Depends On Who's Asking (SWAT Generation 2.0 12)

But I couldn’t really relay that information with the man watching me like a hawk.

Thank God for Smoke, because he’d protected me the moment that the man had pushed himself in the door.

He would’ve done more, like attack the man, but I’d seen the gun the man had strapped to his body when he’d forced his way inside.

There was no way that I was letting Saint’s dog get hurt.

None.

A whisper of sound that didn’t sound like the man at the window had me turning my head slightly to see if I could put eyes on the sound, but all I saw was the fireplace above my head.

And boots.

Boots?

What the…

The logs went flying and Saint came barreling out of the fireplace like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.

The man who was in my home and shouldn’t be, turned around, gun raised.

But he went down with two well-placed bullets to the chest.

The man’s rifle hit the floor, and then everything went silent.

“Shooter down,” Saint coughed as he lay on the ground in the middle of my living room, a piece of firewood wedged uncomfortably under his left shoulder.

I scrambled toward the shooter, but before I could get there, Saint latched on to my ankle and said, “No. Let them do it.”

And by them, he meant the men breaking down my door.

I squeaked and dove at Saint to protect him, but he only laughed.

“Those are the good guys, baby.” He patted my thigh and got up.

That’s when I saw the piece of wood sticking out of his shoulder.

“Umm.” I pressed on his back. “You seem to have a rather large splinter in your right shoulder.”

“Pull it out,” he grunted.

I reached for the wood, thinking it would come out easily, but it sure the fuck didn’t. The t-shirt was in the way, but I also thought the wood might be lodged into his shoulder too tightly for me to pull out.

He grunted out a curse, and I dropped my hand from the wood. “Let’s have someone who knows what they’re doing look at that.”

Smoke came over, his butt wagging, and licked Saint’s face.

“He protected me today,” I said softly. “I don’t think things would’ve turned out so well if he wasn’t here.”

Saint pressed his hand to Smoke’s face and dropped a kiss onto his furry doggy head.

“Glad that he was here when I couldn’t be,” he said as he eyed the man on the floor.

The dead man that was bleeding on my brand-new hardwood floors.

“You know him?” someone asked.

I looked up to see Booth standing there looking at me.

I grimaced.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Dillan and I had a run-in today with him in the parking lot. He, uh, wasn’t very happy with me.”

“What are you talking about?” Booth asked.

I stood up and hurried to the kitchen to look for the donuts that’d started this all.

I found them, surprisingly unharmed, and walked them back into the room.

Saint saw the box and frowned.

I flipped the box open and showed him.

The donuts read ‘Happy Birthday Saint.’

“I was going to bring those to you last night, but you’d said that you were having a long night, and you were super busy, so I was going to wait until this morning,” I whispered quietly. “Happy Birthday, Saint.”

He stood up, getting slowly to his feet.

“What do these donuts have to do with that guy?” He pointed at the person.

Booth reached into the box and plucked out the ‘B’ in birthday before taking a bite.

Hayes came up second and got himself one, too.

Then my dad was there, pulling me into his arms.

Saint took the box of donuts that my father had thrust into his arms, and then my dad squeezed the shit out of me.

“Tell us what happened with him,” Dad ordered.

I then went on to tell him about parking in the lot and getting the donuts.

“Well, it started out with me running inside and getting these donuts. While I was there, Dillan saw this jerk-off park in her parking lot, so I went and said something to him as I was going out to my car. He was a dick about it and left his car there to go into the bar. So, I called my dad,” I answered.

“That’s where I come in,” Dad said. “I didn’t see the guy. I just followed up on the complaint. One of the new rookies made the man move his car while I shut down the bar for over-occupancy with the fire marshal.”

Saint started to take off his Kevlar vest, being careful of the piece of wood sticking out of his back, and I walked over to him and held out my hands for him to hand it to me.

He gave it to me, and I grunted in surprise at the weight.

“Why does this feel heavier than my dad’s?” I asked curiously.