“It’s all over!” one of the men in tactical black uniforms barked. “Drop your weapons and put your hands over your head!”
“What is it, Cole?” Rico asked.
Locking his eyes on Gunari, Cole said, “Answer my question. Can I use this?”
“Pull the handle at the other end.”
The chain was locked into the silver tube with a bar that passed through the last link to keep it from being pulled out completely. Cole pulled the bar, drew the chain all the way back through the handle until the arrowhead was locked, and then drove the pointed end into his chest. He was barely able to break the skin. Whatever had powered him before either wore off or sapped his strength, staying his hand.
Rico charged forward without lowering his Sig Sauer. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Put the guns down!” the SWAT team member shouted.
All three Amriany focused their attention on the police and spoke to each other quietly through their earpieces. There were more Nymar in the building. The itch in Cole’s scars which told him that much. But Nymar were no longer the problem. No matter what language they spoke, he knew that the Amriany had to be discussing their chances of getting Tobar away from the authorities so the group could make a clean escape. “Get out of here,” he told them.
Drina approached him cautiously.
“I told you to go!” Cole said. “We came here to keep cops alive, goddamn it.”
“Give me the Talon,” she said calmly.
Paige had yet to get into the building. There were enough cops at the door to hold her back, but she wasn’t making it easy for them.
Rico stood his ground, paying no attention whatsoever to the cops, the guns in their hands, or anything other than his partner.
Cole pushed the sharp instrument in deeper, grinding it through the meat beneath his skin and scraping against the bone. “I don’t feel anything happening,” he grunted through the pain. Within his body, the tension in his muscles shifted away from the front of his chest and inched down to his feet. “It’s in me,” he said. “I know it is.”
“Was in you,” Rico said as he stepped forward. “We got it out. Remember?”
“No. I can feel it. I even …” But he couldn’t bring himself to say what he’d done. Since Rico and all of the Amriany were also covered in spilled Nymar blood, the stains on Cole’s face didn’t stand out enough for the others to draw conclusions.
All except for Nadya.
She’d stormed that room with him. She’d been there when Hope first jumped him. She was still there now. The only question remaining was just how much she’d seen while the Nymar stragglers swarmed in for their last push and he’d had Hope pinned to the floor. She looked at him with cautious pity and a hint of fear as she told him, “If there was a spore in you, the tip of that stake would have been drawn to it. The spore would have been drawn to it as well. Do you feel that?”
“No.”
“Then you have no spore.” When she reached for the tool in Cole’s hand, she didn’t have to fight to take it away from him. He relinquished it along with a heavy breath as several standard-issue police flashlights threw their beams across the top of the counter.
Once the arrowhead was out of him, Cole looked down to the wound in his chest. It was a clean, deep cut. The ends pinched together a bit, but that could have been the work of the Skinner healing serum in his system. No tendrils emerged to close the gap. He could, however, feel the bands cinching back into place around his muscles. “Paige is with these guys,” he said to Drina. “She’s your best chance of getting Tobar out. Trying to break him out now is just a good way to get us all killed.”
“He’s right,” Rico said. “I don’t know what’s holding these SWAT guys back, but it won’t last forever. Can you get out?”
“Yes,” Gunari said. “Only if we go now.”
Recognizing the commanding tone in his voice, Drina helped Nadya toward the door that led back into the hall.
“Freeze!” the cops said as they cut loose and rushed inside like guard dogs that had finally broken from their leash.
Cole stood up to face Rico and the retreating Amriany. Raising his hands caused his coat to hang like a leather curtain between him and the main entrance. He handed over his weapon and said, “Take this and—”
Shots were fired that hit Cole in both shoulders. Something scraped against his back amid the crackle of electricity. He assumed those were leads of a stun gun, but they were unable to snag within the tough material of his coat.
“On the floor! Now!”
“Get out, Rico!” Cole shouted. “Paige is with them. We’ll handle this.”
Rico’s swearing filled the air and then Cole’s earpiece as his footsteps echoed down the hall. A few of the cops screamed at him and struggled to climb over or around the counter to engage in a pursuit. Before they could get through the door Rico had just used, Cole jumped in front of the cops to absorb the next rounds that were fired.
“I won’t forget that,” Rico said. “Call me as soon as you can. Prophet?”
“Right here.”
“Can you get out without being spotted by the cops?”
“Are you kidding me?” the bounty hunter replied. “I’ve been watching the police swarm that building from half a block away.”
“Good. Wha—”
As the cops rushed at him, Cole ripped out his earpiece and crushed it beneath his boot heel.
“What was that?” A heavy hand dropped onto Cole’s shoulder and spun him around. The cop was a stocky man in his late thirties with a clean-shaven face that looked as if it had been sand-blasted from a hunk of solid rock. He was dressed in head-to-toe tactical gear including a vest that resembled the harness Paige had modified to hold werewolf hides. “What did you crush on the floor?” he asked. “Answer me!”
Three more cops in matching gear encircled Cole while several more passed through the doorway into the hall. Cole could only hope that he’d given the others enough time to put their escape plans to use.
“You got any weapons?”
As much as Cole wanted to lie, he sighed, “Yeah. Under the coat. I wasn’t going to shoot any of you. I just needed to protect myself.”
The coat was pulled off him with so much force that Cole wouldn’t have been surprised if his arms were still in the sleeves when it was taken away. “Got a few guns and what looks like some sort of drug kit. Syringes.”
“I can explain those.”
“Shut your mouth and stand still.”
Cole did as he was told as the holster and harness was taken from him. After that, the muzzle of the cop’s assault rifle was jammed into the small of his back.
“Make one wrong move and you’re dead,” the cop promised.
From the front of the room one of the officers shouted, “This looks like Hendricks!”
“What?” the cop behind Cole asked.
“Hendricks from Vice. He’s dead.”
The muzzle of the assault rifle gouged into Cole’s back as a thick arm wrapped around his throat to put him in an uncompromising lock. He was surprised by the lack of panic he felt as he thought about which method he could use to escape the hold. Paige had taught him several over the last few months, and her grip wasn’t much different than the one choking the life out of him now.
Attached to the cop’s vest was a radio that crackled with a voice that reported, “There’s more dead at the loading dock. Looks like a bunch of the dealers and Anderson’s unit.”
“All of Anderson’s unit?”
“Haven’t found them all yet, sir, but there’s two of them in the back of a van. The dealers are toast. Anderson and two of his men are hurt pretty bad. They say the others are somewhere on the premises.”
Cole’s head hung low. “Try the offices.”
“What?” the cop snarled a few inches from his ear. “Is that where you’re holding them?”
“No, I—”