35. Remington
REMINGTON
G iorgio, Niall, and the rest of my men were in place, waiting until Clark sent the signal for our “buyer” to move in.
Then we had to count on Lance and—God help us—Tony to play their roles.
Lance insisted the monkey was part of his act, and I’d given in.
I sure as hell hoped the little creature could avoid bullets because I hated to think about how Lance would react if he was harmed.
Every moment that I waited in my hiding place, close to the warehouse, felt like an hour.
I’d rather just run in shooting than stand around like this.
It was torturous, but it was the right thing to do.
I held off on communicating with any of the other men, not wanting to take the chance of alerting our enemies who stood guard at the back of the warehouse.
I could tell they were lax in their duties by the way they played on their phones and chatted with each other.
Neither of them were looking out into the night, watching for people to approach.
If they were my men, they would be severely punished and forced to start reearning my trust by doing the lowest jobs I could assign them.
Finally, the gunrunners arrived with their crates of weapons.
Landry’s guards made only a cursory check of their identities and didn’t even look at the goods.
Those crates could be filled with Nerf guns or nothing at all, though the men were doing a convincing job of making them look heavy.
They entered the warehouse. As planned, another excruciatingly long five minutes passed before Lance texted me that he was going in.
Lance strolled up to the door wearing a blond wig, sunglasses, loud Hawaiian shirt, khaki cargo pants, and fucking Crocs on his feet.
How the hell did he think he was going to run in those?
Arrogant bastard. Tony was perched on his shoulder wearing a little t-shirt as usual.
God only knew what it said. He strolled right up to the guards.
They stepped in front of the door, attempting to look menacing, but I knew Lance could take them out in seconds.
“I’m here about buying some guns,” he said far louder than necessary.
The taller of the two men stepped forward. “You got the wrong place. Move on.” He laid a hand on Lance, trying to push him back.
That was a mistake.
The man screamed when Tony bit his hand. Lance grabbed his arm, wrenched it behind him, and brought a knife to his throat. The other man looked confused as hell. He didn’t even pull his weapon.
“Open the door,” Lance directed the shorter man.
When he didn’t respond, Lance kicked him in the gut while keeping hold of the taller man. Then he shoved the man he was holding to the ground, wrenched open the door, and entered. The whole time, Tony never left his shoulder.
The man Lance had kicked started to stand, and the other man rushed to the door. One after the other they crashed back to the ground. Giorgio had taken them out, and thanks to his silencer, I doubted anyone in the warehouse was the wiser about it.
I moved toward the door, knowing once they saw me, the others would emerge as well.
I moved slowly and cautiously as I listened in. Lance was wearing a mic, and I could hear every word he said.
“Like I told you, I’m here to make a purchase.”
“This ain’t no store. You need to move on,” an unidentified man said.
“Is that any way to greet a customer?” He was playing the obnoxious buffoon well, but I knew he’d be observing everything, taking in details no dumb-as-fuck asshole would notice. Could he pull this off?
The man who’d confronted him spoke again. “I’m giving you ten seconds to leave before I put a bullet in your chest.”
“Hey. No need for that. I’m just a man who wants to buy some big guns. That’s all. I heard about your little operation through the grapevine.”
“From who?” Now it was Clark speaking, playing his role just like he’d agreed to.
“I have my ways. I know other things about you too. Like the brothers you put in the swamp last month. The alligators didn’t do such a good job on them. They must not have been hungry that night because parts of those bodies washed up on shore. I know somebody that kept them as a souvenir.”
Clark had killed men and dumped them in the swamp. The rest of the tale was made up, though Dax’s brother, Ambrose, had found several human bones that had turned up on shore.
“Want me to take him out, boss?” one of the men asked.
“Hold up. Tell me more about this person. How trustworthy could he be if he’s stealing bones from a swamp and not contacting the police?” Clark was rolling with the crazy. I had to give him that.
Lance snorted. “The police? This guy don’t mess with any kind of law enforcement, and he doesn’t give a fuck what happens to people out there as long as they stay away from him.”
That was our signal to move in. I motioned for my cousins and the men who were with them to move around back. While Lance had everyone’s attention, they would come in and ambush them.
“Hey, how do we know you’re not a cop?” another man asked.
I tensed.
“I don’t like cops anymore than my friend, but I do like guns, and I’m here to buy some.”
“What’s your name, Mr. Not A Cop?” That challenge came from the first man who’d spoken.
“You don’t need to know my name, Mr. Landry.” My best guess was that the speaker was Timon Landry, Clark’s youngest brother and the biggest hothead in the family.
“I say I do because I think you’re lying, and I like to know the name of every man who lies to me.”
“Put the gun down, Landry,” Lance said. A second later, I heard a shot followed quickly by another. My heart skipped a beat. Please let Lance be all right.
I rushed in. Lance was holding his arm. Blood leaked through his fingers, but he was alive and sitting up.
Timon Landry lay on the floor with a hole through his chest. Tony was nowhere in sight.
Hopefully he was in a good hiding place.
Lance barely jumped aside in time to avoid a bullet from Clark who apparently realized we weren’t on his side.
I ended him, and I didn’t stop shooting until I put down everyone who looked ready to come for us.
By that time, the men with me had subdued or eliminated everyone else.
I made my way to where Lance sat on the floor using some crates for cover. “Are you all right?”
He waved his good hand dismissively. “I’m fine. Where’s Tony?”
The little monkey immediately came out from behind another crate, screeching with excitement. Lance scooped him right up, and I rolled my eyes as I opened the crates to look at the goods that had been brought in.
As we’d expected, they contained military-grade assault rifles and grenade launchers.
Whether the Landrys had planned to keep them for themselves or sell them, they would have been a pain in the ass for us.
We didn’t need these in the hands of our enemies and didn’t want them in the hands of kids.
If anybody was going to have weapons like these, it was going to be my family and those who allied with us.
I looked around for the man who’d shot Charles and saw him lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
He wasn’t going to be answering any of my questions.
That was unfortunate, but overall, the night was a success.
Elandra Landry hadn’t shown up. I hoped she would get far away from New Orleans and stay there.
We’d lost the gunrunners their importer and their cash for the night.
Hopefully that would make them question defying our rule of the city.
If not, we’d come for them more directly.
No matter how badass they thought they were, no matter what weapons they had, New Orleans was mine, and they weren’t taking it from me.
Cleaning up after we’d neutralized the threat to the family business took a while.
We had a lot of bodies to deal with. It was nearly six a.m. before I got back to my house.
I found Corbin in the living room watching a movie and eating popcorn.
I’d come home to my father’s house and seen him just like that so many times when he was a teenager. It made me smile.
“Is Henri upstairs?” I asked.
“Yes. He’s asleep. He needed vodka to cope with being worried about you, but I made him drink some water and take something before I put him to bed.”
“How long ago?” I asked.
Corbin frowned. “Maybe three hours.”
“Hopefully when I wake him, he’ll still be drunk and not hungover.”
“Yeah, I was a little worried about that. I was sure you’d want to see him when you got home, but he was terrified. He couldn’t stop thinking about you not coming home. He did insist on a shower before bed. I was worried he’d fall down and crack his head, but he managed.”
“You watched him in the shower?” My hands curled into fists. I didn’t like that at all.
Corbin rolled his eyes at my display of jealousy. “I took care of him. He’s not my type. You know that.”
His type were bad boys who got him into trouble or women who didn’t care when he didn’t call or even remember their names. They came seeking him.
“Thank you.”
Corbin’s eyes widened, and I hated that me thanking him was so shocking. I needed to do better by him.
“You’re welcome. It wasn’t like this was a hard assignment.”
“If someone had gotten in here, you were his main line of defense. I think that’s really damn important.”
“But you got to be in the middle of the action.”
I’d texted with him to confirm that things had gone as they should. “I was, but we’ve got more investigating to do, and you know what…”
“What?” He looked suspicious as hell.
“I think you would play the role better than Lance.”
His eyes went wide. “He fucked it up?”
“He can’t turn off his need to assess everyone, so they thought he was a cop. You’re better at appearing relaxed.”
“So next time?”
“We’ll see. Go home and get some sleep.”
“Are we meeting up later this morning?” he asked as he got to his feet.