THE FLIGHT to L.A. was far shorter than I’d expected, and once the wheels hit the ground, the guys sprang into motion. By the time the sun had fully set, they had the plan solidified.
The studio was a squat brick building on the outskirts of the city, about as far from actual Hollywood as you could get while still being within the L.A. city limits. I approached the two security guards on the outside of the side door, peering around the street as if I were lost or looking for something. The warehouses nearby were either abandoned or shut down for the night. There was no one around but us and the shadows.
This was my first act on the job, so I intended to prove just how much of an asset I was. I meandered past the guards without a glance at them, pretending to be too distracted to take notice.
“Hey, sweet cheeks,” one called out just after I’d passed him.
I was already whipping into action. I swung around and disarmed the guy who’d spoken with a brisk snap of my hands. A second later, I gave him a kick to the gut that sent him staggering toward a darkened alleyway—where Julius yanked him aside and put a bullet across the back of his head with a splatter of blood and brains.
The remaining guard was mine to handle, and I made it quick, dodging his fist and snapping the gun from his grasp. When he threw another punch, I allowed his momentum to drive him forward while I slipped behind him, wrapping an arm around his throat. The crack of his neck took only a sharp jerk of my body, and he fell to the pavement dead.
I turned and looked at Julius—his tactical uniform already speckled in blood. The black material masked it well, but in the hazy glow of the security lights, the liquid glints shone. He’d made a mess of his kill while I’d done mine clean, like I’d been taught. Suddenly my meticulousness wasn’t a benefit. A prickle of uncertainty ran through my body.
If I wanted to fit in with the crew, I needed to do things their way. Expertly orchestrated chaos, Blaze had recited for me gleefully. The gore made an impact that their clients wanted.
Well, I could learn. How better to learn than on my feet, watching them in action as an immediate model?
Julius didn’t remark on the difference between our kills, and neither did the other three men as they converged on us, though I thought Garrison raised his eyebrow with a hint of disdain at my corpse. He’d barely spoken to me since our evening hookup, and he didn’t break that pattern now.
We slipped into the studio, where large swaths of fabric hung from the industrial-height ceiling to section off the filming set. Julius, Talon, and Garrison headed to the left, while Blaze and I headed to the right, setting our feet so we didn’t make any noise. It didn’t sound as if the actors and crew were likely to hear us over the melodramatic shouts carrying from the soundstage.
“All is lost! How can we ever regain our former glory?”
I reached a gap between the curtains and peered through. For a second, I just stared.
The actors were dressed in… aluminum foil? Or at least suits that appeared to be made out of it, with motorcycle helmets coated in silver paint over their heads. One of them swung an elongated gun that wobbled in his grasp, clearly made out of foam rather than metal. Another poked at a small cardboard box covered in blinking lights that didn’t appear to do anything in response to his jabbing fingers.
Julius had said this was a low budget production, but this was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. I’d witnessed high school theater productions with better costumes and props than this.
It seemed to be a sci-fi flick. At least, I guessed that the mottled teal and purple surface under their feet and the mauve crepe bushes in the background were meant to be alien terrain rather than a sign that their set designer was colorblind. And the jumble of cracked metallic objects off to the side, which included a couple of cans I could still see torn scraps of soup labels on—that must be their crashed ship, I was guessing?
Confirming my suspicion, the actor with the box started talking. “There is still hope! The conditions on this planet can support our life. Perhaps there are other beings we will encounter, a grand new society we can become a part of.”
At his pompous tone, Blaze clapped his hand over his mouth to muffle a laugh. His amusement sparkled in his eyes despite his best efforts. I bit my own tongue, a giggle bubbling in my throat.
“How can you say such things, Robin?” the actor with the foam gun asked, swishing his weapon again for dramatic effect. “Earth is destroyed. Destroyed. We shall never set eyes on it again. All we have left are these tools… and our memories.”
I caught sight of Julius peeking through a gap at the other end of the sound stage, his mouth twitching at the ridiculousness in front of us.
“We still have each other!” the other actor declared.
“I suppose that is true.” The man with the gun swiveled toward the camera. “And if the world is on fire, then I can burn other things too.”
I had no idea what that sentence had to do with the story, but I could tell it was meant to be a tagline, one they imagined would be printed on the movie posters and quoted all around the world. Dear lord. We were really doing society a service here by putting them out of their—or everyone else’s—misery.
“Cut,” the director shouted. “That was the best take yet, guys. Really, you outdid yourselves. Take five and see if you can loosen up for the fight.”
Loosening up apparently involved shaking their heads and arms while making baboon noises. I clamped my mouth shut against another giggle. Then a conversation reached my ears from the crew on the other side of the curtain.
“This new camera setup is sweet, isn’t it?”
“Hell, yeah. And that stuck up jerk at the depot will never miss it.”
The first guy cackled. “Not from his grave, that’s for sure. Remember how he squealed like a pig going down?”
The other guy snickered without any hint of remorse. “I wish we could use it as a sound effect in the film.”
My jaw clenched. They weren’t just making a shitty film—they were shitty people. We really were doing the world a favor by taking them out of it.
The phone in my pocket quivered with a faint vibration. Julius had given his signal. It was time to get to work.
The others didn’t waste any time. Bullets sprayed across the set from where Julius was still concealed in the folds of the sheets. I couldn’t help marveling at his precision: every shot, even fired so rapidly, clipped an artery in a neck or wrist or thigh, maximizing the blood that spurted across the soundstage.
But I didn’t pause in my admiration. I whipped up my own gun, already calculating how I’d use my skills to create a similar effect. The challenge sparked a jolt of excitement in my chest.
I didn’t have time to revel in the thrill. The plan was for Julius to handle the north side of the set and me the south. Avoid the kill shot until they’ve had a little time to stagger around, he’d told me. The longer they live, the more they bleed.
My first few shots slammed into legs and shoulders, hindering my targets without killing them—but not making much chaos either. Although the cast and crew brought plenty of their own chaos to the scene, running and stumbling around with panicked shouts. I caught another guy in the gut and the jerk who’d described his victim’s squeal across the forehead, carving a gouge that made him squeal.
The men I hadn’t shot immediately scrambled for their guns. I blasted their hands and forearms, sending the weapons spinning. One fled toward the exit, and I sent a bullet into the back of his skull. Well, this was my first time out. Julius had also emphasized that the security of our crew trumped every other consideration.
My gaze caught on Julius, who’d stepped partly into view among the shadows cast by the sheets. He aimed his gun with an intent expression, and every shot was perfection. Blood sprayed and hissed from every artery he severed. It was painting the teal-and-purple set a brutal shade of red. Damn, the man was good at what he did.
The wounds he inflicted were vicious enough to send his targets crumpling to the floor in agony, clutching at their broken flesh. Some never moved any farther, still sprawled there when he put the final bullet in their brain or heart a little later. Others crawled toward the doorway and were either blasted in their tracks by him or stopped by Blaze, who I knew was lurking around the fringes with his pistol, ready to pick off those who tried to flee.
Talon wove his way through the flailing mass of figures, his serrated knife flashing under the set lights. He dug the blade into the necks of his victims, wrenching it downward across their chest in a zigzag pattern I’d seen before that seemed to maximize the flow of blood, even though it was instantly fatal. He mowed through the bodies with all the predatory grace of a panther. I had to drag my gaze away.
I’d just shot a few more of the men on my side of the room when a big boar of a guy charged at me in a full suit of foil, as if that was going to protect him any. He probably figured he had a chance of knocking me down compared to the guys because I was smaller and, well, female. But he’d learn the error of that assumption just like all the other people who’d fatally underestimated me in the past had.
I pulled the trigger when he was only a few feet away—and managed to hit him just to the left of the most vital part of his throat. Blood sprayed, and the guy staggered and gurgled, but he stayed alive enough to lurch this way and that for another several seconds before he crumpled.
There. I could be messy too. I’d just needed a little practice.
None of these idiots could stop us. We held all the cards here, and we were dealing out their fate for the equally violent lives they’d lived. All of us, working together in unison. The exhilaration of the collaboration brought an unexpected smile to my lips.
I’d never felt like this on a mission before. I’d gotten satisfaction out of a difficult job well done, sure, but it’d never been a joint effort. Something I was creating with other people, something bigger than I could have managed on my own.
I’d thought I preferred working alone, but there was something special about this kind of team effort that it’d never occurred to me I was missing.
Another shot exploded near the front of the room, despite the bodies that already littered the floor. I looked up to where the sound had originated and smiled as Blaze took down another gangster who’d hurtled toward the exit despite the blood pouring from his wounds. True to his assigned role, he was keeping our chaos contained.
Garrison played an active role too, even though he wasn’t involved in the killing tonight. I knew he’d gotten information about the filming schedule and personnel ahead of time using his manipulative charms. Now that the bodies all lay motionless or sagging, nearly dead, he stalked between them. He scanned the bodies, checked for pulses, and motioned the rest of us to those that hadn’t quite given up the ghost yet. He also emptied their pockets of anything that could be useful or a threat. Like in the job I’d crashed days ago, he tossed all of those items into a sack.
As I delivered one last kill shot, the adrenaline in me softened from a rush to a pleasant buzz. Blaze pulled out his tablet. “No security has been alerted. I’m not seeing any sign that the police have flagged concerning activity in the area either.” He turned. “I’ll collect the hard drive that the security cameras are feeding into.”
“I’m going to make one final circuit of the building,” Garrison said, his hand drifting to the holster he kept at his hip just in case.
If I’d been working alone, all the work of double-checking and securing the scene would have fallen on me. Another benefit of teamwork.
Because my efforts hadn’t been quite as bloody as the other main killers on the crew, my clothes had survived relatively unscathed. I simply pulled a hoodie over the fitted shirt with its protective padding. Julius and Talon chucked off their tactical gear in exchange for tees and jeans that’d look more natural moving through the city, wiping off stray streaks of blood with rags. Somehow their well-muscled forms, Talon’s more compact and Julius’s bulkier, had gotten even more mouth-watering after seeing them fully in action.
Garrison brought the car around, and we all piled in, leaving the chaos behind. The strip where we’d landed the jet was only a twenty-minute drive away. By the time we reached it, the guys had already fallen into the sort of casual conversation I’d gotten used to around the apartment, as if we’d done nothing more than crash a party in the normal people way.
“Could you believe those props?” Blaze crowed, shaking his head. “Those were a crime all by themselves.”
“Don’t get me started on the dialogue,” Garrison muttered. “It couldn’t have sounded more wooden if it’d been delivered by a couple of two-by-fours.”
Julius gave one of his quietly confident smiles. “I’d say we made a much more interesting picture with what they gave us to work with.” He nodded to me. “And Dess more than held her own. You did good out there.”
With him, it was hard to tell how much of a compliment that was—mild or ecstatic or somewhere in between. But I’d take it. I scrambled onto the jet with a bounce in my step, still a little hyped up from my earlier rush.
As I sank into one of the posh leather seats and the engine started to rumble, Garrison pulled a bottle of wine out from a cooler between two of the seats. “To a job well done!” he said, raising it and popping the cork.
He took a swig and passed the bottle on to Talon. The older man downed a gulp of his own and clapped Blaze on the shoulder in a rare show of physical comradery, however brief. The hacker let out a whoop when he grabbed the bottle for his turn. Julius watched over them all with his usual penetrating gaze, foregoing a drink himself, but his smile lingered on his lips.
When the bottle finally made its way to me, I let myself have a tentative sip. I didn’t usually bother with alcohol unless I needed to put on a show for a job, and then I actually swallowed as little as possible. I wasn’t totally sure how the effects might blur my mind. I couldn’t help noticing that when Garrison made a grabby motion to get it back, he directed it at Blaze, who passed it over from me, instead of looking me straight in the eyes.
As the plane soared through the sky, the men fell into a discussion about the most ridiculous moments in past missions, pausing to correct themselves or each other and to exaggerate the situations even more. Soon, even Julius was chuckling. I laughed along from my seat, but I couldn’t help feeling a little off to the side.
I hadn’t been part of any of those missions. I wasn’t really a part of the crew, even now. I’d only been a guest star for this job. Who knew if Julius would want to have me along again? I’d held my own, but I knew I hadn’t been as much in my element as the rest of them.
They knew each other better than I knew… anyone. Maybe they weren’t related by blood, but they were a family in every other way that counted. A pang ran through my heart with the longing to be in their midst, just as much a part of it as the rest of them.
I didn’t know who my birth family was or how they’d lost me—or given me up. Maybe I never would. But this family right here was something I knew with a sudden certainty I wanted in on. Noelle had made me a lone wolf, but every nerve in my body clanged with the sense that I was meant to be part of something bigger.
As long as I was with the Chaos Crew, I had a chance to form those bonds, didn’t I? I’d just have to make sure I proved myself worthy in every possible way they could want.
