“Saint!” Linus shouted as I made it to my knees.
Rage pulsed through me despite the pain and alarm. One of the alpha goons had an arm around my omega and had lifted Linus off his feet. The additional Dumfries men from the boat had rushed forward, both to help fight off the cops and to make an attempt to secure at least some of the firearms from the van. Zane shouted orders to his men, who outnumbered the Dumfries gang, but that was where my awareness of things stopped.
The alpha who had Linus clamped against him stood as if stunned, sniffing Linus’s neck. It was almost bizarre the way he seemed unable to do anything but smell my omega, as if he wanted to cuddle and nuzzle him.
There was no way in hell I was going to let him get away with that. Ignoring the new spattering of gunfire around me, I launched forward, barreling into the alpha who had Linus and tackling him to the ground.
“Don’t touch my omega,” I growled, raising a fist and punching the man. “Mine!”
The alpha was too stunned to do anything more than stare at me with glassy eyes, then to go limp as one of my punches landed, surprisingly enough, on exactly the right spot on his jaw to knock him out.
I would marvel at the one-in-a-million punch later. At that moment, all I wanted was to get my omega safely into my arms and to protect him from the chaos unfolding around us. Fortunately, Linus had been smart enough to roll away from the alpha as soon as we all hit the ground. He stayed low, then scrambled back to me as the action around us reached a pitch.
“I didn’t have anything to do with this, I swear,” Lucas called out.
Linus and I twisted around in unison to see Lucas racing toward Wally Dumfries, his hands still fastened behind him. Theman had to be either incredibly foolish or completely out of his mind to race toward a bunch of criminals in the middle of a gunfight.
Whatever the case, Lucas wasn’t going to find a lick of help or safety from the Dumfries gang. He got as far as one of the henchmen who had come from the boat before he was stopped by a backhanded smack to the face with the butt of a handgun. Even I winced at the cracking sound and as blood splattered. Lucas wailed and fell to the ground.
One last gunshot went off, then Zane shouted, “Nobody move! We have the house and the beach surrounded. You all have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
As he went on announcing their rights, I pulled Linus close to my body, shielding him with my bulk. Linus shook like a leaf and pressed into me like he was trying to climb inside my body. I wondered if that was because of his heat at first, but noticed his body was considerably cooler than it had been earlier. Did abject terror stop heat in its tracks? Possibly. I’d have to find out later, but not now.
“Don’t move!” another voice shouted just as Zane finished shouting out everyone’s rights.
I lifted my head to see a whole new wave of men in uniforms swarm onto the scene. The more I looked, the more it was clear that the Dumfries gang, including a few that were being marched up the dock from their boat, had all been captured and disarmed. Wally and his thugs were on the ground several yards away, having their hands cuffed behind them. One of the goons was hollering up a storm and cursing everyone who touched him, but Wally himself just lay in the grass, glaring at Lucas.
“Lucas,” Linus breathed out, struggling to get away from the shelter of my body.
I turned with him to see what had him so upset. Halfway across the lawn, one of the cops crouched beside Lucas, who sat sobbing, blood running down his face. He still had his hands cuffed behind him, and I had the feeling that even if he hadn’t had cuffs on from earlier, he would have them on now. The cop crouching beside him was both reading him his rights and trying to stop the bleeding from his nose with a handful of grass.
“What’s wrong with him?” Linus gasped as he crawled across the grass toward his brother.
“My dose!” Lucas wailed. “He brogke my fugging dose!”
Linus pulled back just before reaching his brother, dropping to the grass like he’d run into some sort of invisible force field. “Lucas,” he sighed heavily, like his brother had broken his own nose.
I made it to my omega and plunked down to sit in the grass, pulling him into my arms. My head was so full and my body still pulsing and throbbing with adrenaline, but I was beginning to feel the frayed edges and flailing ends of my mind as the stress of trying to hold everything together for the last thirty-six or so hours took its toll.
“I’ve got you,” Linus said, curling himself into me, like I was the one comforting him instead of vice versa.
We could only sit there while the police took full charge of the scene to mop things up. The sun had risen during the confrontation, lending its light to everything so we could all see the full picture. More than half a dozen Dumfries men lay on the ground, their arms secured behind them, as Zane directed his men to check their boat and the van in the boathouse. I was pretty sure they were checking more than that, including the house, the garage, and the cars parked in there. They would go over everything with a fine-tooth comb before they were done.
When somebody shouted, “Ambulance is here!” I perked up.
“You’re hurt,” Linus said, still breathless, even though we’d been sitting for about fifteen minutes. “I saw…I saw a bullet hit you.”
I hugged him tighter, resting my cheek against his head. “You’re not the only one wearing a Kevlar vest,” I said. “But I might have cracked a few ribs. Bullets hurt like a bitch.”
Linus started laughing. I honestly had no idea why. It wasn’t funny. But once he started, he pulled me along with him. Only, laughing hurt, so I ended up wincing and groaning as he hugged me tight, touching me all over like he had to be absolutely certain I was okay.
“Take care of that one first,” Zane called to someone nearby. “We need to get his statement, then take him off to jail.”
One of the paramedics approaching the scene nodded and veered off toward Lucas as a few of the others raced to treat the other wounded. And there were a few men on both sides who hadn’t been as lucky as I’d been in the face of a bullet. At least no one appeared to be dead.
“My dose,” Lucas told the paramedic who crouched in front of him. “Dat bastard hid by fugging dose.”
“It looks broken,” the paramedic said, all business. “Stay still and I’ll take care of it.”
