next cross street over to Meldrum, where he pulled to a stop, far enough away to be discreet but where they could see the gold Goat off on a side street, the blonde walking toward it, and, at the bottom of the hill, the rattrap Star Motel.
This was all just getting too damned interesting for him. How in the hell had they found the Star? He had only one answer, and it didn’t compute.
“They got Con.” Sonuvabitch. Now what?
“No way.”
“You got a better explanation?”
“Even if they’d gotten him, he wouldn’t have given us up. You know that.”
And he did.
Torture wouldn’t have worked on Con, and the only two people he cared about were sitting in this Buick Regal on Meldrum. SDF couldn’t have leveraged the information out of him.
“Something sure as hell happened, because they are sure as hell all sitting there waiting for us to show up.”
“Ah, hell,” she whispered.
Yeah, he saw it, too, the woman from the tenth floor, the redhead, got out from the GTO’s passenger side, and a blond man got out from behind the steering wheel.
They’d just tripled their trouble.
Make that doubled.
After a few moments of conversation, Skeeter Bang-Hart slid into the Goat’s driver’s seat and drove off.
Funny how that didn’t make Jack feel any better.
“Her name is Red Dog,” Scout said. “And that’s Travis with her. She calls him the Angel Boy. They’re married.”
How wonderful for them. Married. Hell. The only girl he was interested in marrying was hooking up with a college professor.
“And they’re headed down to the motel,” he said, watching the two operators pass the gray car the blonde had left on Meldrum and keep walking down the hill.
“Did you guys travel clean?” Scout asked.
“We always travel clean.” Red Dog and the Angel Boy wouldn’t find anything in the room that could identify him or Con, but they’d find a few items of interest to folks with an operational turn of mind.
“I could call her,” Scout said.
Ohh-kay.
He slanted her a curious, disbelieving glance. “And ask her to please not break into our motel room?”
“She gave me a phone,” Scout said, pulling said item out of a pocket in her pants. “It only calls one number. Hers.”
“So you can turn Con in whenever it seems convenient.” It wasn’t a question.
“She says she can help him.”
“Help him what?” He couldn’t believe they were still having this conversation.
“Survive.”
Well, that sent a chill down his spine, striking a little too close to home.
“Survive Lancaster’s goons?” More than likely, Lancaster had brought someone besides his B team to Denver. Karola and Walls were both flawed examples of Souk’s twisted art. Lancaster had plenty of the good stuff to choose from and a couple of soldiers he seldom traveled without, in particular two men named King and Rock.
Jack wouldn’t have minded meeting them in a dark alley, but he didn’t want Scout anywhere around when he did.
“No.” She shook her head, looking at the phone in her hand. “She says she can help him survive until next year, maybe the year after that. Maybe longer. It all depends.”
“On what?” He was surprised he could even choke the words out. This was the subject he did not want to discuss with her, the one where she realized Con was dying.
Hell, he didn’t want to have this conversation with himself.
“On what Souk gave him, and—”
“Everything,” he said, his voice cold. “The bastard gave him everything.” And your father, too—but he couldn’t tell her that.
Suddenly he needed a little air. He rolled the window down and watched Travis, the Angel Boy, who didn’t look anything like a “boy” at all, cross the street into the motel parking lot, guessing that nobody went around calling somebody the Badass Angel MoFo from Hell, because that’s what the guy looked like, more than tough enough, and his girl did, too. She circled the motel, going around back.
Yes, that’s the way he would have done it, just in case someone inside the room decided to make a run for it. Put the big guy on the door, because that’s where the shit really hit the fan, and put the girl who looked like she could kick everybody’s ass on the back. Actually, she looked like she could handle the door.
Any door.
As a matter of fact, watching her move reminded him of something—or someone.
“Is there something I need to know about her?” he asked Scout.
“Her real name is Gillian Pentycote.”
“You know what I mean.” God, the woman moved so smoothly, with so much power and