have felt like a solitary figure in the middle of a frozen field.
“To what?” Rico asked.
In the time it took Cole to blink, he thought back to the first time he’d been dropped off in front of Raza Hill. The sting of Gerald and Brad’s deaths was still as fresh as the injuries he’d sustained after getting knocked around by a Full Blood. The Blood Blade was just a weird knife tucked away in his luggage, and vampires were just sexy fairy tales. When Paige walked out to meet him that first time, his entire world had kicked into overdrive. When she told him about Skinners, Nymar, and Full Bloods, he believed her. When she asked him to come along with her to help with the Blood Blade, he followed. When she told him about a warrior’s spirit and offered to train him, he accepted. At the time, no matter how much of it he might or might not have truly understood, he still would have gone along with her. There just wasn’t any other place for him to be.
“To
There was a reason Cole hadn’t wanted to say that part out loud. Even hearing it from someone else hurt worse than the lingering pains and incessant tightening within his chest.
“She didn’t get a chance to tell you the rest of what happened back in Urbana,” Rico explained.
“I heard enough. Her friend Tara was seeded and killed a bunch of doctors and nurses. Ned found her before, so he probably found them again. Paige probably did what she needed to do and now she’s a Skinner. Can we just flip on the radio and drive?”
“You don’t wanna hear the rest?”
“You’re telling me you memorized those Shampoo Banana journals?” Cole scoffed. “I know she’s your friend and everything, but that’s a little stalkeresque, don’t you think?”
“You want to hear what happened or not?”
“Do I have a choice?” Cole grunted.
“Sure. You could listen or you could plug your ears like a little—”
When Rico spoke again, the edge was gone from his voice. “You need to hear this, Cole.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Things were a little too hot for Rico to stay in New Mexico. It wasn’t the only spot where he’d had legal problems, but it was the most nagging pain at the moment. Fortunately, it was a pain that could be alleviated by some time spent away from the authorities who might arrest him on sight. Ned didn’t like hearing about such things, and Rico was more than happy to keep them to himself. In that aspect and a few others, it was a good partnership. More recently, Ned had set his sights on a Nymar group that staked their claim on the nearby college town of Urbana. No longer content to hang back and watch the bloodsuckers come and go, Ned shifted into a more proactive gear. Rico enjoyed that aspect of the partnership even more.
It would have been ideal for them to set up some sort of home base within reach of the university, but the Nymar had Urbana scoped out so well that whenever Rico drove around on a scouting run, Hope and Evan would drive by and wave at him and Ned within minutes. So they chose Thomas-boro instead, a short drive away from the university and secluded, which made it easy for them to slip back and forth undetected. Ned was renting a little house on South Church Street that had a prime view of Highway 45. It wasn’t exactly scenic, but allowed them to watch the main route in and out of town. If the cops or any fanged visitors showed up, the Skinners could easily bolt for that same highway and put their evasive driving skills to the test.
The attack at the residence hall party had come and gone without much more than a few mentions on the local news. If Hope was anything at all, she was careful and tidy. No bodies were found, one girl was presumed missing, but nobody had filed a report until well after the party. Wes was popular enough among his buddies to convince them to back his story about Amy and Tara leaving together and heading back to their dorm. By the time anything more suspicious than that had surfaced, the bodies at the hospital were found. Once the press got hold of that story, anything as mundane as a wild party was left in the dust.
Bending a few slats of the plastic blinds covering the front window with one finger, Rico watched the highway while Jason Banks of Champaign’s
Jason Banks was cut from Grade A newscaster cloth. Lantern jaw. Dark, closely cut hair. Stern eyes and the occasional genuine smile. He was so good at his job that when he said the doctor and nurses killed at Carle Foundation Hospital had been victims of a mental patient who was corralled within minutes after the slaying, Rico almost believed him.
“Although authorities believe Gracen was responsible for at least two of the slayings,” Banks said, referring to the mental patient by name, “the short time in which the attacks were carried out led investigators to believe that more than one assailant was needed to commit the murders. Gracen is in police custody and hasn’t denied killing one of the nurses. As of this time, however, he hasn’t given any useful information regarding the identity of a possible accomplice.”
Rico smirked and watched a familiar car speed down the highway: Ned’s battered, light blue four-door. He knew it would only take another few minutes to turn off and backtrack to the driveway, and he continued watching through the bent plastic blinds. When he saw the second familiar car streak past on the highway, he grunted under his breath and leaned forward enough for his nose to press the blinds against the window.
By the time Ned pulled up, Rico had already eased into his shoulder holster and was checking to make sure his Army model Colt .45 was ready for use. After he heard the car door slam, Rico counted down the appropriate number of seconds required for someone to make the walk around the house and kept his finger on the trigger. After an acceptable amount of time had passed, Ned stomped in.
“You were followed again,” Rico announced.
“I know. Whoever’s doing it is getting sloppy.”
“Did they track you to the house?”
The older man’s steps brought him into the living room, where he threw his light jacket onto the festering couch that had come with the place and watched the TV long enough to spot the already expired weather forecast. “Yeah,” he grunted. “I even slowed down when taking the corners. Thought we could all go out for pizza.”
“Who is it?”
“Not Hope or any of her bunch. Haven’t felt any of them bastards within spitting distance of the hospital since them folks were killed. What about the university?”
Still watching the roads in front of the house, Rico said, “Wes is supposed to be out of town. I poked around, but all I got was a phone number to some Motel 6 in Florida from some jerkwad at that dorm. When I walked the grounds, I got more of an itch from lookin’ at all them college girls than from anything a Nymar might give me.”
“That’s real nice, kid. We got a job to do out here. I know you’re used to running loose on your own, but this ain’t the time to start sniffin’ around the locals.”
Just as Rico was about to calm the older man down, he felt a twitch in one of the deepest layers of flesh on his palm that made him feel as if he’d suddenly developed an allergy to the bones inside his hand. According to the look on Ned’s face, he was feeling the same thing.
The older Skinner pointed toward the back door and then at the short hallway leading to the two bedrooms. Rico nodded and hurried down the hall in steps that were quick and light enough to carry him to the first bedroom without making more than a few subtle squeaks on the floorboards. As his itch intensified, Ned went to the couch and stuck his hands in between the cushions. Pushing past some loose change and a few stale Cheetos, he found a .38 that had been sandwiched out of sight.
The bedroom Rico chose had a small window looking out to a backyard only slightly bigger than a postage stamp. He couldn’t see anything moving in the shadows, but the itch in his palms became more intense. Rather
