Daniels raced from the buzzing panel to the sliding glass door that opened onto one of the patios Cole had spotted from the parking lot. Daniels stopped there and gingerly pulled aside one of the vertical plastic strips covering the door. He peeked through the narrow opening and then eased the strip back into place. “They’re gone,” he whispered.
“Are you sure?” Cole asked.
Daniels nodded. “The car’s still there, but it’s empty.”
“Someone leaving their car unattended in a parking lot isn’t what I’d call suspicious,” Paige said.
Daniels had already caused a mild reaction within the two Skinners, but something else triggered a dull heat that ran from Cole’s scars up to his elbows. Paige met his eyes long enough to let him know that she’d felt it too.
Whoever was downstairs tapped on the button two quick times, like the friendly beep of a car horn.
After Paige nodded solemnly and stepped back, Daniels reached out to push the speaker button. Setting his jaw as if there was a camera attached to his door, he said, “What do you want? It’s late.”
“My name is Burkis. I think you know why I’m here.”
Chapter 10
Paige’s hand locked around Daniels’s wrist to pull his finger away from the button.
“Do you know anyone named Burkis?” she asked.
Daniels shook his head as he replied, “Is he the one from New York?”
“So you do know him?”
“No, but I’ve heard someone from New York has been trying to find me.”
“And why didn’t you say anything?”
The fleshy pockets around Daniels’s eyes pulled back and his lips twisted into a gaping frown that displayed one and a half sets of fangs that had slipped from their sockets. “I always tell you there’s people after me! Why do you think I paid for two extra apartments and burned escape routes into them?”
The buzzer went off with a prolonged, impatient stab of the downstairs button.
Before Paige could answer that, Cole leaned forward and asked, “Can you see the front door from the first floor apartment?”
“Yes,” Daniels replied. “Well…sort of.”
Cole looked to Paige and raised his eyebrows with another unspoken proposition. She picked up on it immediately and nodded. “Good enough,” she said. “Daniels, keep this guy talking while we go down and have a look. Any trouble, you come down to us. Where’s the Blood Blade?”
“It’s in a safe in the apartment right below us. Bedroom, under the throw rug.”
She ran to the closet and slid down the ladder. Cole was about to join her when Daniels snapped his fingers to catch his attention.
“The ladder to get to the first floor is in the little closet in the hall where the water heater should be,” the balding Nymar told him. When the buzzer sounded again, Daniels answered right away. “Sorry, I was checking my contact list. Who sent you?”
Cole couldn’t hear the answer, but the voice that came through the speaker had the low pitch and stern tone of a parent dealing with a bothersome kid. Grabbing onto the sides of the ladder, Cole slid down and hit the floor on the balls of his feet. He went straight to the hallway closet and motioned for Paige to follow. Sure enough, instead of a water heater, there was another rough hole in the floor with a ladder extending down from it. Cole and Paige were a bit more careful to keep quiet as they descended, but were still quick to get to the front door of apartment 103.
Since he was the first to arrive, Cole placed his eye to the peephole. Within seconds Paige was behind him. He expected to get pushed out of the way but instead felt her hand press firmly on his back as she whispered into his ear.
“Do you see him?” she asked.
Not only was the apartment door a bit to the side of the building’s main entrance, but the lens of the peephole made everything look like it was projected onto the rounded surface of a bubble. “I don’t have a good angle,” Cole grunted as he twisted and squinted to try and improve his view, “but I can make out the front door. Looks like there’s more than one out there.”
“How many?”
“At least two. Maybe three.”
“Let me see,” Paige said as she tapped him eagerly.
Cole stepped aside and let Paige take a look. Pretty soon she was doing the same wriggling dance to see more through the little hole. Stepping back, she said, “Keep an eye on them. Hopefully Daniels keeps them talking long enough for me to get the Blood Blade.”
“Hold on,” Cole hissed. “I can see one of them.”
Now that he’d stared through the warped lens for a while, he could see the man at the speaker lean over to look through the tall window beside the building’s front door. He was no more than six-two or six-three and dressed in a plain, dark suit that hung loosely over broad shoulders and a thick torso. The man turned to stare directly at the peephole, making Cole reflexively jerk away from the door.
“What’s the matter?” Paige asked. “Who’s out there?”
Steeling himself to look outside again, Cole replied, “Just get the blade. Whoever’s out there is getting antsy.”
Keeping his eyes fixed on the door to 103, the man outside leaned against the entrance to the building as two more figures stepped up behind him. There was no doubt the man in the suit was Burkis, because Cole recalled the other two, Mullet and Sid, from his eventful trip to White Castle. The expression on Burkis’s face didn’t change in the slightest as he pressed against the main door and broke whatever bolts had been holding it in place.
Burkis walked into the building and glanced at 103. Shifting his eyes to the stairs, he waved toward the ground floor apartment and started to climb. Whether they’d been given silent orders or just understood Burkis’s signal, Mullet and Sid grabbed the handle of the door and started shaking it.
“They know we’re here,” Cole announced as he backed away and drew his spear from the harness on his back. “Burkis and those two I saw in Cicero.”
“Can you hold them off?”
It hadn’t taken long for the Nymar thugs to stop jiggling the handle and start pounding on the door itself. Judging by the amount of plaster that cracked around the door frame, they wouldn’t have to pound for long.
“I’ll try,” Cole said, “but you’d better get in here!”
“‘I’ll try!’” Sid shouted in a squealing mockery of Cole’s last statement. The door came loose and was flung open. It slammed against the wall of the entryway as Sid rushed inside. All three sets of fangs were on display as he opened his mouth and let out a breathy snarl.
Cole reflexively brought his spear across his chest as Sid charged into him. Since he couldn’t keep from being driven backward, he bent at the knees, rolled onto his back, and straightened his arms. Sid’s teeth clamped together loudly as he was tossed over his prey and into a tall stack of narrow white boxes.
The move went pretty well, but Cole didn’t have time to be impressed with himself. He scrambled to his feet and whipped around to find Mullet standing in the doorway. Compared to Sid, the guy with the bad hair looked tired and pale. He spat a quick obscenity into the apartment and then dashed down the hall that led to the neighbor’s door.
“Paige! He ran next door. I think he wants to feed!”
Nymar were strong enough already, but they had a nasty habit of grabbing a quick meal when faced with a fight. Apparently, Mullet hadn’t expected to face anyone stronger than Daniels and needed a quick shot of energy.
Paige bolted from the bedroom, weaving between small stacks of boxes and dodging Cole while plucking the baton from her right boot. As she raced from the apartment, her batons creaked into full combat mode: sickle blade on one end, with the handle sharpened down to a stake.
Like most animals desperate for its next meal, Mullet moved quickly and tore through anything that got in his way. One of those things had been the door to apartment 102, which Mullet knocked completely off its hinges. Paige stalked over the door laying flat upon the floor and cautiously moved inside. The apartment was dark, except for a trickle of light coming in from the newly busted front doorway. Paige didn’t need night vision to know where Mullet had gone. She could hear screams coming from the bedroom and the sound of something heavy slamming against the walls. She jogged as quickly as she dared while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. By the time she reached the bedroom, she could see one shadow pouncing upon another.