Page 72 of Unhinged
“Seven,” a strange voice corrected in Noah’s ear.
“Seven?” Noah echoed.
Adam nodded. “Yeah, Aiden is here, too. He flew in for the kill. Say hi.”
“Hi,” Noah said before shaking his head. The mystery brother had made an appearance just for this? Was that supposed to make Noah more nervous or less?
Adam gave a wild cackle. “Look,” he said, handing Noah the binoculars.
Noah put the lenses to his eyes, watching as a car slowly pulled up to the entrance. They sat for a good five minutes before they slowly exited the car, glancing around in a way that screamed the man was doing something shady. Hard to believe these guys were criminal masterminds.
When the wind caught the man’s suit jacket, Noah caught sight of a gun holstered to his side. His heart dropped into his stomach. He should have considered they’d come armed. “He’s got a gun,” Noah said to nobody in particular.
“He’d be a fool not to,” Atticus said. “We anticipated that.”
Adam didn’t seem troubled by this new information either, smiling in Noah’s direction. “Told you they’d come. They have too much to lose.”
“Yeah, but they could have just run,” Noah countered.
Adam took the binoculars back. “Sure, they could have, but it’s not easy to abandon a whole life. Especially not when you seemingly have the world at your fingertips. These men think they’re untouchable, so they’ll do whatever it takes to maintain that power. Most of them are probably going in there intent on killing the messenger. It’s why they didn’t think it odd for Gary to say he’d arrive last. They need to believe they can make this problem go away.”
Noah watched the wind pick up Adam’s dark strands, fanning them across his forehead, the sunlight making his pale blue eyes look almost white. “Shit. You look really hot right now,” Noah murmured.
“Again, coms are hot. Keep it in your pants, boys,” Archer muttered.
Why were people always saying that to them?
One of the brothers gave a frustrated grunt, but Noah couldn’t tell who until they spoke. “This is stupid. We do so much better alone. We could have just killed all twenty separately in one night. You know?” Avi asked. “What do they call that?”
“A serial killer?” Noah asked, exasperated.
“No, serial killers have a pattern,” Asa said, sounding like he was searching the farthest reaches of his brain. “A spree killer. We could have been like spree killers.”
“That would have been, like, three kills each,” Atticus chimed in.
“Two for one of us,” August corrected.
“I hate math,” Aiden muttered.
“And twenty separate crime scenes to clean up,” Noah reminded them.
“I’m just saying, killing three guys in one night would have been cool,” Avi pouted.
“But, instead, you get to kill twenty guys during the day, with your brothers, as a family,” August said.
“Other families just have barbeques,” Archer said, tone dripping with sarcasm.
That seemed to be his default setting. His unkempt hair and eye liner made him look like a pirate. A hot sarcastic, drunken pirate.
“Well, you’re in luck. In about thirty minutes, it’s going to smell a lot like barbeque,” August assured them.
That killed the conversation for a short time. Noah grew restless as each man parked their vehicles and filed into the old building to wait for Gary, who was still stashed in the back of Atticus’s trunk. Acid pooled in Noah’s stomach, his heart hammering in his ears.
When the last man arrived, Archer came over the speaker once more. “All targets are on site.”
Adam grinned at Noah. “It’s go time.”
Noah followed Adam from the bait shop to the windowless fish hatchery. They all had jobs to do. Noah was the lookout. Archer barricaded one of the two points of entry, the wooden double doors at the back of the building. Asa and Avi took the cans of gasoline, thoroughly saturating the wood and the surrounding ground. Adam dismantled the water line at the dock to ensure no stragglers had access to anything that might help put out the fire. Atticus was at the car, making sure Gary was where they’d left him, and August stood at the closed front doors of the building, holding a metal device in his hands. It was an iron locking mechanism, like something out of Game of Thrones. Noah supposed it was only appropriate. They were about to have their very own Red Wedding.
