The Payback (Team Zulu 2)

A muscle twitched in Dante’s eyelid. I made him nervous, and not just because I had a pistol aimed at him. What we’d inflicted at the club had him worried.

“How about a trade?” Dante asked. “You have something of mine I’d like returned. Brunette, five-eight. A little mouthy, but oh, what a mouth. I bet she could—”

I shot him in the shoulder. The silenced pistol barely made a sound above the ambient noise, but Dante wasn’t so quiet. He grunted like a wounded bear while clutching the injury. Sage had told me I shouldn’t kill Dante. She’d mentioned nothing about wounding him.

“Watchyourfucking mouth.” I took a steadying breath and continued. “This is the situation. I can kill you both in the next ten seconds, which, trust me, will be my absolute pleasure, or one of you can unplug the hard drive and pass it to me and I’ll be on my way.”

Dante snarled. “You’re going to regret this. I’ll hunt you down and—”

I shot him in the other shoulder. He howled and stumbled into the back wall, slumping to his ass on the floor. I clicked my tongue, in no mood for his belligerent threats. “It amazes me you’ve climbed so high in this world when you’re clearly not a fast learner.”

Governor Drummond’s paleness suggested he was seconds from vomiting his canapés and whiskey. I sent him a sinister grin. “I also enjoy shooting perverted assholes. Hand me the hard drive or you’re next.”

While Dante sweated and groaned on the floor, the governor burst into action. Finally, someone who listened. With shaking hands, he passed me the hard drive.

When he returned to the corner, I shot him in the shoulder, too. He wailed and clutched the wound. “You shot me!” he screeched. “I did what you asked!”

“I know”—I shrugged one shoulder—“I just don’t like you.”

An alarm blared, urgent and loud. A monstrous crash came from behind.

I spun to find a heavy steel door had dropped from the ceiling and slammed to the floor. My eyes flicked to Dante and his shit-eating grin. The cell phone in his hand told me he’d just activated a panic alarm.

The vault room was sealed shut, and I was stuck inside.

Everything had gone to shit.