Limit

by McAdams, Molly

  Each sentence was broken with hisses of pain and wheezes. His voice was strained. Even in the dark, I could see his shirt was drenched with blood. His hands and right arm were covered.

  And it was all too similar.

  Beck.

  Lying on the grass, soaked with his blood.

  Choking and trying to crack jokes until the very end.

  I wouldn’t let this happen to them.

  I gripped his right hand. “You got feeling?”

  “Fuck, man. Yeah. Don’t have to Hulk me.”

  Maverick laughed, but it sounded tortured.

  I reached for the bottom of his shirt. “Gonna see what we’re dealing with. All right?”

  I wasn’t sure who hissed louder.

  Diggs from the pain or Maverick as he took in the amount of blood flowing from his brother’s side and back. So much that I couldn’t tell how many times he’d been shot or where.

  From the helpless sort of panic on Maverick’s face, he knew what I was thinking.

  But I wasn’t losing anyone tonight.

  “Well, you were definitely shot,” I said tonelessly and tried not to wince when Diggs started laughing, only to cry out in pain. “I’ve seen worse, you’re just enjoying the attention.”

  A pained, amused breath left him. “’Bout time I got some love.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see if you still think that after this.” I swallowed thickly and pressed the tips of my fingers to his chest and side. “Sorry, man,” I muttered before I roughly raked my fingers over his torso.

  Diggs arched and yelled curses through gritted teeth as I dragged my fingers over him again and again, looking for gunshot wounds and counting them as I found them.

  Chest . . . clear.

  Right side . . . one, two . . . three.

  Back . . . fuck.

  His back was riddled with tiny holes and jagged pieces.

  I glanced at the shot-up wall of the guesthouse a foot away from us and was thankful that, from the looks of it, they’d missed Diggs more than they hit him.

  “Shit ton of shrapnel in his back,” I whispered to Maverick and then said, “Diggs, left side.”

  “No,” he gritted out. “No, fuck you.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” I rolled him onto his back, trying to ignore the way he cried out, and showed Maverick where to put pressure against his right side. Once he had the bandanas in place and was pressing down, I said, “Last time, Diggs.”

  Before he could object, I raked my fingers down the left side of his chest and torso, and about thanked God out loud when I didn’t find anything.

  I shifted my hands under Diggs and took over where Maverick was pressing down. “Get the rifles. Diggs, we’re moving.”

  Diggs strained and tried not to react to each slight bump and jostle as I hurried to the car, and I tried not to think of how much blood was dripping between my fingers and down my arms.

  How little time we had.

  What I had to do to save someone’s brother when I’d never had a chance to save mine.

  “Kieran has bandages in the trunk,” I said as we neared the car.

  Maverick ran ahead to trade out the rifles for what I needed, and once I was there, I gently lowered Diggs until his feet were touching the ground and he was leaning against the car.

  “Need you to stand. I’ll work fast.”

  “Know how to sta—shit.” He roared when I lifted off his shirt. When I took mine off immediately after, he gave me a weak, wary look. “I don’t love you that much.”

  Despite it all, a laugh forced itself from my chest as I pressed my shirt tightly against his side. “Sure you do, Diggs.” I nodded to Maverick when he rounded the car. “Get a bandage ready.”

  I pushed as hard as I could, trying to ignore the pained sounds Diggs was making. When Maverick was ready, I took the large bandage from his hold and quickly put it over one of the gunshot wounds.

  Over and over until all three were covered.

  I’d just finished with the last one when Kieran appeared beside me.

  Chest heaving, knives covered in blood and still in hand.

  “Diggs?”

  I didn’t answer.

  I didn’t want to when both brothers could hear me.

  I just gave him a look that told him all he needed to know.

  With a sharp nod, he rushed to get in and start the car while I lowered Diggs onto the backseat where Maverick waited, and then headed for the passenger seat.

  “Go,” I said as soon as I was in.

  “There was a guy in the guesthouse,” Kieran started as he tore onto the street. “Said groups of nine men were called to nine houses tonight. Didn’t know who gave the orders or where anyone was.”

  “Nine houses—shit,” I muttered. “The four houses from Zachary and Sutton’s generation, and all their parents’ . . .”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. The bunker was empty, but this was on the inside of the door.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a balled-up piece of paper that was smeared with blood.

  I opened it, rage building and burning inside me as soon as I read the typed words.

  Let’s play a game.

  Which of you will die first?

  Which of you will die last?

  I won’t rest until every last one of you is buried in the ground—dead or alive.

  “I’m going to kill him,” I seethed. “Slowly.”

  “You won’t get the chance if I see him first,” Kieran murmured.

  Diggs tried to choke out something but ended up hissing in pain.

  “He’s mine,” Maverick growled. “Einstein. My brother. He’s mine.”

  I looked in the back to where Maverick was holding Diggs slightly up and putting pressure on his side and then whispered to Kieran, “He needs blood.”

  He mouthed a curse and then accelerated.

  “Maverick, what’s Diggs’s blood type?”

  “O positive.”

  I shifted to look at him, hating that I had put that hopeless look on his face but knowing this was necessary. “You the same?”

  He nodded, the movement quick but solemn.

  “Buncha vampires,” Diggs wheezed.

  “Damn right,” I said with a forced smile as I looked straight ahead.

  I swallowed past the knot in my throat and tried to tell myself it wasn’t as bad as I remembered . . . but I could still feel those holes in his side. Diggs’s blood was coating my hands all the way to my wrists.

  “It won’t be enough,” I murmured to Kieran. “Shit, I don’t think I even have anything to start an IV or take Maverick’s blood.”

  “You have your kit?” he asked.

  “In my bag, but I think I only packed what I’d need to fix someone up.”

  “There’s a hospital a couple of miles past the resort,” he said as he raced down the freeway. “Focus on what you have to do. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Diggs?” Panic filled Maverick’s voice and seeped into the car. “Diggs!”

  I turned in the seat, leaning over to grip Diggs’s limp arm.

  Maverick held him tighter, mumbling curses and pleas under his breath as I searched for a pulse.

  “Faint but fast.” Grabbing my phone, I shoved it against Kieran’s arm and demanded, “Call the girls. Tell them to be ready.”

  Sutton

  “So, what’s the deal with the fort?” Jess asked from where she was sprawled out on the sofa bed with Einstein.

  “The twins have always done it,” Einstein murmured. She took a break from staring at her computer to look at the massive fort, a smile tugging at her mouth before she went back to dutifully watching the screens. “This is nothing. Next time they build one at the Borello house, you’ll have to come see it. They put lights in the sheets, pull all the mattresses into the room, and basically empty the fridge and pantry. It’s magic.”

  I waved a hand in the air, gesturing to the massive two-room, two-floor fort. “This is nothing?”

&n
bsp; “It just isn’t the same. Not as extravagant.”

  A sharp, disbelieving laugh burst from me. I couldn’t imagine anything more extravagant than what the guys had spent all day creating.

  “I’ll be there,” Jess said wistfully. “Just give me a few days at home in bed with my man first, and then I’ll be there.”

  Einstein pretended to gag. “You guys are disgusting. You know that, right?”

  A wry smile slowly stretched across Jess’s face. “You try living out of a car with Maverick for over a week and then tell me you don’t jump at any opportunity to be all over him.”

  “It has nothing to do with your living conditions,” Einstein argued. “You’re all over each other all the time.”

  Jess lifted her hands in surrender, her smile never fading.

  “You guys are living out of a car?” I asked cautiously.

  “Only while we’re here.” She must have read the guilt on my face, because she hurried to say, “Don’t worry. It isn’t the first time we’ve lived out of a car during a job. Sometimes it’s easier that way.”

  I blinked slowly, trying to figure out how that could be easier. It sounded awful. “Why? There are so many hotels around here, I’m sure at least one of them has to have a vacant room.” I sucked in a quick breath. “Or are you trying not to draw the attention of law enforcement because we were already using rooms?”

  Einstein looked up, her brow scrunched together. After a quick, shared glance with an even more confused Jess, she said, “Uh . . . right, I’m not sure either of us know what you meant by that.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be rude,” I said on a rush. “Please don’t think I’m not thankful for everything you’ve done for Lexi and me, because I am.”

  “Yeah, I’m not offended . . . yet,” Einstein said slowly and then shot me a look as if she were trying to figure out if she should be. “I literally don’t know what you meant. And I never don’t know what people mean. What attention of law enforcement?”

  I glanced at Jess before meeting Einstein’s curious, calculating stare again. “I just meant, well, all the rooms that we’ve been in, Conor said they were under different names and cards. If you’ve been stealing cards and identities . . .”

  I realized how wrong I was when both girls shared a look and then burst into laughter.

  “That’s what you’ve thought this entire time?” Jess asked, wiping moisture from under her eyes.

  “Names and cards that are linked to our bank accounts. We have different ones set up under false names for this very reason,” Einstein explained.

  “But these . . .” I looked around the suite we were in. I knew exactly what kind of world I had grown up in. What types of houses I’d lived in my entire life. That didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate and marvel at the beauty and grandeur of the place where I was staying. Even the lesser suites we had been in had been extravagant. “These aren’t cheap. I know that for a fact.”

  “Right,” Einstein said. “That is why I put this one under a card that’s linked to one of Diggs’s accounts. Since he’d just rack up the bill with room service anyway.”

  “Cost the same as the room,” Jess mumbled.

  “Close enough.” Einstein slowly studied me. “Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you aren’t the only one with money, Princess.”

  I started at the snide comment. “What? I don’t—I just didn’t know.”

  “You thought we stole identities and credit cards to secure rooms. I can guess where your thoughts went from there.”

  “I didn’t—” I pressed my lips firmly together and dropped my head into my hands.

  Trying to explain myself would only make this worse.

  Nothing I said was well-received, especially with Einstein and Kieran.

  Every answer I gave was twisted or taken with a heavy dose of doubt.

  There was never any winning with them.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I lifted my head.

  Einstein had already turned back to her computer and didn’t bother to acknowledge me.

  Then again, I wasn’t sure if I blamed her.

  My husband had lured her into a game I knew well, only hers had such a different ending from mine. If the roles had been reversed, I wasn’t sure which would win out . . . my empathy and understanding because we’d been through similar things or my bitterness and resentment that she’d put me in the situation to begin with.

  It was clear which one had won out in Einstein.

  I stood, needing to move, needing to get out of the room I no longer felt welcome in, but I hadn’t made it more than a step before Einstein spoke.

  “Just because we live differently from you, it doesn’t mean we’re all that different.”

  I stopped to watch her as she slowly lowered the top of her laptop and straightened her back and set her glare on me.

  “We’ve lived through and done things you haven’t seen or realized existed even though they were all around you. You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, which was paid for by the same dark deeds that funded our bank accounts for years. We might not live the extravagant life you’re used to, but that’s because we prefer to be unsuspecting. Doesn’t mean each one of us isn’t currently worth more than your piece-of-shit ‘husband’ or his friends.”

  My eyelids slowly shut as words I’d said to Conor last week tore through my mind.

  “Excuse me for having money and using it. I’ll try not to flash it in front of the likes of you again.”

  “Of course you are,” I mumbled.

  “But living the way we do is how we’re able to do this. It’s how, when women and children like you and Lexi, need help . . . we’re able to give them money to help them start over instead of charging them a fee.”

  “I’m sorry for what I said and how it came across,” I said after a moment. “I took what Conor said about the rooms the wrong way—clearly—and for that, I am sorry.” I pressed a hand to my chest in a futile attempt to settle my racing heart. “But I don’t care how much money any of you have. I wouldn’t care if all of you were broke.”

  I took a few steps back, my shoulders sagging as I did.

  “I just . . . God, it doesn’t even matter. Nothing I say will make this better. Nothing will change your mind about me.”

  “Sutton,” Jess called out when I started walking away, but her voice wasn’t what stopped me.

  It was the ringing of a phone.

  I turned, my heart stopping painfully before kicking up, faster than before.

  “About time we got an update,” Einstein said with a relieved sigh, opening her computer again.

  Jess barely took the time to glance at her phone and mumble Conor’s name before answering. “Hey—Kieran?” Her entire body stilled for tense, torturous seconds. “What happened?”

  My hand shot out, grabbing the edge of the chair when it felt like I would fall.

  She whispered short questions into the phone as her expression started to fall. Seconds later, she threw the phone at Einstein. “Talk to him,” she demanded as she scrambled from the bed. As soon as her feet touched the floor, she was running for the kitchen, yelling for me as she did.

  When I made it into the kitchen, she was loading the remaining guns into her arms, already snapping orders at me.

  “Help me get these into this room. We need to clear off the table.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone was shot. Bad.”

  Dread and fear froze me in place until she yelled my name again, and then I was moving. Running guns and cans of ammo into Conor’s room until the kitchen was cleared. By the time I made it back in there from the last load, Jess was climbing the stairs and trying to tear down the sheets from the fort.

  Einstein was already off the phone, her fingers flying over the keys on the laptop.

  “Did he tell you?” Jess asked, her voice tense as she finally got ahold of a sheet and started pulling.

  “No,” Einstei
n ground out. “Move faster.”

  I caught the sheets as Jess dropped them and hurried to untie and unclip them as she rushed back downstairs, bundled them up, and ran them to the kitchen.

  “Sutton,” she called over her shoulder. “Conor’s duffle. There’s a black bag in there, we need it.”

  I didn’t think. I just dropped the sheets where I stood and ran, tripping and sliding over even more as I did.

  When I made it back out, Jess had the kitchen table covered with a couple of the sheets and was folding more into a pile on one of the chairs.

  “Find something to hold warm water,” she said distractedly. “Get all the towels you can find.”

  I turned in a quick circle, my mind unable to figure out which way to go first, when I caught sight of a large, decorative bowl.

  I ran for it, dumped the contents onto the floor, and hurried over to the sink to fill it.

  I’d just placed the bowl on a chair next to the table when Einstein called out, “They’re here.”

  Jess and I both froze, looking to Einstein and then the door.

  “Jess, get to the door.”

  She placed the remaining bundle of sheets in the corner and gripped my arm as she passed. “Towels.”

  “Damn it.” It felt like I was running through water as I went from room to room, collecting all the clean towels we had. My mind was so frazzled that I didn’t even stop to see if all the commotion, which felt so big and so loud to me, had woken Lexi.

  No sooner had I come back with the last armful of towels than I heard Jess’s horrified, “Oh God.”

  I nearly fell to my knees right then.

  My chest constricted and felt heavy.

  I couldn’t catch my breath.

  When Conor came running through the suite, I couldn’t even focus on the relief that poured through me at seeing him. He was there, shirtless and covered in blood and carrying one of the twins’ limp body.

  The massive, open space of the suite suddenly felt too small, and it continued to close in around me as I watched Conor put the body on the sheet-covered table and immediately reached for one of the bandages already on his side.

  Blood.