“That asshole tried to kill Paige,” Cole replied. “He’s a fucking traitor!”
“At least he ain’t a Nymar. Show me your scars.” When he didn’t get a response, Jessup thumbed his hammer back. “Don’t make me ask again.”
Cole recognized the look of a hunter preparing to kill its prey. Straightening up to his full height, he held up the hand that had previously been wrapped around the businessman’s neck and showed his scarred palm to Jessup. Almost immediately Jessup eased the .48’s hammer down and stuffed the gun into the holster clipped to his belt.
“See there?” Jessup said. “Just what I hoped. You’re a Skinner.”
“No I’m not,” Cole sighed. “This Nymar shit’s got a hold of me.”
“But you’re
Shaking his head, Cole felt the pain in his throat lessen while the cinching inside him became worse. “It’s the Shadow Spore. It can take root in a Skinner.”
“Sure it can. I’ve seen it happen to the rest of the Skinners in Helena.”
Cole’s head snapped up. Even though he thought he’d had a good grip on a bad situation, it had suddenly gotten worse.
Jessup nodded. “Oh yeah. It took some doing and surprised the holy hell outta me, but it happened. Some multiseeded bitch made the rounds and infected as many of us as she could. Those other Skinners got sick, tried to fight it off, but they were lost before we could do much about it. Soon as they sprouted fangs, their scars healed up. Don’t know if the spore was clearin’ out what it thought was an infection or that was its way of wiping out every bit of Skinner that was in ’em, but it happened across the board. It didn’t happen to you, so you still got a chance.”
“But you just said I can’t be turned,” Cole pointed out.
“That’s what you need to keep tellin’ yerself the next time you get an urge like the one you got here,” Jessup replied while nodding down at the unconscious businessman. “Just because those bloodsuckers infected you don’t mean you need to give in to it.”
“It …hurts,” Cole said through gritted teeth. Ashamed by hearing himself say those words, he walked away from the man on the floor.
Jessup didn’t miss a beat before kneeling down to the businessman. “You know what’ll hurt worse? When I jam this hatchet through your chest like I did to the folks in Helena who used to be Skinners.”
Before that had a chance to sink in, Lambert shouted from the parking lot. It was an excited yelp, followed by the slap of hurried footsteps that brought the inmate to the door of the motel room. “This asshole kidnapped a girl!”
“What?” Cole asked.
Jessup stomped across the room toward the door. Although Lambert steeled himself to stand in his way, he changed his mind when he saw the tomahawk clutched in Jessup’s fist. “Did she get away?” Jessup asked. After shoving Lambert aside, he started cursing in a raspy snarl.
“Check that,” Lambert said. “He didn’t kidnap her. Just hunted her down …again.”
“What are you?” Jessup grunted. “Psychic?”
“Yeah.”
“Then tell me which way she went.”
Lambert screwed his face into a defiant, jailhouse sneer and looked to Cole. “Remember that young one the Full Blood was talking about? That’s her.”
“Take the car and get out of here,” Cole said to the inmate.
The older man seemed to be favoring his left leg, but that turned into a more pronounced limp as Jessup circled around to the driver’s seat of a pickup truck parked next to the businessman’s car. “Best get out of town altogether,” he said. “No tellin’ if those cameras are workin’ or who was watching when this one here decided to assault a paying customer.”
Cole looked up and around to find a few clunky surveillance cameras mounted to the corner of the overlap of the motel’s roof. Not even the painful hunger he’d been feeling was a good enough excuse for that kind of recklessness. Tossing the car keys to Lambert, he grabbed the passenger door of the pickup that was still swinging on its hinges.
“Where the hell am I supposed to go?” Lambert asked.
Before Cole could come up with something, Jessup said, “Raton. It’s about two hours from here, just across the New Mexican border. Just take 69 to I-25 and head south.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jessup’s pickup was a Ford. If Cole had missed the emblem on the front or the back of the vehicle, he still would have gleaned that fact from the Ford mud flaps, Ford visor, and air freshener that dangled from the rearview mirror. There was a passenger seat directly behind him that was piled high with tackle boxes, tool kits, and rifle cases that Cole guessed contained much more than tackle, tools, and rifles. Because of the air freshener, he could smell a touch of pine mixed in with the pungent varnish used to treat Skinner weaponry. Ford pine.
“What’s so funny?” Jessup asked from behind a wheel that was wrapped in a leather cover emblazoned with faded oval symbols.
Cole sat on the far end of the bench seat, with maps, atlases, and several spiral notebooks sandwiched between him and the other Skinner. His arm rested on the edge of the door, hanging partially out of the lowered window. It was getting dark, so the air was cooling down considerably. The more that blew across his face, the wider he smiled. “Nothing’s funny,” he replied. “I just never thought a Skinner could afford to be a germaphobe.”
Jessup turned to look at Cole as if he didn’t realize he was pushing the gas pedal down almost far enough for the truck to fly into orbit. The bottom portion of his face was covered by what looked to be an old surgical mask tied around his neck and ears by elastic bands. “Germ a what?”
“What’s the deal with the mask?”
Jessup looked at the road and then leaned over to stick his face partially out the window. As soon as he leaned back in, he slammed his foot on the brake and twisted the wheel to send the truck into a controlled spin that pointed its nose back toward a dirt road leading away from Highway 69. “Here,” he said while removing the mask and tossing it over to Cole. “See for yerself.”
With the mask resting in the palm of his hand, the next logical thing for Cole to do was place it on the spot on his face where it was meant to go. Before it got close enough to touch his nose, his sinuses were flooded to capacity. The scents were pleasant at first. Trees, fresh air, oil from the truck, mildew from old lawn furniture that had been dumped on the side of the road about a hundred yards back, even the gritty scent of dirt—all of it washed through him like a torrent. It wasn’t long before the combined odors were enough to make him pull the mask away.
“Takes some gettin’ used to, don’t it?” Jessup asked.
“What the hell is this thing?”
“Something I put together with a little help from a certain dead asshole we’ve both heard about.”
“Lancroft?”
Jessup nodded. “That’s one of ’em, but not the one I meant. I helped myself to plenty while we were all sifting through that house in Philadelphia, but I was more interested in the things that nobody else knew quite what to do with. I’ve always been a tracker. I love getting my boots dirty while everyone else taps away at their keyboards and checks phone records.”
“Who do you know that could check phone records for us?” Cole asked. “That would be great!”
“Nobody. That’s the point. When the power goes out or if you’re too far away to get a damn signal, all of you techie dickheads are helpless. But that ain’t the case for someone who knows their craft all the way down to the bone. That mask you’re holding there is the best thing I ever done. The main ingredient comes from the other dead asshole with whom you’re very well acquainted.”
