“That’s never going to work,” Linus said. “I hate to admit this, but after this weekend I have to face the truth. My brother is a criminal who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He’s not going to play along easily.”
“There’s still time to work on him,” Fenn said, though I knew my brother enough to know he wasn’t convinced Lucas would help at all when the time came. “The other thing the guys need us to do is photograph the contents of the van so there’s a record of the goods that they’re attempting to smuggle.”
“We can do that,” Linus said, perking up a bit and looking at me. “That’s easy enough to do, if you’re okay with going back out there.”
I knew what my omega meant. He was looking out for me. He didn’t want to put me in a situation where I might have another breakdown.
“I’m okay,” I said, smiling softly at him and brushing my hand across his cheek. “I’ve got a fierce omega to protect me from ghosts.”
Linus blushed hard and glanced down. My cock definitely took notice, but I had to tell it to mind its own business for the moment until we sorted everything else out.
“If you guys are okay with doing that, I’m going to do a quick search of Lucas’s phone to see what else in here we can use,” Fenn said, pulling Lucas’s phone out of his back pocket.
I felt a twist of sadness and disappointment from Linus. “Let’s go,” I said, taking my omega’s hand and tugging him toward the door. “We’ve got a mission to accomplish.”
“Yeah, we do,” Linus said, shaking his head, then smiling confidently at me. “We’ve got this.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Linus
Iwas ready to leave the house and do whatever needed to be done to bring the Dumfries gang to justice. What made me deeply sad was the sinking feeling that the whole sting operation would probably end with Lucas going to prison, too. I tried to tell myself Lucas had made his own bed and would now have to lie in it, but that didn’t help. The whole family would be devastated. Dad would be furious, and Papa would be so hurt.
“What kind of pictures do your buddies in the BSI want?” Saint asked as we prepared to head out. “Should we avoid touching things so we don’t get fingerprints on them?”
“I would take pictures of the back of the van on its own, and then maybe open one of the bags to show the guns inside,” Fenn answered. “You’ve already?—”
He snapped his mouth shut and quickly put Lucas’s phone face down on the kitchen counter before turning and lunging for the counter with the coffeemaker.
A second later, a naked and irritated Lucas stepped into the room asking, “Has anyone seen my phone?”
I had to turn away from him. Chances were he would think I couldn’t look at him because he was bare-ass naked, leaking slick, and half hard. Actually, that in itself would have been enough reason to shield my face from him. The truth was that I was just so ashamed of him and everything he’d gotten himself, and the rest of us by default, into.
Saint rested a hand on my shoulder as he reached for a coffee cup that had been left on the kitchen island. “Isn’t that your phone?” he asked as casual as you please, nodding to the phone. He pretended to take a sip from the cup.
“Oh, yeah,” Lucas said, ambling over to the counter to pick it up. “What’s it doing down here?”
“You must have left it when you came down for a snack earlier,” I said, hoping that he actually had come down for a snack at some point.
“Yeah, maybe,” Lucas said distractedly. He tapped it a few times, frowned, then put it back on the island. “Are you making coffee?” he asked Fenn, seemingly oblivious to anything around him but his own interests. “I could use some. I’m starving, but I don’t feel like eating. I’m exhausted, but too buzzed to sleep. This heat sucks.”
“I’m doing my best, Mr. Cahill,” Fenn said, glancing over his shoulder with the sort of professional politeness a good ESA had. “You should probably drink water instead of coffee and eat one of the protein bars I gave you earlier.”
“Those things are awful,” Lucas complained, shifting his weight restlessly from foot to foot.
I knew from being in heat myself that my brother probably felt like he was about to come out of his skin. We were both only just reaching the height of heat. If everything was normal, our next few waves would have been intense and very private.
“We should probably get back to…things,” Saint said, putting his coffee cup down. “Let me know if you need any help making more snacks.”
It was as good a bluff as any, and I was convinced we wouldn’t have a problem heading outside instead of upstairs if we left the kitchen. Lucas had gone to the fridge and had his head stuck in there looking for something to eat anyhow.
But as soon as Saint and I turned to go, Lucas’s phone rang.
All four of us went stock still. I stared at the phone like it might explode. It was face up, and instead of an ordinary, boring name flashing on the screen, like “Dad” or “Eloise”, the name “Wally Dumfries” showed up.
Lucas pulled out of the fridge and scowled at the phone for a second. Then he more or less freaked out and scrambled across the kitchen to snatch his phone up.
“Hello? Wally?” he asked, eyes round, color draining from his face. A few seconds later, his voice rose an octave as he said, “You did? An hour ago? But it’s not anywhere close to midnight yet.”
