Hard to Be Good (Hard Ink #3.5) Read Online Free Page B

Jess whispered. And the civility of their exchange—when they usually drove each other crazy—proved just how serious this situation was.
    Ike crossed to Dare, and they clasped hands. “When Jess called, I came into the city early. But the rest of the guys will be down by eleven.”
    Dare nodded, and looked to Beckett. “That’ll give us time to set up those lookouts.”
    “Roger that,” Beckett said.
    “Hold up a minute,” Nick said. “Before everyone scatters, I want Marz to show y’all something he’s been working on. Marz?”
    “I’m going to project some images on that wall,” he said, pointing to the stretch of brick that ran along the side of his desk. Easy, his girlfriend Jenna, and Beckett moved out of the way. “These are stills I grabbed from the video surveillance footage during yesterday’s attack.” Marz was the team’s computer expert, and the guy among all Nick’s teammates that Jeremy had gotten to know the best. He was hilarious, dedicated to the point of pulling multiple all-nighters to get done the research they needed, and almost always upbeat.
    Grainy images appeared on the wall next to a giant whiteboard filled with maps and questions and lists of information.
    “Well, that wasn’t too bright an idea, was it?” Marz said, chuckling to himself.
    The brick obscured the images so that Jeremy couldn’t really make out what they were. But it was more of the same all around, all the way up to the tall ceilings. “How about this?” Jeremy said, coming around to Marz. “Can I borrow your chair?”
    “Sure, hoss. What do you have in mind?” Marz asked as he rose. The slight limp he had was the result of the prosthetic he wore. The ambush that had killed so many of the guys on Nick’s SF team had claimed the lower half of Marz’s right leg, too.
    Jeremy climbed up on the chair, grabbed the small cube of the projector, and shined it down at the light-colored concrete floor right in the center of the group. Much clearer.
    “Genius, Jeremy,” Marz said, grinning.
    “But, of course.” Jeremy waggled his eyebrows and lifted the projector higher to enlarge the image. Everyone gathered around, those in the front taking a knee so people behind them could see.
    “Okay, these first ones show that the license plates of the three Suburbans are all blacked out,” Marz said, switching among images. Each one showed a version of the last—their attackers had smeared something dark over the plates. “So there are no leads there. Just an FYI.” Marz glanced over his shoulder to Emilie. The pair exchanged some sort of silent communication and, finally, Emilie nodded and averted her gaze. “This image,” Marz said, switching again, “shows the moment the attackers fired on one of their own.” A flare of light was just visible on the far side of the middle Suburban.
    “Manny,” Nick said quietly, his tone full of regret. For Emilie. Even though her brother had been their enemy, they’d all gone out of their way to express their sympathies to her. Not only were she and Marz together now, but Emilie hadn’t had any knowledge of Manny’s criminal activities until Marz and the team told her.
    Marz nodded. “Yeah. So it was clearly an execution.” From what Jeremy understood, both the authorities and the Church Gang were hunting for Manny after he’d gone on a spree and killed a cop and several Church-Gang henchmen, so these guys had apparently decided he’d become a liability. Scary to imagine what they’d do to Nick and the team if this was what they did to one of their own. Marz switched images again. “Now, this is the best thing I found in reviewing all the footage.”
    The image showed a man firing from the rear passenger seat of one of the Suburbans, an automatic weapon in his hands.
    “If you look at the guy’s bicep, you’ll see there’s a mark,” Marz said. “I spent at least an hour trying to enlarge and clarify it, and this is what I managed.”
    The new image that