Elena glanced back down the walkway to the motel room. “The last hunter they executed was by firing squad, or at least the last one I was there for.”
It was such an unimportant detail, but she still felt compelled to say it.
“That’s another way to go,” Logan said. “You also don’t have to return to the compound; none of us do. We can drive them somewhere, leave them there, and call for someone to pick them up. We can explain what happened over the phone.”
“I have to go back; my mother is there. I can’t leave her there, and I have to see Juan in person. He has toknowI’m telling him the truth.”
Logan sighed; he understood her reasons, but he’d much prefer if she stayed away from that place. He didn’t have anywhere near the same faith in this Juan that she did.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” he told her.
“Ihaveto go back for my mother,” she insisted.
“Then we will go back for her.”
She tried to keep her astonishment hidden as her eyes flew back to his. “You don’t have to return with me.”
“I’m not sending you into that place by yourself when we don’t know how many enemies remain.”
“You really think there could be more working for Mateo?”
“I do, and I intend to find them if there are.”
She shuddered when she realized exactly how he planned to do that.
Chapter Twenty-One
Logan and Asherspent the rest of the day and night interrogating the other hunters and discovered three more were working with them. Elena still questioned if they were telling the whole truth, despite Logan and Asher’s very persuasive methods, but for now, she took the traitors at their word.
She didn’t have any other options.
They spent the following day at the motel, catching up on sleep and making sure their prisoners didn’t escape. When the sun set and night descended once more, Logan made sure the clerk and other guests remained in their rooms while they transported the prisoners to the SUV and one of the cars.
They knocked out each of their prisoners before carrying them to the vehicles. Elena asked to drive the other car and prisoners back, but Logan refused. He didn’t want her alone with those monsters. She almost argued with him—she was her own boss after all—but she wasn’t in a rush to be in a car full of her father’s killers… by herself.
She’d endured a lot over the years, but some things weren’t worth the hassle. Instead, she drove the second car into the desert and left it there while Asher and Logan finished with the hunters.
Afterward, she climbed into the SUV and settled onto the passenger seat beside Logan. She would have preferred to ride with Asher; he was the safer of the two to her heart and well-being, but there was no room in the car.
As they pulled onto the road, she glanced at Logan’s white-knuckled grip on the wheel as he leaned forward to study the car in front of them. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I don’t like him being alone with them,” he replied.
“They’re all unconscious and restrained.”
“I still don’t like it.”
Elena wasn’t going to argue with him; she wouldn’t like it either if one of her friends was all alone with a bunch of murderers. Plus, she liked Asher. He was a good guy, and she didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.
They had a way to go before they arrived at the compound, but with every passing mile, the knot of dread in her stomach grew bigger.
“What was it like where you grew up?” she asked, more to distract herself than out of curiosity.
“I assume it was a lot like where you grew up. I was raised in the hunter customs and started training at an early age. I never enjoyed school and much preferred training, so that became my focus. When the elders deemed me ready, they granted me a fiancée, and then everything changed… for the better. What about where you grew up?”
“Same. I grew up on the hunter customs, wore my gray, black, or white demure dresses, and followed our ways. I never trained to be a fighter, at least not in the compound, but I started my schooling early to become a good wife.”
She rolled her eyes as she nearly choked on the words. The hunter women no longer had to wear those unflattering, boring dresses, but she’d stuffed herself into one every day during her childhood. She’d sat through all those classes on being a good wife, as well as countless others, as the hunters believed everyone should be educated, and she’dhatedit.
