Page 55 of Cosmo

Goldie had taken a moment, but he agreed. “Damn right, Murph. We won’t work with those kind, but plenty do. If someone doesn’t take a stand on them, it could be anyone that gets taken by them.”

Hippy finally nodded and said, “I’ll get you guys hooked up before you go. Just in case.”

“The Just-in-Case man is back in action,” Abs chirped. “What do we do?”

Murphy said, “Take care of my family. Ryan’s coming home tonight. Introduce him to the cat, and everyone watches out for anyone that might look off.”

After everyone else left, Hippy waved Murphy and Cosmo over to the corner of the meeting room. “Cosmo, this is my secret place. You talk about it and you can pick which one I use on you.”

Another secret room. He wondered how many there were.

The floor looked like smooth concrete, with indentures around squares, like a myriad of concrete tiles had been laid to make the floor. He’d never thought a thing about it, but most basement floors were smooth concrete across each room, not tiles of the stuff.

All Hippy had to do was to step on the corner to his right and the door popped back and showed a dark square hole in the floor. Hippy started down the ladder and Murphy followed. Dumb as it was, after telling them he’d been hanging out with a fed, to go into some secret room inside of another secret room, he went anyway.

As he climbed down the ladder, the lights came on and the second he got to the floor below, he saw that on every single space on the walls were weapons.

In awe, he spun around and felt his eyes bugging out. Rifles, shotguns, automatic rifles, pistols, crossbows, and one entire wall were nothing but knives of every shape and size.

“What the fuck?”

“I told you, he’s the weapons man. He’s spent half his shares on this stash.”

Cosmo nodded at Murphy. “I respect that.”

“Come over here,” Hippy told them. “Gotta get you wired.”

“Wait, you’re wiring us?”

Murphy laughed as he walked over and explained, “Yeah. Fight fire with fire.”

“They have a lot of info on us, so why wouldn’t we get some on them? Isn’t that what you were doing when you fucked the guy?”

Hippy was glaring at him, and he didn’t even try to hide the fact he didn’t like Cosmo much. If he was truthful with himself, he couldn’t blame the guy. “Yeah. That was why, but now, sorry, but I believe him.”

“You know they’re trained to lie? Undercover cops are trained to lie!”

Murphy got in between them and held a hand on each chest. “Enough. We’re on the same side.”

“You sure about that, Murph?”

“Yeah, I am,” he said, letting his arms drop. “I am sure of it. It’s not like I haven’t known so-called dirty cops before.”

Hippy pointed a finger at Cosmo and gritted, “If you hurt these people, I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands. I ain’t gonna need one of these guns.”

If there was anything that Cosmo could respect, it was loyalty. He looked Hippy in the eye and said, “I’d do it myself. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“We’ll see.”

There was a drawer in a built-in wall cabinet that held guns along the top. Hippy pulled out two tiny pins that were no bigger than a BB for a BB gun.

There was a metal stud on it, so it could be used as a pierced earring or a pin on a shirt. “That’s a wire?”

“Yeah. Powerful and expensive too, but it isn’t great at ambient sounds, so try to stay close and not somewhere there are a lot of other voices or ambient sounds of any kind.”

Hippy pinned one of them onto Murphy’s button-up shirt. When he turned to Cosmo, and Cosmo saw the look of disdain, he set his hand on Hippy’s shoulder. “I know you don’t know me.I know you don’t trust me, even after all this. I don’t blame you. I will do right by all of you.”

Hippy’s head fell as he said, “Yeah, well, that’ll be seen or not, but…” He looked back into Cosmo’s eyes. “You don’t like family? I get why, believe me, I’d feel the same, but that doesn’t mean they’re all bad. This one is good. Don’t fuck this up.”

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