Paige jogged down the hall, drew her pistol and popped a few more rounds into the chest of the one surviving Nymar. She knew that one was finished when the spore attached to its heart tried to suck every last bit of moisture from its host. The moment that process got rolling, the Nymar’s body started to dry up into a flaky mess of ashy skin particles, until it resembled the others she’d left behind.
Outside, Rico and Steve were waiting for her. “What’d you find in there?” Rico asked.
“I’m pretty sure that was the place we were after. No Cobb, though. That is, unless he was one of those idiots who tried to charge me when I walked in.”
“Were they Stripes?” he asked, using his own term for Shadow Spore that had more or less become accepted among the Skinners.
“Yep. What did you find?” she said to the younger man.
“Not a lot,” Steve replied.
“Just shooting up the neighbors, huh? No wonder everyone hates Americans.”
“There were a few Stripes playing cards and one feeding off a trashy lookin’ redhead,” Rico told her. “They were armed to the teeth, but weren’t quick enough to put us down.” When they got to the car and piled in, Rico couldn’t have looked more grateful. “Them guys obviously weren’t guarding much of anything. You sure you can trust what you found?”
“We’ll see about that when I get it all deciphered,” she said while rolling her window down to fill her lungs with a few long breaths. “I don’t know if I did the technical stuff perfectly, but I got some pretty interesting files.”
“How interesting?”
“Most were in code or marked by gibberish, but a few were plain as day. One was labeled ‘Skinner Contacts.’ ”
“Did you get a chance to look it over?”
After rounding another corner, Paige came to a stop well away from the duplex that had been shot up. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I did. Even saw a name on there I recognized.”
“You should be the one answering questions,” Steve replied. “We found records that said you were the one working with traitors.”
Rico’s arms came up as if they’d been spring-loaded. The Mossberg’s wide, menacing barrel looked at her like a soulless, unblinking eye. “That’s right,” he grunted. “What do ya got to say about that?”
“We have to get out of here,” Steve said urgently. “Right now.”
Although she was reluctant to take her eyes off of him, Paige knew the guy in the backseat was right. They had to get moving.
“Go on,” Rico said with every bit of the urgency she was feeling. “Get the hell away from here. And if I even think you’re trying to do something cute, I’ll blow a hole through you, your door, and anyone driving by.”
Paige’s experience with the shotgun made her absolutely certain he wasn’t bluffing. Sirens wailed in the distance. People stared from their windows. A few even walked outside to look down the street. Although Rico’s shotgun now rested across his lap, it was still pointed at her. Stopping at a red light, she turned to look into the eyes of the man beside her. “Who are those friends you mentioned? The ones who you said might like my style.”
When Rico’s eyes drifted to the backseat, Steve shrugged and said, “You should tell us about them.”
“They’re students of Jonah Lancroft,” Paige said. “They study his journals. Some even talked to him over the course of the last few years. It’s pretty interesting stuff. There’s some shit in those notes about shapeshifters that I’ve never heard before.”
“Like what?” Steve asked as he leaned forward. “What did the notes say?”
Paige ignored the younger Skinner and said to Rico, “You stood with me and Cole when that Mud Flu was getting people killed. If we didn’t do anything about it, more would have died. Daniels told me that disease could have gotten worse over time. Thousands could have been killed and that was all Lancroft’s doing.”
“He wouldn’t have let it get that far,” Rico assured her. “He was a smart man.”
“Do you seriously regret putting Lancroft down like the sick animal he was?”
“I thought we were doing the right thing at the time, but he was the purest Skinner we’ve ever had,” Rico said in a voice fueled by indignant fire. “There’s something to be said for taking extreme measures to fight an extreme problem. After what happened in Kansas City, the Half Breed problem was out of control. We couldn’t have done anything more than just run around killing however many of those things we could find. What about the ones we couldn’t find? What about the ones the Full Bloods created to replace the dead Half Breeds?”
“It’s the same problem as before,” she insisted. “It’s a balance we’ve stricken. Skinners and Half Breeds. Us and Nymar. They do their thing and we do ours. It’s a shitty way to live for us, but we’re part of the ecosystem.”
Rico let out a single grunting laugh. “Green light.” After Paige slammed her foot on the gas and sent Steve flopping back into his seat, the big man said, “You can’t seriously believe that tree hugging bullshit you were spouting.”
“What else is there?”
“Lancroft devoted his life to figuring out how those things work,” he said, as if he’d been waiting for months to deliver those words. “Shapeshifters, Nymar, even shit we don’t know about. He tore them down, looked inside and wrote what he found so we could all learn from it.”
“Then how come we all thought he was dead until we found him in Philly? How come the only legacy he left behind was a collapsed insane asylum and Henry? You’d think such a great man would be more of a presence or leave something a little better for the rest of us.”
“He did. We just weren’t the ones to get it.”
When he heard that, Steve leaned forward again. Paige noticed, however, that he was cautious not to get close enough to draw much attention.
She drove for another few blocks, retracing her steps to the expressway that had brought her to Cobb’s neighborhood. Only after they’d gone a few more miles did she feel comfortable enough to let her shoulders come down from around her ears. The fact that Rico still had his shotgun pointed at her was a threat that was beyond her control for the moment, and she took a small amount of comfort from that. Once she had a chance to do something or make a move, she’d go back to worrying.
“What did Lancroft leave behind?” she asked.
“From what I’ve heard, it’s some good stuff. It’d be stupid of me to tell you more.”
“You should tell us,” Steve said. “We’re supposed to be on the same side.”
“But we’re not,” Rico snapped. “There’s always been more’n one way of doing things. Hell, it ain’t like there’s anything better than legend for us to go by, and even that’s just a buncha crap. All that separates legend from Internet rumor is what the words are written on.”
“You’re not sure she can be trusted,” Steve guessed.
“No. I’m not.” After watching the road for a few seconds, Rico said, “I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Turning my back on a partner ain’t one of ’em.”
Paige swerved around a few of the slower cars, then took a poignant glance at the shotgun across his lap. “You’re sure about that?”
“Heh. Point taken. This ain’t my first choice, just like you keep saying about flying off to leave Cole to rot in Denver.”
Steve gripped the back of Rico’s seat as Paige took a corner fast enough to slide him against the door. “That’s not good enough,” he said.
“What the fuck do you know about any of this?” she asked. “I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
“I’m one of you!” Steve replied. “And I’ve heard about what happened, just like everyone else.”
That hit Paige deeply, but didn’t erase the scowl from her face.
“Rico can vouch for me.”
“It’s like I told ya,” Rico said. “I’ve known Steve here for a little while and he’s proven to be on the right side of the fence. We just need to make sure we’re all in that same spot. There’s a lot of changing going on these days, and it’s the sort of thing Jonah Lancroft saw comin’ from a mile away. Some of us are willing to do what’s gotta be done and some aren’t. Lancroft made it his business to reach out to those of us that are suited for the task.”
“And when did he make this offer to you?” she scoffed. “Before or after you came along with me and Cole to put him down?”
