Rhapsody (The Teplo Trilogy #2)

by Ayden K. Morgen

  And the club… Sweet Jesus. Nothing but flame and mortar remained of Teplo as firefighters aimed hoses and let them rip. He didn't know how he'd gotten outside…until he remembered feeling her. She had been there, inside.

  Lillian.

  "Agent Riley, don't move!" someone yelled as he started struggling, outright terror racing through him. Hands grabbed at him, shoving him back down into a prone position, holding him there. Fire shot through his arm as he tried to push them away, to get up, to find her. The world spun around him in response to the pain in his arm, in his side, in his head. The fire was everywhere, burning him as surely as the remnants of Teplo burned in the distance.

  "Lillian," he mumbled, thrashing. Her name was a soundless hiss, half unformed beneath the pain beating at him. The world faded again, another massive wave hitting him in the chest and dragging him under.

  "She's coming around."

  Lillian began coughing, harsh, wracking coughs that made her eyes water. Oxygen cannulas dug into her nose. A blood pressure cuff squeezed her arm. She struggled into a sitting position. An arm reached out and wrapped around her, holding her upright as she pitched forward on the little cot beneath her.

  "Tristan," she croaked through the unceasing burn in her lungs. She didn't care about Teplo burning in the distance or the fire hoses turned on her own home as fire spread across the ground, encroaching on the house. She didn't care about why she hurt or where she hurt. All she cared about was Tristan.

  "He's on the way to the hospital, Miss Maddox," someone reassured her.

  She brushed tears from her eyes and glanced up at the man who'd spoken. Davis. Tristan's boss. "Jason?" she asked him, too scared to ask how Tristan was. Too scared the answer would kill her when Teplo exploding around her had not.

  "He's on the way to the hospital with Riley and Kincaid." Mr. Davis gave her a grim smile.

  Oh, no, Michael. Not him, too.

  "How bad is it?" she asked. The words burned, or maybe that was the oxygen. She wasn't sure. She tore the cannulas out of her nose and flung them to the side. The blood pressure cuff followed.

  "Kincaid will live, but Riley is in bad shape, Miss Maddox," he answered, no nonsense. "He suffered extensive trauma. We won't know more until they can get him into surgery."

  An EMT came into view, fussing over the cannulas.

  She barely heard what he said about smoke inhalation.

  Tristan was in bad shape. Extensive trauma. Surgery.

  No, no, no.

  An image of him lying on the floor of the tunnel flashed in her mind. Blood and bruises everywhere, his bone shoved through skin and muscle, pulse weak and chest barely moving. The urge to scream resurfaced with a fury.

  "Take me to him," she demanded, her heart thudding painfully in her chest as fear gripped her. "I want to go now."

  "We need to get you checked out, Miss Maddox. They had to pull you out of the building," Mr. Davis said, more stoic and business-like than she had ever heard Jason sound. "Had you not been so close to the doors, you wouldn't have survived."

  That pulled her up short. She remembered shoving Jason and Tristan through the doors. She remembered the building erupting around her. She remembered falling. Anything after that was a complete blank though. She had no recollection of being buried in the rubble of the club, or of being pulled out of it.

  How had they gotten her out?

  She shook her head to clear it. What did it matter how she'd gotten out of the building? She was alive. And for the minute, so was Tristan. But he might not be for long.

  No. Please, no.

  "I want to go to him now," she demanded, refusing to back down.

  Whatever Mr. Davis saw in her eyes, he didn't argue. He merely nodded and motioned toward the EMT hovering in the background. "We'll have you out of here in five, Miss Maddox."

  She sank back down on the cot, terrified that five minutes would be too late.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "Lillian, you should go home and get some rest," Zoë said, sinking down onto the bench beside the dirt and soot-stained ballerina. Lillian simply shook her head, still staring at the spot on the floor she'd been staring at for the last—how many hours? Four, five? Zoë didn't even know anymore.

  Wrapping her arms around the bruised and battered woman, her gaze sought Mr. Maddox, who shook his head, defeated. He'd been trying to get his daughter to talk, move, or rest since he'd arrived at the hospital an hour after they wheeled Tristan into surgery, frantic with worry for his daughter. But she wouldn't budge. Or speak to anyone. Zoë wasn't sure anything short of good news on Tristan would release the ballerina from whatever hell played out in her mind. And good news…well, Lillian wasn't the only one terrified he wouldn't make it through surgery.

  "He's going to be okay." She just had to keep telling herself that, keep telling Lillian that, and eventually she'd believe it too, right? He was in bad shape. Really bad shape. He had a concussion, a compound fracture to his arm, four broken ribs, two broken fingers, and a broken nose. He was bleeding internally thanks to a ruptured spleen and punctured lung. He'd been in surgery for four hours already, and they still didn't know when he'd be out or if he'd make it out alive.

  "I know," Lillian said, her voice hoarse and full of pain. "I know." Those were the only words she'd spoken all night. Anytime anyone said Tristan would be okay, that was her response. I know.

  Zoë wasn't sure the ballerina believed the words even when they came out of her mouth. The woman looked like hell. She was streaked with dirt, bruised, and scraped up. The ends of her hair had been singed in the fire. Her shirt was torn and blood-stained. Smoke and gasoline clung to her clothing, giving the waiting room an unpleasant odor. But that wasn't the worst of it. The look in Lillian's eyes, as if she were burning alive, tugged at Zoë's heart until she wanted to cry.

  Whatever was going on in her mind wasn't somewhere she needed to be right then, but Zoë had no clue how to shake her out of it. Should she even try? Because, honestly, if it were Jase in that operating room, if he had been tortured like Tristan had, nothing anyone said would take away the pain or ease her mind.

  The mere thought of someone hurting him like that had her glancing across the waiting room to see for herself that her husband was safe. His gaze tangled with hers, the grim expression on his face softening like it always did when he saw her. He spoke quietly with Davis, but he held his hand out to her, motioning for her to come to him. She squeezed Lillian's shoulders and rose to her feet, the need to be near him overwhelming her. He calmed her like nothing else, made this awful night tolerable.

  "Love," he murmured, wrapping her in his arms as she buried her face against his chest. His lips pressed into the top of her head. She trembled in his embrace, clinging shamelessly, not giving a shit who watched or that he smelled as bad as Lillian.

  "I'll give you a minute," Davis said. Heavy boot steps sounded as he walked away.

  "Jase," she whispered her husband's name like a prayer. He was alive, unharmed. She couldn't handle many more calls like the one she'd received hours before, telling her there had been an explosion and her husband and cousin were en route to the hospital. A girl could only take so much.

  She'd reached her limit today.

  Why had Tristan gone into Teplo alone? She'd been certain Lillian would talk him out of it. He knew better, especially now that he had her to think about. He could have died, for God's sake! Her husband, Michael Kincaid, and Lillian had risked their lives to save him, and had nearly died as a result. Michael had been shot, and was still in surgery. Lillian had been buried in the rubble.

  Even now, it might have been for nothing.

  Tristan might not survive surgery.

  Nothing was worth what this day had brought.

  Nothing.

  "Hey, hey," Jason crooned as she started to cry, the first tears she'd shed all day. He wrapped her up in his embrace, sheltering her in his strength. "I'm okay, love. Everything is okay."

  Things we
ren't okay though. They wouldn't be okay until Tristan was. As she glanced back at Lillian to find her in the same position, staring at the same spot on the floor, she very much feared nothing would ever be okay again.

  "Lillian?" Jason sat down beside her in the same spot Zoë had vacated over an hour before. He was beyond exhausted, dirty, and sore as all hell. He'd spent the last five hours running his team from the hospital waiting room, praying his wife's cousin survived. He felt about as bad as Lillian looked, and she looked like hell. She'd barely spoken, barely moved, since the surgeon wheeled Tristan into the operating room.

  She'd also refused treatment until John pulled out his little black bag and checked her over where she sat. Physically she was fine, suffering nothing more serious than cuts, bruises, minor smoke inhalation, and stress to her leg. Emotionally and mentally though? He wasn't so sure.

  She'd gone through hell today.

  He owed her his life. If Tristan made it out of surgery, he owed his to the little ballerina, too. She'd risked everything for both of them, shoving them out the door before the club exploded around her. The forty minutes it had taken to dig her out of the rubble while EMTs worked on Tristan had been some of the longest of Jason's life. Until the day he died, he would remember the way it felt to dig through the hot rubble, unsure if the woman who had saved him was alive or dead somewhere beneath the destruction.

  "Lillian, look at me, darlin'," he coached when she didn't even acknowledge him.

  She glanced up blearily, her sad eyes not really focused on him at all.

  "Vetrov and his people have all been arrested," he told her, hoping the news would jar her out of whatever torture she'd designed for herself in that mind of hers. "S.P.D. was able to round them all up at the two private airfields they'd selected. They're being questioned now."

  Surprisingly, a few of them were actually talking. Hannah, Stephan. Even Anton had talked a little once he realized Paulo was dead, shot in the head trying to fight his way to the plane. It'd been mostly incoherent babblings, but he'd said enough.

  Every one of his people was facing enough felony charges to send them to prison for life. They were going nowhere for a long while. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said of Elijah Noel. Kincaid had killed his girlfriend, but that son of a bitch had been long gone by the time the cavalry arrived. He'd taken tens of thousands of dollars' worth of the Vetrov drug with him.

  Every law enforcement agency from Canada to Mexico had his information, but Jason didn't really believe they'd have any luck finding the asshole. He'd spent thirteen months living like a ghost, no one even aware he'd survived the shoot-out with Mexican authorities. They'd captured him on camera in Mazatlán, for fuck's sake, and still hadn't put the pieces together. Francisco had sent him to watch over Vetrov for a reason, and that wasn't because he'd be easily captured.

  From the looks of it, Francisco had gotten exactly what he'd wanted all along: sole control of the Vetrov drug. Jason wasn't surprised. Francisco was a brilliant tactician; one of the most intelligent trafficker's he had ever run across. Francisco had played Vetrov like a drum, and his man had slipped away, leaving Vetrov's people to take the fall.

  Elijah could be anywhere.

  Jason really wished Tristan and Kincaid were in a position to go after the motherfucker, because once Francisco released that shit to an international market, all bets were off. But neither of them would be looking for anyone for a long time, if ever.

  Kincaid had just gotten out of surgery.

  Five hours later, Tristan was still in there, and no one knew if he'd come out.

  Fucking hell, he had to make it.

  "Why?" Lillian asked suddenly, her voice ravaged by grief, smoke inhalation, and the hell this day had become.

  "The club wasn't doing as well as Anton wanted, and he was too stubborn to let it go, so he and Paulo started scheming. Once they involved Francisco in their little plot, they were in too deep to get out." Jason shook his head, still amazed that anyone could be so greedy. All of this death and destruction, and for what? A friggin' club they'd ended up blowing up in the end?

  The entire nightmare was senseless.

  Not really surprising though. Addiction bred addiction. Why should Teplo be any different? Anton's addiction to power, his clubgoers' addictions…sooner or later they were bound to collide in a really big way. And this was the aftermath. Anton's son was dead, and good riddance to the sadistic son of a bitch. The payday Vetrov had worked for was gone. His people were sitting in cells. He had come close to walking away on top of the world. But when you balanced on a high-wire, you were as likely to fall off as you were to make it across.

  Anton had fallen and taken all his people with him.

  He'd lost everything.

  The DEA hadn't won either. Sure, Anton would pay dearly for all the blood on his hands, but the victory was hollow, empty. Francisco was the only real winner. Everyone else was left behind to pick up the pieces.

  "It's so stupid," Lillian said. "So pointless."

  "Yeah, it is," Jason answered. "But that's the way this business works. Sometimes, we take down our target, but we still don't win." Especially when people like Pedro Francisco—unscrupulous, greedy, with a network of resources at his beck and call, and no need to play by the same rules that bound those who tried to stop him—were involved.

  "Desperation," she mumbled, still staring off into space.

  "Desperation," he agreed.

  He had a new appreciation for that word today.

  "He's not going to die," Lillian said a few minutes later.

  Jason wasn't sure if she was talking to herself or to him, but he answered anyway. "No, he's not going to die. No one else is going to die because of Vetrov."

  "I thought I was going to," she confessed, her eyes on the floor. Her body seemed to cave inward as if she were trying to protect herself from the memory. "So long as Tristan survived though, I didn't care." A broken sob fell from her lips. "I don't want him to die, Jason."

  He squeezed her hand, in perfect communion with her on that one.

  "Please don't let him die," she mouthed, her expression anguished. "Please."

  Lillian wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting there—she wasn't sure of anything really—but she was living her worst nightmare. She didn't know how to think or talk or do anything when Tristan's future was so fragile, so uncertain. For weeks, he had been a force of nature to her. He'd been larger than life, a protector, a fighter, her lover, her heart, her every waking thought. To see him so broken did things to her.

  The sight of him pale and still, fighting to live, stripped away everything but brutal reality and cold, hard truth. The reality was that he might not make it, no matter how forcefully she denied it. The cold, hard truth was that none of this had to happen the way it did. He shouldn't have been in that club today. He shouldn't be on that operating table now. She'd gone over and over and over again how all of this could have been prevented, and the only answer she could come up with was her. He was fighting for his life because of her.

  She'd convinced him to let her help. She'd walked away this morning, too stupid to even realize what he intended to do. She was the only reason he'd gone in alone. Her and his need to protect her. And if he died now, it would be her fault because she'd been too stubborn, too stupid, to listen to him. How did you come to grips with such a brutal truth when every part of you pleaded for a different answer? For one where you weren't to blame?

  While Tristan fought for his life, something inside of her died.

  Hope.

  The doctor stepped into the waiting room as she stared off into space, trapped in her mind and an endless cycle of prayers and what ifs. She lifted her eyes to him, oblivious to the fact that other eyes all across the room were doing the same.

  "Tell me he's alive," she whispered.

  "He's alive, Miss Maddox," the doctor whose name she couldn't remember assured her. "And he's out of surgery."

  Something went through her as
a chorus of exhalations resounded through the room. Relief. Pain. She didn't know what she felt, really. A weight lifted from her shoulders while another one settled heavily atop her heart.

  Her dad wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

  "I want to see him," she said as soon as the doctor finished explaining the extent of his injuries. She didn't require a surgeon to tell her how close he'd come though. She'd seen it firsthand. For the last…seven hours and eighteen minutes, she'd seen it every single second.

  And the cause of all the pain and heartbreak was so meaningless. What Marc had done to her a year ago. What Vetrov had done to Emma and the others. What Tristan was going through now. All for what? A temporary high? The desire to feel powerful? A nightclub? And who really won in the end?

  Marc hadn't. Vetrov hadn't. Neither had she and Tristan.

  Francisco and people like him, they were the only ones who won. They moved people around like pawns on a chessboard. Careers were ruined. Lives lost. And at the end of the day, even people like Francisco lost eventually. Someone bigger, meaner, and less scrupulous moved in, and the cycle repeated. She understood better in that moment why Tristan fought than she ever had before.

  He'd always told her that someone had to do it.

  He was right.

  Someone had to do it because, in the end, even people like Francisco lost. And all that was left was addiction. It didn't care. It never had, and never would. It simply plowed through you, taking down anything it could, however it had to do it.

  Someone had to fight it.

  She wasn't sure how to deal with the fact that it might not be Tristan after this. The justice he believed in so strongly he'd given his entire life to fighting for it, Vetrov and Francisco had stripped from him. Sure, Vetrov would pay, but Francisco and Elijah were out there still, and so was the drug. Addiction had won.