asked.
“The buffet. We could stop in and check. Or maybe you could call Tristan. She’d be able to tell us where to go for—”
“Oh she’ll tell us where to go, all right. Besides, it’s too late to need any help with transport. The Nymar we’re after is in Toronto, and we’ve been in Toronto for fifteen minutes.”
“What about gettin’ home?” Rico asked. “You tellin’ me we gotta drive all the way back to St. Louis from here?”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“Just like you figured out with Cole?”
Paige’s foot slammed against the brake pedal, putting the car into a skid that made a stomach-wrenching sound of rubber brushing against pavement that still glistened with rain. They were on a section of the Gardiner Expressway that looked down on a row of squat gray buildings to the left and had a view of an ornate structure with tall towers topped with small green domes on the right. Several cars honked at her, which did nothing to prevent her from coming to a stop on the side of the road.
Her hair had been clipped into a pointed bob the previous summer, and although she tried to maintain the style in the following months, it had grown out into a simpler shape that was only slightly longer along the sides than it was in back. Anger filled her brown eyes, and the nostrils of her subtly bent nose flared as she asked, “Just what the fuck was that supposed to mean?”
“You heard me, Bloodhound. You were at that warehouse in Denver when the shit went down with the Nymar and those dead cops. Or, I should say you were there at the end when you were flown in via helicopter like a goddamn rock star.”
“Yeah,” the guy in the backseat chimed in. “What’s the deal with that?”
Paige jabbed a finger at the younger man as if she meant to shatter the car’s rear window. “You don’t get to talk to me like that. In fact, do yourself a favor and stop talking altogether.”
When the guy prepared to defend himself, Rico waved at him and said, “Best listen to her, Steve. You weren’t there.”
As she shifted her eyes toward Rico, a hint of pain could be seen amidst the ever-present fierceness. “Any reason you decided to spring this on me now after we’ve been in the car all this time?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me on yer own. After all we been through, it’s the least you could do.”
“It’s between me and Cole,” she said while cranking the steering wheel so she could reenter the flow of eastbound traffic. “And when are we supposed to talk? We’ve been on the run, living off of beef jerky and coffee for two weeks.”
“Then we had that split after nearly getting pinched by those cops in Bismarck,” Rico chuckled fondly.
“We’ve been hiding in ditches and laying low in basements until we got into New York. Ever since then we’ve had that one tagging along.”
Responding to the scarred hand being waved back at him from the driver’s seat, Steve grunted. “You can trust me. I’m a damn Skinner too.”
“So you keep saying,” she told him. “You may have plenty of people vouching for you and a good record in MEG’s files, but you still need to earn your stripes with me, And it’s funny to hear you so concerned about Cole, Rico. Last time I checked, you hadn’t even gone to look in on him.”
“When did you check?”
“Does it matter?”
Suddenly, Rico became concerned with adjusting the vent so warm air from the heater was hitting his face at precisely the right angle. “All right, you got me. I ain’t exactly eager to walk into another prison. Odds are about fifty-fifty of me not walkin’ out again. Besides, after you left to back Gerald’s play when he moved to Chicago, you stopped bein’ me and Ned’s partner. You never checked in on us until you needed help in St. Louis.”
Paige shook her head while weaving between cars on the sloppy expressway. “Are you trying to come off like you stood by Ned no matter what? You expect me to forget about you going rogue in the Badlands or doing work for the mob?”
“Allegedly,” Rico corrected as he snapped an uneasy glare over his shoulder. He shifted in his seat and focused on the road in front of him. Despite being only a few hours away from New York, he could feel a difference in his surroundings. It wasn’t exactly foreign soil,