Page 144 of More Tricks

“True, but damn wouldn’t it be fucking cool to shoot one off?” Eagle added with a grin.

I shook my head. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Void and Cam. That’s absolutely something they would say.”

“Probably,” Eagle answered with a shrug. “Come on. Everyone is meeting upstairs for the final debrief before we split.”

“We sure this is the right plan? I don’t like the idea of us splitting,” I questioned, sharing my biggest fear in all this with my big brother. “I feel like every time we split, there's a chance not all of us will make it back to each other. You might be my blood brother, but the rest of them are family too. We always say that if one of them died, Dax would lose her shit and never come back to us, but I’m not sure any of us would be any better.”

Eagle didn’t answer right away, just looked out the window at the cars and people moving to and fro, clueless as to what was about to go down. “That risk is something we make every day in the world we operate in. I agree with you completely, we’ve all become a family, and no matter what happens, we’ll deal with it like a family does… together. Shit happens and life is fucked up, but if we have each other’s backs first and foremost, we’ll come out of this even stronger.”

“While that load of bullshit was pretty, it didn’t actually answer my question,” I pointed out to Eagle. “Fuck, let’s just get this over with to get one step closer to ending this whole goddamn thing.”

With a slap on the back, Eagle turned on his heel and headed for the front door, then stopped to look at me over his shoulder. “You ever tell Cam I said that shit about him being family, I’ll ruin every paintbrush you own.”

I mimed zipping my lips and just grinned at him as we headed out. Dax was wrong to think I was the only one who wore rose-colored glasses in life. If Eagle hadn’t ended up in this life, he would have been some great philosopher mulling over life's toughest questions as he smoked a shit ton of weed. Too bad the bastard was too uptight to ever allow himself to smoke the stuff. He was one of those, my-whole-body-is-a-temple bullshit, taking after Mom and her need for order way too much for my liking sometimes. Thank God one of us took after Dad and his more relaxed personality.

Entering the triplets’ place, it was chaos with weapons, ammo, and other supplies we would need for this whole mission. Everyone was dressed in black tactical gear placing the last items they needed into the many pockets on their clothing.

Dax looked up, hearing us enter, and smiled, sauntering over to us. “Where have you two been hiding out?”

“I was talking to Gabby, filling her in on the basics of what’s happening. She’s flying into New Jersey tonight, so when we have Elena, she’ll take her back home. The last thing we need is to save the girl and then have her land back in their clutches,” Eagle shared.

When her eyes shifted to me, I just shrugged. “Just needed a minute to myself to get my head on right for this. Gotta take off the rose-colored glasses and all for this job.”

She reached out and took my hand, giving it a squeeze. “Don’t lose them completely. We need someone with a different point of view to make sure we don’t end up like the bastards we’re going after.”

I pulled her against me and smirked down at her. “Are you telling me that you might have been wrong?”

“Ha.” She laughed. “I wouldn’t go that far, mister. Let’s just say I can appreciate an alternative viewpoint.”

Cupping her face, I kissed her deeply, letting my tongue sweep the inside of her mouth, tasting her like I might never get the chance to do it again. If we were going to split up, I needed her to know how much I fucking loved her so there was nothing left unsaid between us.

When I released her mouth, I kissed her nose, then her forehead. “I love you, spitfire. Don’t you ever forget it.”

“I love you too, Bob Ross,” she teased but pushed up to give me another quick kiss. “Don’t worry about tonight. You won’t get rid of me that easily.”

“What about if something happens to me?” I questioned, unable to have her blind optimism.

She shrugged. “Then I guess I just have to make a trip to Hell and tell the devil he can’t have you because you’re mine.”

“That so? Well, for the sake of the devil and humankind, I better stay alive. No telling what kind of trouble you’d cause in Hell,” I murmured, releasing her so we could join the others as Magnus called us over.

It was easy to see why the other two brothers had no problem with Magnus taking the lead in planning their missions. He was almost at the same level as Dax with how his mind worked. Putting the two of them together while throwing Wes and Cam into the mix was just terrifying. If the four of them wanted to take over the world, I believed they could. The rest of us had our moments, but most of the heavy lifting had been done by that crew. What surprised me even more was Harper catching some important holes in the whole situation that could have left us scrambling.

“Alright, team Take Down Diego is Dax, Cam, Cognac, and Weston, along with the three of us. Team Rescue Elena is Eagle, Picasso, Void, Sprocket, and the men from Tommaso. The attacks at the other locations will start at seven on the dot, which means we need to wait until seven forty-five to make our hits. We need the police to be so overwhelmed with everything else going on that even if our marks get calls out, they can’t respond as quickly.” Magnus paused, then turned to Eagle. “You good on your plan?”

Eagle nodded. “Ours is going to be a much easier hit since he lives in an apartment building. Thanks to Dante and his connection getting us these SWAT bulletproof vests, it will make it all that much simpler.”

“The thing we don’t know, though, is who else is in that building,” Jaxson warned. “There could be more of Diego’s men there to keep an eye on his son, so keep your eyes open and don’t get tunnel vision.”

He made a good point. While we’d looked up everyone in the building, that didn’t mean whoever was living there was who they said they were. The shit stain of a son—Axel—didn’t even pay for that apartment. His daddy dearest did under a shell company name. Diego had proven he was a smart man, but I had a feeling on his home turf, where he thought he held all the strings, he’d made mistakes.

“Any last thoughts, comments, suggestions?” Ghost asked as he nuzzled into Harper’s neck.

It had been a unanimous vote that she remain here at the house as our contact person. If we needed help, then she was who we reached out to. Her and Betta would then coordinate between the two groups to send backup wherever needed. All of us would be eyeballs deep in bullets, so we couldn’t handle something like that. Harper had been less than thrilled, but when we explained it could be the difference between life and death, she realized this wasn’t a ploy just to keep her out of the fight.

When no one spoke up, we gave our goodbyes—meaning we all kissed the fucking hell out of our woman and bro-hugged it out between the guys. None of us wanted to be sappy shits, but on the other hand, we were too aware of what was about to go down. Our lives were lived on the edge of a knife and you never knew when the wrong step would land you on the blade.

The four of us climbed into our blacked-out SUV and headed off to the meet point where we would connect with Tommaso’s men. One of his lieutenants we’d met at his house, David, was going to be there ensuring the men followed orders. We would be heading up this operation since it was our family we were going after but having David there to make sure shit got done eased some of the worries.