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Fuck!
Louie got his belt free right after I did. I crawled into the backseat. Maura was unconscious, bleeding from the side of her head, and the water was up to her neck. I quickly got to work on cutting her loose from her seat belt. The water reached the top of her head before I could. “Fuck!” I roared, and just when my panic started to kick in, the belt cut free. I yanked her up and did my best to hold her head above the water, but the more the car filled up, the faster we sank. Louie was on the hood of the car waiting to help me get Maura out. As I got us into the front seat, Maura and I were swallowed up by ice-cold darkness. I couldn’t see. Feeling around, I tried to find the way out. Louie grabbed me by my shoulders and helped guide me and Maura through the windshield until we were out of the car. I swam up as fast and as hard as I could with one arm.
When we surfaced, I gasped for air. In the distance there was gunshots, but that wasn’t something we could worry about right now. Louie helped me get Maura to shore.
“She’s not breathing!” he said as we crawled up the muddy bank.
Once we had Maura mostly out of the water, I laid her on her back. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Maura!”
She didn’t respond.
I put my hands on her chest and began doing compressions. I did them until I reached thirty. Then I put my mouth over hers and gave her two breaths. When that didn’t work, I did it again. “Come on, baby,” I begged as I pushed on her chest.
I was almost to thirty compressions again when she started coughing. Water spilled from her mouth and Louie helped me roll her on her side.
Relieved, Louie let out every curse known to man.
As soon as Maura was done coughing up all the water, I pulled her to my chest and hugged her tightly. Louie leaned in and hugged her from behind. I moved an arm from around Maura, threw it over his shoulder, and held both of them close.
* * *
Emergency services showed up on the scene and insisted that all three of us go to the hospital. I only got a brief rundown on what had happened on the bridge after the semi had run us off of it. The driver had been wearing a black ski mask like the men who had taken Stefan, and as soon as the semi had done its job tossing us off the fucking bridge, a black utility van full of more masked men had pulled up with rifles. The men in the van had tried to help the guy driving the semi escape by opening fire on all of our people. We’d taken out two of theirs and thankfully, we hadn’t lost anyone on our end.
Conor and Rourke looked over the two dead masked men, one of them being the driver of the semi, and found Irish tattoos on them. Rourke took their wallets just before the police and EMS showed up.
Louie and I only had a few bumps and bruises and were cleared to go home pretty quickly. Maura, however, had knocked her head pretty good and with her drowning, the doctors kept her to run more tests. I called Brody, told him what had happened on the bridge, and asked if he could bring us dry clothes. He got to the hospital in record time. When he walked into Maura’s hospital room, he looked distressed. It showed in his red-rimmed eyes and the way he stiffly moved. It seemed that as the hours had ticked by since he’d learned about Stefan, Brody had been slowly losing the battle to hold it together.
Maura, on the other hand, had been holding onto a hard, emotionless mask. When she looked at me, Louie, or anyone else, there wasn’t any warmth in her eyes. Just cold, detachment, and determination. I didn’t like it and neither did Louie. It felt like a huge backslide after weeks of hard work to get back glimpses of the woman we loved. I knew I couldn’t focus on that right now. I had to reassure myself that Maura was doing what she had to in order to stay strong because too much relied on her right now. And if this was a backslide, Louie and I wouldn’t give up. We’d fight like hell to regain the progress we lost.
As Brody walked into the room and Maura took in his distraught appearance, that mask she had been wearing wavered, and emotion scrunched up her brow. Brody rushed to her bedside, and they hugged each other tightly. Seeing that emotion come to the surface made every part of me sag with relief.
“I will find him,” Maura assured Brody.
Brody stroked her hair, doing his best to hold on to his composure. “I know.”
Not long after Brody arrived, there was a knock on Maura’s hospital room door before it opened. Dean walked in, looking more pissed-off than usual. “Detectives Cameron and Brooks are here to see you,” he told us and stepped out of the way for said detectives to walk in.
“Two attacks on the Quinn family in one day,” Cameron said as he took in the room. “Don’t you have one of your henchmen down the hall?”
He was referring to Stefan’s attack this afternoon, only the police didn’t know Stefan was missing. Only that our men had been gunned down. “We already gave our statements to the police,” I told them from where I stood near the room’s only window.
Cameron gave me a not-so-friendly look. “Well, we have a few more follow-up questions for the three of you.”
I glanced over at Louie, who was sitting on one side of Maura’s hospital bed, and Maura, who was holding Brody’s hand. Maura asked Brody if he would go get her something to drink. He nodded, understanding that she was giving him an excuse to leave the room and taking it. As soon as Brody stepped out, Asher came into the room and shut the door. He and Dean stood guard by it.
The detectives began asking questions about what had happened, which we answered honestly at Maura’s order. We recounted the semi hitting us and how we’d survived our car falling into the river. When they asked us if we knew anything about the shoot-out on the bridge, Maura took over.
“How would we know about anything that was happening on the bridge if we were not on the bridge? And if there was a shoot-out, my family and our security would not have fired back had it not been in self-defense.”
“Did you see who was driving the semi?” Brooks asked.
We all answered no.
“Interesting fact about that bridge,” Cameron said. “About a month ago, four Aryans were hung from it and had shamrocks drawn on their chests.”
“That same night, four properties that belonged to the Aryans exploded,” Brooks said.
Maura didn’t react. None of us did.
