Chapter 259
The team for the hunt at the RV park was so big, we had to meet in the old conference room, which isn’t even in the same building as Cadence and Aaron’s office. Their set up is much nicer, but there’s no way all of those people would’ve comfortably fit around the table where we had met the last few times I went out on a hunt with them.
Not that it was comfortable now. Elliott had just gotten back from Oklahoma about an hour before, and he and Brandon had had a huge fight. I was in the middle of it, though I had mostly tried to comfort Brandon. Apparently, things with Amanda didn’t go so well. We’d been watching TV when Brandon got a really nasty text from his mom. He’d been so upset, he just started pacing the floor waiting for his dad to get back. Elliott was oblivious as to why Brandon was so angry, but he said he’d take care of it, and all he did was try to get Amanda back on her feet. I think Brandon and Elliott hashed things over okay, but they hadn’t really gotten a chance to talk it out before we all had to be at the meeting. Now, I was sitting between them, holding Brandon’s hand, and he had a pretty good grip. Elliott was sitting with his arms folded like he hadn’t quite let it all go either.
Aaron picked up on the problem pretty quickly. I could tell by the way he was monitoring the two of them as he began to address us. I never can figure out how he knows so much. Maybe it’s just that if you live long enough, things start to come back around, or maybe he has some sort of intuition that allows him to read people’s minds to a degree. At any rate, he tried not to even look at either of them as he explained the situation, and when he did, it was brief.
I looked around the crowded room and saw only friendly faces—except for Christian. He was obviously still mad at me for tricking him and stealing his grenade when we were hunting Gibbon. So I ignored him. At first, I thought I should try to smooth it over with him, but the more time I spent around him, the more I didn’t like him. It didn’t hurt that Elliott doesn’t like him either.
Ashley and Mickey were there, along with Aurora, Shane, Meagan, Hannah, and Jamie. We would need two SUVs just to get us all to the site. My sister was sitting by Aaron at the front of the room, and she looked a little irritated still. In fact, she had most of the day. I couldn’t get on to her about it. I hadn’t exactly been a peach.
Aaron explained that the name of the RV park was Southwest Moe’s, and I assumed that had something to do with Missouri’s postal abbreviation being MO until he said the owner’s name was Moe. Go figure. “We had some consultants do a scout a few days ago, and by their count there were eight RVs parked at the location at the time. Who knows if that number has increased or decreased in the past couple of days. I wouldn’t expect there to be more than ten.”
“And how many occupants?” Christian asked. I imagined Aaron would’ve gotten to that if he would’ve just given him a second, but since he didn’t, I tried not to roll my eyes.
“We aren’t exactly sure, but our best estimate is around fifteen. It really is hard to say. As we’ve talked about a lot recently, the Vampires seem to be on the move. Where they are going and why, we don’t know, but as long as they keep this up, it’ll be hard to keep track of who is where.”
“What about their trackers?” Elliott asked, and I wondered if he was asking because Christian was the one who created the trackers compliant Vampires have installed in their foreheads when they are Resurrected, assuming they come in and get that done.
Aaron was hesitant. He looked at Christian for a moment and said, “That data is helpful, but it’s not all inclusive, as you know.”
Elliott made a “humph” sound, and I thought about kicking him under the table. We all know the type of Vampires we are hunting usually aren’t compliant. There didn’t seem to be too much of a reason to pick a fight with Christian right now. He let it go as Aaron moved on to talking about our positions.
I knew I wouldn’t see any action tonight unless something went terribly wrong, so I tuned a lot of it out. There was a map of the RV park up in front of us, and it looked a lot like the place I’d visited in my mind the night before. I could see a campfire in the middle, though it wasn’t on the map, and I thought for sure there was at least one RV missing, but I didn’t say anything because I knew they’d see for themselves soon enough.
“Cassidy, you’ll be with Elliott,” I heard my sister say as she pointed to a tree, and my stomach flipped over. I remembered how much trouble I’d had at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia when I’d been ordered to jump up on top of a wall. Aaron had gotten so frustrated he’d literally thrown me. I didn’t want to go up in that tree. I hoped it would be something small, but since Elliott would be calling the hunt, I doubted that. He needed to be able to see.
Brandon squeezed my hand, and I decided to put it out of my mind for now. I’d worry about it later. I’m sure the last thing anyone here wanted to do was listen to me complain about having to go up really high in order to see.
