“Okay,” Cole said. “We need to search for something specifically related to that Colorado facility where I was locked up, but isn’t a high enough priority to be wiped out in an attempt for these guys to make themselves look innocent. Something not very important in the grand scheme of things but that’s still in the system. Maybe something mentioned in low-level messages or a document that wouldn’t have been wiped off the hard drive.”
“You got ten more seconds,” Rico said.
Cole only needed four. “Try ‘Lambert.’ ”
“That’s the other prisoner that broke out with you, ain’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Where’s he been?”
“Good question,” Cole replied. “Haven’t seen him since about a week after Atoka fell. He’s probably holed up someplace to stay out of the line of fire.”
“Join the damn club,” Rico grunted.
Some hits showed up right away. When Rico clicked on them, he got a few e-mails regarding a scrawny man claiming to be a psychic who was brought up on charges for assaulting two people at a bar in West Texas. A half- garbled link to a website brought his attention to a news story about a man arrested for robbing a woman outside a tattoo parlor and trying to escape into the Rocky Mountains.
Cole sifted through his memories of those days he’d spent behind bars. The next few searches were quick and easy.
That one came up empty, which wasn’t a surprise. Cole doubted anyone running that prison gave a damn about what Frank’s name was.
None of those words sparked much of anything either. Rico could feel his time at the computer dwindling. It wouldn’t be long before one of the others took it upon themselves to step closer and take a better look at what he was doing. When Cole gave him the next search item, the smile shone through in his voice.
“Try ‘Sweet Sarah Sunshine.’ ”
The computer chugged through its own memories before spitting up one note from a file that resided in a buffer where old documents sat after being placed in a bundle and then stored without being opened for an excessive amount of time. It was an e-mail marked,
“We have a winnah,” Rico declared. It read:
“What is it?” Cole asked. “What did you find? Can you e-mail it to me?”
Once quick glance at the young woman who normally haunted that computer was enough to tell Rico that she would be sifting through that terminal the moment he got up. “No,” he said as he deleted everything he knew how to delete. “But it’s enough. Meet me outside. I got something you need to see.”
While going through the motions of shutting the computer down, he jabbed a beefy finger toward the young woman and barked, “Go check on the crow’s nest and secure the armory!”
She, along with half of the Skinners in the immediate area, jumped up and hurried upstairs to follow through on the orders. Once they were out of the way, Rico stomped over to the rune-encrusted panel in the floor and dropped to one knee so he could tap some of the runes on the square door that Jessup had opened earlier. When the trapdoor came open, Rico pressed his finger against the earpiece as if about to shove it into his brain. “It’s not here,” he said in a hushed voice.
Cole’s response was measured and calm. “I may know something about that.”
“You got a hold of that box?” Rico asked. An ugly smirk crawled across his face when he asked, “How the hell did you manage that one?”
“I don’t have it, but I know where it is.”
“I’m coming out there and you’re givin’ it back to me.”
“I can’t,” Cole said. “Paige and I need that thing.”
Rico shut the door, set the runes to remain locked no matter who touched them next, then nodded casually to the Skinner on guard duty carrying an AK-47. “You’re damn lucky that box is still in there. Were
“No!” The guard reflexively replied. “Wasn’t me!”
“Good. Don’t go warnin’ any of the other newbie twerps,” he snarled. “When I find out which it was that did that, I want it to be a surprise.”
The expression on the younger man’s face showed that he was relieved to be grateful he hadn’t touched the floor panel, and his quick turn on the balls of his feet showed how anxious he was to get the hell away from the big man.
Chapter Nine
Cole sat in the car down the street, but still within sight of the Vigilant base. After being cut off so quickly by Rico, he perched on the edge of his seat waiting for him to storm out of the building. Paige had left a few moments ago, but the remains of the Chinese food she’d picked up for lunch was still scattered on the floor and backseat. Even after hell had spilled all over the world, General Tso Chicken still came in those little white boxes. On a very genuine level, that brought Cole some comfort.
Rico walked outside using a stride that seemed powerful enough to smash through any wall unfortunate enough to have been built in his path. After spotting the borrowed car, he motioned for Cole to follow him to the corner. He was headed for the Spring Street Bar and Grill, which had its windows boarded up like every other business in the area. Unlike the miniature fortress created by the Vigilant, the bar showed signs of life. Light filtered through the reinforced shutters, and voices made it outside past doors that were tightly closed in the event any four-legged visitors showed up. As Rico passed the bar, he nodded up toward the spots where Cole already knew the Vigilant cameras were posted.
A pair of figures huddled in the shadows across the street, where a house sat on a corner lot. Its yard was surrounded by a broken chain-link fence, and the grass had been torn up by so many claw marks that it looked as if it had been run over by a piece of farming equipment. A tall tree leaned toward the tiny house as if to offer the shelter that a pointed awning over the front door couldn’t provide. Judging by the broken windows and scratch marks along the walls, whoever owned that house needed a lot more than shade to protect them.
Slowing as he passed in front of a row of little, single-story houses, Rico stepped onto a lawn that was smaller than the house’s driveway to examine a satellite dish sporting a large ugly bite mark that had claimed almost a quarter of its radius. “You got that rock?”
“Not on me,” Cole replied as he closed in on him.
“Then where is it? I’m puttin’ my ass on the line here. Jessup ain’t a bad guy, but he’s not real big in the trust department.”
“So are you with him or us?” Cole asked. “After the hell we went through in New Mexico, the least that guy could do is stick with us.”
“He is,” Rico said. “Jessup’s sticking with all Skinners by ditching his own stomping ground and coming to work for the only core group that has been seriously organized. If you or Paige don’t like it, maybe you should have done
