The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp 3)

Ashley took a big pull on her chocolate shake and said, “Salad?”

“My tummy feels funny.”

“Did you just use the word ‘tummy’?”

I looked around the room. A man was sitting by himself, talking on a cell phone in a loud voice. Something about the meeting in Denver and what a slam dunk the presentation was. A frazzled-looking woman sat in a booth wrangling two toddlers fighting over a red crayon, their faces smeared with what looked like mashed potatoes. Another man sat at the bar wearing blue jeans and a buckskin shirt with the leather danglies on the sleeves.

“Why did he let us go?” I wondered aloud.

“He thought you were serious about hitting the button.”

“Maybe. But maybe he wasn’t bluffing when he said they already had what they wanted. But if they already had what they wanted, why didn’t they just let me go after I shot you? Why chase us into the mountains? Why fly in anoth

er black box?”

“He’s just protecting the Company’s investment.”

“Investment in what? OIPEP used my blood to fight demons before, but only because it didn’t have the Seal. It has the Seal now, so why does it still need my blood?”

She thought about it. I guessed she was thinking about it. She might have been thinking about her fries as she swirled the end of one in a dollop of ketchup. I remembered when I first met her in Knoxville, when she was posing as a transfer student, the big burger and milk shake she scarfed down without taking a breath. She tapped the fry on the edge of her plate like she had to get the ratio of potato to tomato just right.

“The Company was created to investigate extraordinary phenomenon and preserve items of peculiar and special significance. I guess your blood fits into both categories. Nueve doesn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.”

“He’s protecting the world from Alfred Kropp.”

“From what Alfred Kropp can do.”

“Right. We wouldn’t want some kid with the power to heal the world running amok, healing the world.”

My food came. I picked at it. She grabbed the bread stick off my plate and ate it.

“How do you do that?” I asked. “Eat so much and stay so thin.”

“I’m like a lioness,” she said. “I gorge, but only once a week.”

“If it’s true the SD 1031 has a range of only about a mile, then he has no way of finding me,” I said, looking at the guy hunched over at the bar. He was watching a basketball game on the TV mounted on the ceiling. “He’s not that stupid.”

“He knows where you are,” she said.

“How?”

“A Company plane dropped us here.”

“And took off again. Do you think we’re being watched?”

She shook her head. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. We should have killed the pilot.”

She said it so nonchalantly that for a second I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Finally, I said, “So say we aren’t being watched. How will he know where I’m going next?”

“Where we’re going next.”

“Well,” I said. “That’s something we need to talk about.”

Her big blue eyes got even bigger. “Oh?”

“Look, Ashley, the last thing I want to be is alone, but facts are facts and everybody who gets close to me or tries to help me ends up hurt, very hurt or dead. My uncle. Bennacio. Samuel. And you’ve already been stabbed—”