Page 4 of Cold Foot Revenge
Wolf Mask wrapped her hand around his and pulled him toward the hallway.
“No touching!” one of the guys at the table barked out over the noise of the music.
“He’s paying!” Wolf Mask yelled back without hesitation. The grit in her voice said she could handle herself just fine.
There were numbers above the doors, one through four, but she didn’t pull him into one of them. Instead, she pulled himright past them and to a door at the end of the hallway with a glowing exit sign over it.
“Wait, what are you doing?” he asked, pulling his hand from hers.
Wolf Mask rounded on him. “You can’t be here,” she hissed at him.
“Um, disagree. I can be wherever the fuck I wa—”
“I know who you are,” she said, and he noted her chest rising and falling like she was out of breath.
“You know my brother too?” he asked, straightening his spine.
Her refusal to answer was answer enough.
“Please,” she pleaded. “Just go and don’t come back here.”
“What’s going on?” he murmured, stepping closer to her.
“They’re going to kill you,” she whispered, desperation in her bright blue eyes as she checked the hallway. “Please. I’m not big enough to stop anything. Please just go.”
“If you know me, what’s my name?”
“Dylan Hoffman,” she said without a moment of hesitation.
He reached for her mask, but she flinched back and grabbed his wrist, her fake blood-red nails digging into his skin there. “Don’t.” There was a feral snarl in her voice, and he raised his hands in surrender. “I need to find out what happened.”
“It doesn’t matter what happened,” she said, shoving him toward the door. “Hurry!”
“I need to talk to anyone who used to work here a few years ago—”
“Trust me, you don’t.”
“Lady—,”
“I’m begging you.” She shocked him to his bones as she fell to her knees and clasped her hands in front of her. Her too-bright eyes beseeched him in desperation as she stared right into his soul from her knees. “Please leave. I want you to live.”
He didn’t know her. Wolf Mask’s eyes were completely unfamiliar to him. Her physique? Unfamiliar. The half-sleeve of tattoos down her right calf? Unfamiliar.
He was here for answers, but she was begging. She knew something.
“Can I see you again?” he asked.
“No,” she gritted out fast, checking behind her. “You’ll get me killed.” She shoved him bodily out the exit door. “There’s cameras there and there,” she whispered, pointing. “Walk straight down the alley and stick close to the wall. Stay in the shadows. The light’s out. Go that way.” She pointed. “Go the long way to get to your car. Never come back here.”
She searched his eyes for a moment more and then flinched back inside and slammed the door closed after her. The click of the lock sounded loud above the murmur of the song playing inside.
Huh.
He stood there for a few seconds more and then hopped off the right side of the stairs into the shadows. He stopped when he came to the dumpster, and a memory assaulted him. He’d found Garret here, foaming at the mouth, seizing.
He cast one more glance behind him, but Wolf Mask was probably back on her stage, shaking her tits for strangers by now.
Something dark was happening here.
