Limit (Rebel Book 3)

by Molly McAdams

  Kieran mumbled a curse.

  “She opens up when she wants to, and I have to let her.”

  Kieran grunted, the sound both irritated and mocking. “Last night you—”

  “Jesus, last night,” I breathed. It was rough and raw and full of regret.

  Last night I’d been reeling from the ultimatum Kieran had dealt.

  Refusing to allow a client to get into my head and under my skin.

  Telling myself over and over again that Sutton was the reason for Einstein nearly dying, trying to build up that hate again, trying to make her hate me.

  I’d barely lasted five minutes. As soon as Sutton’s eyes had gone all glassy, I’d nearly broken.

  When she’d stood and walked away, I’d lasted until her bedroom door clicked shut before I was going after her.

  Jess had stopped me with disappointed words and a cold glare, and forced me and Kieran out of the suite.

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” I said. “I could’ve ruined what little trust I’ve built with her, and you know it. When she’s ready to tell me something we should know, she will.”

  “We don’t have time to wait for her to trust you,” Kieran rumbled. “It’s been months of trying to get any information from her, and now we need to find people.”

  “Maybe she was afraid,” I said, voicing an idea I’d been thinking over since that first night with Sutton.

  “Of?” Kieran prompted.

  “Us,” I said simply. “She didn’t trust us before, she was hostile when I found her, and she’s been slow to trust me. I’ve been thinking about how she asked for our help and questioned us a lot, but if she only knew that we were involved in Veronica’s disappearance and hadn’t known why Veronica would need us? We were a risk she was taking . . . we were an unknown.”

  Kieran sighed after a moment. “Fair.”

  Jess was staring so intently at the floor, as though she were forcing herself not to look anywhere else, that unease gathered in the pit of my stomach.

  “What, Jess?”

  She angled her head toward Kieran, away from me, and licked her lips nervously.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Jess nervous in the time I’d known her.

  “Jess,” I prompted louder.

  “There’s an or we aren’t discussing,” she said on a rush. “It’s something Einstein mentioned.”

  From the way Kieran was studying her, he was in the dark as much as I was.

  “Jessica,” he said softly, a plea and demand all at once.

  “Einstein’s systems started getting hacked not long after we moved Veronica. We thought it was because Sutton had been looking into us that whole year, and Zachary somehow found out. And that could still be the case. She could have been looking because she knew about our involvement with Veronica, and that was what started the chain of events,” she rambled, quick to backtrack on the speculation.

  “Jessica.”

  She shared a wordless conversation with Kieran before glancing at me. With a stuttered exhale, she said, “The or is that Sutton’s emails about wanting to be relocated could have been part of Zachary’s game, and we’ve walked right into another trap.”

  I didn’t respond because I had a feeling that my immediate response wouldn’t have been met well, all things considered.

  So instead, I waited.

  Kieran said, “I want to know what you think.”

  “I’m not expecting you to believe me, so I don’t have a response.”

  His eyes darkened with frustration. “Sutton’s shock when she learned about the Tennessee Gentlemen, you think it was genuine?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Is there anything she’s confessed to you, other than this morning?”

  I thought over the last five days. “Not confess so much as put together pieces in a way where she can’t help but say it. Like I’ve shocked and stunned her so badly the words just come out.” I waved a hand toward him. “But everything I know, you know.”

  “Except for this morning.”

  “It doesn’t help or harm the case. It gives her a legitimate reason to want to get away from him,” I argued. “But she hates him for what he did to her, and she feels betrayed by everyone around her. That betrayal grows with each new thing I reveal. So, if you’re asking me, I think she would’ve fessed up if this were one of Zachary’s games.”

  “Agreed,” Kieran said on an exhale and then walked forward, extending a hand to help Jess off the floor. “No more disappearances.”

  I ground my jaw to keep from responding in a way that wouldn’t help anything.

  “When are you moving next?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Make it today. Get with Einstein on the times.” His tone left no room for question, so I simply dipped my head in a nod. “And, Conor . . .” He waited until my narrowed stare was focused on him before saying, “Sutton needs to give us something more than she did last night. We’ve been everywhere listed in the files. There’s still no trace of Zachary or Garret. Remind her that, until we have eyes on him, she’s stuck here.”

  “Understood.”

  Sutton

  I watched Lexi coloring at the kitchen table of our new suite that evening, arms wrapped tightly around myself to ward off the bone-deep chill I hadn’t been able to shake since Conor had realized she was gone this morning.

  Gone.

  And all because of me.

  I kept replaying the conversation in my head, trying to think of how it must have sounded to her. My heart cracked a little more each time I did.

  I kept wondering how we hadn’t known. How we hadn’t heard her leave. Even after Conor tested it and we both realized we wouldn’t hear the door close unless someone slammed it, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around how Lexi had slipped out unnoticed.

  Because that meant someone could’ve come in and grabbed her unnoticed.

  A full-body tremor ripped through me, stealing my breath.

  “Cold?”

  I looked up when Conor appeared beside me.

  “Um, I don’t . . .” It was all I could get out.

  Because I couldn’t figure out if I was. I felt it down to my soul, but I was sure it had nothing to do with the temperature in the room.

  My attention drifted back to Lexi for a minute before the thoughts that had been begging to be freed all day finally started slipping out. “We keep switching rooms, but what if whoever’s helping Zachary hacks the cameras? They’ll see which room we go to.”

  “Einstein has fake camera feeds that play three times a day, at random times. They’re long enough for us to move rooms, which is why we have to wait to move, when we do.”

  I nodded, but the movement was jerky. Because his answer didn’t help with the rest of the thoughts clustering together on my tongue.

  “I hadn’t thought about it before,” I said, my voice soft as a breath, “but I thought of something earlier, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  The tips of his fingers grazed my arm when I didn’t continue, and I both cherished and hated the way my skin warmed with his touch. The way my body ached for more.

  An ache so pure and genuine after a year of tainted cravings that I felt as if I might go insane before this war inside me ended.

  There were so many unknowns and suspicions and doubts wrapped up in the man next to me, but I was legally bound to another, so how could I still want Conor so fiercely?

  Alarm rang in his tender voice. “Sutton, what is it?”

  “When Lexi disappeared, you made me stay here.”

  “To pro—”

  “You made me stay, Conor.” I stepped deeper into the living room and held his confused stare. “That’s my daughter, my world, and she was gone. Every instinct told me to find her, and then I had you in my head telling me to stay, and I listened because, what if she came back and we were both gone?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then you had Jess come here,” I continued, not ca
ring that he was trying to explain away something I’d already expected him to. “That was when it hit me. She was here to make sure I didn’t leave. And I wondered . . .” A soft, almost frantic sounding laugh left my lips. “What if you and Jess and Kieran are only doing to Zachary what he did to all of you. And Lexi and I are your Einstein, and I’ve been blindly taking you at your word?”

  “Sutton, no.”

  “That was why I couldn’t leave to find Lexi, because you couldn’t risk losing me too.”

  “No—fuck,” he growled and drove his hands through his hair before he reached for me, bringing me close and dropping his voice. “Of course, I couldn’t risk losing you. I can’t risk losing either of you because it’s my job to keep you safe. To keep you away from a goddamn monster.”

  “And how do I know that you aren’t the monster?”

  He released me as though I’d burned him. His chest moved with rough jerks as he stared at me with a mixture of pain and resentment.

  “How do I know you aren’t the one lying? How do I know that you helped Vero and didn’t hurt her? My entire life has been a lie, why should I believe you?” I asked through gritted teeth. “You called Zachary a master manipulator, but what if that’s you?”

  Of everything I’d said, the last hurt the most.

  He flinched as if it had been a physical blow.

  Anger flashed across his face.

  For long seconds, he stood there with a far-off look. And then those bright eyes captured me and he closed the distance between us with one large step, bringing our bodies flush together.

  I swayed when his lips met my ear, but all thoughts of the way it felt to have him against me fled the moment he spoke.

  Rough.

  Filled with anger and pain.

  And meant to hurt.

  “If you want to be manipulated, then leave. Go back to the bastard who drugged you for a year.”

  We didn’t speak until long after Lexi had gone to sleep.

  We didn’t see each other either.

  I knew where he was, of course. As soon as he had said those words, he’d pushed past me and gone to the door. Lexi had even bounded over there to leave crayons and a page from her coloring book with him.

  I didn’t know what he did with them or what he said to her, but she was all smiles when she came skipping back into the living room.

  My body had ached to go to him, to talk to him. I knew if I did, I would find him leaning against the door, arms folded over his chest, head ever so slightly tipped back.

  The picture of power and strength and ease.

  And utterly handsome.

  Which was why, as I closed the door to our bedroom, I told myself a dozen times to go back into the room and try to sleep or to stop in the living room. To do anything other than continue down the path I was on.

  Tonight, it felt dangerous.

  I rounded the corner to the hall leading to the door, and sure enough, there he stood under the glow of a dim light.

  Power.

  Strength.

  Ease.

  Devastating.

  His guarded eyes followed me as I approached and then went back to looking straight ahead once I was resting against the wall adjacent to him.

  “Conor, I’m . . .”

  “It’s what you think,” he murmured when I hesitated.

  My eyelids slipped shut, and a pained breath wheezed from me.

  Deny it. Deny, deny.

  If I were home, talking with any of the people I normally surrounded myself with, it would have been exactly what I would’ve done.

  I could easily be caught talking trash and then brushing it away with a few exaggerated, kiss-assing sentences, both parties knowing all along that I was completely full of shit.

  Fake.

  Fake smiles. Fake emotions. Fake words.

  That was all we were. All I had been . . . until a giant of a man broke into my motel room and started calling me out on every flaw.

  “I don’t know what I think anymore,” I finally admitted. “You came in and turned my world upside down, taking away everything I ever knew. When I really focus on the specifics, I wonder why I believe a complete stranger over the people I’ve known my entire life—especially when it could just as easily go the other way.”

  “Understandable.”

  I looked into his solemn expression, searching for the hurt that I’d seen earlier, but it wasn’t there.

  “But what you said . . .” He shifted to face me. “It doesn’t make sense. You came to us, and we were trying to help you before Zachary ever came to town or took Einstein.”

  My lips parted, a denial on my tongue, before I remembered . . . before I caught the slip I couldn’t afford to make.

  “We were already so far into the case with you when that went down. Jess and I were panicking because we had lost our communication with you. Only to find out after we got Einstein back that you were connected to all of it. So why would we be doing what Zachary did to Einstein with you?”

  Oh . . . “When you put it that way, I guess you wouldn’t.”

  “And why would you be standing here with me if you truly believed it?”

  Because I can’t stay away from you.

  Because there’s something about your soul that I crave.

  I swallowed thickly and lifted a shoulder. “Probably because I never really could believe it. But I think a part of me wants to.”

  “Would it be easier if it were true?”

  Yes . . . and, no.

  Then I wouldn’t feel so disgusted with myself.

  I wouldn’t be the only one—

  I forced back the thought.

  “I think it would destroy me if it were,” I admitted softly, breathlessly, the words meaning so much more than I ever should have admitted aloud.

  He dragged his hands over his face and groaned into them. When they fell limply to his sides, he slid down the door until he was sitting with his arms resting on bent knees.

  Oh Jesus.

  My heart was racing, and my cheeks were burning with embarrassed heat.

  I wanted to leave, and I wanted to stay. I wanted to take back what I said as badly as I wanted to reach out and touch him, to have that contact with him.

  But I was terrified that, if I did any one of those things, I would push him into that cold, distant Conor.

  I rocked to the side, and at the last moment, I dropped to a crouch beside him.

  As he had been when I’d first joined him, he was staring straight ahead, and for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything to say. But standing back up and leaving was no longer an option.

  “So . . . only you and Jess were panicking?” I tried to make it come out teasing, but my internal panic was evident in the jagged words.

  The corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk. “Kieran doesn’t panic.”

  My head moved in quick bounces. “I guess I can see that.”

  “Sutton,” he murmured so softly, and my shoulders caved with the rejection I already felt coming.

  A rejection that shouldn’t have been necessary because I shouldn’t have allowed myself to feel anything at all.

  “Don’t, please.” I pressed my hands to my knees and started pushing myself back up. My mouth was open, ready to beg him to forget anything I had said, when he snatched my wrist and pulled me toward him.

  I stumbled before righting myself, this time closer than we had been before.

  My breaths were embarrassingly uneven, and I didn’t care.

  Because he was staring at me in a way that I wanted to capture so I could remember this look and this feeling for the rest of my life.

  “What you think of us, of me, it isn’t true. There’s still something you should know.”

  His words should’ve had panic and suspicion rising, but I found myself holding my breath, waiting to hear his voice again.

  “When we finally got Einstein back and she told us everything about Zachary, I hated you.”

&n
bsp; Shock pulsed through me so forcefully that I wrenched back. “What?”

  “The way I saw it, you looking into us started a domino effect that led to Einstein almost dying. I blamed you for it, hated you for it. Then after nearly twelve hours of driving here and looking for you, you were hostile and ungrateful, and it made me resent you more.”

  So many things I hadn’t realized before that moment clicked into place with a few sentences. I felt like an idiot for not seeing it before.

  Embarrassment filled me as I thought over everything I had already said and done and possibly even hinted at.

  I shifted to sit on the floor and tried to put as much distance as possible between Conor and I without making it obvious. “Why did you come then?”

  “A case is still a case, no matter my feelings on it.”

  And he hated me.

  Not only that . . . “Einstein.” I forced myself to meet his curious stare. “I don’t know how I haven’t heard it until tonight. I mean . . . I don’t know how many times I’ve heard you talk to her or say her name.”

  Conor’s expression shifted into some form of dread.

  “She means something to you.”

  His silence was answer enough.

  Such an idiot.

  It doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. I’m still married. I’m his client—he hates me.

  Then why did it bother me?

  I forced a smile. “So, what’s the story there?”

  “There isn’t one,” he said honestly. “I knew the day I met her that she belonged to someone in a forever kind of way. You don’t fuck with that.”

  “But you love her.”

  His head moved in the slightest of nods, and his eyes unfocused. “I did.” With a broken inhale, he turned those piercing eyes on me. “I thought you should know where my head was when I came to Tennessee . . . you know, since we’re in the habit of saying what we think.”

  I cleared my throat, my forced smile tighter than ever. “Well, at least I know. Even if you hadn’t before, I’m sure I would’ve earned your hate by now.”

  “Hated,” he corrected. “Unjustly.”

  My heart skipped a beat before taking off at a torturous pace.