Coyote: The Outlander (with FREE second screen experience) by Chantal Noordeloos Page A

straight and tweaked his moustache with the tips of his strong fingers. Coyote watched the hairs roll between the callused digits. He has the hands of a hard-working man , she noted.
    “I’m also told that Alfonso Martine is part of the James Westwood crew,” Pinkerton said in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Mr. Westwood located the Outlander and took him under his wing several weeks ago.”
    The muscles in her face twitched, and he must have seen her flinch. The long dark lashes that crowned her eyes fluttered slightly. He kept his face straight, but she could almost see the inward smile of victory. He’s got me .
    Westwood was Coyote’s Achilles heel, and she hated that it was common knowledge.
    “You don’t say,” she said softly and slowly, with an edge of danger to her voice. She snapped the piece of paper from Caesar’s hand. He looked solemn, but he did not protest.
    Coyote could feel Pinkerton’s eyes on her, watching her intently as she examined the picture more thoroughly. She sucked in her lips so that her mouth was nothing more than a thin line. Anger ate away at her, and her heart pounded in fast, heavy beats. She extinguished the cigar, which suddenly tasted flat and bitter.
    “So he’ll be here in Indiana? He won’t have left the state?” She was short and to the point and no longer showed any of her flirty gestures or smiles. When Westwood was involved, Coyote’s blood ran cold. Pinkerton answered her question with a nod. A sigh escaped her lips, and she handed the paper back to him. Her agitated fingers played with the rim of her derby. “Has there been any evidence of rips outside of Indiana?”
    Allan shook his head, and he was about to speak when Caesar stirred. Allan looked at him in surprise. It was as if he shifted in and out of the shadows, and it was difficult to remain aware of his presence. Coyote was used to this; she had a sixth sense to where Caesar was, but she could tell it made Pinkerton nervous.
    “Indiana is called the crossroads of America,” Caesar said. “Many people do not know there is a spiritual meaning behind that name.” His dark hands, with skin dry as old, cracked leather, moved as if he were trying to weave his words in the air.
    “The veil of reality is thin in Indiana,” Caesar continued. “There is much magic there. The rips occur easily at those thin spots in the fabric.”
    “I don’t know anything about magic,” Pinkerton said. He coughed in his fist and cleared his throat. The subject of magic clearly made him uncomfortable. Coyote knew that most men found Outlanders weird enough to deal with, and magic was a subject that did not work well with lawmen like Allan Pinkerton. “But I do know that Indiana is a place of many rips, and their frequency seems to be increasing. The IAAI has been investigating a lot of them, and we have some records of the Outlanders who pass through them, but it is still unpredictable when and where a rip will appear.”
    He scratched his neck, red with the heat under his thick beard, and sighed. “We know so little about the rips, and each time we find one, we find more species of Outlanders.”
    “Is there any new information about the other side of the rips? Do we know where they lead to yet?” Coyote asked.
    The Scotsman shook his head. “Special agents have entered the rips, but few have ever returned.” He paused a moment, his eyes darting back and forth. Coyote wondered what he was thinking about and what he was omitting from his story. “There are some small realities that we have investigated, some portal dimensions, but that’s about all. The agents who did return often explored rather barren dimensions that didn’t hold much threat. Only one reported a hazardous world beyond his explored rip, and he’d barely made it out with his life. The information we’ve gathered is not enough to indicate where exactly the Outlanders come from. Most rips don’t stay open long enough for our agents to make it back