Edison (The Henchmen MC 10)

"Figure if you're here to kill someone, you wouldn't make your presence known first," Roderick mused, looking no less confused than he had been a few moments before. I think we were all feeling that way as well.

"If I were here to kill anyone, you'd all be dead without anyone even seeing where the bullets came from."

"Not exactly inspiring any trust here, man," Pagan said, shaking his head.

It was hardly a minute later when you could hear the bikes rumbling in. If they were at their places, they had to be pushing ninety on the way over.

"Can't figure he needs four guns on him when the yard has no fucking protection," Reign said as he came in.

Without needing anything further than that, men used to orders, Sugar and Virgin lowered their guns to their sides, and moved out toward the door.

Roderick followed.

Roan moved to leave as well, but Pagan shook his head. "Roan knows a bit about this guy," Pagan explained. "Adler. Contract killer."

Wolf came in a second later, his massive form taking up the space both Virgin and Sugar had vacated.

"The fuck is this?" he asked, just as Cash strolled in, more tense than usual.

"Lo is on her way."

Five minutes later, the room was packed with people who wanted answers from the man who seemed perfectly at-ease even as Janie threw herself down, frantically typing away on her laptop, digging up dirt on the man who had somehow managed to get into a compound protected by some of the brightest ex-military minds around.

"How did you get in?" Lo demanded almost as soon as she was in the door.

"Got a lot of practice getting through security systems. Tried yours up on the hill," he told her, managing to shock a woman who had seen and heard it all. "Don't worry. I failed. The gates are high. The dogs were a great deterrent. You should look into some dogs," he went on, talking to Reign.

"Yeah, I'm real fuckin' interested in taking advice from some two-bit contract killer."

"Got a hole in your system that I could drive a herd of buffalo through, but sure, let me walk out of here without telling you how and where."

Reign's smirk was slow, wicked, promising. "Who said you're walking out of here?"

"It's the tree," Adler supplied, completely unworried about being held against his will. Hell, maybe he had been in his past. "In the back corner. Might want to consider taking some fuckin' pruning sheers to that every once in a while. I could grab it from the other side of yer fence, and haul my arse up over it with no trouble. Waited for that one to look off toward the front yard," he said, meaning Roan, "and made my way to the side, sliding in the back door that was unlocked because that one was taking out some more bottles from your party last night," he went on, meaning Pagan. "Simple really."

Said a lifelong criminal.

Reign shot Wolf - who was perhaps a bit more familiar with chainsaws than the rest of us - a look that had him nodding, then heading outside to deal with the problem we had all overlooked.

Lo and Janie's shoulders relaxed slightly, like they were relieved it wasn't their original design problem, but instead a maintenance issue.

"Alright. And how about why the fuck are you in my compound?" Reign asked.

"Ya know, heard some things. Wanted to check ya out."

"Heard things about us how? And wanted to check out what? And if you keep fuckin' dragging this shit out, we can try getting the information in the old-fashioned way. Pagan, Roan, and Edison are particularly brutal fucks when on a job."

If he wasn't wrong about me in that - and he wasn't - then he wasn't wrong about the others either. I mean, anyone who had seen Pagan in a ring knew he was capable. I had also seen him back when Lazarus needed our help dealing with the scumbags who ruined Bethany's life. So if the two of us were violent fucks when we needed to be, then so was Roan. That was more information than we had gotten from the man since we heard that he was a spy - a concept already cloaked in a thousand questions. This was the first answer we had been given.

"Think we all can agree that Pagan only uses it in the ring, and when some fuck asks for it. Roan hasn't spilled any blood stateside. And Edison," he said, turning his gaze to me, "Well, we all know his deal." He let that rest for a minute, making the eyes of those who didn't know my deal look over at me.

There were going to be questions now.

A lot of them.

I wasn't ashamed of my past, far from, but keeping that shit close to my vest was what kept me out of third world country jails. I needed that anonymity to protect me. I wasn't exactly comfortable letting that go. Not just yet anyway.