Page 37 of The Last True Hero

Footsteps echoed behind her. McClain jerked his hand off her knee and moved to pour them both a cup of coffee.

"Someone say my name?" Jake asked, squatting down beside the pair of them. His bloodshot eyes revealed just how much sleep he'd gotten last night.

Mia managed to snatch a few hours, but it only felt like it exacerbated how tired she truly was. A constant ache drove into the back of her left eye. "We need to head after Rykker and the girls they took. McClain thinks we should go in small and infiltrate the place. Pretend to be bounty hunters turned wannabe slavers."

Jake scratched his jaw. "It's dangerous."

"It's the only way you're going to get your wife back," McClain countered.

Jake sighed. "Yeah. I know. Who else we got?"

Pointed silence.

"Fuck me," Jake said.

"Sideways," Mia added.

McClain slowly pulled a slave collar from his bag, and handed Mia her coffee. He turned the collar over. "Got this off that reiver. If we do this, we need a slave."

Mia's stomach jerked sideways. The entire thing was repulsive, and her blood ran cold.

"I'll do it," a voice from behind said.

All three of them spun around.

Ellie Thwaites stood there, her fingers curled in fists and her face pale but determined. Her frizzy blonde hair knotted behind her, making her mass of freckles and red-rimmed eyes stand out. "I can't fight," she said, "but they took my friends. I can pretend to be your slave to help you guys get in."

Hell, no. That idea was going to go down like a sinking ship. Mia found Ethan Thwaites in the crowd. He moved slowly, looking a million years old right now. "Ellie, we might not be coming back."

"I know." Ellie knelt on McClain's sleeping blankets. "I know that," she said fiercely. "But I grew up with Thea, Sonya, and the others. How do I slot back into life at Salvation Creek knowing what might be happening to them? How do I look at myself in the mirror every day when they're wearing collars out there somewhere and I didn't do a damned thing to stop it? Do I just let my mom die for nothing?"

"She didn't die for nothing," Mia countered. "She died to keep you and your sister safe."

"If we have a fourth person along with us," McClain interrupted, "then that leaves three of us to act as bounty hunters. I know you can shoot, Mia. It gives us a few more options, otherwise Jake and I will have to do all of the legwork."

Mia shot him a look. She didn't want Ellie along. It was hard enough taking McClain with her, when this wasn't his fight and there was a chance that he might not come back. Sending one more soul straight to hell.

Jake obviously felt the same. "What about your dad?"

Ellie quieted. "He's injured and he just lost mom. He won't be any use to you. And Alice.... She's not coping very well."

"Precisely why she needs her sister there with her," Mia said.

"Maybe that's true." Ellie tipped her chin up. She wasn't going to back down. "But Thea Haynes is my best friend in the world. And she doesn't have a sister. Or a dad. Right now, all she's got is me. Alice's safe now. But Thea's not."

There were no arguments to that.

"I get why you don't want to bring me along, Mia. I know I'm only nineteen. You think I'm throwing away everything, especially after the trick hand of luck I was just dealt. But you were nineteen once too. How would you feel?"

As if she'd move heaven and hell to get her friends back. Mia sighed. Ethan Thwaites was going to be a problem. "There's no way your dad will allow this."

"I can handle Dad," Ellie said. "Those bastards killed my mother and they took my friends. I want to make them pay. Dad will respect that."

Personally, Mia thought that was one argument that wasn't going to go headstrong Ellie's way. But as she looked around, she could see that even Jake was nodding now.

They needed all the help they could get, and even though Ellie knew next to nothing about fighting, she was one more set of eyes.

"Good luck with that," she told Ellie as the young blonde got up to go tell her father her plans.