Page 29 of Wolf Revealed

He could have ducked and dived again, avoiding the onslaught of incoming rounds. But that would have left Carter on his own.

Not going to happen.

So, he charged straight at them, dipping and twisting sideways a bit, reloading his gun, and then firing it as fast as he could squeeze the trigger.

Mike got hit twice, flesh wounds along the left thigh and the right side of his ribs. He ignored the pain and kept going, knowing he was doing more damage to them than they were to him. It was just a matter of who hit something vital first. Or who ran out of ammo first.

The two men broke ranks just as Mike got within leaping distance, abandoning Carter as they threw themselves backward into the open sliding door of the van. The vehicle sped away before the two men had even stopped rolling across the floor inside the vehicle.

The urge to chase after the fleeing van was instinctual and damn near impossible to resist. But all he had to do was look over at Carter to put a stop to that thought. His pack mate was still trying to sit up as his claws retracted and extended over and over, like he was attempting to use raw anger to burn through whatever drug had been pumped into him.

Mike knelt at his friend’s side as Xander ran out of the house, skidding to halt when he caught sight of Carter flailing around on the ground with his claws and fangs out.

“What happened to Carter?” Xander shouted as he dropped down beside them. “Where is he hit? Is it bad? Who the hell were those guys? Two of them came bursting in through the back door and tried to kill me.”

“I don’t have a clue who they were.” Mike wrapped a hand around the barrel of the dart to yank it out. The damn needle was at least three inches long, thick as a nail, and dripping clear liquid from the tip. Even in his drugged-out condition, Carter still grunted in pain. “But they used some kind of tranquilizer on him and tried to kidnap him.”

Xander dragged Carter to a sitting position, and Mike put a hand on either side of his face, trying to get a good look at his eyes. They were glazed over, flicking back and forth between his normal iris color and the vivid blue of an omega werewolf. But they were getting clearer by the second.

“That’s it,” Mike said firmly. “Keep fighting it, Carter. Your werewolf metabolism is burning through whatever they drugged you with.”

“Who the hell would want to drug and kidnap Carter?” Xander asked in confusion, even as he went over to confirm the guy with the dart gun was dead. In the distance, police sirens filled the night, coming closer by the second.

Realizing Carter was as good as he was going to be at the moment, Mike ran inside to check on Sharp again, wanting to make sure this whole thing hadn’t been some kind of distraction. But Sharp was where Mike had left him, hanging on, even if he was still fading in and out of consciousness.

Mike walked back outside as Connor and Trey came rolling up in a SWAT SUV, paramedics and police cruisers right behind them. A pair of paramedics checked on Carter while Mike directed the other two upstairs to help Sharp, telling them the man had been beaten badly, and that his pulse was weak, and breathing labored.

“What the hell did we miss?” Connor asked, taking in the scene while Trey checked on Carter, who sat there looking almost normal now that his claws and fangs had retracted. “I thought you guys were just planning to talk to an accountant.”

Mike filled him and Trey in on what had transpired, going over what Sharp had told him.

Connor frowned. “Less than forty-eight hours ago, Roman used your son as a bargaining chip because he thought you had this mysterious flash drive. Now, he thinks you’re working with his old accountant? Is the guy delusional or just paranoid?”

“Or both.” Mike shook his head. “Like I said, ten years ago Roy pretty much ran Roman’s money laundering operations. Maybe Roman believes Roy was skimming and that I helped? Maybe this flash drive is a list of bank accounts?”

“You and his accountant being in league with each other would explain why Roman came after you in the first place,” Xander said as Trey continued to help Carter. “Especially if he can’t find Roy.”

“That’s a lot of work just to get a little money skimmed off the top,” Connor said. “I mean, how much money could it have been? Surely not enough to justify Roman coming back into the country and risking going to prison for life.”

“Roman’s organization brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a day,” Mike said. “Assuming he started from the beginning, Roy could have stolen a lot.”

With Trey’s help, Carter was finally able to stand up. He looked more like himself, at least. Unfortunately, he had no idea why those guys had been trying to kidnap him any more than they did.

“I have no idea what’s in this dart, but I’ll have Samantha put a rush on identifying it,” Trey said as he wrapped the needle in cloth, then dropped it in an evidence bag. “Hopefully, that will give us an idea who might have done this, assuming it wasn’t Roman with some strange agenda we simply haven’t figured out yet.”

They were still talking about what all of this meant when Gage, Wayne, and several other people from headquarters arrived. Mike grimaced. A shoot-out in the middle of a ritzy neighborhood was always bad publicity, but there was also a dead man with a dart gun to explain. Put all that together and it was going to be a long night.

Chapter thirteen

“Ice cream?” Lark asked, leaning in the open door of Mike’s bedroom, a bowl of chocolate creamy goodness topped with crumbled peanut butter cups in each hand. “I know you guys were downplaying everything that happened tonight for Kal’s benefit, and I wanted to make sure you’re really doing okay.”

Mike smiled as he looked up from the desk by the window where he was sitting, going through piles of old files on Roman. “I’m good, thanks. But that doesn’t mean I’ll turn my nose up at a bowl of ice cream.”

Lark laughed. She’d been hoping to get a chance to talk to Mike alone, but hadn’t been sure if he’d be willing. Especially after the night he and his pack mates had.

“Is Kal already in bed?” Mike asked when they were both seated on the foot of the bed with their ice cream.

She nodded. “He wanted to stay up until you got home, but after that, he was out like a light. Tuffie, too.”