Rico flipped Dave’s jacket open and dug around in the pockets. He came up empty, but found something when he patted down the heavy cotton shirt the Nymar wore over a dark red T-shirt. After nearly ripping the pocket off completely, Rico was satisfied that the card was the only thing in there. Only then did he finally take a look at what was printed on the muted white paper. He showed it to Cole, then tucked it away inside his own shirt pocket. “That’s from one of the cops at the parlor tonight?” he asked.
“That’s the one who sent the cops,” Dave replied. “Some lieutenant or captain, I don’t know. Whoever Ace and Steph were talking to.”
“Sounds like this has been in the works for a while,” Cole pointed out.
“Maybe a month or two,” Dave said.
“But it’s only been a little while since Lancroft’s place in Philly was raided. There’s no way you could get all of this and the cops on board in that amount of time.”
Dave was getting nervous. The sweat trickling from his brow was tainted by the same oily substance found in their blood. It allowed him to maneuver within the spear’s grip, but it also caused a reaction with the weapon’s varnish that made the forked end twitch against his jugular. “We’ve been stringing the cops along for months. Some of them got hooked on the girls. Some stayed out in their cars or tried to act casual in Astin’s bar. Others just swung by to give Steph and Ace some shit. All we had to do was keep them interested so when the time came it was easy to convince him to send some badges down to wait for you guys. When they started to lose interest, all we needed to do was feed them bits and pieces here and there. Drop a few anonymous tips. Let a few of the scared customers go instead of reining them in. It ain’t hard to keep cops looking at you.”
“And when the shooting started, you camouflaged them using that striped shit?” Rico asked.
For a second the Nymar seemed confused. “You mean the Shadow Spore. Yeah. We only just got that. We were all supposed to get altered, but there wasn’t enough time for everyone to get a taste. With everything that’s been happening between us and you Skinners, Hope and Cobb decided to use the Shadow Spore to put everything into motion.”
“Who’s Cobb?” Rico asked. The Nymar that had been under his foot was coming around and glaring up at the Skinners. Rico wiped the snarl off the vampire’s face by stomping his head against the floor hard enough to put his lights out for a good long while. From there, he clamped a hand against Dave’s face and slammed him against the closest wall.
“I don’t mind doing the legwork for an important job, but I’m getting bored with slapping you fuckholes around,” he said. “It’s been a long night, so tell me the rest before I decide to spice this up by carving my name into your face. How are the Nymar coordinating these attacks?”
“There’sh a webshite,” Dave said, his lips crushed and pursed together by Rico’s hand. “It’sh run by Cov Thirtyeigsh.”
“What was that?” Cole asked. “Did you say a website?”
Once Rico gave his mouth a chance to move, Dave said, “Y-Yes. It’s a message board run by a guy named Cobb. Cobb38. That’s his screen name.”
“Who the fuck is that?” Rico snarled.
“I don’t know. All I know is a screen name.” Dave brightened as if he’d found his lifeline. “I can show you how to get to him. Just take me to—”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Rico snapped.
Cole dug the phone from his pocket and pulled up the Web browser. Between the hell his body had been through and the sense of panic that came from being wanted for killing several police officers, it was a true struggle to keep his hands steady. “Don’t give me any shit about needing to be on a certain computer. Just tell me how to find Cobb.”
“If I tell you … you’ll let me go?”
Rico raised his knife and showed the blade to Dave. “How about for every bit of good info you give us, I cut off one less piece from your bloodsucking carcass?”
Dave talked.
Maybe he thought he could walk away from Pinups.
Maybe he already knew he was never going to leave that utility room. The stench of dead Nymar was thick enough to clog Cole’s senses, and he was still nauseous from the stink of oily tendrils reaching up through his sinuses while hugging him from the inside out.
When Dave was finished talking about Cobb’s website, Rico held him in place and asked, “You got any more antidote, Cole?”
“No. Most of it’s in me.”
“Then finish him off the hard way.”
Cole knew it was useless to tell the big man to do the deed himself, and there was no reason to ask why the job had been given to him. Skinners did what needed to be done, no matter how dirty the job was. When he picked up his spear and drove it through Dave’s chest, he figured he was being taught that Paige had simply been doing her duty as well.
“Damn,” Rico said as Cole wiped off his spearhead on the clothes wrapped around Dave’s lifeless body. “That was cold.”
“Sorry. Did you intend on bringing him along so he could screw with us, or let him go so he could warn the others and tell Cobb to change everything on his entire network?”
“I just thought you’d need a little more convincing. Give Paige a call and see where she’s at with her cop buddy.”
Cole wasn’t certain that Rico even had a phone. They were pretty much standard issue for anyone in the modern world, but Rico wasn’t always modern. Rather than question the big man on his views of technology, he took out his own cell phone, hit Paige’s speed dial number, and tossed it to him while it rang.
Poking his nose into the hall, Cole found Tristan standing watch just outside the door. Several dancers hurried back and forth between the stage entrance and dressing rooms, but deferred to the Dryad’s Queen Bee status with a quick nod as they passed her by.
“Any more assholes out there?” he asked.
Without batting a perfectly formed eyelash, Tristan replied, “Just the regular ones. Are you boys through yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you leave a mess?”
“Nothing a broom, dustpan, and some trash bags can’t handle. We’ll take the unconscious one with us and dump him somewhere far from here. That is, unless you want us to make sure he doesn’t come back?”
Tristan considered the Skinner’s offer for all of two seconds before shaking her head. “No. They didn’t see me or my sisters here. No need for any more death tonight.”
“Whatever. Think we could get a ride to Denver?”
“I can arrange that.” Tristan moved even closer to Cole and placed a hand on his forearm. Since he was a human male and she was a member of a species that served as the template for the ultimate ethereal female, that simple touch was enough to separate him from the world as well as his reality. “Please tell me you’re done with this kind of bloodshed.”
“We’ve got what we need from the ones we already questioned. I don’t think any of us are in the mood to talk to another one.”
“Good. I need you to tell me one thing, Cole.”
“Name it,” he replied before he could think any better of the decision.
She smiled, deflecting the knee-jerk appeasement with grace. “I need you to tell me you’re innocent of what they’re accusing you of on TV.”
Even though Tristan didn’t make a threat or even hint at anything along those lines, Cole somehow felt that a lie would be detected instantly by those softly contoured ears or those deep, colorful eyes. Before his baser instincts dragged him any further down into that sweetly scented trap, he told her, “It was a setup. Those cops were set up as targets and we were set up to knock them down. If we didn’t do it, I’m guessing the Nymar would have made it look like we did and then fed the same shit to the press.”
After taking a moment to size him up the old-fashioned way, the Dryad nodded and said, “I believe you. What I said before about not using our bridges still goes. Until this legal mess gets straightened out, we’ll only be able to transport Skinners when it’s absolutely necessary. You and Paige are different, though. I owe you two more than I can repay, which means you can come and go through our temples as often as I can.”