Page 126 of Breaking His Exile

“River,” he said.

River saw it. His hand froze on the remote. The gate stayed closed.

The van slowed. Stopped. Its brake lights flared red in the darkness, painting the gravel in blood-colored light.

The side door slid open.

A body hit the dirt, one arm bent beneath him at an angle that made X’s stomach turn. The van’s engine revved. Tires spun. Gravel sprayed. Then it was gone, taillights shrinking to pinpricks and vanishing around the bend, and the night went quiet except for the sound of X’s own heartbeat hammering in his ears.

He was out of the truck before River had killed the engine.

Blood. A lot of blood. It had pooled beneath the man, black in the security lamps’ glow, seeping into the gravel.

X dropped to his knees and rolled the man onto his back.

Creed Calder. Or what was left of him. He looked like something fed through machinery and spit out the other side as hamburger.

His face was swollen and bloodied, his nose flattened and crusted with dried blood. His lip had been busted so thoroughly that X could see teeth through the tear. One eye was swollen completely closed; the other, half-open, tracked nothing, the pupil blown wide and unresponsive. His throat bore bruises in the distinct pattern of fingers. His shirt—what remained of it—was dark and stiff with blood, torn in long strips across the chest where someone had worked him over with something that wasn’t fists.

“Jesus Christ,” River breathed. He’d come up behind X, phone already out, dialing. “Walker. Yeah. Gate. Now. It’s Creed. They dumped him. He’s—” River’s voice cracked. “He’s fucked up, man. Really fucked up.”

X pressed two fingers to Creed’s carotid. The pulse was there—thin, thready, skipping beats like a faulty engine. Creed’s chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged pulls. Each breath produced a wet, clicking sound that X had heard before, in places he tried not to remember, and knew it meant the Grim Reaper was near.

“Ambulance,” X said. “Now. Tell them massive trauma, multiple fractures, probable internal bleeding.” He was already stripping off his jacket, balling it up, pressing it against the worst of the bleeding on Creed’s chest. The fabric went dark immediately. Warm. Slick. “And call Brandt. He needs to know.”

River was already on it, voice steady despite the way his hands shook. X kept pressure on the wound. Creed’s skin was cold. Shock setting in, or blood loss, or both. His one working eye had fixed on something beyond X’s shoulder—the sky, maybe, or nothing at all.

“Stay with me, cabrón,” X said. He leaned closer. “You hear me? Stay the fuck awake.”

Creed’s eye drifted. Found X’s face. Held. Something moved behind the swelling—recognition, maybe, or the ghost of it. His mouth worked. No sound came out. Just a bubble of blood that popped on his split lip.

X’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

He ignored it. Adjusted the jacket, found a new angle of pressure. Creed’s breathing had gone even shallower. The wet sound had gotten worse.

The phone buzzed again. And again.

River was pacing, phone to his ear, running through symptoms with someone on the other end—Bear, probably, or dispatch. His voice had taken on that clipped, controlled quality that meant he was holding it together by sheer force of will. Behind him, headlights swept across the yard as Walker’s truck barreled down the driveway.

X’s phone kept buzzing.

He shifted his weight. Kept one hand pressed to Creed’s chest. With the other, he fished the phone from his pocket, thumbed it open without looking.

Mariah. Three messages.

X?

Where are you?

Are you still coming?

The screen glowed in the dark. X stared at it. Creed’s blood was warm on his palm. Somewhere in the distance, the first faint wail of a siren cut through the night.

He typed one-handed. Fast. Clumsy. Thumbs smearing blood across the glass.

Sorry. Can’t make it. I’ll explain later.

He hit send. Dropped the phone beside him in the gravel. Didn’t look at it again.