“That was before the legal trouble, but I may be able to wrangle something. She does owe us big-time.”
“You’re damn right she does,” she snapped. “Call her and set something up if you can. If not, just try to get someplace where you can stay alive.”
“No!” The word came out of him as if it had been squeezed up from his ankles. He winced at how much noise he’d made, but continued in a determined whisper. “This is my fight too, remember?”
“You’ve been through more than anyone. I made the mistake of trusting someone too soon and nearly lost you. I thought you were dead,” she stated in her steely tone. “I won’t hand you over again.”
“I was unconscious most of the time,” Cole said with a forced, unconvincing chuckle. “From what I’ve heard about prison life, that’s a good way to go. Randolph told me some things.”
“Randolph, huh?” Paige grunted. “No more Mr. Burkis?”
“That’s one of his names, and I’m sticking to it, okay?” In a strange way, squabbling with her again made Cole feel better than any amount of food he could smell whenever someone opened the door to the truck stop. It filled him up, heart and soul. Knowing better than to get that corny with her, he said, “You’ve got your thing going on in Oklahoma and there’s something going on here as well. Since they’ve both got Full Bloods attached to them, I think our things are connected.”
“Insert dirty joke here,” Paige said. “Before I let you go, I think we should consider something.”
“What?”
“That we may need all the help we can get,” Paige said with a wince Cole could feel through the phone line. “Lancroft worshippers or not.”
Cole ground his teeth together hard enough that he thought the sound might have carried through the phone line.
“If these guys are all like the ones that took me from Canon City,” he said, “they pride themselves on being the ultimate Skinners or something. They were getting slaughtered when I left that place.”
“But they’ve got to be preparing something against what’s happening. At the very least, they’ve got more people to stand against these things.”
“Cannon fodder,” he said. “I like the sound of that. Too bad Rico’s still got my weapon.”
“You can make a new one. Are you okay?”
The change in her voice was subtle, but Cole picked up on it without a problem. For Paige, the absence of that edge to her tone was no small thing. “I’m better now that I’m out of that prison. What about you?”
“In the middle of a freaking meat grinder. Don’t know if I’ll live to see the next hour. Same as always.”
“Good to hear it,” he said with a tired laugh. “I’ll call you when I can.”
“Ring once and hang up, then call me right back. That way I’ll know it’s you.”
“Old school. My grandma used that one for us to let her know we got home safe after Christmas.”
“Mine too. Just sit tight, baby.”
Cole was still recoiling from that last word when the connection was cut. Did Paige just call him baby or was something garbled along the line between Colorado and Oklahoma? Unable to think of any profanities that would have fit at the end of her sentence that could have been mistaken for “baby,” he hung up and hurried to the car.
“Can you still read that girl?” he asked Lambert.
“Yeah. She’s by herself and thinking of all the nasty things she wants to do to our balls with a hammer. Other than that, she’s fine.”
“I’m circling back to make sure she’s all right, then we’re getting out of here.”
“Any way I can convince you to just drive before we’re spotted or picked up?”
“Nope,” Cole replied. “Buckle up.”
Chapter Sixteen
There was a campsite about five miles west of Walsenburg, over twenty miles from the truck stop where Lambert had picked up their supplies and clothing. It was a nice, scenic area with two lakes nearby and plenty of spots for families to set up their tents or park their campers. Cole wanted to get farther away from Canon City, but Jessup had insisted they meet at the motel near Lake Meriam. Too tired to argue, Cole removed the license plates from the hatchback, parked on an access road, and stayed close enough to the nearby families to avoid too much suspicion. He and Lambert changed their clothes and Frank slipped into the lake itself, where he settled in like a rock and didn’t come up again.
“Good,” Lambert grunted. “Hope he drowns.”
“Any reason for that or are you just being an asshole?”
After a brief consideration, Lambert shrugged. “Just bein’ an asshole I guess.”
“Fine. Pass me those beef sticks.”
They changed into their new clothes, rinsed the old ones in the modest restroom facilities, and more important, Cole was able to take a shower. The stalls were basically cement closets with little hot water and a curtain that wasn’t large enough to fully cover the opening, but the running water was a blessing. The only thing that felt better was being able to lay down in the backseat of the hatchback and catch some sleep. He and Lambert traded lookout duty, tapping the glass to wake the other one up if anyone official-looking came around to look at the car. It wasn’t until the following morning that they had to do anything more than take a walk to avoid campground police.
“Fuck,” Lambert snarled as he watched a man in a brown uniform take a notepad from his pocket. When he bent to look at the car’s plates and found only empty bumper space, Lambert hissed, “We should take that guy out.”
“Right. That’s so much better than letting him go through the motions of reporting an abandoned car. He may not even file that report for hours. We’ll be gone by then.”
After the uniformed man moved on, Cole and Lambert drove a little farther down the road to a motel overlooking the modest lake. Since he didn’t have any more money or anything else of value tucked away inside his dirty prison-issue clothing, his only option was to use Brianne’s debit card again. He’d spotted her along the side of the road when he went back to check after leaving the truck stop the previous day, and Lambert couldn’t pick up any deception when Frank made his report, so there was every reason to believe that the police had been notified about her encounter with the escaped prisoners. That was why they’d slept in the car, which didn’t seem as attractive now that Jessup still hadn’t showed up.
When he spotted a man in a rumpled business suit stepping out of a room on the back side of the motel, he looked over at Lambert and said, “Stay here. I’ll take this guy.”
“What for?” Lambert asked. “Let’s just sit tight until that friend of yours gets here. Hell, we could just walk around until he gets here. Worst comes to worst, we drive away.”
“No,” Cole snapped. “We need another place to wait before someone starts asking too many questions. The car’s been reported stolen, so we should ditch it. We need a place to stay until Jessup gets here. We take this guy’s room and keep him here for no more than a day, sleep on a real bed, maybe catch up on some news.”
“We’re on the run, buddy,” Lambert said. “That kinda means we gotta rough it.”
“If this doesn’t work, then drive away. Just don’t bother coming back to ask for more help, and good fucking luck convincing Frank to go with you.” With that, Cole stormed out of the car and headed across the parking lot. Even as he strode toward the man in the rumpled suit, he replayed Lambert’s words in his head. They made sense. A lot more sense than what he was about to do. If only good sense could cause the cinching pain in his gut to subside. Either they’d burned through the blood he’d taken from Chop or they were becoming something more than just remains of a dead spore, because he could feel them slicing into his stomach and along the upper portion of his throat.