My heart leapt into my throat as the animal control officer suddenly stepped forward with a snare and looped it around Loki’s neck. The wolf hybrid, who’d been standing quietly nearby, jumped when the snare tightened around his neck, then tried to jerk back.
Dallas let out a strangled shout and then he was striding toward the sheriff. I tried to stop him, but he was too strong. Luckily, Maddox stepped in front of Dallas and grabbed him by the arms. “Don’t,” he told his brother. Dallas fought him as the sheriff watched, his hand resting on the butt of his gun. Panic tore through me.
“Dallas,” I said as I grabbed his face so he would look at me. “Please don’t. We’ll get Loki back, but not like this, okay?”
“Dallas,” Maddox said so softly that only Dallas and I could hear him. “It’s what he wants.”
Dallas’s eyes shifted to the sheriff, then Loki who was being dragged to the animal control vehicle. The animal was struggling violently. Dallas nodded to Maddox and stopped trying to get past him. As soon as Maddox released him, Dallas motioned to Loki, then himself, followed by the animal control truck.
“He wants to put Loki in the truck himself, Sheriff,” I quickly said. “Please,” I added, though it nearly killed me to beg the man for anything. “It will go easier on everyone if Dallas does it.”
The asshole was clearly enjoying his victory, because he studied Dallas, me, and then Loki for a long time – much longer than was necessary – before he finally nodded. Dallas quickly moved past me and the sheriff and hurried to Loki’s side. The animal instantly calmed at his presence. Dallas let his hands stroke over the wolf hybrid’s coat, then carefully gathered him in his arms. He put him in the truck, then removed the snare. I felt tears sting the backs of my eyes as he hugged his pet.
“Let’s go,” the sheriff snapped impatiently and walked toward his car as the animal control officer gently forced Dallas to step back. Dallas didn’t move as the cars left. I hurried toward him when he suddenly swayed.
I didn’t manage to reach him until after he’d fallen to his knees in the snow.
I waited until long after the pain pills had taken effect to release my hold on Dallas. He was pressed up against my chest, but the drugs had knocked him out enough that when I untangled my body from his, he didn’t wake up.
It had taken quite a while to convince Dallas to take the pills once we’d reached the house. His silence had worried me, and my hope was that it was just the lingering pain and the medication he was on that was keeping him from reacting to the loss of Loki. He’d been so out of it that he’d even let Maddox help me get him to the house and then up to his room. Dallas had tried to refuse the pain pills I’d handed him, but he’d given in when I’d promised I would be there when he woke up and that we’d figure out how to get Loki back. Neither of us had any doubt that the sheriff had been lying about someone getting attacked. We also knew he held no jurisdiction when it came to trying to close down the center, since it wasn’t technically located in Pelican Bay. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get enough support from residents to have them flooding the state with calls demanding the center be shut down. There was no question as to the sheriff’s motives, since he’d made it clear that he hated Dallas for the accident he still believed had been Dallas’s fault. Not to mention the way Dallas had embarrassed Jimmy at my father’s wake.
I brushed a soft kiss over Dallas’s temple, then went downstairs to check on Isaac and Newt. The young man had been worried when Dallas had collapsed and had asked if there was anything he could do. Since Maddox had been there to help me with Dallas, I’d told him we were okay, but when he’d suggested he and Newt should leave, I’d asked him to come with us to the house. Not only did I still have questions about his involvement with Trey and the Stradivarius, I was also worried about him and Newt. I hadn’t missed how scared both of them had been when the sheriff had shown up. The reaction could have been attributed to the violin, but it could have been something else, too.
My instincts were telling me it was the latter.
I found him in the kitchen doing the breakfast dishes I hadn’t had time to get to before Dallas and I had made the trip to Minneapolis for the follow-up appointment with his surgeon.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said as I searched the area for Newt. I finally spotted the little boy asleep on the couch in the living room.