The Hitman’s Guide to Stately Fences and Killer Defenses (The Hitman’s Guide #8)

Chapter 1

ONE

LELAND

“I need to talk to you about something.”

I freeze and slowly look over at Waylon as he stands in the door of my gun shrine where I’ve been busy staring at my latest beauty. “Did you knock someone up?”

His face scrunches up. “No! Oh my god!”

“Did you start selling drugs at school?” I ask.

“I wanted to talk to Jackson! I thought Jackson was in here!” Waylon says before he storms off in a perfect rendition of a teenage tantrum.

After we illegally made the fifteen-year-old our son, Waylon has been in our wonderful care.

He’s a good kid with a brain that got him in extreme trouble when he followed his stepfather’s instructions to create a drug that ended up killing people.

Because of it, his brother Bennett was sent to prison, which meant that Waylon had nowhere to go.

Since living with me is not the safest place for a fifteen-year-old, we’d considered sending him to someone else.

But people know what he can do, and we’re afraid that it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to take him from us.

A normal family wouldn’t be able to protect him like Jackson and I can.

Hell, we’re surrounded by people who would move mountains to protect the teenager.

“What’s going on?” Jackson asks as he steps out of our bedroom and into the hallway, looking handsome, as always.

Waylon rushes over to him. “Oh, thank god, the normal one.”

“Excuse me? My husband is not normal in the slightest! Have you seen him climb fences? No normal man climbs fences like that,” I assure him.

“I just…” Waylon wavers some more, telling me that we might not be prepared for what he’s about to say.

“Who’d you kill, knock up, or drug?” I ask.

He gives me an exasperated look, like he’s not the one over here struggling to get out what he did. “Why does it have to be one of those things? What kind of… okay… maybe… maybe I did some shit in the past, but I’m being good!”

“You shouldn’t cuss,” Jackson comments, brown eyes scrutinizing him, like that’s the issue here. He really is too good and sweet.

“I feel like that’s the least of his worries when we don’t know what atrocities he’s committed!

” I say. “Blink if you’ve started a gang and then got caught by another gang who said they’d pay you off, but you’ve realized that it was a scam all along so you went to the police who are now forcing you to work as an undercover gang member, but you fell in love with the head of the DEA’s daughter and you two are aware it’s forbidden love but nothing can stop your love for her. ”

“How am I supposed to not blink?! I didn’t…

I haven’t… I was just going to say that my friend…

his parents are having friends over so he’s hoping he could stay somewhere else, heavily implying that he wanted to stay at my house…

so I was wondering if the two of us could stay at Cassel’s or Henry’s from tomorrow until Sunday. ”

I grab my chest. “Jackson… Jackson, I have this… there’s something in my chest that really hurts. There’s… it’s a pain. There’s a pain, Jackson, what’s this called?”

“Drama?” Waylon asks.

Jackson rubs my shoulder. “Honey, it’s fine. If he wants… to stay with others… because of our house…”

I gasp as I realize what it is that burns so brightly in my chest. “Betrayal. I have Papa’d you so damn good, and then you do this to me?”

Waylon looks a little flustered. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just that sometimes… please don’t be upset.”

I swipe away a fake tear. “Fine. Go stay with someone else. I will cry myself to sleep tonight. Jackson… where are the Kleenexes? I will need a whole stack of them.”

“I thought we were watching a movie and popping popcorn?” Jackson asks, like he’s not at all affected by this betrayal.

“Just the popcorn for me. I will need the salt to replenish my tears,” I say.

Waylon sighs very loudly. “Hey, Leland, my friend Cam would like to come over tomorrow. Do you mind if he spends the night?”

I freeze and slowly look over at him. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite hear that over my sobbing.”

He gives me a look. “You heard it just fine. Do I tell him yes or no?”

“We’ll pick him up at five AM,” I say. “Tell him not to be late.”

Waylon’s face scrunches up again, like there could possibly be a problem. “Why so early? No… can it be a normal time? What about ten? I’m going to regret this so much,” he whines.

“You shouldn’t have caved, then,” Jackson says, like he wants Waylon to take his friend over to some other family and pretend like they’re his!

I reach over and take Blow-Up Randy’s hand. “I just really don’t understand why you’d want to bring your friend over to Cassel’s. Jeremy would probably feed you squirrel, and Cassel would make you pet his keyboard.”

“And strangely it sounds more normal than whatever is going on here,” he mutters. “Can… can you please put Randy and Rhonda, wherever she is, away… until my friend goes home?” He eyes the blow-up doll like he could possibly have a problem with it.

“It’s not nice to suppress Randy. He is a free man, Waylon. One cannot tame this man.”

“We’ll put them away,” Jackson promises.

“What do you boys want to do for fun? We could have a pillow fight. Ooh, pin the tail on the donkey! What about bobbing for apples? Nothing says friendship like a tub full of each other’s spit as you go in, mouth open, for those apples.”

Waylon is weirdly staring at Jackson, like he might save him.

Jackson holds up his hands. “Don’t look at me. I can’t control him. I knew this from the moment I met him.”

“You could like… I don’t know… try? Ooh, I have an idea. Leland, what if you stay over at Henry’s?”

I gasp as I consider that idea. “How… tantalizing! I don’t want to ruin your sleepover, though, so I’ll ask him if I can stay Sunday night. Maybe he’ll even let me sleep between him and his wife.”

“Oh joy,” Waylon says. “Honestly, it would be cool if Cam and I just like… played video games… in my room. It’d be so fun if we, you know… did that… all day.”

“Jackson… this poor soul doesn’t know what people do during sleepovers,” I announce.

“Do you?” Jackson asks.

“Umm…” I think about that for a bit. “I usually… you know…” I draw a finger over my throat, “the people I had sleepovers with when I was his age, but I’m sure this will be fine.”

“That’s not at all concerning,” Waylon says.

“It’s fine. I’m learning,” I assure him. “And I have the two best people to practice on.” I pat him and Jackson.

Waylon gives me a hopeful look. “Video games are so much fun. He doesn’t have a PlayStation 5 or a Steam Deck, so he wants to check mine out. You guys even got me new games for them that he’s really into.”

Jackson gives him a pat on the back. “It’ll be alright.”

I make Blow-Up Randy also give Waylon a pat on the back. “Don’t be nervous. Just be happy you listened to my birds and bees scenario so you don’t have a kid too.”

Waylon sighs and heads off to the living room since it’s his turn to pick out a movie.

“You have him terrified,” Jackson says. “Just the way you like him.”

I grin, proud of my abilities. “Did you like the way I guilted him into staying here?”

“I sure did. I especially like how proud of yourself you were,” he says as I beam at him and have Blow-Up Randy pat back his neatly styled brown hair. He really shouldn’t look this put together this late in the day.

“Thank you.” I lean in and give him a peck on the lips, but before I can trot off, he pulls me back to him.

“Leland, repeat after me.”

“Ooh. Is this like foreplay?” I whisper in his ear.

“It is definitely not like foreplay. Do not do anything extreme, do you hear me?”

“I kind of hear you,” I admit. “Not super well, but a little. Like you know when you hear a cricket in the background? You know it’s there, you hear it, but you do your best not to listen to it?”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work when it’s your husband.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Hmm… we’ll come back to that.”

“I really don’t think we need to,” he says before he grabs me and drags me into a hug. “Listen to me!”

“I’m trying! I really am, but… oh no… there’s… there’s something… happening!” I cry as I lift Blow-Up Randy and jab Jackson in the cheek with his blow-up penis. “I can’t hear you over the penis!”

“You better listen to me!”

“I’m trying, but… the penis, Jackson, the penis!”

He reaches over and bites Blow-Up Randy’s penis, making me gasp.

“Jackson! His ween!”

“He shouldn’t have had it in my face.”

“He’ll never be able to forgive you,” I whisper.

“I bet he will,” Jackson says as he pries the blow-up doll out of my hands and grabs my face. “Are you listening?”

“I’m listening to Blow-Up Randy’s cries of ‘How dare you nibble on my dingaling!’ Did you hear that? Just now? Such cries!”

“Fine, you torture that child all you want. Is that what you want to hear?” Jackson asks.

“It is!” I’m proud as can be while I hurry down the stairs to where Waylon is sitting on the couch. I lean over and ruffle his hair. “I hope you’re as excited about tomorrow as I am.”

“I’m… afraid I’m not,” he says with a grimace.

I ruffle his hair some more. “I’ll be back to join the movie in a second. I… I need to make some calls… about tomorrow.”

“Please don’t. Video games are so much fun.”

“Can’t hear you!”

I swiftly escape into the sex dungeon where I will not be heard as Cayenne, our red mutt we adopted, and Sarge, the Doberman who joined our household after being part of a Doberman army hired to protect Jackson, scramble after me.

I shut the door and make my first call.