Page 90 of Stone Coast

I nodded, and he helped me to my feet.

“I leave you alone for two minutes, and you’re already trying to mix it up with two strangers in a storeroom.”

Another masked figure dragged Ray into the room and shoved him to the ground. He aimed his shotgun at Ray while another figure watched the door and the hallway.

“Tell the lady what she wants to know!” Cooper said with a growl.

Ray didn’t look so tough now. They had roughed him up a bit.

His goons still writhed in agony, but there was no blood. It took me a moment to clue in to the fact they’d been shot with non-lethal bean bags. Those will crack ribs and take the breath out of you. Make you wish you were dead.

“I don’t know,” Ray whispered.

Coop shoved the barrel of his shotgun in his face. At that distance, non-lethal became lethal. “I’m not playing around with you.”

“I don’t know. Some guy. He came to me with a job. I didn’t ask questions. Paid in cash.”

“What did he look like?”

“Clean cut. Curly brown hair. Blue eyes. Boyish face. Early 30s.”

“Fed?” I said.

“Could be. No tattoos.”

“I need a name,” I demanded.

“Lady, it’s not the kind of transaction where you exchange names.”

“How did he approach you?”

“He came into the club.”

“Bullshit. You’re not going to take a job from some schmuck off the street.”

Ray hesitated.

“Start talking, dipshit.”

After a long moment, he said, “He was referred by Mako. It checked out.”

“Who’s Mako?”

“Dominic Mackey. Everybody calls him Mako. Look, you didn’t get his name from me.”

Cooper whispered in my ear. “We need to go? What do you want to do with him?”

I thought long and hard about it. These guys would have killed me in a heartbeat and wouldn’t have thought twice. And that would have been after they did unspeakable things. I wasn’t inclined to show them any mercy, but that voice in the back of my head said,walk away.

And I did.

We left the sniveling dirtbags on the floor and hustled out of the storeroom, then made a hasty exit through the back. The van waited with a driver at the wheel. We hopped aboard, and Cooper rumbled the door shut. The driver stomped the gas, and we blazed out of the alley. The team pulled off their balaclavas—Cooper, TJ, Finn, and Piper behind the wheel.

I gave a look around at the motley crew. “I guess I owe you for saving my ass.”

Cooper flashed that brilliant smile. “We take care of our own.”

With a few twists and turns, Piper put the Cool Cat behind us. I said to her, “I thought you were just tech support.”