Page 72 of Butcher

Switch: Give me five minutes and cookies will be ready.There was a pause, then she typed out.Good luck.

I shut down the program, knowing she’d be waiting to hear from me. To make sure I was okay at the end of this.

“What did you just do?” Lockout asked.

“Switch is about to hit the dark web,” I told him, standing up and facing them. “She’s going to release my location.”

“Won’t that make the assassins suspicious?” Butcher asked. “I wouldn’t trust that shit.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Riptide teased. “It came from that magic box.”

Butcher flipped him off, but was staring at me.

“She’s putting it out as a hit,” I replied. When I’d gone over my plan with them, I’d told them I had a friend who could help with this part, but we hadn’t gone over the specifics. There’d been plenty of other pieces of this to plan out and Lock had trusted me to take care of it. “You guys are included in it.”

“Why would you include us?” Kilo asked from across the room. “Wouldn’t it be better if they didn’t know what they were walking into?”

“Bait,” Lockout answered before I could.

“Exactly.” I looked around because now everyone was staring at me. “If Switch put out that it was just me, we’d only draw in a couple assassins. It would take us months to kill them all because they’d come one at a time. This way, they’ll realize that they need numbers to combat ours.”

“So they’ll team up and come at us full force,” Hush finished with a nod. “Good plan.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “Just so you know, it’s not going to be only assassins.”

“What do you mean?” Ricochet asked.

“Well, there’s probably only twenty or so good assassins left,” I told them. “Since Butcher here has done a number on our ranks.” He shot me a wicked grin. “I’m guessing there will only be about five who are going to take us on. The rest are going to chalk this up to a mistake on both mine and Randal’s part and let us hash it out ourselves.”

“Do you know which assassins will join the fight?” Toxic asked.

“I think so, but it’s just a guess. I’ll go over their skills with you, though.”

“Five shouldn’t be a problem,” Hell commented.

I shook my head. “That’s the assassins. Now that they know our numbers they’re going to bring help. But we needed all five to come at us at once, so it’s a risk we had to take.”

“Help?” Kilo asked. “What kind of help?”

“Sicarios, for one,” I told him.

“Isn’t that just Spanish for hit man?” Kilo pointed out. “What’s the difference between a sicario and an assassin?”

“Most of the sicarios work for the cartels,” I told him, leaning back against the desk. “And something the cartels have in droves are men. They’ve been training them since they were kids to protect their compounds and their drugs.”

“Why would they get involved in this?” Lockout asked.

“The cartels won’t, but when things are quiet, they don’t mind if their sicarios take...outside work. Money is a huge motivator for all of us.”

“Okay so assassins and cartel hit men,” Priest said. “What else?”

“Mercenaries. Guns for hire,” I continued. “Pretty much anyone who is willing to kill another person for money.”

“What are we talking, as far as skill?” That came from Butcher.

“Anything from as good as us, to where did this asshole come from?” I quipped.

Everyone laughed, though there was tension in the room.

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