The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(49)

“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 another 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—”

“And shot.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t counting that.”

“You weren’t counting my being shot?”

“Because I did that.”

“Still counts.”

“To save you.”

“You shot me for my own good?”

“It was a zagging thing; I thought I explained that.”

“You’re cutting me loose.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’ve already been hurt.”

“Hurt worse.”

“Maybe I’m a grown-up and don’t need a teenager to make that decision for me.”

“Nueve gets this. You used to be a field operative, so I know you get this. It’s why Mingus used you to test me. It’s why Nueve threatened to kill you to get me to give up. I can’t do that anymore, Ashley. Not to anybody, but especially not to you.”

She angrily slurped the dregs of her milk shake through her straw, if it’s possible to slurp angrily.

“And where am I supposed to go, Alfred? I can’t go back to the Company—what do you think they’d do to me after I helped you escape? I can’t go back to my old life. They took my old life away. God, I wish I knew you were going to do this back at the château; I would have told you to let me bleed to death after Mingus sliced me open. You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you do this to me. I’m coming with you, wherever you go, until I’m dead or you are or we both are.”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but if the past proves anything, I’m pretty sure I know what’s going to happen to you, and I don’t want that to happen to you, Ashley. I’d rather be cut open myself than see something happen to you.”

She tossed her napkin on her plate, leaned over the table, grabbed my face with both hands, and kissed me full on the lips. I tasted chocolate.

“You don’t get it,” she said, touching my cheek. “I’ve been assigned to you, Alfred Kropp. You own me.”

01:11:57:02

I left Ashley in the restaurant so they wouldn’t think we were running out on the check and went to the Western Union office where the money from Mr. Needlemier was waiting for me. I cashed a twenty and used the change to call Samuel’s cell phone.