vaguely like the varnish used for Skinner weapons.
“Hi, Nadya,” Paige said in the cheeriest voice she could manage. “Prophet sends his best.”
The woman had a face that was pretty, but rough around the edges. Reflexively touching the spot where she’d been wounded during the ill-fated raid on the Nymar warehouse in Denver, Nadya sat down in the seat directly across from her and said, “We’re sorry about what happened to Cole. That was an unfortunate sacrifice, but it allowed most of us to escape.”
“He didn’t get brought in just to save you,” Paige said. “There’s more to it than that.”
“And he wasn’t the only one to sacrifice,” Milosh pointed out. “Tobar was captured as well.”
An athletic man wearing a tactical vest and brown fatigues stood up from a seat at the other end of the cabin. His vest looked to be the same make and design as the shell Paige used for body armor, but was modified by strands of silver woven into black mesh. Despite the graying hair on his head, his face still had a youthful smoothness that would get him carded at casinos for years to come.
The smooth-faced Gunari might have been one of the Amriany who had joined forces with the Skinners in Denver, but the fire in his eyes still reflected generations of mistrust between the two groups of hunters. Sometimes tradition was a real bitch. “We had to flee from that bloodbath,” he said to Paige, “but not before we saw you step out of a fancy helicopter. Tell me, did the Skinners win another lottery thanks to that psychic you work with?”
“No,” she replied. “Prophet’s been busy doing other stuff, like trying to stay out of jail and divert any attention that might come our way thanks to warrants issued after all of that Nymar business. Speaking of that, since he’s covering your asses too, maybe you should call him by name instead of ‘that psychic.’ Okay?”
Gunari nodded. “He was also supposed to find information from those Nymar about their communication network and pass it along to us in exchange for us helping you Skinners survive that massacre. We haven’t gotten anything from him or you.”
“And,” Milosh grunted, “if you think we’re gonna let you go so you can screw us over, you’re fucking wrong.”
“I told you I’ve got information you can use,” Paige said. “You can make a copy when you drop me off in Denver.”
“Not good enough,” Milosh grunted.
She extended her arm, flipped up one finger and panned it slowly back and forth so all of the Amriany could see it. “I’ll e-mail the rest to you. Until then, kiss my ass. Good enough now? My partner’s in a maximum security prison so the rest of you could get away. If I don’t hear from him soon, it means he’s probably dead and I made the worst mistake of my life. Prophet brokered an information exchange to repay you for this ride. You don’t like it? Either drop me at the next airport or hand me a parachute.”
“Cole can handle himself,” Nadya said. “I saw him wade through the worst moments in that warehouse.” Her voice trailed off as memories of that night flooded through her mind. Just when it seemed she might become lost in those images, she blinked them away. “If anything, the men in that prison should fear him. Since Tobar is also locked in a cage somewhere, we’re all working toward the same thing.”
“Are we?” Paige asked. “Why do you want that Nymar communication network so badly? I haven’t heard anything about an uprising overseas, so the network probably only covers the U.S. and Canada.”
“You know nothing about what the Nymar do in our country,” Tobar replied. “And you know nothing about reports of any policemen that may have been hurt or killed by those leeches.”
Unfortunately, Paige knew that she truly didn’t know about those things, so she slid right into the next topic. “The Nymar communicate through a site on ChatterPages.com run by someone named Cobb38. I got some stuff from their computers but haven’t had a chance to look through it yet. The computer was barely guarded by a bunch of Stripes like the ones we found at the warehouse. You know. The Nymar with those black markings?”
“We know,” Milosh said. “We’ve been trying to find a simpler way to kill them since that day.”
“And?”
“And we would not tell you shit even if we found it.”
“So you didn’t come up with anything either,” Paige said.