I remembered the protest outside the hotel in the city where I’d found Maeve. Crowds meant chaos, and we had no way of knowing in advance how many people would be around Todd, how much security he’d have.
“Fuck,” I said. “How do we make a plan when we don’t know all the moving pieces in advance?”
Bram got to his feet and walked to the window overlooking Main Street. We were all thinking, all turning over the problem of how to take our shot at Ethan in such an uncontrolled environment.
Bram got there first. Sort of. “We don’t need a plan.”
“Come again?” Poe said, even though he’d obviously heard Bram the first time.
“Yeah, Rafe would beg to differ.” I thought about all the advance work Rafe, Nolan, and Jude had done for us in Romania, which they’d called recon: satellite footage of the castle and digital maps of the surrounding terrain and enough weaponry to go to war with a small country.
“We’re not Rafe,” Bram said. “We’re not Nolan and Jude. What they do is different from what we do.”
“What do we do again?” I knew what we did in Blackwell Falls. Obviously. I just didn’t see how it pertained to taking a shot at Todd during a crowded conference.
“We don’t make plans, that’s for fucking sure.” Bram turned to look at us. “We stay flexible, make decisions on the fly, use whatever we have at our disposal.”
“He’s right,” Poe said. “Think about the Hunt.”
The Hunts weren’t operational. We didn’t go in with a plan. We picked a girl — or we had, before Maeve — and we adapted to the way she moved, the way she hid, the way she played the game.
Some of them were good at hiding. Others were good at running.
But we almost always found them, and we almost always found them because our strength wasn’t planning.
It was adaptability.
“So we get in and scope out the place?” I asked. “Look for an opportunity?”
“No guns,” Poe said. “We’re not looking to freak a bunch of people out with a shooting.”
Bram nodded. “Agreed.”
“You’re saying we take our knives?” I asked. “Try to get close enough to shank him in the crowd?”
“Or we could try something less… bloody,” Poe suggested. “Try to slip something in his water bottle, put him to sleep.”
The room grew silent as we considered the possibility.
“Nah,” I said at the same time Bram said, “No,” and Poe said, “Never mind, fuck that.”
“We go bloody,” Bram said.
I grinned, because he was right. “Bloody is our middle name.”
From his bed, Ray whined a warning.
36
MAEVE
I knewsomething was up as soon as I stepped off the stairs into the living room.
Ray rushed toward me like the youngest sibling eager to tattle, and the Butchers were huddled around the new coffee table like a bunch of generals in the middle of a war.
A thick current of excited tension hung in the air.
“What?” I asked, setting down my bag. “What’s happening?”
