Jake looked down in confusion to see a tree limb sticking out of his chest a few mere inches above and to the side of his heart. If Damien hadn’t missed, that would have killed him as sure as a bullet to the head.
The pain hit full force then, and Jake collapsed to the ground, only to see Damien coming at him with a second tree limb. This one was long enough to qualify as a jousting lance and easily more than enough to kill him. And without a weapon, Jake had no way to protect himself—or Jes.
Then Jes was at his side, big Glock in her hand, firing round after round at Damien, slowly forcing him to back away from them until the slide locked back on an empty magazine. Damien stood there unfazed, blood running down his chest in freaking rivers, a smile slowly creeping across his ugly face to reveal his fangs as he strode toward them.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the roar of an engine echoed in the night and Jake turned his head from where he lay on the ground in time to see a white van swerve off the road and into the park, smashing into Damien. The asshole—and the tree limb he’d been holding—flew through the air, disappearing into the darkness.
The driver of the van slammed on the brakes, sliding across the grass for at least thirty feet before coming to a halt.
Jake had no idea what was going on, since the pain was making it nearly impossible to think. He dragged himself across the ground, fighting to get closer to Jes and the Robinson boy, growling in his effort to protect them from whatever was about to happen. When the doors of the van burst open and Caleb jumped out, he finally remembered the van was one of their team’s other rental vehicles. Misty followed close behind Caleb, a gun in her hands and looking distinctly out of place. Harley was there, too.
Jes was on her knees beside Jake. She wrapped her hands around the base of the tree limb protruding from his back and squeezed, like she was trying to keep his blood from pouring out.
“He’s dying!” she shouted to their teammates. “Call an ambulance. We need to get him to a hospital.”
Lying there on the grass, Jake decided he liked the idea of Jes being concerned about him. It would have made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside if it weren’t for the sharp, pointy piece of wood in his chest making him feel all cranky and pincushion-y.
“He’s not dying,” Caleb said drily, walking over to stand on the other side of Jake. “And we’re sure as hell not waiting around here for an ambulance. The Metro Police are already setting up a perimeter. This place is going to be ass deep with cops soon, and they won’t be very understanding when they see all this.”
Jes looked at Caleb like he was crazy. “But what about Jake? We have to do something for him.”
“We’re gonna do something.”
Casually putting the heel of his boot into the center of Jake’s back, he pushed down with his foot, and Jake had about a half second to think about how much this was going to suck at the same time Caleb yanked the tree limb out—hard and fast. Except it seemed to hurt a whole hell of a lot more this time.
Jake vaguely heard Jes screaming something about Caleb trying to kill him, then everything went dark.
He came to at some point later on, his back pressing against something harder than the leaves and grass he’d passed out on earlier. His chest felt like a thousand-pound pig was sitting on it, and breathing couldn’t have been harder if he were trying to do it through a drinking straw.
Red and blue lights spun above him, and it took Jake a while to figure out he was seeing the lights of police and other emergency vehicles reflecting on the ceiling of the team’s van. He tried to push himself up a little, wanting to see out one of the windows, but a gentle hand on his chest held him down.
“Don’t move.” Jes’s voice was soft in his ear. “We’re going through a police checkpoint and I doubt Caleb and Harley want to explain all the blood.”
Jake relaxed, trusting Caleb and Harley to get them out of there. Besides, there wasn’t anything he could do, not in this condition. So he closed his eyes and let the sound of Jes’s heartbeat gently lull him to sleep, her hand over the wound in his chest, her breath warm on his face as she whispered over and over in his ear that he was going to be okay.
Chapter 9
“Put him on the bed,” Jes said softly after she’d pulled the blankets back and placed several large bath towels down to protect the sheets from the blood and dirt. “Gently, so his wounds don’t open up again.”
Caleb—who’d carried Jake all the way from the rental van and upstairs to Jake’s room—snorted, practically tossing him on the bed so roughly he actually bounced.
Jes glared at Caleb. “I said gently, you jerk.”
She wanted to shout at him, but she didn’t want to wake up Jake. Then again, if dropping him on the bed hadn’t done it, she doubted raking Caleb over the coals would. Still, there wasn’t any need for Caleb to be an asshat about it.
“Relax,” Caleb said. “Jake’s a werewolf. If getting skewered with a tree limb didn’t kill him, he’s fine.”
She blinked. “Fine? You call having a hole the size of a baseball in his chest fine?”
“It’ll heal up.” Caleb regarded Jake, then shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt to clean him up and get the debris out of the wound, though. If any crap is left in there, it slows down the healing and hurts like hell when it finally closes up.”
Jes opened her mouth to ask what he meant bydebris, but before she had a chance, Caleb turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Forgetting about Caleb and his crappy bedside manner, she turned her attention to Jake. She hoped Caleb was right about the wound healing on its own, because judging by Jake’s ragged suit jacket and bloody dress shirt, he was a mess under there. She didn’t know about the whole debris thing, but cleaning him up couldn’t hurt.
Hoping it’d be safe to leave Jake on his own for a bit, Jes slipped out of the bedroom and down the hallway into one of the two bathrooms on the second floor. Taking a stack of washcloths out of the small linen closet, she ran a few of them under the faucet, then grabbed the first-aid kit. She wasn’t sure what was in it, but there had to be antibiotic ointment and bandages, if nothing else.
As she made her way back to Jake’s room, muted conversation drifted up from downstairs. It sounded like Misty was putting together the videoconference equipment. Harley and Caleb must have been helping, since Forrest wasn’t back yet.
