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Frankie scowled at me. “What do we need him and his stuffy boss or whoever for? It’s not like they’ve done anything for us so far.”
“That could have changed. You didn’t give me the chance to find out.”
“I told you to shut up,” Rafael added, looming over the other guy. “If you’re going to serve Lou, you’ve got to be able to follow orders—and recognize when she can handle a situation herself.”
“Handle it herself?” Frankie sputtered. “These pricks keep coming at you. You can’t make deals with them. At this rate—”
Rafael stepped closer, his gaze narrowed to a glare. “Now would be a good time to practice the shutting up.”
“You’ve been going off half-cocked all day,” I said, setting my hands on my hips. “That’s not how I do things. The whole point is that I’mnotconstantly on the attack like my mother.”
Frankie shoved away from Rafael, throwing his hands in the air. “Fine. Fine! You think you’ll get far playing things like that, talking down to the people trying to tell you the truth? Handle it your way, then. I’ve got better things to do.”
Dámaso extended an arm toward him. “Frankie, come on, man—”
The thinner guy shrugged him off and stormed away. I stared at his retreating back, wondering if he even knew how to handle the public transportation in the city to get back to the apartment building. I guessed he could always hail a cab.
I restrained a groan. “Well, that went horribly.” How much damage had he done with the Bright Dragon? Had he just made me one more enemy when I was having enough trouble fending off the ones I’d already had?
Rafael’s expression had clouded over with different concerns. “We’re going to need to find another apartment. We can’t trust him if he’s getting into moods like that—and we can’t have someone we don’t trust knowing where we’re living.”
My heart lurched. I hadn’t even thought that far ahead. “You’re right. Let’s get back and move our stuff out right now. We can always stay in a hotel until we get something more permanent sorted out.”
Niko brandished his phone, smiling tightly. “I’ll get on that right now.”
As we turned to our cars, Ursula touched my arm. “I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. “He’s been a hothead before, but I wouldn’t have thought he’d go that overboard. He’s just gotten real tense since the shootout at the mall.”
Dámaso let out a derisive sound. “He didn’t even get injured.”
I heaved a breath. “We’ll sort everything out. You two should pack up your things too. I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out where we’re going. And don’t say anything to Frankie if he catches up with you there.”
“Not a word,” Dámaso promised solemnly. “He dug his own grave. He can deal with the fallout.”
We scrambled back into our vehicles. Niko spent the whole drive making one call after another in animated Japanese, and announced just as we reached the apartment building that he’d found a couple of available short-term apartments in a place on the fringes of Tokyo. “Not as nice as this spot, but decent.”
“The less flashy, the better,” I said. “Okay, everyone—grab your stuff, and let’s haul ass.”
I don’t think any of us had fully unpacked. I crammed my belongings into my suitcase, did a cursory sweep of the rooms, and hauled my luggage and my equipment bag down to the parking garage with my men at my heels.
My stomach stayed balled tight as we drove across the city to our new digs. We rode up in a plain but clean elevator to a three-bedroom apartment even more compact and spartan in décor than the last one.
But it was clean, and none of our enemies had any idea it existed.
We sorted out our rooms, and Niko, Jasper, and I ducked out for a quick grocery run. Niko handed off the defectors’ keys to Ursula on our way down. When we made it back to the apartment, Rafael looked over our acquisitions and decided he could whip up some kind of dinner with them.
As the smells of boiling rice and sizzling garlic laced the air, I sagged onto the hard sofa and released some of my tension with a sharp exhalation. “Let’s not do that ever again.”
Quentin grabbed one of my feet and started massaging the arch. “Hey, at least it’s over now. We got out before that idiot could screw us over any more than he already had.”
Niko let out a crow of excitement from across the room. “I found us a rink! One of the places I reached out to this morning says they had a cancellation and can fit us in now.”
A startled but pleased laugh tumbled from my mouth. “Okay, I guess things are looking up a little.”
Jasper stretched his arms over his head. “Some good food, a little relaxation, and tomorrow we can—”
The peal of a phone alert cut him off. Followed by a chime and a buzzing sound. And then a beep from a different direction.
All of our phones were going off.
