“Will it help? If I tell you guys everything—” She gave him a meaningful look. “—and I mean, everything, will it help you take them down?”
Cade stroked his hand down her braid, then cupped the back of her neck to pull her close. “I can’t promise that it will, but I know it can’t hurt. Right now, we don’t know anything. Someone is going to have to run recon, but there’s only so much we can learn from a distance.”
It wasn’t a guarantee, but there was a chance. “I’ll do it.”
He sighed and kissed the top of her head. “I had a feeling you’d say that. Everyone’s waiting in the conference room.”
And when he said everyone, he meant everyone. Mackenna had expected Luca and Lynk, maybe Rhys and Thea. What she hadn’t expected was for at least a dozen heads to snap in her direction when she entered the room.
Luca sat at one end of the long conference table, Lynk at the other, and every seat in between had been filled. Others had taken up positions along the wall, or they’d squeezed in between chairs to pour over the map spread out on the table.
There were even a couple of faces she didn’t recognize.
Cade must have sensed her apprehension, because he stepped in front of her, effectively shielding her from the curious gazes. “Mack, this is Seth Barnes.”
He motioned to a male with the palest complexion she’d ever seen on a living person. His icy blue eyes tracked her across the room, and he dipped his head. Mackenna nodded back at the human.
“And Orin Gaines.”
His hand swung to the right, indicating a black male the size of a freaking mountain with copper-colored eyes so warm and kind she couldn’t help but smile at him. Again, she nodded.
“I think you know the rest of these assholes, so let’s get started.”
Her mate, ladies and gentlemen, the diplomat.
Even Deke was in attendance. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in years, and the simple act of sitting up straight appeared to be taxing, but at least he had a little color back in his cheeks.
She’d learned from Roux that he’d broken three ribs in his fight with the ghost walkers. Not a significant injury in and of itself, but one of the fractures had punctured his left lung and caused other internal bleeding. While he’d mostly healed over the past couple of days, it would be a while longer before he was back to business as usual.
“Good timing,” Luca said, not looking up as he motioned for them to join him at the table. “Based on where Cade and the others found you on the highway, we think we’ve narrowed down where the Hunter camp might be.” He jabbed his index finger at the map of Colorado. “Take a look.”
Mackenna inched closer, choosing to squeeze between Roux and Deke to get near enough to the table. Abby sat on the other side of Roux, and although Mackenna normally felt more comfortable with females, Abby gave her the damn creeps.
Maybe that wasn’t fair. The way she’d heard it, the tiny blonde had been through the gauntlet in recent months. Mackenna knew better than anyone that people didn’t just walk away from trauma without being affected in some way. Still, there was something about the female, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but it made her hair stand on end.
“Um, what am I looking at?”
“So, this is approximately where the team found you.” He tapped a squiggly yellow line. “There’s not much around here.”
Mackenna bit her lip and nodded. She still didn’t understand what he was asking her.
“Do you know if the camp was a ski resort?” Cade asked, comforting her by resting his hand against her lower back.
“No, not like that.” The camp had been situated in a valley with mountains on three sides, but not the kind that skiers would find hospitable. “I think it might have been an inn.” She wrung her hands together as she tried to find the words to describe it. “There was just one big building, then some smaller cabins sprinkled through the woods around it.”
Cade rubbed his hand up and down her spine. “Do you know which direction you were coming from when you found the highway?”
“From the east.” That much she was sure of, but she couldn’t say with certainty how far she’d traveled.
“You couldn’t have gotten far on foot,” Luca said as if he’d plucked the thought from her head. “That puts us somewhere around here.” Uncapping a red marker, he drew a circle on the map that encompassed about three square miles. “There isn’t even a town here technically. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Okay, kid,” Lynk interjected, pushing to his feet to offer her his chair at the far end of the table. “It’s time for the hard questions now.”
She was twenty-six, hardly a kid, but she accepted the moniker in the spirit in which it had been intended—as well as the seat he’d offered. “What do you want to know?”
Rounding the table to join her, Cade shoved at Rhys’ back a couple of times and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get the fuck up.”
Jesus, they were going to have to work on his people skills. “Why don’t you share my seat?”
He grunted and glared at the male, but eventually, he sat down in her vacated chair without argument. Once she was settled on his lap, he wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled the side of her neck.
“Remember, you don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to, and if you need a break, just say the word.”
“It’s okay.” Taking a deep breath, she held it for a count of three, then released it slowly. “I can do this.”
“We’ll start
