The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

Cold Heart/Warm Heart pt. 3

Cole met us in the hotel bar. He ordered a bourbon for himself and spun it around the glass for a few minutes before he said much.

Parker, now drunk, provoked him. "You're awfully quiet, Blue Eyes."

"You're awfully sloshed," he sighed. "And my name, though you may not remember from five minutes ago, is Cole."

Parker giggled. "I remember. But they're so blue."

Now I laughed and elbowed Mark. "Some effect you have on women."

"She's easily distracted," he glared.

"So what are you kids doing here without the rest of your family?" Cole asked Mark and me. "I thought your boy didn't like you being out of his sight."

"Her boy," Mark said stiffly, "sent me as her chaperone. We'll be back with the rest of them soon enough."

Cole took a long sip of his drink and considered how much more this angered him.

In the stiff silence, Mark tried for another conversation topic. "So, Cole. How's good ol' Tennessee?" Mark asked him.

"Wouldn't know. I can't think of the last time I've been," he said.

"Christmas?" I asked.

"I didn't go home for Christmas," he admitted. This surprised me. Avoiding his family at a holiday seemed like a fraying edge in a tapestry I'd woven in my mind of Cole's perfect Southern gentleman, perfect human image.

"Everything... okay?" I asked.

"Oh yeah. Just too much work to do. Family offered to come here, but they're afraid of the city, and they wouldn't let me pay for their plane tickets if they came and..." he trailed. "It's complicated." This fit better. I understood that in his line of work, extreme hours and limited time off came with the territory. I also understood his family in small-town Henderson, Tennessee, probably didn't have the money to fly themselves up here or to do a lot of the things Cole did. He, of course, tried to take care of them. Tried to pay for things. Tried to help them. But for reasons too personal for me to understand, they refused this aid.

"So what have you been up to?" I asked.

"Not much, to tell the truth," he said, his eyes gazing into the bottom of his glass. I thought of every song lyric I'd ever heard about seeking answers in the bottom of a glass or a bottle, and watching him I understood what that meant. "What about y'all?"

Where to start? Chasing a ghost, cave arts and ruins, interrogating terrified humans, having a complete breakdown on the floor of a church 5,000 miles from where I sat now, discovering dead bodies in hidden cities, training for a war... That's what I'd been doing. "We were traveling," I said.

"Per the usual. Go any place interesting?"

"I went to Ephesus in Turkey and Densus Church in Romania," I said.

He perked up at this. "Weirdly, I've always wanted to go there." I smiled, sipping a hot tea I'd ordered. "Very interesting. And where's the rest of the clan now?" he asked.

Mark answered. "My brothers, sister, sister-in-law, and parents flew back to California. We'll meet up with them soon. Sadie had a few things to do in New York and Boston, and we thought we'd keep her company," he said, wrapping his arm around Parker's shoulder and bringing her in close to him. That was close enough to the truth, I thought.

"I see," Cole said, his eyes suspicious. So unaccustomed to receiving answers from me, Cole wondered if we were lying.

"And Boston is next?" he asked me. I nodded. "What's there?"