I glanced at Mack’s plate to make sure he’d found enough food, which he had. Good, good. Making sure Mack could find dairy- and corn-free food was a real trick while on the road. We ate companionably, and I went for dessert because the apple cobbler was calling my name. This was a pretty good restaurant; we might come here again since it was only about ten minutes to the hotel.
Mack finished and sat back with a satisfied sigh. “I feel human again. All right, serious talk, who knows if anyone else is coming?”
Quinn glanced at Mack. “So far, I only know of your mentor coming?”
“Beau and Hannah,” I confirmed before finishing the rest of my soda.
“They’re catching up,” Mack said, “and should be here by tomorrow night.”
Eli grunted, brow pinching. “Sylvia’s trying to get more people for us. We’re all stretched thin and a little tired. She’s having a hard time finding anyone else. We might be alone for a while.”
“No,” I corrected, “Falisa and Ken Tate are coming, too. Falisa texted me just before we boarded and is driving in. Should be here in two days or so.”
Eli relaxed into her seat, delight spreading over her face. “Oh, thank god. I know those two are reliable. Lachlan, you’ll like them. We all met on a case together in Louisiana, and Falisa is a solid Medium, easy and dependable to work with.”
“Delightful. Now, if my math is right, we’ve got Davina, Mack, the lovely Eli, Beau, and Falisa? Six Mediums to tackle a small town might be enough.”
Mack cast him an apologetic look. “Plus the ghost town.”
Everyone else but me froze, staring at him like he’d told a joke in incredibly poor taste.
“I gather from your reactions, no one else fully read through the file,” I drawled.
Booker grimaced. “We barely got it before we had to pack and fly, then I forgot it in the luggage, so we couldn’t read it on the plane. Brief us.”
Mack and I did, explaining the parameters and what all was expected of us. Mack outlined his hope to do the ghost town first so we wouldn’t be getting hit from both sides. Did they think we were joking about the caves earlier? That Lachlan was going to poke into them for fun? They hadn’t realized the mining shafts were part and parcel?
Well, tired people didn’t pick up on nuance very well.
Lachlan lifted a hand. “I’m for it.”
Quinn nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the table, clearly thinking. “I admit, it’s got several pros. I’m for it, too. Good thought, Mack.”
Mack preened a little. “Can’t take all the credit. Brandon suggested it first. That said, should we wade in while we’re waiting on the rest of our team to arrive? Or scout out the area and come up with an overall plan of attack so we’re ready to go when they get here? I’m good either way. Just don’t know if there’s a preference.”
“Scope and plan,” Quinn and Booker said in near unison.
Eli pointed to the sides where her husbands sat. “I’m with them on this one. Lachlan?”
“Oh, plans are a fine thing,” he said grandly. “Let’s split up so I’m with Brandon and Mack, and we’ll take the mines. You take the city, aye?”
It made the most sense. Then we’d have two teams of three. I think Mack wanted to go into a haunted miner’s town about as much as he wanted to eat a five-course meal of sawdust,but he also knew we couldn’t afford to ignore it. He sighed in resignation.
Booker whipped out the company card to pay for dinner, and then we all got up to leave. We still had to get to our hotel and check in. Lachlan paused us right outside the restaurant door, though, the light shining through the glass door partially illuminating us.
“I’m very excited to work with you,” he told us, and he honestly did appear it. The way he kept shifting his weight, gestures broad, was almost like watching a child in a parade. “My cousin, she is too.”
He had gotten some food to go for her, come to think of it. “We’ll meet her in the morning?”
“Aye, that’s the plan. The hotel has a breakfast, they said, so we can meet downstairs.”
“Sure, let’s do it.”
We all split up into our own rental cars and headed off. I really did not want back in the SUV, but needs must. At least we were fairly close to the hotel.
Mack sighed low as we got back on the road. “I’m tired. It took all day to get here.”
Between getting to the airport, flying to Phoenix, then the drive here, it really had. “I also want to be horizontal for a while.”
