he goes for the .22. “Cam, I’d rather ye were home.”
“Listen, you can bump heads with Brody. Not me. I’m not arguing or fighting blood. But there’s one thing you aren’t gonna do. That’s stop me from being there for one of my six brothers. That’s you, Leith.”
I groan. Why does my knucklehead brathair sound so wise?
Brody rubs at his beard. “Nice and civilized, American. Leith, ye’re gonna deid the arsehole, right?”
I let go of being stubborn. “That I am.”
“Has to be done,” Camdyn utters. He hands over three ski masks with skulls over the face. He’d filched the masks at the same gas station with the Slurpees that dominate his hand when his cell phone doesn’t.
“Does it fit?” he asks Brody as our brathair starts to pull down the mask.
“Feck ye, ye wee bawbag!” Brody shoves it over his head.
“Nae games. This is my feckin’ life,” I snarl.
Seconds later, the air shifts. Our faces grow stony, serious. Brody drives over, pulling into the massive driveway. We’re out of the truck in seconds. At the double doors, my big brathair lifts his foot, prepared to kick down the door.
“Nae!” I stop him.
Brody opens his mouth. Camdyn cuts in, “C’mon, bro, he’s our polite brother.”
I snap out each word. “Nae, bampot. What if someone drives by, sees the feckin’ door on the ground, and decides to investigate.”
With a grunt, Brody rolls his eyes.
“Touché.” Cam pushes the sleeve of his hoodie over his finger and mashes the doorbell.
I sneer at my sarcastic wee brathair and pound my fist on the door.
The door opens. We step in hard and quick. A servant shuffles back, tripping over his shiny shoes.
“Oft!” He lands on his arse. The door closes behind me, and the deadbolt engages.
I crouch down, grip the collar of the servant’s penguin suit. “Where’s Phelps?”
Camdyn taps my shoulder, finger to his lips. Brody’s flanked to the wall where the staircase winds upward. With his body against the wall, he careens his neck.
“Where the feck is he!” I demand.
“He’s-he’s—” The servant chokes on air.
Brody fires twice. An armed guard in a suit topples down the steps. Camdyn hurls his switchblade. The sharp tip gouges the eye of another guard, who’d started toward us from an expansive corridor across the room. He hardly gets a scream out before he sinks to the ground. Feckin’ showoff.
Camdyn’s running, picking up the knife, and heading down the hall. “In here, bro!”
“Watch yer feckin’ arse,” I warn the hothead. I let go of the servant, attempting to catch up with Camdyn. I hear the Glock double tap. Brody’s finished the job. My muscles tense at the sound of Camdyn’s .22 letting off four shots.
Down the hall, my little brathair is standing outside of a door punctured with holes. Another stiff in a suit sprawls on the ground next to him. Camdyn says, “He’s not alone.”
He rubs the knife on the side of his jeans, closes it, and places it into one of his cargo pockets. In the other hand, he’s fisting the gun, ready for an order.
“Ye sure?” I ask.
From the haze of the mask, Camdyn’s eyes question me. He’s subtly offering that he and Brody could complete the mission. Wit’s he think, I’m a pussy?
“Nae, now stop feckin’ asking me,” I whisper back. “How many?”
“At least two.”
I nod. “Dinna deid my lad, the stuffy fecker from the photo. Ye hear?”
He nods back. “Phelps is all yours.”
Heart pounding in my chest, I signal with two fingers. Brody’s leg propels forward. The double door kicks in. Gun close to his chest, Brody lets out another two rounds. Each bullet pierces the forehead of two suited guards on either side of the door. Never having a chance to use their Berettas, one man stumbles back into a pillar. An antique vase crashes to the ground. The other man slumps over the back of a chair.
Bill Phelps sits behind his desk. With shaking fingers, he’s just unlocked a gun box. I snatch the steel box from his trembling hands, slamming it across his face.
Camdyn calls our older brathair stingy for the two kill shots. The big brute laughs in response.
This is a feckin’ game to them. To Bill Phelps. To my brathairs. To everybody but me.
I drop the bloodied box, fist flying. Nae need for questions. Once I deid this motherfecker, I’ll reconfigure any of the programs on his computer system. Get my squeaky-clean life back.