Rico smirked and watched a familiar car speed down the highway: Ned’s battered, light blue four-door. He knew it would only take another few minutes to turn off and backtrack to the driveway, and he continued watching through the bent plastic blinds. When he saw the second familiar car streak past on the highway, he grunted under his breath and leaned forward enough for his nose to press the blinds against the window.
By the time Ned pulled up, Rico had already eased into his shoulder holster and was checking to make sure his Army model Colt .45 was ready for use. After he heard the car door slam, Rico counted down the appropriate number of seconds required for someone to make the walk around the house and kept his finger on the trigger. After an acceptable amount of time had passed, Ned stomped in.
“You were followed again,” Rico announced.
“I know. Whoever’s doing it is getting sloppy.”
“Did they track you to the house?”
The older man’s steps brought him into the living room, where he threw his light jacket onto the festering couch that had come with the place and watched the TV long enough to spot the already expired weather forecast. “Yeah,” he grunted. “I even slowed down when taking the corners. Thought we could all go out for pizza.”
“Who is it?”
“Not Hope or any of her bunch. Haven’t felt any of them bastards within spitting distance of the hospital since them folks were killed. What about the university?”
Still watching the roads in front of the house, Rico said, “Wes is supposed to be out of town. I poked around, but all I got was a phone number to some Motel 6 in Florida from some jerkwad at that dorm. When I walked the grounds, I got more of an itch from lookin’ at all them college girls than from anything a Nymar might give me.”
“That’s real nice, kid. We got a job to do out here. I know you’re used to running loose on your own, but this ain’t the time to start sniffin’ around the locals.”
Just as Rico was about to calm the older man down, he felt a twitch in one of the deepest layers of flesh on his palm that made him feel as if he’d suddenly developed an allergy to the bones inside his hand. According to the look on Ned’s face, he was feeling the same thing.
The older Skinner pointed toward the back door and then at the short hallway leading to the two bedrooms. Rico nodded and hurried down the hall in steps that were quick and light enough to carry him to the first bedroom without making more than a few subtle squeaks on the floorboards. As his itch intensified, Ned went to the couch and stuck his hands in between the cushions. Pushing past some loose change and a few stale Cheetos, he found a .38 that had been sandwiched out of sight.
The bedroom Rico chose had a small window looking out to a backyard only slightly bigger than a postage stamp. He couldn’t see anything moving in the shadows, but the itch in his palms became more intense. Rather than take his chances on alerting multiple Nymar as well as the neighbors with gunfire, he tucked the .45 away and reached under the red flannel hanging over his plain T-shirt to unclip a wooden oval that hung from his belt by a D-ring. It had points extending from each end and was studded with thorns that punctured his palm as he grabbed hold of it like an oversized set of brass knuckles. Once the thorns sank in, the points grew into short thick blades that were somewhere between stilettos and hunting knives. The knuckle guard tightened around his fingers, spread out and sprouted half-inch spikes that curled into hooks before straightening out again as if they were flexing to limber up.
There was movement at the front of the house. Whoever it was, they weren’t trying to sneak along the wall beneath the windows or through the bushes, because no living creature could walk on the ground too close to the house without setting off one of the traps the Skinners had set. Footsteps echoed outside and occasionally scratched against the sidewalk until the visitor got to the front door and knocked.
Ned waited long enough for his partner to get situated and then stomped toward the front door while bellowing, “Who the hell is it?”
“I need to talk to you,” the visitor replied.
Instead of blinds, the windows of the front bedroom were covered with a thick set of drapes that were yellowed by the sun and stained by rainwater that had gotten in through cheap insulation. Rico eased the edge of one curtain aside just enough to place the girl who stood on the front step as one of the students attacked at that party. She’d made herself scarce after those people turned up dead at the hospital. Paige, he suddenly recalled. That was her name.
The Nymar were still out there as well, but too far away to be on the front stoop. Ned was probably thinking the same thing when he pulled the door open and asked, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Following you,” she replied.
“I gave you my damn card. You could’ve just called.”
“I did call. Remember those messages about the sightings of that missing girl?”
“Yeah.”
“That was me,” she explained. “I told you to show up at those places and waited for you to show up and you did.”
“I also got some strange messages from cops,” Ned told her. “Was that you too?”
“Anonymous tip along with your phone number. All I needed was for you to show up to meet one of them and I was able to follow you all the way here.”
“When I gave you that card, it was ‘cause I wanted to work with you. No need for all this other bullshit.”
“Would you have invited me back to your house?”
“No,” Ned reluctantly told her. The older man didn’t like being the one steered through a conversation, and it showed. Rico had to smirk at the sound of that.
“What if I told you I knew where to find Wes?” she offered.
“Do you?”
Now it was the girl’s turn to pause. Rico had seen her tailing Ned at least three different times, but getting all the way to the house was impressive. At least, for a beginner.
She shifted on her feet, but not out of nervousness. There was something else, and it was tough for Rico to pin it down given only his partial view through the hairline slit he’d created between the window frame and curtain. Before he could study her any further, he caught a hint of movement to his left along the next door neighbor’s roofline. A figure hung from the gutters of that house; too slim to pull the rusted metal down and too fast to send more than a metallic creak through the air.
“Let me in and I’ll tell you where Wes is,” Paige said.
The figure was no longer hanging from the gutter, and Rico was unable to figure out where the hell it had gone. As he pulled the curtains aside to get a better look, he knew he might be spotted by the girl on his doorstep. But some things were more important than trying to get the drop on a single, albeit crafty, college girl.
“Why do you want to get inside so damn bad?” Ned asked in a tone that made Rico certain the older man was reaching for his weapon. Always one for practicality, and hiding in plain sight, Ned’s club was about the size and shape of a stickball bat or possibly a broken broom handle. More than likely he was just prepping the bat for use and making sure the girl saw he was ready for trouble. It would be a while before the spikes came out.
The dark figure launched itself from the neighbor’s gutters, to land softly on the lawn directly in front of Rico’s window. At that moment, Paige took her hand from her pocket to point a little .32 revolver at Ned’s face. “Tara told me all about you guys. Step back before I shoot you.”
As that simple threat drifted through the air, the figure on the lawn stood up and drove her hand straight through the pane of glass in front of Rico’s face. He knew it was Tara because Ned had made a point of describing her to him in detail. Tara’s dirty blond hair may have been a little stringy and dirty, but went along with the wear and tear on her slightly rounded face. What Ned hadn’t told him about was the Nymar tendrils that traced paths up along both of her cheeks like skinny black fingers reaching up to massage her temples. When Tara bared all three sets of her fangs, it seemed more like an inexperienced gunner pulling all of her triggers at once simply because she hadn’t figured out which weapon in her arsenal was best for the job. Despite her lack of finesse, Rico was barely fast enough to jump away from the window before getting his head torn off.