“Is this contact a Nymar?”
“No.”
“Then they’re not as qualified to examine this specimen.” Before she could rebut that statement, Daniels added, “If this contact has enough space for me to work in a protected environment, I could move my investigation along much faster.”
She narrowed her eyes and stood toe-to-toe with the dumpy Nymar. “Wouldn’t the lab in your apartments be a good enough place to work? Or here? You can have the run of this place while we’re away. And what about that collectibles thing you started?”
“Actually,” Daniels groaned, “my girlfriend’s got a whole shopping trip planned to refurnish my second floor apartment. There’s colors to look at, patterns to choose, then she’ll want me to move furniture. It’s a whole, involved process. If I was to come along with you, I wouldn’t have anything else to do other than work.”
“How is Sally?” Cole asked.
Brightening at the mention of her name, Daniels replied, “Great. After those animals tore through the building the last time you were there, she’s decided to move in with me.”
“Hey! Congrats.”
“How long will it take for you to finish with Peter?” Paige asked.
“Another day should be sufficient. There’s plenty of tests to run, but that would be enough time for me to check out a few—”
“You’ve got until tomorrow,” she cut in. “Then Cole and I head out to St. Louis with or without you. Also, you’re driving your own car and paying for your own gas.”
Daniels obviously wasn’t happy about that, but nodded tersely rather than concede. “Fine.”
“And you,” she said to Cole as she followed him toward the kitchen. “If the wrong stuff from that list shows up in one of your games, you’ll see how much I can do with this gimpy arm of mine.”
“Yes, ma’am. Nice to have you back, by the way. When you stop feeling sorry for yourself, you become the Paige I’ve always known.”
“You haven’t really known me that long,” she pointed out.
Cole let go of the heavy door they’d installed. “Hey!” she scolded as she caught it.
Reaching out to push the door back, Cole noticed that she’d been quick and strong enough to hold it open using her right arm. “Sometimes a wounded little bird just needs to be pushed out of the nest,” he mused.
Paige strode ahead and grumbled, “I got yer bird right here.”
Chapter 7
Coming from Seattle, Cole had needed some time to adjust to the heat of a Chicago summer. He hadn’t been away from Washington for very long, so he was still getting used to it. Coming from Chicago, however, the heat in St. Louis was something special. They’d left Rasa Hill after a breakfast consisting of three different kinds of meat, eggs, and cheese sandwiched between bagels or English muffins. Once they got onto the open road, they were able to drive at their leisure. Too bad it felt as if the Cavalier’s tires were melting to the pavement.
“Why couldn’t we have taken the rental car?” Cole asked. “At least that had air-conditioning.”
“Stop whining. If Daniels is going to drain our spare cash to buy books, we can’t afford to rent a car. Hang your head out the window. That helped in KC.”
“KC was seasonably warm. This feels like a damn blast furnace.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Paige said as she tuned the radio to an alternative rock station and cranked the volume just high enough to discourage more conversation.
It was early evening when they skirted downtown St. Louis and caught their first glimpse of the Gateway Arch. Having trailed behind them this far, Daniels blinked the headlights of his SUV to let them know he was splitting off to try and make contact with some of the local Nymar. Cole watched the scenery go by as the tall, shining buildings in that area gave way to crumbling apartments and warehouses that looked as if they’d all been scorched by the same fire. Within a fair amount of time, the architecture shifted once again to that of St. Louis University.
Paige sat in the driver’s seat as always. Despite the fact that she steered from the sling, she knew the area well enough to be an asset behind the wheel. Her navigation came in very handy since, no matter how much Cole itched to use his new GPS, there was so much construction that the little box would have probably started smoking after chugging through too many recalculations.
Letting his eyes wander along the scenery, he asked, “You used to live here, right?”
“Yep.”
“Isn’t this where you did your training?”
“That’s right,” she replied.
“What’s his name? Rico. You worked with him here, didn’t you?”
“Sure did.”
Cole drew a deep breath and hung his arm out the window. When they were flying down Highway 40 at seventy miles an hour, the breeze actually felt pretty good. “Rrrrrico,” he said, making sure to roll the R off his tongue. “I’m picturing some baby-face little pretty boy with a bandanna and no shirt under a leather jacket.”
“Are you? Well, whatever floats your boat.”
“You know. Because of that song from the eighties. Rrrrrrrico.”
Paige nodded. “Be sure to mention that when you meet him. He loves that joke.”
“Is he still here?”
She looked over at him while gunning her engine to get around a Mustang lingering in the right lane. “Ned Post is the resident Skinner around here, but he isn’t exactly up to that sort of thing anymore. Rico came by to lend him a hand.”
“Sure would have been nice for him to lend us a hand in KC.”
“Rico was stomping through the Rockies after some domestic Yetis. Once he gets wrapped up in a hunt like that, he doesn’t resurface until it’s done.”
Paige exited at Kingshighway Boulevard and drove past a large park. Normally, Cole would have enjoyed the greenery, but he’d become all too familiar with the kinds of things that live in wooded areas, whether they were in a city or not. He and Paige both kept their eyes pointed forward.
“This town seems pretty quiet,” he said.
“Then you must be deaf.”
As if to prove her point, tires squealed at the intersection in front of them and four people started screaming at the white pickup that had stuck its front end out where it didn’t belong. Two of those screamers weren’t even remotely involved in the averted accident.
Cole made loose fists to rub his fingertips against his palms. “No, I mean quiet in the…wait,” he said as a fiery pain touched his hands. His scars’ reaction to shapeshifters felt like a match being dragged across his skin. “I guess this place isn’t as quiet as I thought.”
“Rico told me he cleared out all the Half Breeds.”
“When did you talk to him?”
“While you were helping Daniels load that body into his backseat.”
As they continued down Kingshighway, the pain grew stronger. It wasn’t the deep tissue burn caused by a Full Blood, and it wasn’t the prickly sensation set off by a Half Breed. When Paige turned onto McPherson Avenue, Cole put a name to the pain. “Mongrels,” he said. “And they must be close.”
Paige gunned the Cav’s engine so she could skid into a parking spot against the curb a split second ahead of the black four-door that had been waiting for it with its blinker ticking. “Damn,” she said. “I am one hell of a good teacher.”
The black car held its ground, and when Cole got out, a man with a meticulously trimmed goatee stuck his head through the driver’s side window and screamed, “That’s my spot, asshole!”
Cole took his harness from the backseat but tried to keep it out of sight. Even though the spear was collapsed down to about half the size of a baseball bat, he didn’t quite succeed in keeping it under wraps.
“Oh, you wanna go?” the man with the goatee blustered as he kicked his door open.