Page 86 of Hard Limits

“The dude in the Hawaiian shirt?”

“Yes. Do you have any idea who he is?”

Dawson shook his head. “Never met him before, but he’s an operator. I see it in the way he moves. Former Delta, I think.”

“What makes you say that?”

“When we met, he smacked me on the back and said I must be the pussy from Six.”

I was lost. Completely lost. “I don’t understand any of this. Who’s Jerry? What’s Blackstone House? And six?”

“She doesn’t know about Blackstone?” Ari asked.

I shook my head no.

“Well, buckle up. This story’s a doozy.”

I pointed to my seat belt. “I’m already buckled up, so can somebody please tell me what’s going on?”

Brax sighed. “It should be me.” The plane began to move slowly along the tarmac. Normally, I enjoyed the take-off, the exhilaration as a plane soared into the air, but today, I was too tense to breathe. “Blackstone House is our former home. Mine, Dawson’s, and Alexa’s. Eleven years ago, in the summer before my third year at Georgetown, the apartment I was living in got condemned, and I needed to find a new place to live. I saw an ad online—rooms available, rent discounted in return for help with maintenance.”

“Maintenance, my ass,” Dawson cut in. “The place was falling down.”

“It needed a full renovation. But at fifty bucks a week near DC, the offer was too good to pass up. Blackstone House was a huge old place—nine bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a full basement.”

“Three acres of land, a derelict garage out the back. Remember the grill in the yard?”

“How could I forget? There was no kitchen to start with,” Brax told me. “After we dealt with the structural issues, that was the first project we tackled. And although it was hard work, it was fun. We all got along well.”

“After Joey left, anyway. He was an asshole.”

“Yes, Grey was a definite improvement. Anyhow, there were nine of us to start off with—me, Dawson, Zach, Grey, Justin, Nolan, Levi, Jerry, and Ruby. Alexa came along later.”

It was fascinating to hear about Brax’s past. Although he wasn’t necessarily secretive, he didn’t tend to volunteer personal information. And he’d built a life from almost nothing, hadn’t he? That gave me hope.

“Levi owned the place,” Brax continued. “He won it in a poker game. An odd man, but I didn’t think he was a bad one, not at first, anyway. Sometimes he used to stay with us, but other times he went home.”

“His parents lived in Maryland,” Dawson said. “Just across the state line. And his mom made Carissa look like a saint.”

“Levi was firmly under her thumb. She called him every half hour, checking up. Did you remember to brush your teeth? Have you taken your pills? It’s cold outside, you should wear a sweater. It never stopped.”

“And if he didn’t report in when he should, she used to drive over.”

“Maybe that’s why he snapped?” Ari suggested. “The pressure could’ve gotten to him.”

He snapped? I began to get an uncomfortable feeling about this.

“He was twenty-one years old,” Brax said. “He could have cut her off the way I did with my father.” Another sigh. “But he didn’t. And then one night, he murdered Ruby.”

I gasped, searching desperately for a sign that Brax was joking. But he was dead serious.

“He…he killed her?”

I was pinned in my seat as we accelerated for take-off, and Brax paused for a moment before he answered.

“The official cause was death by asphyxiation, but he also stabbed her.”

“And raped her,” Ari added, shuddering.

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