Up In Smoke → Liam Dunbar [1]

Chapter Nine

"I'm not scared," Liam exclaimed.

"Well I am! What the hell is wrong with you people? God, I don't understand how the hell you can do this!" Addy confessed. Her arms were swinging all over the place to emphasize her point. She nearly hit Stiles in the face, and rested her hands against the table before she actually did hit someone.

"We're not going to judge you if you don't want to do it, Addy," Scott informed.

"No, because if I'm not here, then if you do something extremely stupid – more so than this plan – then I can physically hit you for being stupid to do something more stupid than this stupid plan which is really stupid, making me want to hit you for being so stupid," she rambled.

"What?" Everyone around the table was confused at her outburst, even Stiles, who was trying to figure out exactly what she meant.

"It's a stupid plan!" Addison shouted. It wasn't that hard to comprehend. 

"Look," Stiles continued on, ignoring everything Addy just said, "if we do this, we don't know what's coming for us. You know that, right?"

"How do we even know something's definitely coming?" Kira asked the unsaid question. Addy was bouncing up and down on her toes. She was stressed out, which could easily be seen by the others. The price on her head was nearly as big as Scott's and he had years of experience dealing with dangerous things. 

"Because the tape from Garrett's bag said 'visual confirmation required.'"

Addy had forgotten about the bag of money. The half a million dollars stashed under Scott's bed. That money could cure all their problems if they were greedy enough to take it. The problem was, it wasn't theirs to take and everyone in the pack was too honest to steal it.

"Simon said the same thing. He couldn't get paid by the benefactor until he had proof that you guys were dead," Stiles added. She didn't know who Simon was, but apparently he had tried to kill them. She wasn't surprised that they still didn't tell her anything. She still didn't know how the benefactor even got all the money.

"So the idea is, what if you kill someone on the deadpool, but you can't send the proof?"

"You don't get paid,"' Addy finished. No proof, no money. Simple. "But how does that get us any closer to the benefactor?"

"He still needs to know if the target is really dead."

"Especially if it's someone high on the list." Stiles glanced at his best friend. He didn't like the plan either, but he knew Scott would be okay. He always was. He survived everything thrown at him: the kanima, the darach, the alpha pack, the nogitsune.

"So if he wants visual confirmation..." Liam trailed off.

"He's going to have to come get it himself." Scott nodded. Addy didn't know how he was so calm during the whole thing. Kira was literally going to put him so close to death, his heart would barely be beating. It would kill any human in an instant, and probably even Addy or Liam.

It was still early in the day. They were going to wait until it was later at night. There was more of a chance that the benefactor would come in the dark rather than the day. If  he came.

Stiles went off into the living room to call Malia; they had been fighting apparently. Addy didn't know why. It was probably just something stupid. Kira was in the bathroom, leaving Scott, Liam, and Addy in the kitchen.

"Okay, what's going on with you two?" the alpha asked. The chemo signals they were giving off was actually starting to give Scott a headache. He didn't want to ask when the others were in the room but with only the three of them there he felt as if they would tell the truth.