Unhinged, page 21
“Yet, you’re the one with the gun to his head,” Gary reminded, his voice growing cold.
“He’s not the only one.”
Noah let out a sigh of relief at Adam’s voice. He stepped forward out of the shadows, a much smaller gun trained on Gary.
Gary’s eyes went wide but he didn’t lower his weapon. “Who the fuck are you?”
Adam pressed the gun to Gary’s temple. “I’m the guy who killed your boyfriend. Now, drop the gun.” Gary hesitated. “Do it now and I won’t fillet you before I kill you. Make me take it from you and I’ll make sure you die screaming.”
Gary lowered his arm, the gun slipping from his fingers, head swiveling back and forth between Noah and Adam, like he couldn’t quite get the pieces to fit. “You couldn’t have killed Wayne unless you’ve been swimming in the fountain of youth. You would’ve just been a kid.”
“I was sixteen. But I’m not anymore. And I promise you, I’m going to enjoy killing you far more than I did Holt.”
Noah’s tongue darted out to lick over his lower lip. He wanted nothing more than to watch Gary take a bullet. But then inspiration struck.
“Wait!” he cried.“I have an idea.”
Adam arched his brow. “I’m listening.”
“Why are we standing in an empty storage unit?” Atticus flicked his gaze to the center of the room, lip curling in disgust. “Well, almost empty.”
Adam rolled his eyes as he watched his brother remove a silk handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his hands, as if just standing in the damp, musty unit was enough to make him dirty.
“Yes, I’m just dying to know why that guy”—August pointed at Gary, tied to a folding chair—“is not currently dissolving in an acid bath?”
Gary began to thrash around in the chair, frantic noises coming from behind the gag in his mouth.
“Shut up,” Asa said, bored. When Gary didn’t take his advice, Asa picked up a booted foot and upended the chair. “This one’s going to be fun. He looks…juicy.”
Avi ignored the man flailing on his back to study Adam. “So, why are we all here?” he finally asked, exasperated. “And why isn’t Dad here?”
Adam shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Noah’s the one who called the meeting.”
Most people would have wilted under the gaze of five stone cold killers, but Noah just continued to lean against the wall, hands in his pockets. Maybe after having a gun pointed at his head for twenty minutes, he lacked the ability to look frightened.
Noah looked positively serene as he addressed Adam’s brothers. “Thomas isn’t here because he chose not to come. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say this is a test of some kind, but I don’t have time to worry about that now.”
August looked amused, Archer bored, Asa and Avi intrigued, and Atticus, as usual, looked like he’d smelled something bad. But Adam found it hard to tear his gaze away from Noah. He looked so sure of himself. It was sexy.
Noah flashed a quick smile in his direction. “Adam said the only way to kill these men is to do it all at once. That prospect seemed less difficult when we were looking at six or seven major players. Now, there could be as many as twenty major players. Politicians. Police. Priests. High value targets that are going to draw a lot of attention.”
“And that changes things how?” August asked.
Noah tilted his head, examining August with the same shrewd gaze he was receiving. “Well, the original plan was for each of you to take out a target on the same night, at the same time. You can’t do that with twenty people. As soon as word hits that one is dead, the others will start scattering like roaches.”
Asa cocked his head. “Go on.”
“Adam said Thomas would probably make you take out the targets one at a time, but that’s not very efficient.”
“Alright?” Atticus said, frowning like he was hoping Noah would get to the point.
“So, we kill two birds with one stone. We make Gary here call up the major players and get them to agree to meet them somewhere desolate, say Gary’s cabin. Then you lock them in, set it on fire, kill the stragglers as they run for their lives. That takes them out all at once and the fire will hide the evidence. It ain’t sexy, but it will work.”
As far as plans went, it was more than a little risky. It was madness if Adam was being honest. But it could be done. Quickly if need be. Adam knew just the place. Not Gary’s cabin, but somewhere equally as desolate.
“Damn,” Asa said with a laugh. “That’s fucking cold, bro. I like it.”
“No way. These guys all deserve to suffer,” Avi said, once more kicking Gary’s fallen chair.
August snickered. “You just like butchering people.”
Avi gave him the finger. “I’m not the one who has a kill playlist on Spotify.”
August bristled, giving an offended scoff. “You know all the screaming and begging gives me a migraine.”
Adam shook his head. He liked guns. They were clean. Efficient. Portable. And left very little mess if you knew what you were doing. Which he did. He didn’t kill for fun. He did it because he knew it needed to be done. Because his father said it was what they were born to do. But his brothers…they weren’t like him. They didn’t just like it, they fucking reveled in it. All but Aiden. Aiden was a lot like Adam. More a soldier than a monster.
But, in this particular case, Adam was willing to forgo guns and knives for fire and flames if that was what Noah wanted. There was some divine justice in watching them all burn. It wasn’t like they didn’t have it coming. He just had to convince his brothers to skip the gore and theatrics for a clean kill.
Adam sighed, looking at August warily. “You don’t always have to use blades. You could just put a bullet in the ones who try to run. I know for a fact you’re an excellent shot,” he reminded, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
August rolled his eyes. “Are you seriously bringing this up again? I shoot one of your targets, and you harp on it forever. I did you a favor. You froze up.”
“I was thirteen,” Adam shot back.
“You wouldn’t have made it to fourteen if I hadn’t stepped in. So, you’re welcome.”
“Enough!” Atticus shouted. “Can we save the witty banter for later? What Noah is proposing is most definitely the smarter plan.”
Avi shrugged, pouting. “I guess. Can we at least hurt this one?”
Noah frowned. “Are you guys really disappointed that you can’t stab somebody when the alternative is to just set them on fire?”
Asa nodded. “No offense. It’s just a little…hands off for our taste. We take pride in our work.”
“Look, I don’t care how you take them out, but we need to do it all at once and Gary is the key to doing that,” Noah said. “Can we all at least agree on that?”
Adam’s brothers all looked at each other before Atticus nodded. “It will work. We just have to get this one to make the call without signaling the others.”
Adam looked down at the man, still making distressed noises from behind his gag. “Oh, Gary here knows the alternative is a slow, painful death versus a nice quick bullet to the head.”
“He’s going to play ball,” Noah assured them. “Right, Gary?”
The man frantically bobbed his head. Atticus nodded towards the twins and they grabbed the back of the chair and set it upright. Gary’s eyes darted from person to person.
Adam was surprised when Noah approached the man, dropping down onto his thighs until they were nose to nose. “How does it feel to be scared?” he asked, tone chilling. “How does it feel to know you’re going to die?”
Gary didn’t respond, just stared wide-eyed at Noah. As did the others. This Noah had been born of so much pain and trauma and had come out stronger for it. His brothers seemed fascinated by Noah, but Adam… Adam had never been so horny in his whole fucking life. Noah looked fierce and so fucking sure of himself that it made Adam want to drag him out to the car and fuck him right then and there.
But there was no time for that. There was truthfully no time for any of it, including Noah perched in Gary’s lap, head tilted, as if he was truly trying to gauge the man’s fear.
“Noah likes to play with his food before he eats it,” August said. “Excellent.”
Noah stood but continued to stare down at the older man.
“I mean, it’s only fair he’s the one who gets to kill Gary,” Avi said. “Right? That kill belongs to Noah.”
Adam snapped his head around. “Noah’s not killing anybody. Just because he’s being inducted into the family doesn’t mean he needs to be initiated with blood.”
“Every one of us had to make our first kill,” Archer said, as always sounding inconvenienced.
“Noah said it himself,” Avi reminded. “He said this was a test. Dad is clearly using this as some sort of experiment. If Noah is part of this family, he’s going to have to get his hands a little dirty.”
“No—”
Noah cut him off. “I’ll do it.”
“You don’t have to,” Adam swore.
Noah looked at Gary, his gaze almost frigid. “I don’t have to. I want to. But not until it's over. I want him to watch the others die first.”
“Then it’s settled,” Archer said. “Get the man’s phone and let’s get this over with.”
“What if they don’t show?” Noah asked again for the hundredth time, chewing on his thumbnail as he watched Adam gaze out the window through a pair of binoculars.
They sat in an abandoned shack that had once been a bait and tackle shop, approximately five hundred yards away from an old wooden building that had once been a fish hatchery, whatever the hell that was. Adam had said the whole marina had shut down years ago and had sat abandoned for more than a decade. It was one of the forgotten properties in Thomas Mulvaney’s vast portfolio.
“They’ll show,” Adam promised without looking up from his post. “Your idea was smart. Even my father thought so.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Thomas had said the plan was reckless and risky. But he’d also said he was going to sit back and let it play out. He was putting a lot of faith in Noah. Too much faith if he was being honest. Noah’s bravado from the other day had vanished in a puff of smoke the moment they’d posted up in this dirty dilapidated shack that reeked of rotting fish, even though there were none to be found.
Still, the area was perfect for their purpose. The rotting wooden building would go up like a tinderbox once they were all inside, and—unlike Gary’s cabin—was unlikely to start a forest fire. Thomas didn’t strike Noah as much of a conservationist, so he imagined it had more to do with unwanted attention than saving wildlife and vegetation.
Noah shook his head, chewing harder at his nail until Adam had reached up and tugged his hand from his mouth without looking, dropping it to Adam’s jean clad thigh.
“You’re going to chew off your own hand like a bear in a trap. If you need a distraction, I have something you can play with,” Adam said, clearly amused with himself.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Archer muttered in Noah’s ear.
“Yeah, coms are live. Try not to act like heathens,” Atticus added.
It felt weird hearing other people in his ear, but there was something weirdly exciting about it, too. The adrenaline rushing through his veins made him jittery, his heart racing like he’d had too many energy drinks.
Adam chuckled. “Baby, relax. I can literally feel your nerves from over here.”
“Here being six inches to your left?” Noah sniped, feeling suddenly sulky.
“We don’t have time for marriage counseling today,” Avi said, voice low. “How about we save the hurt feelings for when we’re on the other side of this pile of bodies? No?”
Adam continued on like his brothers hadn’t even spoken, looking only at Noah. “Relax. Everything is going exactly as planned.”
“You know who says that? That one person in every movie right before it all goes to shit,” Noah said, earning another amused smirk from Adam.
Adam was right, though. Gary had sent out the distress call, alerted his pervy friends that they had a verifiable threat to their operation and he was calling an emergency meeting to figure out how to rectify the situation as quickly and quietly as possible. He’d been impressively convincing. Noah assumed it was the hunting knife pressed to his balls and not a sudden attack of conscience.
He gnawed on his lip. “Seriously, though, there’s twenty of them and only six of you.”
“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.
Aiden didn’t participate much. He stood beside Noah, arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t look like any of his photos. The clean cut boy was long gone, replaced by a man, who looked like he spent his nights sleeping on park benches but was somehow still cute even with his hand floating over the Glock at his side.
They were all armed. Though it was unlikely anyone would make it out, the wood was old and somebody might be able to kick a piece free.
August was just about to chain the door when Asa pulled a generic butane lighter from his pocket. He flicked the starter, but it sparked and then went out. Once. Twice. Half a dozen times.
“Oh, no. Take your time,” Aiden drolled. “It’s not like people won’t start to suspect something any minute now.”
Asa looked at the others sheepishly. “Um, anybody have any matches?”
“Jesus Christ. You have got to be kidding me,” Atticus hissed.
“Fuck this,” August muttered, freeing his phone from his pocket and pulling his com from his ear, replacing it with his earbuds.
“What’s he doing?” Noah asked, his pulse skyrocketing, watching as the others pulled their weapons free. “What the fuck is happening here?”
