"Toren, I have to call Kassie right away. She's all I have left." Samantha had calmed considerably but her voice still wavered.
"I know. As bad as I hate it, I have to ask you to wait a little. Kassern and Dorn will be here in a few minutes and we can decide the best way to handle it."
Her eyes widened. "It's a phone call. What is there to handle?"
Toren lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. "I'm sorry, baby. We're in a complicated situation. Remember those things in the field? And back at the cabin?" At her reluctant nod, he continued. "Those are best case scenario. We can't take a chance of their creators monitoring communications and using a phone call to follow us back here. It would put us all at risk. And we don't want to put Kassie in danger either. They can use a phone call to find her as easily as they can us."
The remaining anger faded from her face. "I never thought of it that way."
"We also have to consider that it could be a trap. The enemy may have engineered the situation to draw us out."
"So what do we do? How do we make sure to keep Kassie safe? We can't leave her there to face those things alone."
Before Toren could remind her about Kassie’s guardian, a flurry of mist rose in the room and Dorn and Kassern materialized side by side. "What's going on?" Dark hollows rimmed Kassern's eyes, as if he'd been under an usually vast amount of strain.
Toren explained the situation with Samantha's home as succinctly as possible. "Samantha and I are concerned for Kassie and need to find a way to ensure her safety."
Kassern started to pace as if his mind were elsewhere and left Dorn to figure things out. "Does she have family she can stay with? Perhaps in another state?"
Samantha shook her head and wrung her hands. "Kassie was an only child and her parents were drifters so if she had any extended family, she didn't know about them. Her husband died four years ago and they never had any children. The ranch was her life. She brooded over the hands like an old bossy hen and treated me as the daughter she never had. My father, she just tolerated mostly. She just didn't make any other close connections, even with the women in her church groups." Samantha paused to swallow a sob and straighten her shoulders. "She's all alone now, grieving for her dead and in terrible danger. I can't leave her to that."
Dorn nodded and appeared to consider the facts and get nowhere. Toren snapped his fingers. "I've got it. Uriel mentioned that we need to establish a semi-permanent base to come back to between operations, a safe place for Peggy and her brood. Some of us will have work to do that requires some stable resources, like Lucian and his internet searching. And no doubt, we'll eventually have humans who are unsuited to active roles in battle."
Dorn nodded once more in agreement with Toren's reasoning thus far. "And?"
"So what if we bring Kassie here and make this the operational base until something else is arranged? She's a gifted cook and accustomed to preparing food for a group, so she could take over that task and spare us Devyn's culinary efforts. She'd probably also be willing to assist Peggy with her kids."
Samantha nodded eagerly. "That's the perfect solution! Kassie would love taking care of stuff like that."
Dorn lifted one hand in a signal to pause and turned to Kassern, still pacing. "Brother, go. Take care of her. We'll handle this."
Kassern's eyes glowed red with his gratitude. Rather than reply, he nodded and disappeared in a tornado of blood-red mist.
Dorn continued. "What are you thinking of for this arranging something else you mentioned?"
Toren ran one hand over the stubble growing back on his scalp. "Uriel mentioned working on setting up a main base of operation for us. To come and go without being seen, where we can do some serious training off the radar, set up a heavy defensive position. I’m thinking, as Peggy's young grow, they’ll need space to move and grow strong and not be seen. And through all that, we need someone we can trust to manage this base of operations."
Dorn studied his immaculate nails for a moment then gave a single nod. "I just got word that our compound will be ready in a week. I see no reason why that idea couldn’t work.” He turned to Samantha. “She can…make coffee? And cook?”
Sam’s eyes lit up bright white and Toren felt her joy all the way to his phallus. “Oh, yes the best, I assure you!”
“We'll give it a shot,” Dorn said. “Pending Uriel's approval, of course."
"You think he'll say yes?" Samantha's brow furrowed with worry.
Dorn nodded. "I don't see why he wouldn't. It's a logical plan and Uriel is nothing if not logical. But since we're talking about what the humans call operational security, we can't move ahead without approval. In the meantime, I'll send word to her Guardian to contact us immediately if anything looks wrong."