Chapter twelve
“So, who is Oliver Sharp again?” Carter asked as he maneuvered the SWAT SUV along the tree-lined lane several hours later. “And what does he have to do with finding Rogelio Roy?”
“Sharp and Roy were college friends, according to the information Wayne was able to dig up,” Mike explained from where he sat in the front passenger seat.
Wayne had called while he was in the middle of playing video games with Kal to say they had a lead.
As much as Mike hated bailing on his son and Lark, they needed to find Roman.
“Sharp brought Roy into his prestigious accounting firm shortly after Roy talked himself out of a prison sentence, hoping it’d help clean up his image.
Wayne thinks there’s a good chance he knows where Roy is hiding, but unfortunately, no one has seen Sharp since yesterday morning. He’s not answering his phone, either.”
As they drove through the upscale neighborhood with their twinkling Christmas lights, Mike absently noticed how fancy and expensive-looking the houses were. Apparently, accountants made good money. Even ones who weren’t working for an organized crime syndicate.
“How did lunch with Lark and Kal go?” Xander asked from the back seat. “I heard you guys playing video games. You sounded like you were having fun.”
Mike smiled to himself. “It was fun. I can’t believe how amazing Kal is. I never saw myself as a father, but now, I can’t imagine not being one.”
As he rambled on about Lark and Kal, he realized his pack mates were both sitting there with goofy grins on their faces.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Xander said. “It’s just good to see you happy, man.”
Mike smiled. “I am happy.”
Maybe happier than he’d ever been. And yeah, he knew this reunion with his family didn’t guarantee Lark would want to get back together, and that she and Kal would stay in Dallas. But she was still wearing his ring, so that had to count for something, right?
“I’ll feel better when Roman is behind bars, though,” he added. “Every time I leave the house, I worry about Lark and Kal.”
“They’re both safe there,” Xander said.
“For now,” Mike agreed. “But how long can we expect to keep them that way? Roman has money and connections. He’ll find them at some point. And no matter how many werewolves we have protecting them, they’ll still be at risk.”
Neither of his pack mates said anything to that. Probably because they knew he was right.
“We’re here,” Carter announced, turning into the driveway of a huge two-story home located on a golf course.
“Sharp’s vehicle is in the driveway, and the lights are on in the house, so he should be here,” Xander said, pointing at a cherry red sports car.
Mike stepped out of the SUV and walked toward the front door along with Xander and Carter. Solid wood with thick frosted etched glass, he lifted his hand to knock on it, only to freeze when he picked up a familiar, sharp, chemical odor. Along with another scent he knew all too well.
“Blood,” he murmured, reaching for the SIG holstered on his hip.
Mike put his free hand on the door and shoved, snapping off the deadbolt and the latch. The scent of blood grew stronger as he stepped into the marble-lined entryway. It was coming from upstairs.
“Clear the first floor,” he whispered to Xander and Carter as he headed for the stairs, holding his handgun out in front of him, his finger on the side of the trigger guard.
While there were several slightly muted scents that suggested there’d been a few people in the house recently, none of them were strong enough to make him think they were still here.
Halfway up the sweeping staircase, Mike picked up the ragged thud of a heartbeat in distress. “Call for an ambulance!” he shouted over his shoulder. “We have someone still alive up here.”
He took the last few steps at a run, then sprinted down the hall toward the room where the heartbeat was coming from.
He took in the chaos as he quickly moved through the bedroom, following the scent of blood to the en-suite bathroom.
Drawers from the nightstands and dresser were scattered everywhere, picture frames had been ripped off the wall, and the mattress was sliced open with the fluff sticking out.
An older man who must be Sharp lay on the marble floor of the bathroom, looking exactly the same as Roman’s other victims. Except this time, the bruised and bloodied man was still alive—barely.
Given the amount of damage, Mike wasn’t sure how he’d survived the beating and could only assume he’d been left to die.
Mike holstered his weapon and rushed to the man’s side. “Mr. Sharp, I’m with the Dallas Police Department. Help is on the way. Just hold on.”
The man groaned, and Mike instinctively reached down to gently take his hand, wanting the guy to know someone was with him.
“My name is Mike Taylor. Try to squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
When he didn’t answer, Mike thought the guy had fallen unconscious. Then he felt the man squeeze his hand slightly and groan again.
“An ambulance is on the way,” Xander said, sticking his head in the bathroom door. “But with traffic and the long route through the subdivision, it could take them a while to get here.”
Mike turned back to reassure Sharp that he was going to make it to see the man open his eyes. Sharp blinked them a few times before focusing on him. “Did you say, Mike Taylor?”
“Yes, I’m Mike Taylor.”
“That psychopath, Roman, kept asking about you,” Sharp mumbled slowly, still gazing up at Mike like he was having a hard time focusing.
“He wanted to know if I’d ever seen you and Roy together.
Roman is looking for something. I don’t know what it is, but he thinks you and Roy are working together to keep it from him.
Or using it together. I don’t really know. ”
Sharp tried to talk more after that, but his words quickly became incoherent. The only thing Mike could make out for sure was that Roman had beaten Sharp and that Roy had gone into hiding, but no one knew where.
Mike was about to check to see if Xander had an ETA on the paramedics, but before he could, a thud came from the first floor. For a second, he thought one of his pack mates had tripped and fallen, but that didn’t make sense. Werewolves didn’t trip and fall.
He hated leaving Sharp, but he couldn’t ignore his gut. Cursing, he strode out of the bedroom and down the hall, glancing over the railing to the first floor as he went. In the entryway, Carter was on his hands and knees, trying to get to his feet.
Sure that Carter had been shot, even if he couldn’t smell any werewolf blood, Mike hurried down the steps. Halfway to the bottom, he caught a glimpse of the tranquilizer dart in Carter’s shoulder.
What the hell?
Mike got the answer to that as three men in dark tactical gear rushed in the front door and over to Carter, two rifles and one dart gun pointed at him.
Mike’s first thought was that it was Roman or some of his supernatural goons, but they didn’t have that weird chemical odor. These guys smelled human.
“Don’t move!” Mike shouted as he pulled his weapon.
One of the men spun around and opened fire in Mike’s direction on full automatic. Bullets shattered the marble steps and balustrades all around him, forcing him to duck. Then he was up and leaping over the rail.
By the time he landed, two of the men were dragging a struggling Carter between them out the door as the third guy provided cover.
While a werewolf could take a lot of damage, they weren’t immortal, and Mike had no choice but to dive to the side and roll across the room to avoid the hail of bullets coming his way.
“Xander! Need some backup here!” Mike shouted as he slammed into an antique sideboard topped with vases and glass sculptures. Wood, ceramic, and glass went flying everywhere.
Mike expected Xander to immediately come running. But instead, all he heard was the chatter of automatic weapon fire and the crash of breaking glass coming from the back of the house. Clearly, Xander had problems of his own to deal with at the moment.
Cursing again, Mike got his feet under him and then charged through the front door.
Another hail of gunfire came his way, and he lunged to the side.
Then he was rolling and bringing his handgun up to pop off round after round at the third goon, who was still hanging back to give the other two time to drag Carter toward the black conversion van parked in the driveway.
He knew for a fact he hit the guy, but the damn vest kept him from going down.
Carter was still fighting off whatever the hell was in that tranquilizer dart, his claws and fangs coming out as he struggled, shoving at the two men holding him. One of them stepped back and aimed the dart gun at Carter again.
Mike couldn’t let that happen. One dart had damn near knocked Carter unconscious. Another might actually kill him.
Diving, Mike rolled across the concrete driveway, coming up to fire two rounds at the head of the goon with the dart gun. The man immediately went down, but Mike had no time to relax, as both of his buddies turned their full attention on him.
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.