The doors of the helicopter slammed closed, shutting out whatever else Hale might have said. Then a paramedic was leaning over him with an IV bag and the bird was taking off. As he drifted off into the darkness of unconsciousness, Hale’s words echoed in his head. His friend was right. Helping other people was his purpose for living. If he wanted to keep doing it, he was going to have to make it through this.
There was just one problem with that.
He wasn’t sure he could.
Chapter 1
Dallas, Texas, Present Day
“Forget it, Diego. No way in hell am I letting you walk into that diner with some psycho in there.”
Diego Martinez sighed, resisting the urge to point out to Senior Corporal Mike Taylor, his squad leader, SWAT officer in charge on this incident, fellow werewolf, and all-around good guy, that calling a suspect a “psycho” was considered politically incorrect. Even if, in this case, it was almost certainly correct.
“I know you’re trying to protect me, but you have to let me do my job,” Diego said, his attention focused on Mike while still keeping an eye on the video monitor of the retro-looking diner across the street. The one that should have been bustling with the usual 8:00 a.m. breakfast crowd on a weekday morning, but was instead surrounded by police vehicles, cut off from the rest of the world.
Mike scowled. Diego knew he wasn’t a big fan of sending him into the situation blind, but with the shades in the diner down, the door barricaded with racks of dishes, and all phone connections cut after the brief conversation he had with the gunman that’s exactly what they were. Which was why Diego needed to go in. Other than a bizarre request for a news crew with a live feed to the internet and all the networks, the armed man holding an unknown number of hostages hadn’t said a word since.
“Look, we have a diner full of scared people, a gunman who’s either high on drugs or mentally unstable, and two cops who might be bleeding to death as we speak while we stand here arguing about whether I should be able to take a risk I’m paid to take,” Diego said.
Mike muttered a curse. “Okay. But the second I think the situation is going sideways, we’re coming in, so make sure you don’t put yourself between the target and our entry points. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Diego knew the drill. He’d been a negotiator on the SWAT team for the past seven years—a job he’d never thought he’d do until Hale Delaney pointed out he had a knack for staying calm and talking people out of doing something stupid—and one thing he’d learned early on was don’t be in the way when your teammates make an entrance. Getting shot might not kill a werewolf, but when your pack mates were doing the shooting, it was embarrassing as hell. And he hated being embarrassed. He hated getting shot, too, of course, but on a relative scale of discomfort, being ragged by his own buddies was right up there beside taking a bullet.
Pushing that thought aside, Diego stepped out of the operations vehicle to find Hale, Senior Corporal Trey Duncan, and Officer Connor Malone regarding him expectantly.
“Well?” Hale prompted. “Did you talk Mike into letting you go in?”
Diego nodded, walking over to one of the SWAT SUVs. Opening the back door, he started shedding his tactical gear, dumping everything on the back seat. Department-issued SIG Sauer .40 caliber, small-frame backup piece in the same caliber, vest with its protective ballistic plate, Taser, cuffs, radio—everything. People who took hostages tended to get upset when you walked into their territory wearing violent fashion accessories. And if the recent incidents the SWAT team had gone on were any indication, this guy would be even more pissed than normal.
“Am I the only one thinking this hostage situation looks a hell of a lot like the other calls we’ve been getting lately?” Connor asked. Big and tall with dark-blond hair and hazel eyes, the team’s sniper had a definite surfer-dude vibe going on. He was originally from California so that made sense. “You know, the ones with the suspects acting strange AF.”
Diego shrugged as he pulled the folding knife off his belt and tossed it on the table along with the other stuff. He’d been thinking the same thing. Yeah, being a SWAT team full of werewolves practically guaranteed more than their fair share of weird calls, but the ones they’d gone on in the past few weeks had been outside the norm, even for them. The calls had involved extremely volatile and violent suspects, most of whom refused to give up without a fight, and all of whom had no criminal record of any type. Hell, they came way closer to Boy Scouts than cold-blooded killers, yet in the end, they’d all been more than willing to commit murder.
Even more bizarre, none of the suspects he and his teammates had taken down could explain why they’d done what they had. Hell, they couldn’t even remember doing it. Things had so gotten bad the Special Threat Assessment Team—aka STAT—a joint FBI-CIA supernatural task force very few people had heard of, had started sniffing around to see if there was something paranormal involved. Diego had worked with the group in Los Angeles a little while back, and he’d gladly take their help now. But so far, all they had was a bunch of whacked-out suspects with no connection to one another. So, STAT had backed off and was letting the SWAT team deal with the problem. Yeah, the feds were helpful like that.
“It doesn’t matter if this is another one of those cases,” Diego finally said. “That guy walked right into a crowded diner and shot two cops, then took the rest of the customers hostage. We don’t need to understand why he did it. We just need to get him out.”
Beside him, Trey’s blue gaze strayed to the front of the diner, his usually serious face even more solemn. “I agree, but I’d feel a lot better about this if we could see through those windows.”
“Agreed,” Connor said. “I’ll be on the roof across the street with my sniper rifle, but with the blinds pulled down like they are, there’s not a whole lot I can do.”
“I’m not sure I can do anything about the blinds, but I’ll try,” Diego told him. “Be ready to come in when I give the signal.”
Diego wouldn’t be wearing a radio, but with their enhanced hearing, his pack mates would be able to hear him give the code phrase if things went sideways.
“We’ll be there,” Hale promised before he and Trey walked over to stand by the cluster of patrol cars forming a semicircle in front of the diner.
“Be careful,” Connor said, then turned to jog across the street.
Mike came out of the team’s operations RV a moment later, giving Diego a nod as he moved over to join Hale and Trey.
Taking a deep breath, Diego slowly walked toward the front door of the diner, trying to appear confident without looking threatening. That was difficult to do when you were as broad and muscular as he was, not to mention wearing a dark-blue tactical uniform and combat boots. He did it anyway, just in case the bad guy was looking out the window.