Teeth of Beasts (Skinners) Read Online Free PDF Page B

get a hold of some shears.
    The land on either side of I-94 was thick with trees and took him directly between Middle Spunk Lake and Big Spunk Lake. Cole did a triple check to make sure he’d read the signs correctly, indulged in some juvenile laughter, and checked his GPS. According to the female British voice who’d gotten him this far, he needed to drive for another 1.2 miles and take the next exit. He did just that, followed her prompts along the side roads, and then patted the little monitor lovingly when he realized he would have been irrevocably lost if he’d followed his gut instincts.
    “Thank you, Romana,” he said, naming the British GPS voice after the companion from a classic Doctor Who storyline. “Don’t know where I’d be without you.”
    The restaurant was a little place that took up the first floor of a two-story brick building marked by a single wooden sign. Judging by the frillier curtains and knickknacks in the upper windows, the second floor was someone’s residence.
    Cole parked along the street and got out, leaving his varnished wooden spear on the floor behind the passenger seat. Having been treated with shapeshifter blood, the weapon was able to change its shape when commanded to do so by its owner. It took a lot of practice to get the spear to twitch, but he was getting the knack of it. One of the most practical tricks he’d recently learned was to make the weapon collapse into a more manageable size so it could be carried and hidden much easier. He always kept the weapon close, but decided it could wait in the car for a change while he lived his life. He walked in front of a large picture window, and before he got to the restaurant’s front door, Abby was rushing outside to greet him.
    “There you are! It’s great to see you in person!” she said excitedly.
    Abby wasn’t much shorter than Cole’s six-feet-and-some-odd inches. Dressed in jeans that wrapped nicely around slender legs and curvy hips, she moved almost fast enough to make smoke appear from the soles of her white sneakers. Despite the fact that it was a warm August day, she wore athin cotton button-up shirt over a dark brown tee adorned with the logo for the Midwestern Ectological Group. His eyes naturally took in the sight of her smooth, generous figure, but didn’t linger. Long hair flowed in a thick wave past her shoulders and swirled around her face thanks to a gentle breeze. Abby batted it away and smiled while using the back of her hand to nudge the boxy plastic frames of her glasses farther up onto the bridge of her nose.
    Cole smiled effortlessly at the sight of her. “Yep. Here I am. You look great.”
    Abby immediately shook her head and pulled her over-shirt closed. “I’m in the field, which means I need to wear dirty clothes and these things,” she said, placing both sets of fingertips on the edges of her glasses.
    Reaching out to smooth her hair back, Cole told her, “I think the glasses are cute.”
    “No you don’t. Nobody does.”
    “Did you change the color of your hair?”
    “Yeah, I’m going back to the red. Actually, the box says Intense Auburn, but that’s a little too dramatic for me.”
    “Well, it looks nice.”
    “You’re only used to seeing me on a webcam, so you don’t know any better,” she added, “but thanks. Are you hungry?”
    “Starved. All I’ve been eating is road trip food.”
    “Burgers and trail mix?”
    “More like beef jerky and candy bars,” Cole said. “Your road trips sound healthier than mine.”
    Cole had met Abby through Stu, his regular MEG contact, and chatted with her at any opportunity. Phone conversations and the occasional picture weren’t anything like the real thing, however. “We don’t have to do this if you’d rather not,” she said.
    He leaned forward to place a simple kiss on her cheek. Grinning as if the gesture had been more of a playful joke, he said, “Let’s just eat.”

Chapter 2
    Abby’s table wasn’t tough to spot. It was