Cole twisted the spear a little more, turning Ace’s arm the wrong way and bringing the skinny Nymar to his tiptoes. “Drop the gun,” he demanded.
“I…can’t!”
“Then take your finger away from the trigger.”
It took some doing, but Ace got his finger outside of the trigger guard. “What about her?”
“If Stephanie makes one wrong move, I’ll—”
“Not her,” Ace snapped as he nodded toward the rear staircase. “Her!”
Careful not to take his eyes away from Ace for too long, Cole glanced down the hall. At first he only noticed Stephanie, a few of the Nymar bodyguards, and one or two of the girls who must have worked at the place. Something about one of those girls seemed familiar, so he glanced again. The familiar girl had her black hair tied into pigtails so it brushed against shoulders that were bare thanks to the black corset she wore. “Paige! Where the hell have you been?”
Paige stood between Stephanie and the bodyguard in the black suit. She had a sickle in each hand, holding the weapons up to press the curved blades against both Nymars’ throats. Although Stephanie looked ready to pounce, her bodyguard cringed at the touch of Paige’s sharpened blade and allowed the barrel of his small submachine gun to droop toward the floor. “You seemed to be doing pretty good until these chickenshits pulled out their guns.” Pulling the sickles in a bit tighter, she added, “This is about to get really messy, Ace. Sure you want to stain this tacky new carpet?”
Even though she was at the business end of a very sharp blade, Stephanie pointed out, “They’re not gonna kill us. If they were, they’d already be spraying that antidote shit all over the place.”
Cole realized then that he didn’t have any of the Nymar antidote. One of the first Skinner innovations he’d ever seen was a serum that directly counteracted the infection that changed a human into a Nymar. When injected directly into Nymar tendrils, the stuff might as well have been acid. It was the most effective weapon the Skinners had against Nymar, and he hadn’t been given any when sent into a building full of them. Paige was definitely going to hear about that.
“I’ve got some antidote on me,” Paige pointed out.
A tight scowl came across Cole’s face. Insult…meet injury.
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Such a bad bluff. Kind of pathetic, really.”
“You’re so cute, Steph,” Paige said. Just then the sound of creaking wood drifted through the air and Stephanie’s eyes widened. Without moving her hands, Paige willed the sickle blades of both weapons to extend and wrap around the throats of both Nymar. “You’ll be perfect once I make one little adjustment.”
“She’s right!” Ace quickly said. “I mean, your boy here said he just wanted to deliver a message.”
“Hey!” Cole said in his own defense.
Ace couldn’t have been quicker to correct himself. “Cole. His name’s Cole. Sorry about that, man. It’s just that he said he wanted to deliver a message. Stay away from Cicero. We got it. We’ll stay out of Cicero. Okay?”
“You’ve said that before,” Paige pointed out.
“I know, but we just had to test the waters, you know? Let Steph go and we can call it a night.”
But Paige was having too much fun to let it drop now. Cole could tell that much by the mischievous glint in her eyes as the sickle around Stephanie’s neck cinched in a bit tighter. “I don’t know. I mean, we did come here to take a look around and have a little chat, but then you went and tried to hurt my partner. You threatened our lives and we can’t let that pass. I mean, that just wouldn’t look right.”
In an instant Ace’s concerned expression shifted to impatience. “Wouldn’t look right? You wanna come into our place, kick around our people, threaten to cut our heads off, and you wanna talk about what looks right? How about this? Get outta here while you can. You wanna do some damage to us? You won’t live long enough to—”
“Someone’s after Daniels,” Stephanie blurted.
Ace’s eyes narrowed into angry slits and his upper lip curled into a snarl. “Bitch, you’d better shut your mouth and let me handle this!”
Stephanie met Ace’s glare and then some. “You’re the one who wanted to send Sid and that other asshole along with Rita! I told you my girl could scout just fine on her own, but you had to send those two shit stains along with her! They’re the ones that brought the Skinners here!”
Cocking his head to one side, Ace raised his eyebrows and patted the air with his free hand. All the anger and impatience that had been on his face suddenly evaporated as he said, “We don’t know that. Even if it was their fault—”
Cutting Ace short by twisting his spear, Cole growled, “Let her talk.”
“Yeah,” Paige said. “Who’s after Daniels?”
“Some guy from New York. He’s been asking about him and it got back to us.”
“What’s he want?”
“I don’t know,” Stephanie whined.
“I think you do.”
“Maybe, but it’s really hard to think with whatever the hell that is wrapped around my neck!”
Paige let out a controlled breath, which allowed her to ease the sickle blade away from Steph’s neck just enough to let her turn her head.
“All he said was that he wanted to find Daniels,” Stephanie said
“So you talked to this guy yourself?” Cole asked.
“Maybe,” she squeaked.
“Say everything there is to say about him so we can get the hell out of here,” Paige announced. “How’s that for a plan?”
“The guy is from New York,” Ace replied. “At least, that’s all we’ve heard. If you want a home address, you’re out of luck. He asked about Daniels, but we weren’t gonna give him up without meeting the guy face-to-face.”
“What about a name?”
Staring at Cole, Ace replied, “Burkis. That’s the only name he gave. Mr. Burkis. He came to town asking about one of us, so of course we heard about it.”
“Daniels doesn’t work for you,” Paige quickly pointed out.
“He’s Nymar,” Ace told her. “We own this town. Someone pokes around about one of us and we all know.”
Cole didn’t have to try too hard, but Paige did a pretty good job of keeping a straight face through that particular line of garbage. Despite the appearances they liked to put on for anyone who looked in their direction, the Nymar were more of a loose association than a real organization. They had numbers and some assets throughout some major cities, but so did the National Association of Hot Dog Vendors.
Raising his eyebrows, Ace added, “He also asked about you.”
“What’s this Burkis guy want with us?” Cole asked.
“Just you,” Stephanie replied as she locked her eyes on Cole as though he was once again on the menu. “He said you had some knife before Daniels got it.”
“Knife?”
“Maybe just part of a knife. He only mentioned a blade.”
Paige looked at Cole for a fraction of a second, which was enough to let him know they were both thinking the same thing. Once the moment passed, Paige moved her sickles away from the Nymar throats. “If we need anything more, we know where to find you.”
“What about me?” Ace asked.
“Let him go, Cole.”
Suddenly, Cole felt like he was in one of those dreams where he was supposed to deliver a speech in front of his Spanish class but could only remember one word of Spanish. He stared down at the spear in his hands the same way he would have stared down at all those blank note cards. After a bit of mental screaming, the end of the weapon creaked and snapped apart to form the forked end he’d carved there in the first place.
Ace pulled his hand away so quickly that he dropped his gun. Either that or his fingers were too numb to hold the pistol any longer.
“Any chance of you giving me this Burkis guy’s number?” Paige asked.
Rubbing his wrist, Ace stood against the wall like he was exactly where he wanted to be. “Any chance of you telling us what knife he’s asking about?”
“I don’t need knives,” Paige told him. “Just ask Miss Crushed Velvet and Anguish over there.”
