The Good Guy Koontz, Dean

Timothy Carrier walks into a bar and gets mistaken for a hitman. A stranger slides him an envelope with cash and a photo of the woman he's supposed to kill. Tim's a stonemason, not a killer — so he tracks down the target, a woman named Linda, to warn her. The real hitman is already on the move, and now Tim's inserted himself into a nightmare where doing the right thing might get them both killed. Koontz leans into his thriller instincts here, stripping away the supernatural for a taut cat-and-mouse chase built on ordinary decency colliding with professional violence. It's fast, propulsive, and surprisingly tender — a story about what happens when a genuinely good person refuses to look away. For fans of straightforward suspense with a moral backbone, or anyone who's ever wondered if they'd actually step up when it mattered.