Center Mass (Code 11-KPD SWAT 1)

He stood stiffly for a few long seconds before he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and buried his face into my hair.

I held him, felt his shaking, and knew he’d done something awful. Something truly horrid that’d ripped him apart.

Likely, he’d had to choose Luke’s life over Anita’s. A pregnant woman for his friend. An impossible decision in any situation.

His arms felt like bands of steel around me, and I sniffled loudly into his ear, so thankful he’d made that decision I could barely contain my joy.

“Let’s go see Luke, Nico. I don’t think I can do it alone,” I whispered.

That was true, too.

I was scared shitless of what I’d find. As a nurse, I knew all the gruesome things that went on, having witnessed them myself multiple times.

I knew how much a head wound bled, and I was scared it was worse than he said it was.

That seemed to focus him, giving him something to do.

He let go of me, wrapping his hand around mine, and walked with me down the hall and around the corner to the ER’s rooms.

He was in the last one.

I knew that because the entire ER was full to bursting with cops and fireman.

They were everywhere.

There was no telling how many were in the actual room with him.

All eyes turned to us when we rounded the corner.

Eyes that I knew. Eyes that I didn’t know.

All curious.

Nico pulled me forward when I would’ve stopped, and I went. Mostly because he hadn’t given me a choice.

We walked through the crowd, the policemen backing up enough for us to get through.

Nico got slugs on the back as he went, and I got comforting hands.

By the time I was at Luke’s room, I was near tears from the support.

I wasn’t able to see Luke at first.

The large bodies of Downy, Bennett, Michael, and John blocking him from my sight.

But Nico’s deep ‘move’ drew them apart, and I finally saw Luke laying on the bed with his eyes closed. A young doctor leaned over his left side, stitching up his brow.

Half of Luke’s hair was gone, shaved down to little more than stubble on the right side of his head.

Dried blood covered his bare shoulders and arms. It was everywhere. Embedded in the grooves of his knuckles, the creases of his arms.

His bottom half was covered by a sheet, but his bare feet stuck out from the bottom.

Letting go of Nico’s hand, I walked forward and wrapped both of my hands around each of his toes.

His toes clenched, and he smiled, eyes opening as he took me in.

“You listened,” he rumbled, giving me a small, pained smile.

I nodded. “I do that every once in a while.”

Even when it nearly guts me.

His eyes glanced down to my hand, and his grin got a little bigger. “Looks good on you.”

I looked down at my hand, at the ring he’d given me hours before, yet felt like long, long days.

“Anything looks good on me,” I teased.

He gave a soft laugh and shook his head, producing a hiss from him and the doctor who admonished him for moving.

“If you can’t keep still, I’ll send her out of the room,” the doctor muttered.

Luke’s eyes hardened. “You could always try to take her away from me, Doc. But then you’d be missing a few limbs, and she’d still be here.”

The doctor snorted. “You cops. All the same. Jealous, alpha males who don’t know what’s for their own good. I’m almost done here, if you’ll hold still for another ten minutes, I’ll get the rest of these in and you can do whatever you want.”

The silence hung heavy as everyone thought about the ‘whatever you want’ he’d been referring to.

Every man in the room was thinking the same thing, too.

“No,” I said, squeezing Luke’s toes.

He chuckled softly and closed his eyes again. “Okay, we’ll wait until we’re back at home.”

“Not to interrupt, AC, but your daughter wants to know when she can go home,” James drawled from the doorway.

I turned and found him smiling with a phone to his ear. “She and Rowen are getting antsy, and something about you promising them Frozen and ice cream were mentioned, as well.”

The tension in the room broke.

“Call Baylee and tell her what’s going on, ask her to come get them, and I’ll pick the girls up tomorrow with Reese. We’ve got a lot of paperwork and questions that need to be answered once I’m done here,” Luke sighed.

I shook my head.

The man had lost a lot of blood, dodged death twice with two shots to the head, and he wanted answers.

Men.***“God,” I said sadly, thinking about how Rowen lost her father.

Gruesome wasn’t even good enough to describe what I’d just heard.

“What was her reasoning? I don’t understand why she would’ve done all that,” I shivered.

Would Rowen even understand?

Agent Lawrence looked over at me and then swung his eyes back up to Luke. “Should she even be here?”

I wanted to kick him, which I probably would’ve done but Luke rolled away from the man when he felt my leg tense.

“Assault of an officer, regardless of the reasoning, is enough to get you jail time, honey,” Luke whispered into my ear.

I sighed and relaxed. He was right. That wasn’t what we needed right now, but I couldn’t help the way I felt.

Weston, although not the best one in the world, was still Rowen’s father. A man who’d never be able to walk his daughter down the aisle.

“She stays,” Luke insisted, keeping his arm around my belly.

I leaned into him, pressing my nose against his neck.

“What kind of retaliation are we looking at here?” Luke asked when no one continued.

The chief, Luke, Nico, and Agent Lawrence had started this meeting a little over an hour before, and it’d been the most intense, gruesome hour of my life.

I’d listened to how Weston and Lydia had been tortured, supposedly by Russian mafia standards, for nearly a day before Anita had finally killed them. Then I’d listen to Luke as he recounted what had happened. Then again from Nico’s point of view.