“You listen to the Doors?”
“What? You think I’m just some token Mexican who only digs Santana?”
“Didn’t even know you were Mexican.”
“I’ve got true soul, man. All music flows through me.”
After Cole lowered himself onto his bunk and curled into an aching ball, he was serenaded by an off-key rendition of “L.A. Woman.” Without Chop in his cell to terrorize him, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the concert.
Chapter Six
After renting a cheap room in Toronto and resting there overnight with her Beretta grafted into her hand, Paige was more nervous about crossing the border than she was about stealing the car she’d used to do it. In that time, she’d cleaned up her arm well enough to find less damage than she’d been expecting. The muscle tissue was scraped and gouged, but was still solid enough to function. A few injections of healing serum from the kit strapped around her ankle did a good enough job to get her on the right track. She wasn’t one hundred percent, but could barely remember what that felt like anymore.
The vehicle she’d stolen was a little blue Toyota Tercel missing a taillight, several loops of electrical cord holding the rear bumper in place. The shabby exterior matched an engine that rattled noisily under the hood in what could very well be its last hurrah. Whoever the previous owner was, they were probably glad to be rid of the heap and collect the insurance. When she pulled up to the border crossing station, Paige was concerned that she might not be able to get the car moving again. An even bigger concern was that her friend in uniform had already met with the same lying little prick who had turned Rico against her.
“Hey, Mike, it’s me again,” she said with a tired smile.
Wearing his fifty-plus years on a face that was weather-beaten and scarred by three jagged grooves running all the way down his left cheekbone, Mike smiled and waved away the other Border Patrol officer who started to approach the car. “Back so soon? Usually you guys spend a little more time to get to know a place.”
“Things went better than normal,” Paige told him. “Just headed home.”
“Where’s Rico?”
Mike wouldn’t have made a great spy. That much was certain. On the few occasions she’d needed to get into Canada, he’d been extremely helpful in either waving her through or arranging for one of his friends to let another Skinner pass somewhere else along the border. He’d made several calls to help Gerald into the Great White North, and was the one to grease the wheels for Cole to reenter the States after Gerald and Brad were killed. None of those things made it any easier for her to tighten her grip around the Beretta hidden beneath the flap of her jacket.
“He had to stay behind,” she told him, while praying that he didn’t know anything more than a retired trucker and ex-Marine who’d been jumped by a Yeti in the Adirondacks should know. “Cleanup stuff. You know the drill.”
Mike let out a tired breath and nodded as if he was simply praising the fact that Mondays were indeed the worst. “Yeah. I hear that. Should I expect him soon?”
“Not sure.” Before his experienced eyes picked up on something that might delay her any further, she faced forward and set her sights on the gate that blocked her progress. “Should I just go ahead, then?”
Mike’s hand slapped flat against the top of the car just above her head.
He looked over his shoulder at his partner and another car that had just pulled up to the station.
He started leaning in to the window.
If he got much closer or asked too many more questions about Rico, she would have to assume he was either tainted by Kawosa or aligned with the Skinners who had rallied under Lancroft’s flag. And if that was the case, she figured she might as well shoot her buddy Mike and drive straight through the barricade. What’s the worst that could happen? The law might try to hunt her down?
In a fierce whisper he asked, “Is this trip connected to those policemen that were killed?”
“Maybe,” she replied as her thumb flicked off the Beretta’s safety. “But you’ve got to know we don’t kill innocents.”
“Can you tell me where Rico is?”
Paige shifted her eyes to look at him and angled her gun barrel so she would be sure to hit him if she started firing through the car door. “I could,” she said, “but then I’d have to kill you.”
After a few seconds Mike nodded and gave her a quick little wink. “Gotchya. Walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
“Just about.”
He smacked the car again as if he was swatting a football player’s shoulder pad. “If I see him, I’ll let him know you came by. You have a safe trip and keep up the good work.”
Paige waved graciously and drove beneath the barricade that was lifted and then lowered behind her before the next car in line could slip through. She sped down the road without seeing any of the beautiful scenery around her. The terrain looked as if it had been painted as an ode to approaching winter, which normally would have put her in a very good place. Now, she saw the falling leaves and brown grass as more death heaped onto an already rotting world. Cole would tell her to lighten up when she got like this, but she stopped thinking about him before her mood any worse.
After pulling off to a spot marked as a scenic overlook, she dug her phone from her pocket to dial a number she’d memorized instead of programming it into the phone’s memory. The Beretta was kept on her lap, with her free hand resting upon its grip. Just when she thought she wasn’t going to get an answer over the phone, a connection was made and a crisp voice made itself known with a simple, monosyllabic greeting.
“I need to talk to Adderson,” she said.
The person who’d answered sounded like a dispatcher from any number of taped 911 calls. He was quick, sharp, and had less personality than a discount greeting card. “He’s not available. Who is this?”
“Paige Strobel. I know he’s available. Put me through to him now.”
“One moment.”
There was a series of electronic crackles, a few short buzzes, and then half a muted ring tone. Paige knew she was being recorded, but for once she was talking to people who had more right to be paranoid than she did.
“This is Adderson,” said an even sharper voice than the one that had answered the call.
“Where’s Cole? I need to know right now, dammit.”
“Paige?”
“You know it’s me. If you’re trying to trace the call, don’t bother. I had a friend of mine wire this phone good enough to screw you up for a while.” That wasn’t exactly a bluff, but she wasn’t entirely convinced that Prophet knew what he was doing. The bounty hunter had access to some good equipment through his employer, and swore it would do the job as advertised. She took very little at face value anymore and would be moving along soon enough anyway. “Things are even shittier than before, and I don’t want to leave my partner in a lurch. It was bad enough handing him over in Denver.”
“He’s safer where he is than on the outside,” Adderson replied. “Already, some of the local police units have lessened their searches for you and your people.”
“I want to see him. You said you’d keep tabs on him, and I want to know where he is.”
“Where are you?”
“New York,” Paige replied, figuring the equipment at the other man’s disposal would be good enough to find out that much anyway. “The last I heard, he was already being hauled off to a maximum security prison.”
“That’s right.”
“Just because you put that crap on TV about him getting held up in a trial is just a smokescreen, that doesn’t mean you guys can just lock him up wherever you like and keep him there. He’s supposed to be getting medical attention.”
