23. Remington
REMINGTON
C orbin had shown up on time with the car, but on the ride to Metairie to pick up Lance and Dax, he bitched constantly about Beau and how he’d treated Corbin like a kid.
“You are a kid.”
“I’m twenty-two, and I don’t want to be treated?—”
“Then don’t act like you’re fourteen.”
He slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Why are you so fucking hard on me?”
“Because somebody has to be in order to keep you alive.”
He sighed but didn’t say anything else. When Lance climbed into the car, Tony was on his shoulder. “No. Hell no. I’m not going to be involved in another operation with that fucking monkey.”
“Tony’s my good luck charm,” Lance insisted. “I can’t leave him. Besides, he gets lonely.”
“I’m sure he can survive for a few hours tonight,” Dax said.
“No way. I’m not leaving him.”
I would’ve told Lance and the damn monkey to stay home, but Lance was much better at finessing his way into a house than I was. I needed him to be involved.
“Tony can sit in the car with me,” Corbin said. “You’re not going to let me go inside, so I might as well have Tony to entertain me.” The monkey leapt onto his shoulder and started playing with his hair.
“At least somebody appreciates Tony,” Lance said.
I might kill them both before the night was over. Surely no one would blame me if they knew how fucking obnoxious the two of them were.
“Watch out, guys,” Dax said. “Much more of this and Remington’s going to explode.”
I glared at him. “Are you trying to get on my bad side too?”
“You have a good side?” Lance asked.
“Not around you and Corbin.”
Corbin huffed. “I think we’re a lot of fun, and it would be even more fun if I went inside with you.”
Lance and I simultaneously said, “No.”
“When are you going to realize I’m all grown-up?”
“When you start acting like it,” Lance said. At least I didn’t have to repeat myself.
The drive back into the French Quarter seemed to take forever, but eventually, Corbin was parking in an alley behind Clark Landry’s house.
Lance gave him a bag of snacks for the monkey and far more instructions than necessary.
I told Corbin to call us immediately if he saw anything suspicious.
If that damn monkey distracted him from his job, I didn’t care how lonely he got, he wasn’t coming on another mission.
Finally, we hopped the back fence of Landry’s property and made our way slowly through his wetlands garden. When we reached an open expanse of lawn, Lance brought out his night vision binoculars and took a look at the house.
“Can you get us in?”
He nodded and motioned for me to follow him.
Dax waited outside while Lance got us in through a first-floor window.
We heard voices coming from a room down the hall.
The men’s words were slurred, and their laughs were too loud, letting us know they were drunk.
Hopefully they would keep arguing with each other and never know we were here.
Just in case, though, I had several weapons stashed on me, and I would do whatever was necessary to protect us.
I followed him, wincing when one of the steps we were climbing creaked.
Lance pointed to it, indicating I should avoid it and I did.
We made it upstairs and quickly found Clark’s bedroom where we searched for the safe our intel said should be there.
A few moments later, I located it in the floor of the closet.
Lance made quick work of cracking it. The first thing he removed was a small notebook.
As he flipped through it, I could tell he was fighting back a laugh.
I raised my brows and mouthed, “What?”
He turned the notebook so I could see. The damn fool had written down all his passwords.
The sounds from downstairs grew louder. Knowing we had little time, Lance grabbed all the papers from the safe and shoved them into his backpack.
As we reached the window we’d used to enter, one of the drunk men, maybe Clark, shouted, “Hey, did you hear something?”
We froze.
“Hear what?” a second man asked.
“I don’t know. Some kind of creaking noise?”
“This old house makes sounds all the time.”
“No, it sounded like footsteps.”
“Creaky footsteps?” The other sounded annoyed.
“Yeah, or… I don’t know.”
“Are you saying you think someone is in the house?”
Please say no . “Maybe.”
“Shit. Let’s get ’em.”
I used my flashlight to signal to Dax so he would know trouble might be coming, and I hoped to God he would tell Corbin because I didn’t have time to send off a text.
We heard the two men fumbling around as Lance opened the window, not bothering to be quiet.
Lance motioned for me to go first. I wanted to argue, but there wasn’t time. He jumped through after me just as I heard someone shout, “There they are.”
Heavy footsteps clomped across the room, but we didn’t wait to identify the pursuers; we just ran.
I didn’t see Dax, but I felt sure he’d taken cover.
The crack of a gun had me grabbing Lance’s arm and pulling him into the alley.
I hoped to hell Corbin had gotten out of there.
We told him to leave if things went south and we’d contact him about where to pick us up, but who knows if he’d actually listened. I never should’ve brought him.
When we reached the street, I was glad to see Corbin and the SUV were gone. Hopefully he had more sense than to drive straight home in case he was followed.
Lance and I darted in and out of alleys, snuck through a brothel, and ended up on Bourbon Street where we easily melted into the crowd waiting to get into one of the city’s most notorious strip clubs.
I grabbed a drink from a man who was so drunk he just stared at his empty hand.
I pulled sunglasses from my pocket and put them on.
Lance stood behind me, and I was thankful he didn’t have Tony with him, not that I really thought a couple of drunk Landrys were going to find us in the Saturday-night crowd.
After several minutes had passed with no sign of pursuit, Lance and I checked in with Dax and Corbin.
My youngest brother was a few blocks away.
He’d pulled into a hotel parking garage.
Dax had gone the opposite direction from us and lured the pursuers into an alley where they’d been confused about how they lost him, not seeming to understand how easily he’d been able to climb over a wall and drop down into some unsuspecting tourists’ courtyard.
He’d apologized and raced off before the men and women could even comprehend what had happened.
We agreed that Lance would contact Blackjack to see what we could learn with the passwords we’d acquired. I told the others I’d walk home. Lance and Dax went to meet Corbin, but I was anxious to get back to Henri after forcing myself to stay away from him all day.
I needed to stop being afraid and enjoy the time we had.
When someone saw as much death and destruction as I had, he learned to indulge himself when and where he could.
That was exactly what I intended to do. I had a hell of a lot of ideas for how Henri and I could spend the rest of the night.
I was still hopped up on adrenaline from our escape, and I needed to let some of that energy out, which meant I could either fight someone or fuck Henri into the mattress.
We’d all be better off with me choosing the latter.
I remembered how I’d contemplated pushing right into Henri’s body as he slept, waking him up with the delicious stretch. I hoped he was asleep now because that was exactly what I wanted to do.
I had to force myself to walk slowly, but finally, I reached home. When I stepped inside, the house was quiet. That didn’t necessarily mean Henri was in bed, but he better be. If not, I was going to put him there as fast as I could. I didn’t want to wait.
I started up the stairs and immediately had the sense something was wrong.
When I reached the landing and saw my office door standing open, hot anger rushed through me. I reached the doorway as Henri was closing my laptop and scrambling away from the desk.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I… I needed a laptop. I needed to look something up, but I couldn’t get in because it’s locked, and I just…”
“Stop lying to me.”
Tears glistened in his eyes. “I needed to know who you really were. I’m sorry. I’ll get my things and go.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
“You told me you looked up everything you could find about me and my background, but I don’t know anything about yours.”
His refusal to answer only made me angrier.
“I do a background check on all my employees. None of them get to know more about me than I want them to.” If he was able to break into my laptop, was it possible he had the skills to erase any traces that would connect him to my enemies?
“This is your last chance. Tell me what you saw.”
“Um… your name on an envelope.”
“And?” There was no way in hell his face was so ghostly pale because of that.
He shook his head frantically. “I… I don’t want to die.”
Angry as I was, the pain in his voice made me want to comfort him. “Then why did you disobey me?”
Anyone else I’d found in my office would already be dead.
I wouldn’t have wasted time interrogating them, but Henri had the power to melt my anger away with his sad eyes.
I’d never hesitated to mete out justice before, no matter how scared a man might look.
I was totally fucked up over Henri. There was no way in hell I could kill him.
Punish him, yes, but I couldn’t do anything to truly hurt him.
If he was not who I thought, I’d have to get Lance to do it for me.
“I… I…” He swayed on his feet, and I caught him just as he started to go down. I lifted him into my arms and headed to my room. Henri had started to come around by the time I placed him on my bed.
He tried to sit up, but I shook my head. “Don’t move.”
“What… what are you going to do to me?”
I considered that. The best thing I could do was send him somewhere he would be guarded until the war with the Landrys was over.
After that I’d let him go, making sure he knew what would happen if he gave up any of my secrets.
Fuck. He was making me soft. I couldn’t risk compromising my family’s position because my heart wanted something my head knew wouldn’t work out.
Right or not, I wasn’t going to do that. What I was going to do was make sure he knew that when I told him something was off-limits, there would be consequences if he didn’t listen.
I stepped into the adjacent bathroom, got him a glass of water, and wet a washcloth for him to lay across his head. Why was I caring for the man who’d violated my privacy? What the fuck was wrong with me?
You never should’ve taken him, never should have brought him home.
He’d seen me near the Landrys’ hideout the night Charles had been killed. It was perfectly reasonable for me to keep him close by, and why the hell not fuck him if he was with me?
What you did wrong was fall in love.
My heart pounded. Was I really in love?
No way. That couldn’t happen to me, especially not now.
I laid the cloth on his head. “When you feel like it, drink a few sips of water, but go slow.”
He looked at the water and frowned at me. “You… I…”
“I need you conscious so you can tell me what you learned and how you got into my computer.”
He drank a little water, glanced at me, then looked away.
“The longer you make me wait, the worse your punishment is going to be.”
“P-punishment.” His chest rose and fell rapidly.
“Yes.”