The front door of the Jeep opened as she crossed the street, and Rhynehart stepped out, wearing his black fatigues again. He nodded and waved her toward him, so she changed her path from walking toward the house to walking toward him. “Good timing, rookie. Get in.”
“What?” Cheyenne glanced behind the Jeep at the designated house. “That’s the address you sent me.”
“Yep. Just a rendezvous point. Sort of.” He shrugged and looked across the street at her car. “That your ride?”
“No, I’m just really good at hot-wiring cars and thought I’d take the ugliest one I could find for a quick joyride to meet up with you. I thought you already knew that.”
“Very funny. Let’s go.”
Frowning, Cheyenne walked around the back of the Jeep and opened the passenger door. A smell like an old almost-flat basketball mixed with the abandoned failure of copycat Axe body spray assaulted her even before she noticed the huge magical sitting in the back seat of the Jeep. She stood out on the street and stared at the guy, who was so big he had to hunch his shoulders, and the top of his head was still smashed into the roof of the car.
He brought an ogre. What’s going on?
She’d only seen one of those before, and that first ogre had been one of the magicals at that event center when she’d inadvertently crashed a FRoE sting. Now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure the special ops team had brought a fell cannon specifically to blast the ogre unconscious. Even her drow magic had been ineffective on that one. And there was another ogre squashed into the back seat right behind her.
Rhynehart got behind the wheel, closed the door, and snapped his fingers. “Hey. Less staring and more doing what I said. Get in.”
Cheyenne blinked and turned her attention to Rhynehart, who just sat there and stared at her with wide eyes, his brows raised in impatience. “Yeah, okay.”
She climbed into the passenger seat and noted that it had been slid farther toward the dash than the last time she’d sat in it.
Rhynehart started the engine, buckled himself in, and pulled away from the apparent rendezvous point without another word. Then things started to get tense.
She could hear the huge ogre in the back seat, breathing heavily through his nose. For the most part, it sounded like he was leaning forward and breathing right up against her ear. The halfling pulled down the sun visor in front of her, which thankfully had the little mirror she’d been hoping to find there. When she looked through the reflection into the back seat, the ogre was sitting all the way back, or at least as far as he could go with what little room he had. But he was staring right at her with those glowing yellow eyes, his gray-skinned face contorted in a frown. She couldn’t tell if his nostrils had just flared and wouldn’t go back down or if they were normally that massive.
With a final glance at the big guy scowling at her, Cheyenne flipped the sun visor back into place and folded her arms. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a friend.”
“Didn’t know I had to tell you anything, rookie.”
She shot Rhynehart a quick glance, but he was staring straight ahead through the windshield as he drove them wherever the heck they were headed. The guy’s usual smirk hadn’t appeared since she’d stepped out of her car, and his good-natured joking, however much it annoyed her, didn’t exist. “Why’d you cram an ogre in the back seat?”
“He’s coming along to make sure everything’s going the way it’s supposed to.”
“Because you don’t trust me to handle it.”
Rhynehart’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, which squeaked under the pressure. “Because I decided to cram an ogre in the back seat, and he went along with it. The rest is none of your business.”
“Jeeze. Guess it’s your turn to have a bad day.” Cheyenne glanced out her window instead, and the huge ogre in the back growled.
What’s going on? The whole Jeep smells like one big, steaming pile of pissed off. Is it because I wouldn’t let him buy me a sandwich?
The tension in the Jeep thickened over the next ten minutes. Every time the halfling turned to look at Rhynehart, opening her mouth for another question or a quick-witted jab she figured might get him to loosen up, the ogre in the back seat growled again. He stopped when she took her eyes off the FRoE operative behind the wheel and shut her mouth.
That feeling of wrongness didn’t lift even when Rhynehart drove them into a slightly less affluent neighborhood, but a neighborhood all the same. The houses were spaced farther apart, although they were smaller with bigger yards. He pulled up at the curb in front of a little bungalow painted olive-green with potted plants holding brightly colored flowers dotting the front porch. The house was set back a little farther than its neighbors, and the tall trees rising on either side of the yard to curve toward each other in an arc overhead made the flagstone pathway to the house seem that much longer. And a little ominous.
Rhynehart turned the engine off and got out first, still without a word. When the door closed, Cheyenne turned around in her seat to look at the scowling ogre in the back. “What crawled up his ass, huh?”
The big guy sneered, puffed out a sharp hot meat-scented breath through his huge teeth, and growled again. “Get out, halfling.”
“Yeah, okay. Good game face.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and got quickly out of the Jeep, feeling even more like she was missing something really important. The energy coming off both FRoE operatives was seriously dark and a little suffocating, and during the whole ride out here, it had felt like it was aimed in her direction.
One last mission, huh? Especially if I’m
