The lie he and Kenna gave the others—that Madera was already being killed by some stranger when they got to Maryland, and thus they could not retrieve the talismans—was tenuously believable at best. They hadn’t seen the person’s face, but the perpetrator seemed heavily armed with talismans. It wasn’t worth the risk. Since they left Dakota’s family alone, the pair didn’t intervene. It would be better to clash with the individual at another time and place, when they had more information. Kenna would do some research to see if anything came up.
Adelaide and Katya accepted it because they had no choice. Two witnesses with an identical story—well-rehearsed over the long drive back to Colorado—trumped their innate distrust of anything that didn’t quite add up. And they couldn’t afford to lose a
