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“I can do that.” Making a few swift creases, I tore the flyer into a square. Rowan almost flinched. Just a doodle, but he didn’t like me manhandling it, now did he?
“What are you—” he began, and then he seemed to catch on.
I deftly formed a series of folds, smoothed the sides to give it a final shape, and then held it up. “Ta-da!” I offered the origami dragon to Kaige.
“Damn, girl,” he said, taking the fragile figure out of my hand. “You’ll have to teach me how to do that.”
“What will I get in return?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Anything you want.”
“It’s a childish game,” Wylder announced.
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Let’s see you do it then.”
He met my gaze in the mirror, and I had to keep myself from squirming at the look in his eyes. “I’m good at everything I do, so I’d imagine I could handle twisting around a bit of paper if I wanted to bother.”
I had the itch to kick the back of his seat but controlled the flicker of anger. Instead of giving in to it, I leaned back into the seat. “So where are we headed?”
“People call it the Park,” Rowan said tersely.
“And where is that?”
“It’s the covered parking lot of a mall,” Wylder filled in. “Trent and his main bunch like to hang out there. He’s decided to make us come to him. We’re going to make him regret that.”
Right. And I was the bait. I held back a grimace and peered out the window. A question that’d been niggling at me ever since I’d come down to meet them rose up again. “Where’s Gideon?”
Wylder’s eyes narrowed. “Fights aren’t his strong point. He doesn’t normally come along for these kinds of jobs.”
“The great Wylder Noble has someone on his team who can’t hold his own in a brawl?” I said in mock disbelief.
“What Gideon can or can’t do is none of your business,” Wylder snapped as if I’d gravely offended him.
Kaige chuckled and ignored the evil eye Wylder shot at him. “Don’t mind him. He’s just over-protective. Gideon helps out plenty in his own way, with the computers and everything. He gets more done with his brains than I do with these guns.” He flexed his biceps. “He’s got a lung condition; it acts up if he pushes himself much physically.”
“I did say it’s none of her business,” Wylder reminded him.
I remembered his grousing at Axel over the cigarette. “Is that why nobody’s allowed to smoke in the house?”
“You’re damn right.” Wylder clenched the steering wheel harder. “I protect my own.”
“We’re here,” Rowan announced with what sounded like trepidation.
We pulled into one of the empty parking spots in the lot. This end of the space clearly didn’t get used much by your average mallgoer. A few abandoned cars stood sprawled across more than one spot, one missing a door, another with its roof dented in. Spray-painted graffiti mottled the concrete wall nearby. The sound of raucous voices carried from the other side of a couple of parked vans farther across the lot.
“Trent and his crew will be over there.” Wylder pointed to the vans and then turned to me. “You know what you have to do?”
“It’s not exactly a complex plan. Go in, ask Trent to pay up, listen to him insult me a bit, and then watch the three of you swoop in and kick his ass.”
“Right,” he said, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. “Trent isn’t dangerous, but he thinks he is, which makes him a little unpredictable. So stick to that plan.”
I glowered at him. “Like I said, I’ve got it.”
Rowan jumped in. “The first sign of trouble, and you—"
I cut him off. “Iamhere to cause trouble, aren’t I?”
Before any of them could lecture me more, I shook out my hair and pushed open the door. I was aware of the three pairs of eyes watching me in the closed space.
