The man didn’t have enough time to step back before she reached toward him. Black tendrils sprang from her fingertips and knocked the man off his feet. He skidded across the gravel drive on his back, and the halfling turned to take care of the other man.
Her lashing tendrils whipped toward him and wrapped around his midsection. Cheyenne flung him toward the other end of the gravel drive, then her attention was captured by the first SUV of three parked several yards from the stairs. She sent a crackling orb of black energy at the vehicle, which left a massive dent in the rear passenger door and rocked the SUV sideways on its wheels. The man in the driver seat leaped out of the car, and she sent another black sphere hurtling toward him. He ducked, and the halfling turned toward the two men stepping away from the second SUV and heading toward her.
It didn’t matter that they had their hands up, eyes wide in surprise. The drow halfling reached out with both hands, and the black tendrils from her fingers twisted around the FRoE operatives. The first one shouted as the vines of magic knocked him backward. The other guy got jerked six feet up in the air before Cheyenne tossed him aside. He landed with a hollow metallic thud on the hood of the SUV and slid off onto the gravel.
She sent two more orbs of sizzling black energy at the second vehicle again, crushing the hood and shattering the passenger-side window. All her rage and everything she’d held back in her mom’s study now burst out, with no regard for the unarmed men parked out front or the screaming protest from her semi-healed shoulder wounds or her recognition of one of the men who was pushing himself up off the gravel with a grimace.
“Cheyenne Blakely Summerlin!”
The sharp, commanding bark from her mother made the drow halfling pull back enough to see what she’d done. Her chest heaving, Cheyenne swallowed and took in the destruction. Three SUVs, two of them banged up from her magic. Half a dozen FRoE operatives in black fatigues, two of them bleeding, none of them wearing the protective SWAT gear she’d expected. No one trained a weapon on her because no one had a weapon. Glass littered the gravel drive in front of the second vehicle, and the man she’d thought she recognized stood scowling up at her.
Rhynehart.
Bianca stormed outside onto the front porch and stopped behind her daughter. Her voice was much lower this time, barely above a harsh whisper, but the warning and the disapproval in it were as powerful as if she’d shouted again. Maybe more. “Have you forgotten everything I taught you?”
Licking her dry lips with a tongue that was just as dry, Cheyenne forced her heavy breathing down into a semblance of normalcy and swallowed again. She couldn’t find anything to say, but she dropped the rage and powerful magic coursing through her veins. The next second, she stood there, not as a drow halfling, but as Bianca Summerlin’s Goth daughter.
Maybe I screwed this up, but these people shouldn’t be here.
The passenger door of the third SUV in line, which was parked in front of Cheyenne’s car and had been shielded from her magical damage by the vehicle in front of it, opened slowly. Sir stepped out with his usual self-confidence, his mustache twitching as his boots crunched across the gravel. The man Cheyenne had tossed backward beside the second SUV had regained his feet and stepped out of Sir’s way before gazing at the Summerlin women at the top of the stairs.
Cheyenne could hardly hear over the rushing in her ears, but she didn’t take her eyes off the man who supposedly ran the entire FRoE organization and who had undoubtedly ordered the tracker inserted into her flesh. He thinks he’s something, coming all the way up here to get to me. He thinks he won.
Her heart raced quicker as Sir climbed the broad stone steps with a small smile of amusement beneath that stupid graying mustache. The last thing Cheyenne expected was for the man to ignore her.
Instead, he headed for Bianca, who stood straight and composed next to her daughter, eyebrows raised in curiosity. At least, that was what she wanted everyone else to see on her face. I give up on trying to guess what she’s thinking now.
Sir stopped at the top of the stairs and extended his hand toward Bianca. “Ms. Summerlin. You may not remember me—”
“I know who you are.”
Cheyenne blinked and looked from Sir to her mom, who’d historically insisted that interrupting someone, especially a guest, was the crassest type of insult imaginable. Bianca made it sound polite and inviting anyway. She took Sir’s hand for a brief shake. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again anytime soon. Or at all.”
“Well, circumstances have changed.” Sir offered a tight smile, clasped his hands behind his back, and tipped his head toward her. He didn’t have to, but he turned ever so slightly to meet Cheyenne’s gaze.
“Yes.” Bianca smoothed the sides of her blouse and nodded. “I imagine they have. Would you care to come inside?”
“That would be lovely, yes. Do you mind if some of my men join us? The rest will stay outside.”
With a slight tilt of her head, Bianca stepped aside and gestured toward the open front door. “Of course.”
“Thank you.”
Neither of them looked at Cheyenne as they headed into what had once been her home. Bianca did leave the door open, and if it wasn’t an invitation for her daughter, it was definitely left open in invitation for the FRoE operatives previously selected to accompany their superior—one of the two men Cheyenne had tossed off the steps and Rhynehart.
The men walked up the stairs together. The man she didn’t recognize stopped and wiped blood from a cut on his face. Rhynehart
