“The rivalry?”
She nodded. “The bandanas were something every Borello member wore for generations. Probably not an easy thing for Kieran and Conor to see, considering what it represented whenever they had seen it.”
She pushed out a sigh and walked toward Maverick, snatching the bandana he was holding and grabbing another off the table.
Walking up to Kieran, she gave him a pointed look and started wrapping the bandana around his wrist as she spoke to the entire kitchen. “You guys are supposed to be headed out on a job right now, not standing around arguing over pieces of fabric.”
Kieran’s jaw was clenched tight when she finished knotting it and moved over to do the same to Conor.
“I know a lot of bad memories are tied to these, and I can’t claim to understand the feelings that come with that, but Kieran works a certain way, you work a certain way, and this is their certain way.”
She shifted back to look at Kieran but gestured to the twins. “You told me the symbol tattooed on them meant a rebellion. Considering that symbol is now on you and Conor, that links you to them. And that’s all they’re doing with the bandanas—linking. Binding. One front. No more Holloway. No more Borello. Just a rebellion. Something you started years ago when you asked for Dare’s help.”
Kieran reached for her, but he stilled and shot Diggs a glare when he said, “Damn straight. There’s our love.”
“All right, we need to move,” Kieran said resolutely. “Einstein.”
“I’m ready when you are,” she said from wherever she was hiding in the kitchen, her voice excited and edgy. “Not a soul in the hall, stairwell, or side exit.”
“Parking lot?”
She choked on a laugh. “Yeah, have fun with that.”
Maverick bit out a curse and tugged on his bandana until it was hanging around his neck and then grabbed the rifle from his back and placed it into the empty weapons bag. Conor’s rifle followed, but Diggs stood there stubbornly until Maverick punched him.
“You don’t know they will see me,” he argued even as he started putting his rifle and guns in the bag. “I’m ninja fast.”
“Kieran’s the only one who could get out unseen, and he’s the only one whose weapons can’t be seen,” Einstein said matter-of-factly. “Nice try.”
Conor grabbed the bag and came for me, stare locked on my own.
When he reached me, he didn’t say a word. Didn’t hold me. Didn’t try to kiss me.
Just pressed his palm to my cheek and studied me, his bright blue eyes saying more than we could in that moment.
More than we should.
He was coming back.
He was worried about me, worried he was making a mistake by leaving.
He would do anything for me.
He was falling in love with me.
And that . . . that shouldn’t have been possible. Except I had a feeling I had already fallen.
Improbable, illogical, unreasonable, and more real than anything I’d ever felt.
My soul shook with the truth of our unspoken words as he released me and headed for the door, Diggs trailing behind with a sly grin.
Maverick watched where Einstein was sitting as long as possible before looking straight ahead, a fierce sort of determination on his face.
Then there was Kieran, holding Jess’s face close and whispering to her in a way that was so gentle and pure that it made me feel as if I were some kind of interloper.
Before I could look away, he released her, the action looking as if it physically caused him pain.
A second passed before he nodded to himself, ground out Einstein’s name, and then went to meet up with the others, slanting a cold, menacing glare my way as he passed.
“You have ten minutes. That’s three times as long as it should take you to get to the car and leave,” Einstein called out. “Starting . . . now.”
I didn’t watch them go.
I wasn’t sure I could.
Because that feeling Jess said I would get used to? It was back and worse than before.
Dark.
Ominous.
Foreboding.
Conor
I shouldered the bag as we slipped out into the night, headed for the car, and stuck close to Kieran’s side. “You gonna tell me why Jess is sitting this—the fuck?”
Kieran had stumbled as soon as Jess’s name left me, bringing me up short.
He was stealth and precision and always sure of every move he made. For him to make any kind of misstep, literal or otherwise, was so alarming I just stood there staring at him as he slowly continued toward the car.
When I caught up to him, he started in a jog.
But it was different.
Distracted.
Every couple of steps, he shook his head as though he were trying to clear it.
I grabbed his shoulder, bringing us both to a stop. “Kieran.”
He smacked my arm away. “We don’t have time for this.”
I tossed Maverick the bag when the twins turned to see what we were doing. “Get the car.”
“We have a job,” Kieran said in a commanding tone. “Let me focus on that.”
“You can’t focus on shit right now. Go back to the room.” I pushed him in the direction of the door we’d just left and started toward the car, but he was right next to me.
Keeping step without ever looking like he was doing anything more than walking in a daze.
“Jessica is late.”
“She isn’t com—oh. Oh . . .” So much from tonight made sense with those three words.
His aggravation and lashing out and what he’d said.
Not that it excused any of it.
I wanted to comment on it so damn bad, but I just cleared my throat and said, “I took care of Lily for years. That doesn’t mean she’s pregnant.”
He cut me a hard look at the reminder of life with Lily, but it quickly fell away, and he raked his hands over his face. “Late, late. Over a month. She’s known and only told me today because she fucking passed out right in front of me.”
“Shit.”
“Said we were about to move on this case when she realized, and then Einstein was taken, and we all came here. She thought I’d keep her from everything if I knew.”
“She wasn’t wrong.”
What would’ve earned me a frustrated look before earned me nothing more than an agonized groan. “I should’ve known. She’s been saying she hasn’t felt right. But this isn’t what we—we don’t want this. She never wanted a baby. I can’t be a dad.”
“And why not? Your kid would be a badass.”
He slowly lifted his eyes, looking at me as if I were insane. “You know me. You know what I’m like and what I’m capable of.”
“Yeah, and I’ve seen you around Lily’s kid and Jess’s nephew. You’re fine. You’re in control. You also aren’t gonna start training your kid to be an assassin from the time they can walk.”
Kieran’s head didn’t stop shaking the entire time I spoke. Slow, wide movements. “What’s inside me is dark and disgusting. I couldn’t live with myself if I passed that on.”
“That side of you was engrained in you by your dad and Mickey, every day, until they molded you into their perfect weapon. It isn’t genetic.” I forced out a laugh. “Jesus, does Jess know this is how you feel?” I started for the car again and pushed him toward the building when he came with me. “Your head isn’t in the right place. Go back.”
“I need this to think—to get my mind off everything.”
“Fuck, man. I don’t blame her for not telling you before.” I placed myself directly in his path, stopping him. “You find out your wife might be pregnant, and the first thing you do is pull her off the case and panic over turning your possible-future kid into an assassin.”
Kieran suddenly had the tip of a knife between his fingers so the hilt was aimed behind me. “Get in the car.”
“The hell?” Diggs yelled. “We have to go.”
Kier
an didn’t respond, only narrowed his eyes.
“Did you even ask Jess what she wants?” I asked.
“You’re saying that, if your wife were pregnant, you wouldn’t pull her off a case like this?” he shot back.
What the hell was wrong with me that the first thought to enter my mind was Sutton and how I would never have her anywhere near a case like this.
“Of course I would,” I said. “Only, I wouldn’t pull her in front of everyone the way you did.”
“It was the only way to keep her there,” he said after a few seconds. “To make sure everyone knew she was off.” He slid the knife into its sheath and rocked to the side as if he were about to start for the car, but then he stopped. “I didn’t have to ask. She told me. Freaked out, saying she didn’t want a child to ever deal with her crazy.”
“She isn’t crazy.”
“I know that,” he whispered. “She doesn’t. Started saying she couldn’t be pregnant. She’s worried that, if she is, it will hurt Einstein. Fuck, I couldn’t tell if she was more afraid of that or of it actually being real.”
I stared at him, unable to comprehend what he was saying. When I spoke, the word was barely audible. “What?”
Kieran dragged his hands over his face again and again before he stilled.
When his eyes met mine, they were cold and distant.
“The hell did that mean?”
His head moved in a sharp jerk of denial, and he tried to step around me.
I shot out a hand to stop him, but he dodged it.
“Kieran, what the fuck?”
He stalked toward the car, leaving me there.
Motionless.
Dumbfounded.
Anxious.
Halfway there, he turned, hands folded behind his neck.
Indecision played on his face for a minute before he said, “Einstein was pregnant with twins. Last year.”
Jesus Christ, everything with Einstein was still too raw not to hurt when I thought about her in that way.
Not to pierce my chest when I pictured her with anyone.
Pictured her fucking pregnant.
“Why didn’t I know?”
“No one knew,” he said solemnly. “Maverick included.”
My gaze shifted to the car the twins were waiting at, still too far to hear our conversation. “Why do you?”
“Because she called Jessica for help when she lost them.”
My eyelids slowly shut as a deep ache radiated within my chest.
For the girl I had loved.
For the pain she’d always tried to hide and failed to conceal.
Even for Maverick, because I knew, without a doubt, everything that had happened between them had to do with that.
“That was why she spiraled last year,” he said, confirming my thoughts. “That was why she left Maverick. He found out right before she was taken.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be my story to tell you,” he said with a heavy sigh.
I nodded, but I couldn’t make sense of any of the emotions spiraling through me.
“Look, I know the two of you are having issues, or whatever,” Maverick said as he stormed toward us, frustration leaking through every word. “But we should’ve been gone within three minutes. We’re now closing in on the ten Einstein bought us. Either you’re coming or Diggs and I are going alone.”
“We’re coming,” Kieran muttered and then turned to lead the way.
The drive was short, but it felt like it took hours with the tensions in the car.
Between Kieran and me.
Kieran’s panic.
My pain.
And all of us preparing for what we were about to do.
Diggs was trying to ease it, but I didn’t hear a word he said.
By the time we’d parked just off the Larson’s property, we were all on edge in the worst of ways.
We quickly dug into the bag, checking the guns and arming ourselves, no one speaking as we did.
Kieran just stood by, slowly pulling knives out of his pockets.
“Remember the blueprint?” he asked the twins.
Diggs snorted. “Like I could forget.”
“Yes,” Maverick murmured.
“Remember everything they did to Einstein,” Kieran said gravely. “Remember the way they slowly tortured her. The way she looked when we found her. Remember that we almost lost her because of these bastards.” His eyes darted to me before shifting to the blades in his hand. “Remember what he did to Sutton.”
I knew he didn’t believe a word Sutton had told us.
But I didn’t care.
He’d said that to get my head straight, which I was thankful for.
Because the clusterfuck of energy that had been surrounding us had turned cold and dark and cruel, and I knew we were all right where we were supposed to be.
I softly closed the trunk of the car and then gripped my rifle.
Maverick looked to Diggs as he pulled the bandana over his face. “You alive?”
Diggs’s wide smile was the last thing I saw before he set his bandana in place. “Fuck yes, I’m alive.”
“Keep it that way.”
I looked from them to Kieran, who was staring at the twins in annoyance. With a sigh, he started toward the property. “Let’s show a cartel what happens when they hurt one of our own.”
The rest of us followed, quickly and quietly cutting across the Larson’s land and straight for the guesthouse.
I knew it ate at Kieran to be working in a group. Not to be able to go where he felt called.
Could see it in the way he twitched and hissed curses under his breath.
But this had been the plan for every stop.
Jess and Kieran had cleared the places we were hitting last week, so we knew what to expect. Even though we knew where the bunker entrances were this time, it didn’t mean we were going straight in.
There were multiple points of entry at every location, including the guesthouse we were approaching, and we planned to use them on the off chance anyone had caught on and was expecting us.
The twins would go in through the back, and Kieran and I would go through the front.
Halfway through the backyard, Maverick and Diggs branched away to go around the house. Rifles pressed to their shoulders. Eyes to their scopes.
Ten feet later, Kieran slammed a hand into my shoulder, stopping me.
He was still, head tilted low but eyes moving everywhere, hearing something that I couldn’t beyond the night sounds.
I glanced through the night vision scope mounted onto my rifle and slowly turned, looking for something that shouldn’t be there.
Kieran hissed a curse and took off for the left side of the house a split second before gunfire erupted.
A cry of pain ripped through the night, somehow overpowering everything else.
Because I knew in my gut that cry had come from one of the twins.
I charged after Kieran, rifle up and ready, finger resting next to the trigger, and stumbled upon one of the twins shooting at the tree line on the edge of the property.
A bullet zipped past my ear, and I shifted, catching where the moonlight reflected off something in the bushes. I fired two rounds as another roar sounded from beside me.
“Where’s Kieran?” I yelled, still looking for signs of anyone else.
“The fuck should I know?”
I risked a glance at Maverick, and caught sight of two people rounding the corner of the house, guns drawn.
“Down.”
Maverick dropped without hesitation, already letting off another burst toward the tree line.
I lit into the first as they fired at Maverick and me and was aiming for the second when he staggered back.
Before he could fall, a man as silent as the night slipped up beside him, ripping a knife through his throat.
I rushed toward Kieran, tapping Maverick’s back as I went. “You good?”
“Fu
cking bastards, where’s Diggs?”
I didn’t answer; I just kept running.
Kieran grabbed me by the collar, trying to force me to the other side of the house. “Get Diggs and go.”
“What?”
“Get Diggs and get the fuck out of here.”
I looked wildly around, trying to find the twin in question, when Maverick came up beside us, rifle still raised, searching the area.
“There were three over there,” he said, his breaths uneven. “My arm.”
My eyes darted over him and caught on the dark liquid dripping down his upper left arm.
“Three on the other and two at the back,” Kieran said as I quickly unwound the bandana from my wrist and tied it tightly just below Maverick’s shoulder, above the wound. “You need to get your brother.”
Maverick lowered his rifle and snapped his attention to us. He studied Kieran for a moment, trying to hear the underlying message before racing to the side of the house Diggs had gone to.
“Diggs is bad off,” Kieran said. “Get him to the car. I’ll be there soon.”
“Fuck that, I’m staying with you.”
He shoved me back, trying to get me to go to where the twins were. “Three, three, and two? That doesn’t make sense. Someone’s still out there. I still need to check the bunker. You aren’t coming with me.”
“You aren’t going alone.”
He gripped my head and pulled me close, his voice harsh. “I’m not fucking burying you too. Go.”
Maverick yelled my name just as I was about to argue.
“Go,” Kieran repeated in a lethal tone. “They won’t see me coming.”
I warred with myself until my name was called again and then took off for the twins.
Diggs was on the ground choking out curses, and Maverick was trying to calm him. Both had their bandanas off and were pressing them to Diggs’s right side. Neither watching their surroundings for any potential threats.
I went to my knees beside Diggs, searching the area through my scope before looking at him.
“Fucking assholes waited until I passed them before they started shooting. Fucking pussies. And why is my goddamn stomach growling?”
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.
Limit (Rebel Book 3) Page 28
