19. Lancelot
LANCELOT
“ W here are we headed?” I asked when I picked Dax up in front of his house.
He’d been in contact with Blackjack, our computer expert, who’d been doing some digging for us.
We wanted to find the man who’d broken into the library.
I had a suspicion it was the same man who’d killed Remy’s contact.
Remy had texted to let me know there was nothing left behind but his friend’s body.
The scene was totally clean. I hoped to hell Blackjack had found us a lead.
“Remember the Landrys’ warehouse?”
“Of course I do.
“Head there.”
“Blackjack thinks they’ve taken over the Landrys’ old stomping ground?”
“It’s a guess based on flimsy evidence, but?—”
“It’s a good one. People would expect an operation like theirs to be somewhere more luxurious.”
Dax snorted. “Basically anything’s more luxurious than the Landrys’ old warehouse.”
“Especially after we shot it all to hell.”
Dax laughed. “Right? We got rid of the Landrys, and we’ll get rid of these bastards too.”
“It’s going to take a little more effort.”
“We’ll have to be more careful this time.” He gave me a pointed look, and I glared at him.
“I know how to behave myself when I need to.”
“I’m going to trust you on that. Don’t make me regret it.”
“Like you’re the picture of calm?”
Dax grinned. “At least I don’t take a monkey everywhere I go.”
Tony popped up from the backseat, and I reached over to pet his head. “Tony helps me. I keep telling you guys how useful he is.”
“Well, it’s too bad he’s not a bloodhound who could sniff out the man we’re looking for.”
“We could borrow one if?—”
“Let’s check this lead before we resort to that. Besides, you nearly count as a bloodhound anyway.”
I was a damn fine tracker, but I usually needed a little more to go on than what we had at the moment.
We found nothing at the abandoned warehouse. Dax ran a hand through his hair as we walked back to the nondescript SUV I’d chosen for our hunt. “What about the store the Landrys worked out of?”
“The one where they had something on the owner?”
“Yeah, that one. He was laundering money for them, and we were pretty sure at least one of the twins lived in the apartment above the store. It would be a good place to hide out.”
I liked that idea. “Let’s go.”
We parked in the alley that ran behind the store.
The property was surrounded by a metal fence, and the gate was held shut with a rusty padlock that would take too long to pick and would also be noisy, so we scaled the fence and dropped down silently onto the small strip of grass behind the gravel parking area.
It didn’t look like anyone had taken over the space since we ran the Landrys out of town. Still, we approached slowly. Hopefully if anyone was in there, they wouldn’t be looking out the back windows.
I started up the stairs to the second-floor apartment. When the next to last step creaked loudly, I froze. Tony clung tightly to my neck, and Dax waited behind me for my signal to keep moving.
I heard a scraping sound like a chair being pushed across the floor. I pulled my gun, and Dax followed suit. The door handle turned when I tried it. Maybe whoever was inside was just a squatter. Surely the man we were looking for would have secured the door.
I held up three fingers and did a countdown before pushing the door open.
A man dressed in ragged, dirty clothes held up his hands and scurried back until he tripped and landed on a mattress that looked like it had been there for decades.
“Don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot,” he begged as I approached him.
“What are you doing in here?” The answer didn’t really matter. There was no way in hell this was our guy. He had a limp, and he wheezed as he spoke. He couldn’t have jumped out of the second floor and landed easily like the intruder had.
“I just needed a place to sleep. I’ll go. Just don’t…”
I lowered my gun, and Dax did the same. “Has anyone else been up here? Have you seen anyone come or go from downstairs?”
He shook his head frantically.
“If you do, don’t mention we were here.”
“Nah, man. I won’t say a thing. Is that really a monkey?”
Tony hooted loudly.
“No,” I answered and turned to go. I was confident the man was on something. I doubted he’d even remember us once we were gone.
Dax and I backed out of the place and shut the door behind us.
“Blackjack and I came up with a few other ideas, places where there’s been recent activity,” Dax said.
When we reached the last location on the list, I left Dax in the car on a call with his twin, Ambrose, and approached on my own. A few moments later, I returned to the car.
“Find anything?” Dax asked.
I shook my head.
“Fuck.” Dax slapped the dashboard as I sank into the driver’s seat. “I’ll call Blackjack and see if he’s come up with anything new.”
“You know he would’ve let us know if he had.”
“I can push him to?—”
I held up a hand. “Wait.”
“What?”
It was a little crazy, but something told me I was onto something. “What if the fucker is hiding in plain sight?”
Dax’s expression brightened. “Keep talking.”
“He would know where Remy’s guy lived, right?”
“Sure. But what…” Dax suddenly smiled. “Oh. You mean?—”
“Where better to hide than the house of the man you killed, pretending to be a grieving family member?”
“If you’re right, he might not be alone.”
I wasn’t letting that stop me. “He could have had company at any of the locations we checked out.”
“I’m calling in backup,” Dax said.
“We don’t need?—”
“Lance, we’ve got to move carefully, or we’ll start a war we can’t win.”
“Who says we can’t?”
“Remington, for one, and you know he’s right.”
I did, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “Right now, maybe, but I want to take them all out.”
“That’s for the future. Let’s make sure we’re all there for it. You wouldn’t want Julian left all alone, would you?”
“They’ll come for him too. You know they will. That’s why we have to?—”
Dax laid a hand on my shoulder. “I know, okay? I get the protective instinct.”
“Who are you protecting? Your brother?”
Dax shook his head. “Ambrose can take care of his damn self, you know that.”
“He can most of the time, but…” Ambrose suffered from PTSD, and I knew some days were worse than others.
“When things get bad, he calls me.”
“Then who are you protecting?”
He shook his head. “That’s not important.”
I studied my cousin before I pulled out into traffic. Something was definitely up with him. I itched to keep prodding until he told me, but I needed to focus on clearing this shit up and keeping Julian safe.
We parked a few blocks from Andy’s house. The closer we got, the more my gut told me we were on to something. I peeked through a slight gap in the back fence, but I couldn’t see anything interesting, just a patio with lawn furniture and a grill. It looked like an average person’s backyard.
“Dogs?” Dax asked.
“Not outside.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
I glared at him. “You’re the one who said to take it slow.”
“Not this slow. Let’s get in there and see if we can find the bastard.”
After a few moments of fiddling with the latch on the gate, Dax swung it open and ushered me through. We stood at the edge of the yard for a moment, making sure my assessment that no one was around, human or canine, was correct. Nothing moved but a few birds flitting around a feeder.
“You’d never know the dead guy was part of a family as powerful as the Carlottis,” Dax said.
“Would anyone know who I was?”
Dax chuckled. “Fuck yeah, if they thought for like two seconds.”
I supposed that was true enough. We moved slowly toward the house, weapons at the ready. Fortunately, the privacy fence was tall, and there didn’t seem to be any nosy neighbors around.
When we reached the back door, we looked through the windows, but we still couldn’t see anyone. If we were approaching from the front, I might have simply tried knocking, but who knocked on a person’s back door unless they were a friend or an expected neighbor.
I attempted to open the door, but this time I wasn’t lucky. It was locked. Once again, I let Dax do his thing. He’d always been faster at picking locks than me. That didn’t bother me. I had other skills.
We eased the door open. Fortunately, it had been well maintained, so it didn’t make a sound. I led, and Dax covered me. We paused once we were both inside, and that’s when I heard it. The clink of ice in a glass, the shuffle of feet.
Whoever was in the kitchen could be anyone, but my gut told me it was our man.
I set Tony down and told him to stay put.
Whether he did so was anyone’s guess. Using signals we’d developed long before, Dax and I made our way down the hall, carefully checking each room.
When we reached the kitchen, we each took a position on opposite sides of the door.
Just like before, I did a countdown, and we both stepped into the room, weapons leveled directly at the man who stood at the counter.
He set down his glass and smiled. He had a weapon of his own, and it was trained on me.
“Think you can shoot before I take you down?”
“There are two of us, so you’re dead either way.”
“Would your precious brother really want to lose you, though? Would your dear cousin want that on his conscience?”
Dax snorted. “Maybe I’m ready to get rid of him and move up in the family.”
That was Dax’s way of telling me he was going to take the shot. He had damn fine aim, but I wished I knew what he was going for. Ideally, we wanted the guy alive. We needed to question him. Potential scenarios raced through my head in the second I had.
Dax pulled the trigger. I dove for the floor as I realized his shot had hit the man’s hand. The man’s gun fell to the floor. I grabbed it and took out one of his kneecaps. He collapsed to the floor, screaming.
I stood up and kicked him in the stomach. “Shut up, or it’s your balls next.”
“You’re a whiny little bitch to do the job you do,” Dax said, foot hovering over the man’s injured knee.
“Stop!” the man yelled as Dax started to put pressure on the wound.
I laughed. “You must really be used to people doing what you say.”
The man tried to kick me with his good leg, but I dodged him easily.
Dax shook his head. “That was weak. Obviously, you’re expendable.”
“We’d probably be doing his family a service by getting rid of him. Too bad it can’t be that easy.”
“Quit playing games with me.” The man had regained some of his composure. “You’re already dead just for touching me and so’s your little bitch at the library. How stupid is he anyway?”
This time I did kick him in the balls. He screamed, curling in on himself. I grabbed him, yanking him up onto his knees, knowing it would hurt like hell. I shook him, ready to slam him against the wall, but Dax pulled me off him.
“Let me take care of this. I’ve got two men on the way.”
I struggled against Dax’s hold for a moment before I let go, and the man slumped to the floor.
I took a step back and blew out a long breath. “I should be here too.”
“You know I’m good at this. I’ll be fine without you.” He was right. Interrogation was his specialty.
“You’re too involved.” He pulled me farther away from the man who was moaning, curled in a ball on the floor. “It’s lunchtime. Go check on Julian. That’ll make you feel a lot better than this.”
I wasn’t sure. Torturing this motherfucker would make me feel pretty damn good.
I paused to picture Julian in my mind. I thought of kissing him, pulling him into the storage room, and sucking him as he whimpered and moaned.
I would get to see the sweet look of ecstasy on his face when he came.
Yeah, that sounded fucking perfect. I whistled for Tony, and he came running.