Dominic

Good Under Fire

Dominic

My inner beast stilled and waited just under the surface to emerge.

Rosselli's man, Spider, had set off my predatory instincts, and now more than ever, I had the impending sensation of doom rushing to meet me head-on. It didn't help that I really wanted to beat the shit out of him for leaving my doe-eyed beauty to the fate of that fucking quack with a scalpel.

That blade-wielding asshole's death was far too easy and made me wish that I had more time to play with the sick fuck back in the cavern before killing him.

Spider held my gaze, and his unreadable expression made it hard to get a feel for him. But if what Rosselli had said rang true, then he and I had more in common than the generic titles of tracker and enforcer bestowed upon us both.

"Now, Yasmina," said Rosselli, "I may call you by your given name, yes?"

"It is my name."

"If you seek the umbrella of my protective hand, unlock your father's wallet." Rosselli tapped the top of the laptop. "Unless, of course, you cannot, which would cause a different course of action today. One of protection for you but on a different playing field."

Spider eased back the lapel of his suit jacket, exposing the butt of his weapon.

"My father's phone, may I have it?"

"But of course." Rosselli relinquished his hold on the phone.

Mina opened her father's phone, then pulled up a notepad with eight words: daisy, rose, flora, iris, tulip, holly, aster, and mint.

"Dom, bring up the image you took of my back—of the tattoo."

Without a word, I did as she asked, then sat my phone next to her father's outdated cell.

She opened a word document, then inserted two charts: a 10x6 and a 6x8. Inside the first, she typed out numbers one to twenty-six in the ten-column chart, leaving a row between each alpha section. Glancing at my phone, then at her father's, she quickly filled in the empty rows of the ten-column chart with letters, creating a cipher key.

It didn't take her long to match the numbers to their corresponding letters. The letter "Z" paired with the number one, "Y" with number two and it continued until "A" matched with number twenty-six. When finished, she turned the screen around.

"There's the first set with the key." Mina kept her hands on the shell of the laptop that now displayed the same words: daisy, rose, flora, iris, tulip, holly, aster, and mint.

"And what of the second set?" Rosselli spun the electronic device around.

"That's easy," she said, then her hands flew over the keys.

When she finished, a light chuckle left her lips.

"You find something funny, Miss Costa?" Spider raised a brow.

"Yeah." She nodded. "The first set of seed phrases were flowers—some of the ones my mother had kept in her garden when alive, and the second set were birds."

She showed the next set of eight words: loon, duck, coot, finch, crow, pipit, robin, and wren.

"That brings the total seed phrases to sixteen," said Rosselli.

"Yep." A small smile came to her lips. "My father said she loved birdwatching, so I'm not surprised."

"That leaves another eight words," said Rosselli.

"Uh-huh," said Mina as she read up on claiming the contents of a crypto wallet, "which would explain why my father had me memorize the last set."

"What are they?" Rosselli came across about as eager as a shark in the middle of a school of tasty fish.