“Are you going to come here or not?” she asks. “I can’t bring this goddamn map to you, you know?”
Cassian gets there first, naturally. He circles the table and his eyes glue to the map. Nathaniel drifts to his shoulder, close enough to see everything, but staying as close to me as possible just in case. Talon hangs back half a step.
I lean in over the map and force my attention down.
“Okay,” I say. “Show us.”
The youngest taps the highway again, then drags her finger along it. Or tries to. Her fingertip ghosts through the paper, the ink, the wood beneath, and she swears under her breath.
“For fuck’s sake,” she mutters, then re-aims with exaggerated care, hovering a hair’s breadth above the map like she’s tracing in air. “Here. This stretch. They drive it once every three months, more or less.”
“They’ll be there in three days,” Buzz Cut adds from the wall.
The area they’re showing is at least a two-day drive from here. And it’s the middle of the woods. I look up and catch Nathaniel’s gaze.
“Okay…” I drawl.
He cocks a brow.
No one ever knows everything when they go in for a kill, huh? Still. Two days away, deep woods, terrain we know nothing about? Sounds like the perfect place for something unknown to crawl out of the dark.
“They drive a white van,” the girl continues, “with fake plates. They like gas stations that don’t have working cameras. Motels with side exits. They always pick girls traveling alone, or with one other female companion. They never take from groups, and they never take anyone who looks like they have someone waiting for them. In other words, they’re paranoid.”
Now my three guys exchange glances.
“Why the woods?” Cassian asks. “What’s up with that?”
Braids looks up with a flat stare.
“That’s where they burn the bodies, of course,” she says.
“That’s where you’re going to burn them instead,” the youngest supplies.
I get dizzy again.
I mean, yeah. Sure. Let me just find my matches.
Not a big deal. Right?
Ugh… who the hell came up with this plan?
Either I’ve just taken a step toward the slow decay of my intellect, or I’ve outed myself as a believer to a very deranged man.
Cassian looks at me with narrowed eyes and the kind of stillness that sets something uncomfortable running along my spine. His jaw shifts once. A slow drag of muscle pulling tight beneath the skin.
He didn’t flinch when I stepped out from behind that corner. Not even slightly.
Talon did. He blinks at me with wide, exhausted eyes, and his hand slides toward something on his belt. A knife, I assume. Or a gun. Something that can hurt me.
“Excuse me,” I say, and put my hands where both of them can see them. “I overheard your conversation.”
A mistake, perhaps.
But my heartbeat is quickening, and there’s a rush through my limbs, a sharpening of the world’s edges, and something inside me clicks quietly into place. Something I haven’t felt since before my mother died.
Purpose.
“I can help you,” I say.
