Rhapsody (The Teplo Trilogy #2) (19 page)

She'd told him that his parents' deaths weren't his fault.

He thought maybe he actually believed that for once. Believed that, even had he told his parents about his uncle, things would have played out the same way. They still would have gone to his house that day. They still would have come to pick Tristan up. And that motherfucker still would have pulled up on them at the stoplight and started firing.

Seventeen.

That's how many bullets it took to tear his world apart.

Three minutes for his father to die.

Sixty-seven for his mother.

One-hundred and ninety two hours for his uncle.

And none of it was his fucking fault. He'd been a kid. A thirteen-year-old with a chip on his shoulder and a group of friends who'd thought he was the coolest thing on the face of the earth. It. Wasn't. His. Fault.

If something happened to Lillian though, that
would
be his fault. If it happened on this case or on a case five years down the road, it would be his fault. And that would never be okay, no matter how many people like Anton Vetrov he stopped. He couldn't risk her. Not when it frigging
hurt
letting her walk away to face the blond alone. Not when he wanted to fall asleep with her in his arms every night and wake up to make love to her every morning.

She literally consumed him—his heart, his mind, his body. Ever since he'd dragged her onto the dance floor that first time, he'd been owned by her. He didn't know why. He didn't think he would ever know why, but it was true all the same. He needed her more than he needed anything else. He wanted her more than he wanted anything else.

Risking her safety when her safety was
everything
to him wasn't an option. After this case, he was done. He was walking away and he wouldn't regret it. He wouldn't let her regret it either. He was giving up nothing and getting the world in return. How could he ever regret that?

"She's in," Jason said.

"Hurry baby," he whispered.

The headset in Jason's ear crackled as he paced back and forth in Lillian's living room, trying to remain patient. She'd been inside for less than five minutes, and nothing appeared to be wrong. Stephan had barely spared her a glance when he'd waved her through. Something didn't feel right though. He'd been an agent long enough to know that when something didn't feel right, you didn't ignore it. The problem was that he couldn't put his finger on exactly what felt off.

Actually, that wasn't true.

For a brief minute after Tristan and Lillian had left to find Simon this afternoon, he'd been absolutely sure they were overlooking something. And the feeling hadn't really left him yet. In fact, the more he thought about it, the stronger the feeling became.

It was the storage room, he decided as he paced.

Hell, when
wasn't
it that fucking room?

Vetrov had it boarded up, but Tristan had checked everywhere else in the club through every means available. If there was another way into the lab, they hadn't been able to find a whisper of it. The storage room was the only logical entrance. The problem though was that it didn't add up. Since Tristan hid the camera inside, no one had gone near the boarded up basement.

So why guard it like the damn thing was the entrance to Fort Knox?

Why go to all the trouble if they were simply screwing with Tristan? As careful as Vetrov was, why would he give Tristan a reason to keep coming back by guarding that room so tenaciously if he was only screwing with him?

Because Tristan had been right all along.

That room
did
grant access to the lab, and Vetrov wasn't stupid enough to risk Tristan getting inside. But he'd been wrong, too. The storage room wasn't the only way in. They had another entrance tucked away somewhere, one they'd taken to using once they started to suspect Tristan.

"Kincaid," he barked into the headset.

"Yo?"

"When you were in the Planning Office, did you find anything about tunnels or sewers in this area?"

"What?"

"Did you come across anything marking sewers or tunnels in this area of the city?"

Tristan stopped pacing and turned to face Jason, watching him with a hawkish expression, already connecting the dots Jason had only just connected himself. His wife's cousin was a pain in the ass, but he was smart.

"Naw, man," Kincaid said, his radio crackling, "I didn't find shit. That place was like a kindergarten classroom on the first day of school. Fucking chaos."

"Shit," Jason swore and pulled his cell phone out, dialing Janet's number.

"Yes, sir?" she answered on the third ring.

"I need you to do me a favor," he said, forgoing any type of greeting. "Simon's still down in IT. Get him to pull up sewer schematics in a five mile radius of
Teplo
."

"O-kay."

"Now, please."

"Yes, sir," she said. "One second."

"You think they're using a sewer entrance." Tristan said, and then cursed loudly.

"Is he looking for anything in particular?" Janet asked.

"Tell him to find out if anything runs beneath
Teplo
or near it. Mark anything with an entrance bigger than a manhole."

"Anything else?"

"Hey, Ames?" Kincaid's voice came through the headset, distracting him from answering.

"Shit, hold on, Janet." He lowered the cell. "Yeah?"

"What does the boss look like?"

"Which boss?"

"The boss that runs this fucking place."

"What the fuck is happening?" Tristan asked, resuming his pacing.

Jason held up a finger. "Graying hair, about six foot one, beefy. Why?"

"Because he's walking into the club now."

"Shit. You're sure?" Jason strode to the window, flicking the curtain aside to look out, but he didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Seventy, thirty," Kincaid responded. "It's worse than the fucking strip clubs out here, man. There are people dry-humping and milling all over the place. The little bastard at the door looks ready to beat them off with sticks, but he waved the old guy straight through without hesitating. Actually seemed surprised to see him."

"Jason, man, what the fuck?" Tristan barked.

"Shit. Hold on." Jason grabbed his cell from the coffee table. "Janet, tell Simon to call me as soon as he finds anything."

Kincaid's voice came over the headset. "This place makes me grateful I work with gangbangers. These people make them look rational."

Jason ignored him, turning to Tristan. "Kincaid spotted Anton Vetrov entering the club."

Sheer terror flared in Tristan's eyes before he grabbed the spare radio sitting on the coffee table. "Kincaid."

"Yo?"

"Get her out of there now," he barked, his hand clenched so tightly around the radio his knuckles were white.

"Have you seen this line?" Kincaid demanded. "There's no way I'm getting in there in the next hour unless I start shooting people, T."

The headset crackled before Liam McGregor spoke up. "I can get in. There's no one back here."

Tristan hesitated, clearly torn. Jason knew how he felt. If they pulled Liam off the rear-exit, they were going to be blind on that side. Fucking hell.

"Get in and get out as fast as possible," Tristan decided for him. "Kincaid, cover his post until he gets back. I'll watch the front." He was already in front of the living room windows, his eyes fixed on the scene outside of
Teplo
.

"On it," Kincaid said.

"Ten-four," Liam responded. "I'm going in now."

"Report in as soon as you're out," Jason reminded him. The headsets were useless in the club. It was too loud for a fucking phone call to be heard, let alone for the headset to make a bit of difference. And wasn't it just their luck Anton Vetrov had decided to put in an appearance tonight? Nothing about this case had worked in their favor so far. Not a goddamned thing.

Why should tonight be any different?

"I fucking
hate
this case," he said to himself as he positioned himself in front of the windows beside Tristan.

"Fuckin' A," Tristan groaned, not even looking at him.

Michael wandered as casually as possible through the pathetic excuse for a line, grateful that he'd had a fuck-ton of time to practice a careless swagger. No one knew how to pull off the "I don't give a shit" walk like a teenaged thug, and Michael was nothing if not a quick study. That shit came in handy when you grew up in the projects, and he'd eaten it up with a spoon. As a result, he could swagger like a champion and no one took him seriously. Good thing too, because these people were nuts and he needed to blend like a fat fucker at a bakery.

He hadn't been kidding about the dry-humping. In no less than four places against the brick outer wall of the club, cracked out chicks in skirts barely covering their cheap panties grinded into cracked out men who smelled like ass. He'd stick out like a sore thumb trying to ease his way through the line and around the building without that cock-of-the-walk stroll.

As it was, it took him five minutes to wade through the crowd and slip around the side of the building. And wouldn't you know it? Once he got a good twenty feet in, it became harder to see than a black cat in a dark alley.

"Tell me why the hell we don't have flashlights?" he hissed into the headset when he stumbled over a tree root and nearly fell on his ass. He reached out and grabbed for the building to keep himself upright.

"Just smile, Kincaid," Tori suggested. "That'll light up the whole place."

"Don't hate on the pearly whites," he said when Garrison laughed in his ear.

He felt along the building as he made his way around to the back. It took for-fucking-ever, too. "The groundskeeper here is shit," he cursed. "No fucking lights, tree roots with no trees, and I swear to God, the sadistic bastard randomly dug holes in the ground to screw with me."

"Kincaid, shut the hell up and get to the back of the building already," Jason snapped. "We don't need a running commentary on the state of the ground for fuck's sake."

"Easy for you to say," he snorted. "You aren't walking through a mine-field with nothing but you assholes for company."

"Kincaid."

"Slow your roll, Ames, I'm going." Yeesh. The man was more bent out of shape about Lillian than Riley was, and homeboy was all kinds of fucked up over Little Mama. Not that Michael blamed him or anything. She was crazy hot. He wouldn't have minded wrapping those long legs around his waist and fucking her senseless a time or three. Not that he would or anything. He wasn't stupid. Riley would cut his balls off with a dull butter knife and feed them to him if he even thought about it.

As much as it pained him to admit it, he doubted he'd be successful with her even if he tried. The way she looked at Riley with stars in her eyes made it clear she wouldn't be leaving his lucky ass anytime soon. And that was cool with him. Riley needed someone to settle him down before he did something stupid and ended up in a body bag.