Dockingboys

Chapter Twelve

Mack widened his eyes. "Really? Who?"

Pitts shrugged. "I was hoping you were gonna tell me. Was it you?"

Mack put a hand over his heart. "No, of course not!"

Xavier shook his head. "Well, whoever it was, we're in deep water now. I got word from a friend of mine, and he said that someone called the cops and recited everything about us three. Including our names, and who we are. You know how many times I've been in prison?"

"Yeah, and I have a criminal record about as long as my damn arm," Pitts chimed in. "We're all screwed."

Mack put out his hands. "Hey, guys, not yet. Do you think it could've been Jaxon? And remember when we were extracting the container from the train? The other truck? Could that have been him?"

Pitts narrowed his eyes. "Jaxon, you say? Keep talking."

Mack took a moment to gather his thoughts. "A few years back, I did a job for a lot of money from the person who hired me. After I completed it, the guy ditched me and left me for the cops."

Pitts leaned forward, obviously interested. "So what'd you do?"

Mack grinned. "I killed him."

Xavier arched his eyebrow. "What does this have to do with our situation?"
"The man who hired me obviously didn't want to do the dirty work himself, because then he wouldn't have hired me to do it. So, that means if Jaxon is greedy enough for the money, he could ditch us and let us rot in prison while he gets more money.

Pitts looked at him, blinking. "More money?"

"Yeah, because if he killed us or ditched us or whatever, that's three less people to share the money with," Xavier explained, beginning to understand it now.

Mack spoke up again. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Hey, do you know what's in the container?"

"Oh, just a few million bucks in gold and silver, a bunch of guns, and some blueprints for a new machine gun."

"A new machine gun?" Mack asked, intrigued.

"Yeah."

"Then we were definitely set up."

Xavier tilted his head. "How?"

"Think about it. Blueprints for new guns are almost the most valuable thing right now. If someone were caught stealing one, they'd rot in prison for the rest of our goddamn lives, or hell, maybe even get executed. But if they hired someone else to do it and give it to themselves, they could just blame the heist on them and get away with it."

"So in this situation, that would be Jaxon getting away with it," Pitts said.

"Right," Mack replied.

Xavier's eyes darkened. "Then we're going to have to take extreme measures."

Mack and Pitts both smiled. "Like what?"

"Like killing him."

"Well, that was easy," Pitts said, chuckling.

Mack nodded. "We can literally do it right now."

"No, we can't. Jaxon knows we're not that dumb. He'll go into hiding immediately. We can't kill him yet," Xavier explained.

"Then we'll do it at the gathering," Pitts snorted. "We'll find a way to kill that bastard one way or another."

Xavier nodded. "Ok. Then we can split the money between the three of us. Perfect."

After that, the day moved quickly as the three men devised a plan to kill Jaxon Moorings at the gathering in the South Docks. Their boiling hatred for him was so immense that a normal man would not have been able to take it. But Jaxon Moorings wasn't an ordinary man. He was a lethal criminal with a certain amount of skills, and if he wanted to do something, he would make a plan and he would follow through with it. That night, Mack had a little trouble sleeping, and he could feel something was wrong, but he couldn't place his mind on it. Within minutes, he dozed off.