Since the answer to that wouldn’t have helped his cause, Cole settled for a stern glare in her direction.
“There are real dog attacks and plenty of missing people,” she said. “We can’t investigate every last one on the off chance of a Half Breed turning up. Now that we know there’s a problem in KC, we’ll go there. If a Full Blood is still there, we’ll need what Daniels is working on anyway. Read off some more of those search results.”
“I can’t,” Cole snarled. “My battery just died.”
“How long did you wait in line for that new phone?” Paige chided.
“Shut it.”
Chapter 9
It was a long drive to Schaumburg, but thanks to an overpriced car charger for his phone, Cole had plenty to keep him busy along the way. As Paige drove to the Chicago suburb with her arm propped on the window and the night breeze shaking her hair back into its normal shape, he sifted through dozens of online news sources. The reports ranged all the way from syndicated articles about the supposed rottweiler-bullmastiff mixed breeds roaming Kansas City to conspiracy blogs that compared the attacks to the incident in Wisconsin commonly known as the Janesville Massacre. Cole and Paige had been in Janesville to see the massacre firsthand, and there were more Nymar there than werewolves, but the blogged reports were a little too close for comfort.
Then Cole spotted something to perk him up. “Hey! I think I found someone in KC who might help us.”
“Don’t trust anything you might hear about Skinners or their locations. I plant all sorts of lies on the Internet to cover us. If another Skinner was nearby, I’d already know.”
“This isn’t a Skinner. It’s a cop. The story is only two days old and says he hit one of those mixed breed dogs with his car. Apparently he still has the body and is trying to sell it on—”
“We’re here,” Paige announced as she nodded toward a cluster of buildings on the right side of the road. “The rest will have to wait for later. If there are Nymar watching this place, I don’t want to miss them.”
Cole tucked away his phone and took the revolver from the glove compartment. They’d left the interstate and were cruising through a quiet apartment complex that looked as if it had fallen out of an expensive mold. The buildings weren’t quite fancy enough to have an electric gate around them, but were clean, well lit, and inhabited by people who had impressive taste in cars.
“This is where a Nymar lives?” Cole grumbled.
“Sure beats your freezer, huh?”
“It beats the place I used to live back when I was pulling in a real salary.”
Paige drove along a road that led into the middle of the apartment complex where a clubhouse glowed with blue, wavy light reflected from the nearby pool. Pointing to the third of five identical buildings, she said, “Daniels lives in that one.”
“Why is it so important that we see this guy right now?”
“Because he does a lot of good work for us, and you should be introduced before Ace and Stephanie hand him over to some asshole from New York.” Slapping the Cav into Park and cutting the engine, Paige added, “Plus he’s got the Blood Blade. If we’re going to KC, we’re gonna need that. He’s been using it to put together a nice little surprise that should also come in handy.”
“What surprise?”
“You remember that project I had him working on after we chased Henry out of Wisconsin?”
Cole furrowed his brow and rolled his eyes toward the roof of the car. If he’d stashed any notes around, that wasn’t the spot. Finally, he said, “No. I don’t remember.”
She sighed and pushed open the car door. “You’ll just have to wait, then. Look out for any Nymar lurking in the parking lot.”
“Will we be able to spot them?”
Rather than say anything else as she walked to the narrow sidewalk cutting across a well-tended lawn, Paige simply tapped the palm of her hand. The cuts from his weapon’s thorns had long since healed. He’d sat and watched the gashes close up once, but found it more disturbing than interesting. Since he didn’t feel the prickly itch caused by the reaction of the venom in the weapon’s varnish with the Nymar that produced it, Cole knew there weren’t any of them nearby.
“Take this,” Paige whispered as she placed a syringe of the Nymar antidote in his hand. “I’ve got more if you need it, but try wearing them down before you inject them. Remember, aim for the biggest, fattest tendril you can find. The gun’s already loaded with the special rounds, so don’t be afraid to use it. If there are Nymar watching this place and they’re taking orders from Steph, I doubt they’ve been told to go easy on us.”
The apartment complex was pleasantly quiet. There were no dogs barking, no loud music, and, Cole noticed, no drunken idiots screaming at three in the morning—more advantages of this place over his old apartment. He could hear traffic from the nearby interstate, but it was more like the tide of a mechanized ocean. Following the sidewalk to the third building, he looked up to see nothing but windows and porches framed by thick wooden beams. A cool breeze rolled in from the north to brush past a set of chimes hung by a resident on the top floor.
Paige walked up to the main entrance of the building and tried opening the double doors. They rattled a bit in their frame but didn’t budge. Shifting her attention to the row of buttons beside the entrance, she pushed the one marked 303.
Almost immediately a squeaky voice came through the little speaker set into the wall above the buttons. “Yes?”
“It’s Paige.”
“Who else is with you?”
“My partner, Cole.”
“The delivery guy left a package down there. Bring it in.”
Paige found a parcel near her feet that was about the size and shape of a brick and wrapped in plain brown paper. Just as she picked it up, the door buzzed. She tried pulling it open but wasn’t quick enough to get there before the buzzing stopped. “For Christ’s sake,” she muttered. “Every damn time.” Keeping her hand on the door, she waited for the next quick buzz and finally got the door open.
Cole watched the parking lot for a few more seconds. He felt a slight reaction in his palms, so he checked to make sure his spear was in its harness as he followed Paige inside.
After climbing the first set of stairs, they turned the corner on the second floor landing to continue up. Suddenly, the door to apartment 203 opened. “Hey. Stop.”
Paige glanced toward the door the way she glanced at anyone who tried to bug her with stupid questions like, “Where are you going with those sticks?” or “Why are you chasing that big, wild dog?” But instead of a curious bystander, she spotted a familiar face peeking through the crack of a partially opened door.
“Daniels?” she said as she stopped with one foot perched on the next set of stairs. “I thought you were on the third floor.”
The door swung open, but the man inside stepped away from the opening. Peeking around the door like a cartoon mouse sticking its nose out for a big triangle of cheese, he waved frantically for them to come inside. Paige turned while smoothly drawing one of the batons from her boot holster and walked in. Cole followed her lead by taking the spear from where it was strapped across his back. No matter how many times he’d practiced to make that look good, he still got the forked end snagged before the snap on that loop popped open.
The apartment was sparsely furnished but stuffed to the rafters. Boxes of all sizes were piled into neat pyramids, and bookcases reached as close to the ceiling as the little owner of the place could reach. Daniels stood just under six feet tall, but his posture was so bad that it made him seem smaller in every way. Not only was his back stooped, but he held his head low and twitched at every sound Paige or Cole made as they tried to find a place to stand where they wouldn’t knock something over.
“When did you move in here?” Paige asked. “What happened to the old place?”