The moment the Skinners were outside, the door was pulled shut, a key was turned, and that was that.
Rico unlocked the Civic and dropped himself onto the seat behind the wheel. After unlocking the passenger door, he started the engine and waited for Cole to lower himself in. “I don’t think she liked you.”
“She gave me a new car,” Cole said. “That puts her one up on my dad.”
“I don’t think I ever heard about your dad. Wanna regale me with stories of Young Cole Warnecki during the drive into Denver?”
“No.”
The little car’s engine revved a few times. When it started whining, Rico pulled away from the club. “You know where we’re going?”
Cole checked the GPS he’d recently added to his phone’s laundry list of services, but wasn’t able to get his results before Rico stumbled upon a sign pointing him toward southbound Highway 36.
After Cole stuffed his phone back into his pocket and started fighting with the lever for his seat’s backrest, Rico asked, “So what’s the deal with you and Paige?”
“I thought you already had that figured out.”
“And I thought you weren’t such a prissy little bitch.”
Cole rolled down the window and closed his eyes to feign complete relaxation as the cold air tore into his cheeks. “If this is building into another ‘she did what she had to do’ speeches, you can save it.”
“Well,” Rico grumbled. “She did.”
“Maybe.”
“But?”
“But she didn’t have to make it seem so easy,” Cole replied.
“Easy? Are you fucking blind?”
Cole shook his head. “I’m not talking about what was going through her head or whatever was on her face. I’m talking about the weapon in her hands being stuck in my chest. I felt her trying to push it in, and wouldn’t have been able to stop her if it wasn’t for that … that thing giving me the strength. Spare me all the talk about duty or mercy or whatever else you were going to use to justify it. She was going to kill me and I couldn’t have done that to her. Even if it was the right thing to do, it would have been nice if she’d taken a moment before letting me go to …”
The highway was covered with a layer of snow that crunched under the Civic’s tires, and the wind coming in through the window smelled clean. It was late enough for there to be relatively few other cars on the road with them, but even if they were in the middle of a traffic jam with police helicopters closing in from all sides, Cole would have felt like a solitary figure in the middle of a frozen field.
“To what?” Rico asked.
In the time it took Cole to blink, he thought back to the first time he’d been dropped off in front of Raza Hill. The sting of Gerald and Brad’s deaths was still as fresh as the injuries he’d sustained after getting knocked around by a Full Blood. The Blood Blade was just a weird knife tucked away in his luggage, and vampires were just sexy fairy tales. When Paige walked out to meet him that first time, his entire world had kicked into overdrive. When she told him about Skinners, Nymar, and Full Bloods, he believed her. When she asked him to come along with her to help with the Blood Blade, he followed. When she told him about a warrior’s spirit and offered to train him, he accepted. At the time, no matter how much of it he might or might not have truly understood, he still would have gone along with her. There just wasn’t any other place for him to be.
“To what?” Rico asked again. “Say a proper goodbye?”
There was a reason Cole hadn’t wanted to say that part out loud. Even hearing it from someone else hurt worse than the lingering pains and incessant tightening within his chest.
“She didn’t get a chance to tell you the rest of what happened back in Urbana,” Rico explained.
“I heard enough. Her friend Tara was seeded and killed a bunch of doctors and nurses. Ned found her before, so he probably found them again. Paige probably did what she needed to do and now she’s a Skinner. Can we just flip on the radio and drive?”
“You don’t wanna hear the rest?”
“You’re telling me you memorized those Shampoo Banana journals?” Cole scoffed. “I know she’s your friend and everything, but that’s a little stalkeresque, don’t you think?”
“You want to hear what happened or not?”
“Do I have a choice?” Cole grunted.
“Sure. You could listen or you could plug your ears like a little—”
“Don’t call me that.”
When Rico spoke again, the edge was gone from his voice. “You need to hear this, Cole.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thomasboro, Illinois The past
Things were a little too hot for Rico to stay in New Mexico. It wasn’t the only spot where he’d had legal problems, but it was the most nagging pain at the moment. Fortunately, it was a pain that could be alleviated by some time spent away from the authorities who might arrest him on sight. Ned didn’t like hearing about such things, and Rico was more than happy to keep them to himself. In that aspect and a few others, it was a good partnership. More recently, Ned had set his sights on a Nymar group that staked their claim on the nearby college town of Urbana. No longer content to hang back and watch the bloodsuckers come and go, Ned shifted into a more proactive gear. Rico enjoyed that aspect of the partnership even more.
It would have been ideal for them to set up some sort of home base within reach of the university, but the Nymar had Urbana scoped out so well that whenever Rico drove around on a scouting run, Hope and Evan would drive by and wave at him and Ned within minutes. So they chose Thomas-boro instead, a short drive away from the university and secluded, which made it easy for them to slip back and forth undetected. Ned was renting a little house on South Church Street that had a prime view of Highway 45. It wasn’t exactly scenic, but allowed them to watch the main route in and out of town. If the cops or any fanged visitors showed up, the Skinners could easily bolt for that same highway and put their evasive driving skills to the test.
The attack at the residence hall party had come and gone without much more than a few mentions on the local news. If Hope was anything at all, she was careful and tidy. No bodies were found, one girl was presumed missing, but nobody had filed a report until well after the party. Wes was popular enough among his buddies to convince them to back his story about Amy and Tara leaving together and heading back to their dorm. By the time anything more suspicious than that had surfaced, the bodies at the hospital were found. Once the press got hold of that story, anything as mundane as a wild party was left in the dust.
Bending a few slats of the plastic blinds covering the front window with one finger, Rico watched the highway while Jason Banks of Champaign’s Local News at Five informed the late night audience of the latest developments. Rico heard the story when it was first broadcast, but he listened to the repeat just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Also, the sitcom rerun playing on the other channel would have only distracted him.
Jason Banks was cut from Grade A newscaster cloth. Lantern jaw. Dark, closely cut hair. Stern eyes and the occasional genuine smile. He was so good at his job that when he said the doctor and nurses killed at Carle Foundation Hospital had been victims of a mental patient who was corralled within minutes after the slaying, Rico almost believed him.
“Although authorities believe Gracen was responsible for at least two of the slayings,” Banks said, referring to the mental patient by name, “the short time in which the attacks were carried out led investigators to believe that more than one assailant was needed to commit the murders. Gracen is in police custody and hasn’t denied killing one of the nurses. As of this time, however, he hasn’t given any useful information regarding the identity of a possible accomplice.”