“Great.” Lucas clapped his hands together and started for the door. “I’ve got to pick out a good outfit for this whole thing. I don’t have a lot of clothes here, but I think Papa has some of his old suits in storage upstairs. I could look like a real gangster for this scene.”
None of us tried to stop Lucas as he left the room. We all stood right where we were, watching him retreat into the hall, then listening for his footsteps on the stairs.
“Do you think he’ll really play along and help the cops?” Fenn asked.
“Not for a second, unfortunately,” Linus said, his shoulders dropping. “He’s got to be up to something. But then, Lucas is always up to something.”
“Zane and the others need this operation to be a success,” Fenn said. “I’ve been in touch with them again and told them about the Westfields. That was a piece of information they were definitely glad to get. Another unit is tracking them now. Andit’s helped them finalize a few details about the plan. They’re going to pose as members of the Westfield family when Wally Dumfries and the others arrive.”
“Don’t they all know each other?” I asked.
Fenn shook his head. “The two gangs have worked together for a while, but they do their business anonymously, mostly online on the dark web.”
“Two criminal gangs, and they’ve never met each other face to face,” Linus said, pushing a hand through his hair in disbelief.
“If you think about it,” I said, “that makes perfect sense. If one gang gets caught, they can’t identify or implicate the others.”
“Then what’s to stop the Dumfries gang from getting suspicious as soon as they see people other than Lucas waiting for them and to call the whole thing off?” Linus asked.
“It’s going to take some finesse,” Fenn said. “Zane and his team are going to have to stay out of sight until all of the Dumfries are off their boat. Which is why I let the cat out of the bag with Lucas. We’re going to need him to act like everything is normal to get the Dumfries guys away from their boat and to explain things.”
“That’s never going to work,” Linus said. “Lucas will only think of himself. The second things get tense, he’ll bail and run, probably ruining the whole thing.”
I hated that my omega was right and that it put us all in a dangerous position.
Fenn didn’t look at all upset by Linus’s statement, though. In fact, he had a spark in his eyes that I wasn’t sure I liked.
“You’re right, of course,” he said, smiling. “Which is why it’s lucky we have the perfect decoy.” He looked straight at me.
I sucked in a breath when it clicked what he meant. “No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. I won’t have it.”
Linus figured it out, too. “You want me to pose as my brother in order to foil a smuggling gang?” His voice shot up to a super high octave as he gaped at Fenn.
“It might be the only choice we have,” Fenn said. “I agree that Lucas isn’t going to play nicely on this one. He’ll try to save himself, which could potentially get a lot of people hurt.”
I was furious with my brother for playing the “people might get hurt if you don’t do this” card. The problem was, he was right.
Linus stood there gaping for a moment, but I could feel the wheels turning in his head. “Well, I mean, Lucas and I used to swap places all the time,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That’s how this whole thing started, isn’t it?” He looked to me. “I was pretending to be Lucas for a job interview. I’ve pretended to be him for a lot of things before.”
“I don’t like it,” I said. “I don’t like any of it. The whole reason we left Kincade Slopes to come here to the beach house was to confront your brother for crossing boundaries and putting you in danger by pretending to be him. We came here to stop this sort of thing.”
“True,” Linus said, nodding slowly. “But in this case, me pretending to be him might actually help people. It might put an end to his shenanigans once and for all.”
What Lucas was involved in was way more than shenanigans, but my omega had a point. He was clever and far braver than he thought, and if he took his brother’s place this one last time, there was a good chance Lucas would end up getting what was coming to him in a way that would mean he couldn’t put Linus in danger ever again.
“Okay,” Linus said, turning to Fenn. I could feel he’d made his mind up and I wasn’t going to be able to convince him otherwise. “I’ll do it. I’ll impersonate my brother when theDumfries gang arrives so that we can catch the bad guys and put an end to all this. Just tell me what to do.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Linus
Icouldn’t believe it. I was about to be the point person in a major police operation to catch a band of hardcore criminals. Me, a boring little primary school teacher from an uninteresting suburb of Barrington.
“The most important thing is to convince the Dumfries gang that everything is normal and they don’t have to call the whole thing off,” Fenn said, striding over to the kitchen sink so he could look out the window into the back yard and down to the boat house, though there wasn’t much to see in the dark. “For operations like this, the police just need the perpetrators to express intent to engage in an illegal action in order to arrest them.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “What sort of intent to engage in illegal action?”
“I’m assuming they have to acknowledge the contents of the van, state what they have to swap for it, and make a move to,I don’t know, take the keys to the van?” Saint said, shifting to stand behind me with his hand on my shoulder.
