A/N: Sorry it's so short! Don't worry, the next chapter should be longer!
"How'd it go?" Tool asked.
"Ask Miss I-wear-the-fucking-pants," Christmas snapped, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at Erin.
Erin stepped out of the Royce, dress shimmering around her. A scowl darkened her face, made her eyes livid with fury and danger. Tool approached, hesitant. Erin glanced at him; her gaze softened. She offered a weak smile.
"Well?" Tool asked. "I'm waiting."
"Seven million," Erin answered, threw herself into a seat. "That's what he's paying."
"Seven million?" Tool glanced sharply at Ross. The lead Expendable nodded his head, still somewhat stunned and appalled by Erin's audacity. "How'd you get him into agreeing to seven million?"
"It's a hard job." Erin passed a hand over her face, eyes darkening. "You guys get to keep the money, though. This is personal."
Tool yanked the pipe from his mouth. "What the hell are you talking about? You're not going on a fucking job by your-fucking-self!"
"I have to," Erin stated, flicked her gaze over to Ross, gave him a hard, challenging stare. "It's vengeance."
"Vengeance? Vengeance?" Tool turned to Ross. "Barney, knock some sense into her brain! Smack her or something!"
Ross shook his head. "No matter how bad I want to, I'm not gonna hit her, even if she is being stubborn."
"A stubborn bitch is more like it," Christmas muttered from the corner, yanked the tie off his neck. He grumbled incoherently to himself, shrugged out of the suit jacket, unbuttoned the dress shirt so he could breathe.
"Listen, this is a dangerous job." Erin settled down on the edge of Tool's tattoo chair. "I don't want to get you guys involved anyway."
"Jesus!" Tool shook his head, made to throttle Erin's neck, pulled away at the last moment. "The fuck you're going alone. I'll be tailing your ass if you don't have Ross and Lee with you."
"Hey," Erin snapped, "in case you haven't noticed, you're a bit out of practice! It's people like you that would fuck the job up! You're so out of practice you'd get a bullet up your ass the moment you set foot on Montoya's property."
Tool flinched, drew back. "Montoya? As in Alexander Montoya, the millionaire?"
"Yes, Tool, the millionaire." For the umpteenth time, Erin passed a hand over her face, rubbed her temples and eyes wearily. "Listen, listen, the job doesn't need to get done right away. We've got a day or two before we're wired the first half of the money. We can argue about this later. Right now, I need to go home, eat, take a shower, and hit the fucking hay."
"You aren't going anywhere," Tool growled, stepped into Erin's path. He met Erin's lethal gaze, died a little inside as her eyes bored into his with venom. "This needs to be settled right now."
"I don't give a damn whether or not you guys tag along." Erin sat back down, let her gaze dart over to Ross and Lee for a brief moment. "If you are, then it's my mission and you do what I say."
"Fuck no!" Christmas, stripped of his tie and suit jacket, stormed over to the woman. "If you want to be a part of this team then you listen to us. That was part of the fucking rules!"
"Fine, then!" Erin leapt to her feet, shouldered past Tool. "Forget about it! I won't join the team, you won't get the seven million, and you won't have another asset." Yanking open the car door, Erin threw herself inside, revved the engine, backed out of the garage, tore down the street, wheels squealing.
The three men stood in silence, more or less stunned than anything else. After a moment, Christmas rolled his shoulders, both relief and regret rolling in his chest.
"Good riddance," he growled.
Ross pivoted around so fast Christmas hardly saw him coming. The older man slammed Christmas against a nearby wall, knocking the air out of lungs. Barney hit Lee across the face, drew blood, hit him again. The Brit tried to fight back, tried to use his youthfulness to his best advantage. Ross threw Christmas against a wall again, grabbed Lee by the collar.
"What the fuck is your problem?" Ross yelled. "Look what you just did! If I ever met an asshole and a dumbass, it was you!"
Christmas shoved the older man away. "No, what the fuck is your problem? She's bad for the team, can't you see that? We're better off without her!"
"I don't know why you don't like her," Tool said, having stood unmoving while Ross had attacked Lee, "but whatever the hell it is, you need to put it fucking aside."
"Why? What good would she have done us?"
At this, Tool and Ross fell silent. Ross turned away, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Tool relit his pipe, took a long drag. Lee nodded his head, an unintentional smirk twisting at the corner of his lips.
"Exactly," he sneered. "For once, I'm right and you guys – "
"She threw knives better than you and me," Tool cut Christmas off, eyes wandering to the knife-board. "Betcha she's a helluva shot in the field. And she probably could've seduced her way into any man's bed. Do you know how easier that would make your job?"
"I don't see how having Erin fuck her way through the job would've helped us."
"She could kill him in his sleep," Ross spoke up, voice low, dangerous. "If she were to put her mind to it, she could probably kill us all within in a couple of hours. Hale, Toll Road, and Gunner are at home, sleeping. They're vulnerable, and Erin is more than capable of slipping into a house unseen. She is a woman, after all."
Christmas glanced between the two men, brow furrowed. "Oh, I see. I didn't realize you guys loved her so much. You just wanted her around 'cause you liked it. It had nothing to do with putting her on the team."
"Bullshit." Ross stormed towards Lee, was stopped by Tool's arm.
"You know," Tool mused, looking at Ross and Christmas, "I was thinking. Little Miss Gorgeous was probably a millionaire herself."
"What makes you think that?" Christmas folded his arms over his chest, refrained to reach for his knives to threaten the two older men.
"She was part of The Ravenous, right? And The Ravenous picked up jobs other mercs passed up or failed. They were sorta the last resort, know what I mean?" Tool took another long drag on his pipe, tried to calm his nerves. "If they were, wouldn't the client pay twice as much? Think about it. If the others teams couldn't get it done, the client's got to be desperate. So he seeks the last on the list, which is The Ravenous. The Ravenous take the job, but they are offered twice as much to get it done quick and right. She must've been fucking rich."
"Why the fuck do I care?"
"Can you imagine all the things she had to leave behind once her team was killed?" Tool shook his head. "She had a lot of nerve to leave everything and come down here incognito. And she's been hiding for how long? Three years? I'd say that's a pretty damn good accomplishment, don't you think so, Barney?"
Ross nodded his head, tore his angry gaze away from Lee. He walked away, struggled out of his jacket. Christmas and Tool watched as the older man yanked off his tie, unbuttoned his dress shirt. Lee shook his head, stormed to the other side of the garage, muttering incoherently to himself. Glancing around at the empty shop, he expected Erin to jump out of nowhere and snarl at him playfully, or laugh and mess around with her throwing knife. Christmas punished himself inwardly, created a new mantra.
Good riddance, he thought. Good riddance, good riddance, good fucking riddance.
"If she's not part of the team," Tool spoke up for both men to hear, "then we have no reason to keep an eye on her, do we?"
Christmas and Ross stopped undressing at opposite sides of the shop. Ross's hand gripped the edge of the chair he was bracing himself again, knuckles turning chalk-white. He pictured Erin's smile, her tears, the tattoo rippling on her shoulder; he heard her laugh, cuss, yell; he felt her hug, her hand, her warmth as she stood next to him. His chest tightened. In the other corner, Christmas imagined Erin in nothing but bare skin, relieved the feeling of her pressing against him, responding to his kisses, shivering as he touched her. Her moans echoed in his ears again as they had in the past few days, haunting him and yet arousing him at the same time. Lacy, for once, didn't even come to mind. Both men stood to their feet slowly, rising with a stiffness that could only be attributed to those who had just realized they had made a mistake. Christmas shook his head, slid into a thin t-shirt. Ross pulled on a long-sleeve, button-up Oxford shirt, rolled the sleeves up lazily, stepped into old, faded jeans. Shedding his dress shoes for his boots, the older man glanced up at Tool, looked away from the man's intense, soul-searching gaze.
"She could be in trouble, you know," Tool added, still exceptionally quiet.
Both men turned, faced Tool with quizzical expressions on their faces. The tattoo artist shrugged, pulled the pipe out of his mouth slowly.
"We've still got that little Mexican contact of hers running around and telling everybody that she's not dead."
Ross had almost forgotten the incident. He laced his shoes quickly, hurried to his motorcycle.
"I'll go talk to her," he said, swinging his leg over the seat, "maybe knock some sense into her brain."
Tool's eyes widened. Whether the action was exaggerated or not, Ross couldn't tell. The tattoo artist asked, "You aren't really going to hit her, are you?"
Ross fixed the man with a stern gaze. "Why the hell would I do that?"
Receiving no answer, Barney revved up the bike, drove it out of the garage. Tool and Christmas watched it go. Once the engine became a distant roar, Tool turned to Lee. He shook his head as he looked at the Brit, heaved a sigh.
"You better watch your ass," the tattoo artist said, still shaking his head. "At the rate you're going, you'll be the one kicked out."