her teeth in frustration over idiot men who skirted around the truth to protect her. As if it weren't bad enough that Tristan and her father had already done it today, now Jason was doing it, too.

She was so over their attempts to coddle her.

"When Marc attacked me, everyone sat there for what felt like centuries, watching it happen. I don't know if they were shocked or horrified or simply didn't realize what was happening, but not a single person in the audience attempted to stop it. They just sat there until Tony tackled him to the stage," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I never told Tristan that."

"I'm sorry, Lillian."

She waved him off. She didn't want his sympathy; she needed his help. "When you asked me to help him with this case, that's what I thought about. Everyone watching Marc attack me without even trying to help me. I was so angry at Tristan for what he did, but when you explained what he was doing at
Teplo
and how dangerous his job was, I looked at him and I thought "not him." I didn't even understand half of what you were telling me, but I understood that he risked his life to save people he didn't even know. He wasn't sitting there, letting bad things happen to them. I didn't want to admire him or feel anything for him, but I did. I wanted to help keep
him
safe, help keep
him
alive, so he could help others."

"He's not going to die," Jason said.

"No, he's not." She met his gaze. "He's not going to die because I'm not going to stand here and let it happen. I'm not a child, Jason. I may not be an agent, but I signed that NDA and contract. I've been over every detail of the case file with Tristan. I've been there with him on this every step of the way since the instant I said yes. And I was the one who was almost kidnapped last night. I know how dangerous this is, so do us both a favor and stop trying to soften the blow to protect me. Believe me, I
know
how bad things can go. So tell me what we need to do because while you edit and hesitate, Tristan is out there, in danger, and I'm not going to let it be him who loses everything like I did."

For several interminable seconds after she spoke, Jason didn't say anything. He merely stared at her with that infuriating impassive expression on his face. And then he nodded, giving in. "We've always wondered if there were another entrance, but we couldn't be sure. I think Tristan went looking for it."

Lillian barely contained her sigh of relief that he, at least, wasn't going to baby her on this. He might not like it, but he understood. She'd never felt such an affinity for him as she did right that moment. She didn't have to hear him say that Tristan was important to him. He'd just proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He was letting her help despite what had happened last night.

"How do we stop him?"

"Christ, I don't know," he sighed as she waited for him to come up with a plan, a suggestion, anything to help them find Tristan.

"That's really not helpful, Jason," she said, limping in worried circles around the living room. "We have to find him."

"Warner is looking for his car, Simon is looking for the entrance, and Kincaid is at the club. Tristan's got his cell turned off. We don't have many options here," he said, his voice gentle as if trying to soften the blow.

"If you tell me we have to wait, I'm going to scream," she warned him. "I did that once. When he was at the morgue, I waited and wondered. I can't do it this time. I
can't
."

"I know." He pegged her with the same look he'd given her in his office when she'd first agreed to this, the ultimate
don't make me regret this
look. "You have your gun?"

She nodded.

"If I take you with me, you do as I say, when I say, without question. If I say shoot, you shoot. If I say hit the floor, you hit the floor. If I tell you to stay in the car, you don't even think about opening the door. Think you can handle that?" he asked.

She nodded again.

"Then we'll go look for him, but I swear to God, Lillian, if you make me regret this, I will arrest you faster than you can blink," he vowed. "And it won't be for show this time."

"I won't make you regret it," she promised. She'd follow his orders to a
T
so long as he didn't tell her that she had to sit here and do nothing. Going out to look for Tristan, going back to the office to help there, anything was better than sitting here, doing nothing.

"I'm killing Riley," Michael muttered under his breath as a branch poked him in the ass for the eighth time in as many minutes. He shuffled positions and hunkered down, irritated beyond all belief. His hand hurt. His fucking head hurt. And, thanks to Riley's mad dash to insane rage, his ass hurt, too.

And the fucker hadn't even shown up yet.

Michael was well aware that Ames expected him to do exactly that, but the longer it took Tristan to appear and the more the Vicodin haze clouding his mind wore off, the more second thoughts he had. He'd seen the way Riley looked at Little Mama. A man who looked at a chick like she was the center of his universe didn't decide to waltz into a place full of cocksuckers like this and start shooting, no matter the provocation. That was suicide, and Michael highly fucking doubted Riley would put Little Mama through that. The man knew full well how much it sucked to lose someone. He'd lost his parents. Putting Little Mama through that same bullshit because he was pissed?

Michael didn't see that happening.

Besides, crazed or not, that wasn't Riley's style. Not to say that he would sit around and twiddle his fucking thumbs either, of course. Like he'd told Ames, every-fucking-body and their mama knew that wasn't going to happen. But, whatever he decided to do, he'd be smart about it. Sneak in, wreck shit, and flip the douchebags off as he waltzed off with their cocks in his hand. Or, you know, sneak in, sneak out, and tell Ames, Davis, and their warrants to kiss his ass while he handed over the goods.

Strolling in through the front door wasn't smart and Riley was a smart son of a bitch. He was going through the back. Not the back door of the club, but whatever bum-fuck escape hatch these assholes had. And Michael could guaran-damn-tee they had one because the beefy asshole walking out the door with the douche guard?

Yeah, he hadn't been in there an hour ago. And unless the man had the gift of invisibility, Michael was fairly fucking certain he hadn't abracadabra'd his way inside.

The bastards had a rabbit hole, and Riley was going to find it.

Ames would lose his shit.

So would Davis.

All in all…another freaking day in the neighborhood.

Michael was seriously contemplating the merits of a job transfer as he dragged his ass out of the bushes and began circling back to his car two blocks over. He needed back-up, preferably of the incendiary variety. Too bad that wasn't in the cards.

Misappropriated tear gas would do in a pinch though.

Tristan regained awareness in increments, and none of it was particularly soft or comfortable. The throbbing of his head brought him awake. The roiling of his stomach refused to let him pass out a second time. And the buzzing of voices added to the overall feeling that he was utterly screwed.

"
Why the hell…bring him here?"

"
Need him…divert attention."

"
You should have…somewhere else."

"
Not part of the plan."

His eyes watered as he tried to focus on the distorted voices rising and fading with each painful throb of his head. He could feel cool cement beneath his cheek, and he couldn't move his hands, but beyond the fact that his skull fucking hurt and he wanted to vomit, everything else seemed to be in order.

He cracked one eye open to assess the situation.

Table legs, dollies, three pairs of shoes attached to legs working around the tables.

And his guns were on the floor across the room.

Ah, hell.

Lillian was going to kill him if he got out of this alive.

He snapped his eyes closed and continued to breathe in the deep, even rhythm of one knocked the hell out as one pair of said legs shifted in his direction.

"He came alone," the blond bastard, Elijah, said.

"You sure about that this time?" A higher-pitched feminine voice retorted. "You got rid of the car?" A pair of heels clicked across the floor. Four pairs of legs then.

Worse and worse.

Had he gotten his phone turned on in time for Jason to track him?

He couldn't remember. Thinking was not easy after being pistol-whipped. Christ, he'd love to know which of these assholes was responsible for that so he could repay the favor.