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This was his territory; he couldn’t stop anyone from plying their trade, so to speak, but it was understood that compensation would be due.
“If it pans out.” Rollins nodded. “Might even be a need for a bigger group. If so, we’ll call you in.”
Jack nodded as though in agreement. “What’s your offer?”
Sanchez sat forward.
“The normal ten percent,” Sanchez offered, his accent a little slurred.
Jack tamped down his satisfaction. The overly bright eyes, the slight slurring. Whatever the other man was smoking or snorting, it wasn’t anything high-grade or too stimulating.
Jack sat back in his chair as though thinking about it.
“Fifteen percent,” Van Nyes suddenly offered before licking his lips with anticipation. “And you let me have a few hours with that little redhead pussy. She looked sweet…”
The icy rage was instant. It shot through his senses, tore through his bloodstream, and filled every inch of his body with adrenaline spiked with bloodlust.
Jack moved.
In a flash he had Rollins’s Ka-Bar and Sanchez’s long knife in hand. A swipe across the Colombian’s neck and he was toppling to the floor. Jack threw the same blade and buried it in Alberts’s chest as confusion rooted the man to the floor across the short distance to the sink.
He slashed out at Rollins’s neck before the mercenary could make sense of the fact that he was already dead, nearly severing his head with the depth and force behind the blade. Van Nyes didn’t even get a chance to lift his weapon and fire, let alone get his finger on the trigger. Jack buried the Ka-Bar in his throat and listened to him gurgle as he went to his knees and began drowning in his own blood.
His gray eyes lifted to Jack as though pleading as his hands gripped the blade’s hilt in a weak attempt to pull it free. But it was too late. Lungs filling with blood, his heart pumping dry, he was seconds from death.
“No man touches what’s mine,” Jack murmured as Van Nyes’s eyes glazed over and he toppled to the floor.
Kicking the weapon away from him, Jack began a quick search of the men, starting with Rollins.
“Call in Hayes and Hank,” he ordered the silent Lucas, briefly sparing a glance at the other man. “I want this place searched top to bottom for information. Rollins has a contact somewhere, and I want to know who it is.”
He pulled a wad of rolled and banded hundred-dollar bills from the side pocket of Rollins’s pants, plus a small clear bag of what appeared to be cocaine.
The band on the bills was still neat, the bills reasonably unstained. Someone had paid them to make their appearance here, but Jack doubted it was for the job Rollins believed. They were there to test Jack and his team. Or to assassinate them.
Or that was what he had assumed until he found a picture of Poppy sitting with her friends at the bar, a red circle drawn around her.
She was sitting with her fist propped beneath her chin, smiling with a whimsical little curl to her bow-shaped lips.
This wasn’t good.
Rollins and his men were there for Poppy.
Why?
Checking the other men, he pocketed the cash he found on them as well, replaced the various drugs for law enforcement to find, then began searching the kitchen.
The latex covering he’d applied to his hands ensured no prints would be found, not that he expected a very thorough investigation once Ian worked his magic. But better safe than sorry.
He’d divide the cash with the other men once they returned to the house and let Ian know this matter had been taken care of.
“Boss, what happened to the plan?” Hayes sounded outraged as he and Hank burst into the farmhouse. “Goddamn, you don’t play fair. Thought you were sharing this kill.”
Bloodthirsty little prick, Jack thought.
“The big boy there nixed the plan.” Lucas flicked his fingers toward Van Nyes where he’d fallen to the floor, staring vacantly into death. As Jack turned away, Lucas turned to the other men and made a waving motion at his neck with his hand. “We don’t talk about the redhead again. Do not…” he hissed.
Jack caught the movement, heard the words, but let it pass as he moved to Alberts’s body. Best they be warned where Poppy was concerned.
