Rhapsody (The Teplo Trilogy #2) (9 page)

Lillian gaped openly at Jason before turning to Tristan.

"I left your house that night fully expecting him and Davis to fire me. It's the least of what I deserved—what I
still
deserve—for some of the shit I said to you." He reached out and tugged gently on a strand of her hair. "I was an ass, and you didn't deserve it. It's a miracle Jason didn't fire me and a bigger miracle you forgave me."

"There was never any chance of me not forgiving you, but…." she trailed off.

"What?"

"That's why I was so afraid last night," she confessed, dropping her gaze back to the table and twisting her fingers together. "I thought you were going to do something drastic like that. When you didn't call, and Jason and Zoë didn't return my calls–"

"You thought I went back inside," he said.

She nodded, still avoiding his gaze.

Of course she would have thought he'd taken that risk. Since she'd met him, he'd done nothing but take risks. That realization settled him in a weird way, made him even more certain of what he needed to do. The trajectory of his life had changed drastically because of her. In so many ways he couldn't define, and in so many ways that made his heart race. He had something to look forward to now, something he wanted more than he'd ever wanted anything else.

She deserved to know that.

Zoë murmured something to Jason and slipped from the dining room, leaving the three of them alone.

"I've messed up a lot on this case," Tristan said. He wasn't used to admitting failure, but he
had
failed this time. On so many different levels. "I've been selfish and involved you. I've been careless and raised suspicion. Jason will tell you that I've always been a pain in the ass to work with, and I have. I can admit that. But I want you to understand something for me, okay?"

Lillian nodded.

"You were right before, when you said you didn't know if I wanted to survive. I've never really cared if I lived or not. I took risks because the only thing that mattered to me was winning, regardless of how I made it happen or what it cost me in the end." He jerked his chin at Jason. "He knows that and has done more than his fair share to keep me alive. I suspect that's why he finally decided to involve you at all."

Jason shrugged, but Tristan could see that he wasn't far off the mark. He'd kind of figured that had been Jason's motivation for involving Lillian. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, honestly. Had he really become so unstable that Jason feared this was the case that ended with him in a casket?

He hated to admit that he had. Before Lillian, he'd been done. He'd grown tired of the job, of constantly being alone. Of never making enough of a difference. Before she had burst into his life, he'd more or less resigned himself to the fact that this job would kill him. And that hadn't bothered him nearly as much as it should have. Hell, a large part of him had been looking forward to it. The people he hadn't been able to save haunted him. Every time he closed his eyes, nightmares plagued him. An escape would have been a relief.

And then he'd met Lillian. Almost overnight, everything had changed.

She brought back to life the part of him that had died so long ago. She erased the nightmares without even trying, gave him peace, and a reason to want more. She made him happy, and for the first time in a long time, he found himself wanting something different for his life. He wanted
out.
So maybe Jason had made the right choice. Tristan didn't know. But he did know one thing: because of Lillian, there was now light at the end of a really frigging dark tunnel.

"Remember when I told you that things had changed for me?" he asked softly.

"I remember."

"I want out, Lillian," he confessed, meeting her gaze and then looking at Jason who nodded as if he'd been expecting those words. Tristan didn't doubt that he had been waiting for it. After all, hadn't he made a similar decision for a girl once himself?

"I don't understand," she said.

He took a deep breath. "After this case, I'm asking for a transfer out of Jason's division. I'll work with one of the teams if it can be arranged, or as a full-time trainer—I have to talk to Jason and Davis about the details—but I'm done with undercover-ops, beautiful."

"What…? Why?"

He cupped her face between his palms. "You really don't know?"

She opened her mouth, closed it, and then shook her head.

"Last night, I was an idiot. I did exactly what I've worried over for days: I made you wonder whether I was coming home alive. I never wanted you to go through that, beautiful. I don't want you to go through it again."

"But–"

"No buts," he interrupted, placing a finger over her lips. "I've done this job for years and I've hated it since the beginning, but Jason needed me and I didn't have anything to lose. Trying to ease my guilt by stopping people like Anton Vetrov was the only thing that mattered to me for a long time. That's changed. It's changed completely."

Somewhere between him and Jason having it out at the Medical Examiner's office and watching Lillian cry because of him, he'd been forced to face the truth. And the truth was that he couldn't do this shit and come home to her every day. She deserved more than constantly fearing for his life, wondering what he was doing, or if he'd be coming home. He'd lived with grief for so long. He didn't want her to suffer the same.

Figuring out who he was without the job would be hard, but he had something more important to protect. Something he couldn't live without. Spending his entire life fighting for something he would never be able to change seemed so goddamned pointless now.

So he'd made a choice.

He chose Lillian. And he chose life.

To finally be done with this, to have something to look forward to? God, he wanted that so badly he could taste it. Now, he just had to find the strength necessary to make it work. He had to trust himself, get them out of the situation they were in, make sure she was safe, and then he could walk away free and clear. With her.

She stared at him as if she couldn't understand what he was saying to her.

"I want out, beautiful," he said again, offering her a crooked smile. "I want you."

She still looked shell-shocked. "Is this what you really want?"

"It is," he promised her, not wanting her to think he was giving anything up in this equation. He wasn't. He might never have reached this decision had she not come bursting into his life like a comet, but she had, and he wanted out. Not just for her, but for him.

Duty was heavier than a mountain, and he'd been carrying his burden alone for a long time.

Too long.

Chapter Seven

Lillian sat at the table with her hand in Tristan's and her eyes trained on Jason, but her mind had drifted a million miles away. She couldn't believe Tristan wanted to give up his career to be with her. To say she was stunned would have been a vast understatement. She was so far beyond that, the mere word seemed laughable to her. Out of everything she had prepared herself to hear tonight, Tristan telling her he wanted to quit his job had not even made the list.

She wasn't opposed to the idea if that's truly what he wanted. Of course she wasn't. But she would never ask him to choose between her and the DEA. Not ever. She understood why he did what he did, and why someone had to do it at all. Was that what he thought she'd been asking from him? Was that what she'd done last night? Made him feel as if he had to choose between her and his job?

She wanted him safe.

She wanted him to let her in and to stop trying to protect her from important parts of his life.

She wanted him to let her love him.

But she didn't want him to give up something important to him because he felt like he had to do so to make her happy. This job was his life. To give it up when he'd worked so hard to become one of the best was unfathomable to her.

"Davis is working to obtain a search warrant based on the information from Renaldi and the raid on
Fu Lin's
," Jason said, drawing her from her thoughts.

Her fingers tightened around Tristan's of their own volition.

"Unless you can come up with a better plan, we're planning to raid
Teplo
on Sunday. We've got Kincaid leading one team through the emergency exit around back. My team will go through the front and round up everyone in the building," Jason explained, drawing an imaginary box on the table top and pointing a finger at two different areas—the points of entry, Lillian assumed.

"What reason is he using to justify the search warrant?" Tristan asked.

"Violation of the Illicit Drugs Anti-Proliferation Act," Jason said, his expression grim. "It's the best we could do, but it should be enough to keep everyone occupied so you can get in and find the evidence the judge demands."

"And if we're wrong about the location of their lab? If it's not in the club?"

"Then we're no more screwed than we are right now." Jason eyed Tristan, daring him to disagree, but he didn't. He simply raked a hand through his hair and sighed heavily. "If we had more time, we'd find another way, but we're out of time, and we're out of options. We have to move now."

"What about Francisco?"

"You know we can't charge him unless we can prove he's involved," Jason said. "And a photo of him and Paulo Vetrov isn't enough. As soon as we're in position, Kincaid's team will move in and sweep up everyone on Vetrov's payroll so they can't send out an alarm. Once you set eyes on the product, we'll detain on suspicion of murder. If we can convince someone to connect Francisco to Anton, he'll be charged, too, but not without compelling evidence. You know how it works."

"Yeah. Shit." Tristan scrubbed a hand down his face. "What about
Fu Lin's
?"

"We have Yin, the owner, on possession, manufacturing, and intent to deliver. He's in solitary for his safety. I doubt he'll try to warn anyone, but if word gets out before we move in, we're screwed. We offered him Wit Sec. He declined."

"Wit Sec?" Lillian asked.

"Witness Security, the witness protection program," he explained. "Francisco and the Asians both have the muscle to kill him while he's in prison, so he's keeping his mouth shut. The health inspector, Renaldi, is another story. He's told us all he knows, but we may need him to testify at trial to link Yin to Vetrov. We're keeping a guard on him until we're sure we won't require his testimony."

"Oh." She wasn't sure why she hadn't thought that far ahead, but she hadn't. She'd just assumed they would cut off the Vetrov supply, send them to prison, and that would be that. Of course it didn't end there though.

"Do you think Yin will talk?" Tristan asked, squeezing her fingers as if he sensed her unease. The nuances of the case were so much more complex than she'd grasped. Even after all that Tristan had explained to her, she still didn't understand all of the intricacies—Asian cartels and Mexican cartels and new drugs and murder. God, did it ever end?

Could he really walk away without regretting it?

He wasn't the kind of guy who could sit by and let people like Pedro Francisco and Anton Vetrov win. He was a protector, a fighter…an agent. Giving all of that up would be as hard for him as losing her ballet career had been for her. Worse, perhaps.

"Doubtful," Jason said, reclaiming her attention. "Not unless we manage to grab Francisco too, and even then it would be a bad idea."

"Why would it be a bad idea for him to talk?" Lillian asked, confused. She thought the whole point of arresting him had been to get him to talk.

"Since Yin works for the Asians, if he talks, it could spark a war with Francisco. Francisco's people outnumber them five to one here. Yin knows this, and so do the Asians. If he talks, they'll kill him. And that still might not be enough to stop a war with Francisco. Yin's not stupid enough to take that type of risk, not even with the Wit Sec offer on the table."

"Oh." Her shoulders slumped. "I didn't think about that."

"It's a lot more complicated than anyone wants it to be. When you get traffickers of this velocity working together, your options are limited. It's why cartels continue to thrive while law enforcement constantly plays catch up. They aren't bound by the same rules, so they have the advantage. And there are a hell of a lot more of them out there than there are of us."

"Do they work together often?"

"More often than we'd like," Jason said. "Trade routes are typically held by one cartel or another. The trade routes through Mexico and into Central America and, in reverse, through Mexico into the United States, are secured by Francisco and Mexican cartels. The routes into Canada as well as through Europe and into Asia are, in turn, held by Asian and Middle Eastern groups."

He must have noticed her look of confusion because he broke off. "Imagine it like lines on a map," he suggested and drew another imaginary box on the table before pointing a finger at an area inside. "Here's South America, Central America, Mexico, and the United States," he said as he traced his finger upward through the box before tapping another spot. "This route runs all the way up the West Coast to Seattle. Francisco's people control the area. To move drugs through his territory, you have to have his permission."

"Okay."

"Unless he agrees to let you use the route, you'll never have the information necessary to safely move your product," Jason continued while Tristan stayed quiet, rubbing circles along her knuckles with the pad of his thumb. "And you risk pissing him off. The same goes for the Asians." He traced another line, this time on the other side of his imaginary box and then across to a spot above what he'd deemed the United States, presumably Canada. "They control the only secure routes into Canada. They also control the most secure territory in Europe and Asia, meaning the only routes that we haven't been able to effectively disrupt."

"So they have to work together since they require the routes the other group protects?"

"Exactly." Jason smiled his approval. Tristan squeezed her fingers. "Francisco knows that the Asians would win any fight over the European and Asian routes because that's where they're most heavily situated, and the Asians know that Francisco would win any fight over Mexico-American routes because that's where he has the biggest reach and the most bodies. It's simply more mutually advantageous for them to maintain the relationship they have than to challenge the status quo."

"Neither side wants to deal with the losses they'd sustain by fighting over the routes," Tristan explained when Jason reached for his beer. "When we shut a route down, they lose time, money, and people. The system they have in place works well—they have secured routes that we've been unable to touch and they all gain from it…drug profits for one group, route taxation profits for the other—so it'd take something drastic to make them risk the balance."

"Oh." In a strange way, cartels and their rules reminded her of the ballet world. Ballet companies relied upon the theaters to provide the necessary space and the theaters relied upon the ballet companies to put on the shows. Both turned a profit—the theater through charging the company, the company through charging the audience or vice versa—and it worked well. In some situations, you'd have a theater and a company that worked with one another exclusively, simply because they both gained more from that relationship than they would if, say, the theater rented out to any company that desired it. The relationships Tristan and Jason were describing, while a whole lot more gruesome and complex, were the same way. In order to prosper, both sides maintained a careful balance.

"Ordinarily, people like Yin aren't important enough in the grand scheme of things for either side to willingly engage in a drug war that could cost them millions," Tristan continued. "If they lose their trade routes because they're in conflict, they're screwed and they know it. As nice as that would be for us, it's not worth the risks for them. We're talking millions of dollars in profit and thousands of lives; more than have died in Mexico already."

Lillian swallowed hard, remembering how much damage had already been done in Mexico, how many people had already been killed in the wars between cartels there. She couldn't imagine that carnage spilling out into the rest of the world. It would be horrific.

"Francisco has been hit hard by the drug wars in Mexico. He's barely holding some of his routes, and other cartels are encroaching on his territory. He needs the Vetrov drug more than he needs the Asian routes. With him controlling the supply, he stands to make billions on the international market. It'll also make his competition behold to him. If Yin jeopardizes that by talking, the responsibility will fall on the Asians, and Francisco will start a war like we've never seen. So as messed up as it sounds, it's better for all of us if Yin keeps his mouth shut."

"So that’s why you decided to raid now?" she asked. Tristan had told her time and again how complicated this case had become, but until that moment, she'd never understood exactly what he meant by that. They weren't just trying to stop a drug. They were trying to prevent a global drug war from igniting.

"More or less. It's risky, but we don't have another option," Jason answered. "Anton knows Tristan is DEA now. We can't send him back inside. And we can't risk them shipping the supply."

Lillian felt sick to her stomach at the thought of Tristan going back inside
Teplo
now. He leaned into her as a cold chill wracked her body, freezing her from the inside out.

Brushing a strand of hair away from her face, he pressed his lips to her temple. "We'll stop them one way or another, beautiful."

She didn't doubt that, but how bad were things going to get before they did?

Jason blew out a frustrated breath. "We have one small problem."

"What?"

"The blond lurking around
Teplo
. We have to identify him before we raid."

"Why?" Lillian asked.

"Because there's no hard evidence that places him as a Vetrov employee. If we don't find enough to sweep him up in the raid, he'll go free. And if that happens before we find the lab, there will be no stopping Francisco from getting his hands on that drug. We have to take them all down at the same time to buy us a little more time. Hopefully the lab is in the basement like we thought and we won't need the extra time, but we can't guarantee that."

"Oh."

"Have you found anything on him at all?" Tristan asked.

"Aside from the photo? No, nothing." Jason rubbed a hand along his jaw. "But I'm inclined to believe he works for Francisco, which is incentive enough to figure out who the hell he is. He may be our only chance to link Francisco to Vetrov."

"Well, I can't stroll up to him and ask his fucking name now."

"I can," Lillian blurted out.

An angry growl rumbled in Tristan's throat as he turned to glare at her. "Hell no."

"Who else do you have?" she asked. A few days ago, she'd made the same suggestion, and he had lost his shit. She hated bringing it up when the mere thought had given him nightmares the last time she offered, but they didn't have another choice. They had to know who they were dealing with or all that Tristan had worked for would be for nothing.

"We'll find someone else," he snapped at her.

"No, you won't. You have to know who he is before you guys raid on Sunday or none of you will be safe." She held her ground, refusing to back down…and silently chanting for him to forgive her for this. She knew how he felt about it, but there really wasn't any other option.

"She has a point," Jason broke in when Tristan told her no again.

He turned his glare on Jason, his expression black.

"If he works for Francisco, we need to know now and you know it," Jason continued when Tristan merely stared at him, breathing hard and looking like he wanted to kill something.

"It doesn't have to be her," he finally muttered.