list, Bloodhound. I wanted to make sure you’d be on board with this before doing something drastic. Once you saw my name, though, I didn’t have much choice.”
She glanced over to him and said, “I didn’t see your name on the list, Rico. Just Jory, some of the Philly Skinners, and some others I didn’t recognize.”
Rico was stunned.
“You did see his name,” Steve told her. “Just like we found yours in an e-mail that explained how you betrayed all Skinners to the men flying that helicopter that brought you to Denver.”
Paige watched the road, still looking for anything that could be put to use.
Steve moved so he was looking at her like the proverbial devil sitting on Rico’s shoulder. “Tell us about those people who flew in that helicopter.”
“They helped me once,” she said. “They’re not exactly on my Christmas list.”
“Are they with the government?”
“No.”
“Cops?” Rico asked.
“Getting colder,” Paige sighed.
Steve placed a hand on Rico’s shoulder and said, “She’s trying to manipulate us.”
When Rico’s fingers tightened around the Mossberg, Paige thought she could hear the shotgun bend within his angry grasp. “Cut the bullshit and tell me everything, Bloodhound.”
The expressway was clear and straight enough for her to see she wasn’t going to get the break she’d been hoping for. There was always the chance of making a move that was sudden enough to get the drop on the big man in the passenger seat, but she’d worked with him for too long to expect his trigger finger to let her live through something like that. In an earlier time of her life, when she’d first been introduced to the darkness that crept in around society’s edges, Paige might have welcomed an opportunity to roll those dice and risk going out in a quick blaze of shotgun fire. Things might have become even darker, but she’d found something else to cling to. As much as it had torn her up to leave that something behind back in Denver, she wasn’t about to forget it anytime soon. In fact, it was a rare moment that she wasn’t thinking about him.
“You have to tell us about the group,” Steve said. “You can trust us.”
“It’s got some military ties, but it’s privately run,” she said. “They’ve also got friends in the press. And before you ask, yes. They do have some important jobs for me to do in exchange for the protection they can offer.”
“Protection?”
Paige shook her head solemnly. “I’m not saying another word.” When Rico placed the shotgun to his shoulder and pointed it at her cheek, he braced his arms and legs as if the kick of the Mossberg and the turbulence that would follow once the car was without its driver were both as inevitable as the rain.
Looking at her in the mirror, Steve said, “He’ll shoot you, Paige.”
She saw the image waver once more, so she looked away from it and to the familiar face beside her. “I know you would, but never based on so little. We’ve been through worse, including when you finally agreed to help Gerald train me.”
When Rico let out a breath, a fond smile accompanied it. “Gerald knew his way around the sticks, but we could always take him in a fistfight. Remember the look on his face when you knocked him on his ass that time?”
“Yes.”
The expressway cleared out along a stretch that curved sharply to the left. It glistened with a thick layer of water tainted by a mix of oil and any number of fluids dripping from the hundreds of cars using the road on a daily basis.
“So you must be one of these guys that Rico’s talking about, right, Steve?” she asked while glancing back and forth between the mirror and the road. “I figure that has to be the case since you seem to be so familiar with Lancroft.”
“I never said that.”
“No, but you called him Doctor Lancroft. The only one I’ve ever heard call him that was Henry. Henry’s dead, and if you’re not one of Lancroft’s followers, maybe you were around him for a long time for some other reason?”
“I . . . am one of his followers,” Steve admitted.
Although Paige believed that implicitly, she held onto her underlying train of thought. “And what about you, Rico? You must have known this guy for years to let him boss you around that way.”
“I—”
“He has,” Steve interrupted.
Rico nodded. “Yeah, I have.”
“Funny how you never mentioned him.” Gripping the steering wheel, Paige added, “It’s also funny how both of