“Then we might have your stuff,” Wally replied, eyes narrowed.
My heart beat a mile a minute. Wally knew something was wrong, I just knew it.
“Why don’t you take a look and tell me if all that is what you came for,” Zane said, tilting his head up like a tough man, almost like he was daring Wally to challenge him.
“I just might,” Wally said.
“You do that,” Zane countered him.
The two of them were going to drive me out of my mind. Or maybe that was the heat need, which was getting unbearable with so many alphas around and my own alpha inching ever closer to me. This whole thing had to be resolved soon, immediately. I needed my alpha in me. I needed his seed inside me and his knot locked tight in my?—
“Hey!”
My spiraling need and everything else stopped dead just as Wally and Zane both moved toward the boathouse. Everyone’s attention zipped up to the house, where Lucas had just crashed out onto the porch.
“Hey! Stop! It’s a trap!” Lucas shouted. His hands were still cuffed behind him and he still had rope around one ankle, but his gag had slipped down around his neck. Somehow, he’d wriggled free of the closet and made his way down to the porch, and at the most inconvenient time possible.
“It’s a set-up!” Lucas continued to yell, lurching toward the edge of the porch. “Those aren’t Westfields, they’re cops!”
“What the fuck?” Wally shouted, glaring at Zane, and then back to me.
A heartbeat after that, the guns all came out.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Saint
The sight of Lucas stumbling onto the porch, still partially bound in the way Fenn had secured him, had me blisteringly angry in no time at all.
That anger evaporated into pure fear when I caught the first flash of metal as the two goons standing behind Wally Dumfries pulled guns from inside their jackets.
I lunged for Linus, but I was too far away and had both Zane and one of his men standing between us. I was a little surprised when Fenn drew a gun as well, and even more shocked when he stepped between me and my omega, holding me back like I was an oncoming flood.
“What the fuck is this?” Wally shouted again, reaching for his own gun.
“It’s a trap! It’s a trap!” Lucas kept bellowing as he made his way clumsily down the porch stairs. The man was even stupider than I thought if he was running toward the sudden chaos instead of away from it.
I didn’t care about him. I only cared about Linus. My omega was caught in the middle of two storms as tensions escalated. More men ran toward the standoff, both from the dock and from up the hill, closer to the garage.
“Don’t move,” Zane said in a commanding voice, holding his gun pointed at Wally. “Wallace Dumfries, you’re under arrest for trafficking firearms and narcotics?—”
“Like hell I am!” Wally shouted, then fired his gun.
It wasn’t the rending of metal or an explosion in the dark and rain, but the bang of Wally’s gun, and then two or three others, that had my soul feeling like it might wrench its way out of my body with terror.
A second later, I realized those weren’t my feelings, but Linus’s as my omega dropped to the ground.
“Linus!” I screamed, pushing past my brother in an attempt to reach my omega.
My movement made me a target. One of the goons whipped around and fired at me. The bullet hit me square in the chest, or rather in the Kevlar vest that Zane had insisted I wear as we prepared for the confrontation. Either way, the impact stole the air from my lungs and threw me back. I fell hard to the ground as more shots were fired above me.
“Saint!” Linus screamed, reaching out a hand to me along the ground. His eyes were wide and I could feel nothing but fear radiating from him as sound and movement exploded around us.
I reached back, but before I could do more than brush fingertips with him, Linus was yanked away.
“Put your guns down, now!” Zane shouted somewhere above me.
His demand was met by shouts, curses, and more gunfire. I ignored all of it, scrambling as best I could with my ribs bruised and possibly broken to reach my omega.
