Jo stared at Scott as he came to a stop in front of her. He took a step to the side and gestured for her to step forward. “Let’s get on with it, Little Mac,” he said.If Scott was willing to listen to her, then everyone else had to be, too. The others gathered around, and Jo tried to determine what would be the best place to start strategizing.There was a pool table in the corner. Jo moved toward it, and the others saw where she was headed. A screech of wooden legs against wooden flooring filled her ears as they moved the table and assembled chairs around it. “Do we have a paper map?” she asked Mila because she was standing nearby and had been there a while.She looked a little confused, but Mikali stepped over with the requested item. It was large, and he’d pulled it from the corner of the room where it had been propped against a bookshelf.“Thank you. I app

Somehow, Jo had ended up getting stuck with the Jeep riddled with bullet holes. After a big fuss where some of the team members yelled at others over who got to take the vehicle they’d rode to the cabin in together, she’d finally settled it by drawing straws. She was still shaking her head about it two hours later as Zane drove them deeper into the snow and ice, closer to the mountains. If all of their team members always acted like this, like kindergartners fighting over a toy, it was no wonder her dad always seemed to be on his last nerve.Ping and Leo sat in the back seat, neither of them saying much of anything. Jo knew now would be a great time to get to know them. It was important for her to be familiar with anyone who might have her life in their hands, after all, but they weren’t voluntarily speaking up, and she didn’t see the point in forcing them. Zane had tried earlier, asking a few questions about where they’d gr

The village faded out the back glass as Jo tried to pry her eyes away from the rearview mirror. Night was falling fast, and it wasn’t long until the tips of the rooftops vanished. But it wasn’t the town her eyes were drawn to; it was the strange man sitting behind her, his hood still pulled up around his ears as he huddled in the back seat, his uneasiness pervasive enough to fill the entire vehicle.They hadn’t gone far when he ordered Zane to stop the car. He turned from one side to the other, carefully looking through the darkness for any signs that they weren’t alone. When he was satisfied, he opened the car door and got out.Jo looked at the others, unsure of exactly what was going on. Zane gestured for her to get out as well. The American was standing in front of the Jeep, his hands in his pockets as he waited, the falling snow catching the headlights as it swirled around him. With a deep breath, she pushed

Sitting on what appeared to be a handmade quilt at least a few decades older than her, draped across a mattress that may have been in the old lodge two villages over, the first one that had had an empty room, since Jo’s father was born, she listened to the rest of her team discussing their options, keeping her mouth shut. Ryker had spent the entire drive cussing them out over how much trouble they’d gotten him into, and even when Jo had handed over twice the cash she’d originally promised him, the man hadn’t shut up. He was downstairs in the bar now, likely spending a chunk of the money he’d just earned trying to forget their predicament, a luxury Jo couldn’t afford. He’d insisted on keeping his bags with him, too, saying he didn’t trust them not to go through them.“I say we leave him here,” Leo was saying, sitting in an old recliner near a fire they’d lit for their human companion when t

The location Ryker had given her was farther away than Jo realized. It took a few hours to get there, especially since the roads were terrible, full of potholes and covered with fallen branches. The inches of ice and snow they had to pick their way through didn’t help any either. If the vehicle they had was the high-end sort the team had instant access to in the past, they might’ve made it in half the time, but dreams of what used to be were nothing but a distraction, and Jo didn’t need any distractions at the moment.Zane brought the Jeep to a halt on the side of the road in a wooded area. The wind whipped between evergreen branches, blowing the snow off of the needles and sending it spraying up off of the ground so that it appeared to be snowing, even though it wasn’t at the moment. “This is it,” Zane said. “As close as I can get us by road.”“Where’s the actual location?&rdq