Page 169 of Beau and the Beast

When noon approached, Lincoln joined him in the living room, sitting down calmly with a handgun and a box of shells.

“What the fuck is that?” Noah asked, a stripe of panic painting itself up his spine. He’d never evenseena gun in real life outside of the ones that were always holstered on the hips of cops.

“It’s exactly what it looks like.”

“What’re you going to do—shoot your way in?”

Lincoln gave him a steady look. “Did you think I was going to go in there without a way to defend myself? What the hell kind of leverage would I have if I didn’t have a gun?”

Noah hated the look of the snub-nosed thing, mean and ugly, but he knew Lincoln was right.

“I’m not going to shoot anyone,” Lincoln said. “I just need to be able to defend myself—and I have to show them that I mean business.”

“Jesus, Lincoln…”

Noah hated it. He hated the reality of what was going to happen—the idea that Lincoln might have to actually draw a weapon on someone, or have a weapon drawn on him.

Things suddenly felt much realer than they had before Lincoln had sat down with a gun in his hands.

Anxiety clenched around his lungs and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. It was almost noon. His hands were shaking so he put them under his laptop.

“Are you ready to do this thing?” Lincoln asked.

He wasn’t. Noah nodded anyway. “Everything is set up on my end. Just call me when you’re at 330 West and I’ll initiate the sequence.”

“And what happens once you press the button?”

“When I press the button, you’ll be able to walk right in. They’ll have no idea what hit them.”

Lincoln reached out, pressing under the laptop to lace his fingers through Noah’s. He squeezed Noah’s hand tight and the shaking stopped, if only for a moment.

“I’ll be careful,” Lincoln said. “It’s going to be alright. I’m going to find your brother, and then I’ll come back for you.”

“Our knight in shining armor,” Noah said with a snort.

“No. We’re both going to be responsible for getting him out of there.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Lincoln.”

“This whole thing is stupid,” he said with a crooked smile.

Noah was struck by the notion in that moment that his entire life was about to change. He’d never been one for premonitions or paying much attention to intuition, but the thought bubbled up in his brain like an undeniable fact. Things would never be the same for him after today. He knew that much.

Noah leaned forward, catching Lincoln’s mouth with his own, letting the laptop slide off of his legs as he moved to face Lincoln, to kiss him harder, pulling him in by the back of his neck. Lincoln was obviously surprised and it took him a moment to go pliant, to open to Noah, to hum into the kiss. But finally, there he was.

When they broke, Lincoln had a hand threaded through Noah’s hair and he kept Noah pulled forward, their foreheads still touching.

“We’re doing the right thing,” Lincoln said softly, looking straight into Noah’s eyes. “I promise you, I’ll be safe.”

A lot of people had promised Noah a lot of different things over the years. His father had promised that he’d always be there for Noah and Beau. His mother had promised that she would always protect them. Beau had promised that he would always put Noah first, no matter what.

Noah felt as if he stood at the end of a path littered with broken promises.

But what choice did he have but to believe in Lincoln in that moment?

“Ok,” Noah said, finally. “Let’s go get Beau.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

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