“Okay.” He followed her back toward his shop. “But why’d you come here? Is there somebody watching me? I’ve been doing everything right. Followed the code. K’shul and his…whatever they are make their rounds, but I didn’t think I’d put out enough of a signal to bring a—”
“Look.” Cheyenne turned on him and gestured toward the van. “Did you want help getting these assholes off your back or what?”
“Well yeah.”
“Great. So you get what you want, and I still have to find the orc who put my friend in the hospital.” She stormed back inside and went to the blue-skinned dude. He had a goose egg on his temple where she’d struck him. His hand looked worse, mangled, charred, and raw halfway up his wrist.
Cheyenne knelt and picked him up. He was much lighter than K’shul.
“Hey, wait.” The goblin stepped over the destruction in the backroom. “Did gu@rdi@n104 send you?”
She paused for a split second, then tossed the blue guy over her shoulder. “No.”
“Oh. ‘Cause, I mean, I don’t know how anybody else would think to come here. Just for orcs. If he sent you, I have money for—”
“Never heard of the guy.” Cheyenne grunted when she stood, carrying a magical who weighed close to twice her size. She headed for the door again. “Never heard of you, either. And I don’t need your money.”
The goblin blinked. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope. Do you know this guy?”
“The troll?” The shop owner shook his head. “Just another thug trying to take from the rest of us who follow the accord.”
“Right.” Great. We got trolls now.
Cheyenne stepped outside and headed for the van again.
“Wait. Did the FRoE send you?” The goblin hurried after her. “I thought they would’ve sent more people. I mean, not that you couldn’t handle it, but—”
“Stop.” Cheyenne dumped the troll into the van and grabbed another zip-tie. “I came to help with your problem and maybe get some answers. That’s it. You need to cut it out with the questions, dude.”
The goblin took a deep breath and paused, then just couldn’t help himself. “I’m just trying to understand why a drow would…”
Cheyenne straightened and turned with a raised eyebrow. The still-burning heat in her body filled her palm with another whirling storm of sparks.
The shop owner swallowed. “Uh. Got it. I’m Radzu, by the way.”
“Good for you.” Cheyenne walked around him for her third trip depositing unconscious magical thugs into their magical-thug van.
“You have a name?”
“Yep.”
Radzu stopped asking questions after that.
Chapter Eighteen
Cheyenne slammed the driver-door of the orc van shut and dusted off her hands. Whether the five idiots knocked out in the back woke up anytime soon wasn’t her problem, but they’d have a few—mainly untying each other and figuring out which ones among them had to drag their vehicle out of the ditch by the river.
She stepped away and surveyed her message, which she’d written in melted chocolate from a bar she’d found under the seat. It was smeared on the inside of the windshield so they’d see it first thing, but seeing it backward from the outside wasn’t any less satisfying.
‘Back Off.’
They probably won’t listen to that kinda warning. Not even from a drow they don’t know is a halfling.
Either way, she’d done her part, which was more for the goblin named Radzu, consignment boutique owner, of all things. She still hadn’t found Durg, and she was saving her worst for him. That didn’t mean she didn’t feel a sliver of pride when she studied the van.
Her skin tingled with her drow blood coursing through her. I broke my record for holding it all together like this. With a smirk, Cheyenne flashed her middle finger at the orcs and their van, then took off down the street toward the consignment shop and her car.
“Yeah. My happy place.”
* * *
The fifteen-minute drive from the shop to where she’d ditched the van took her a little over five minutes on foot. She stopped twice to catch her breath, once in a dark parking lot, and the second time on a side street. She was exhausted, and she still had to drive home.
By the time she made it to her apartment, the anger and heat in her veins had cooled. The pale-skinned, dark-haired, human version of Cheyenne Summerlin stepped out of her Focus, and it was only 10:08 p.m.
“Who said fighting a bunch of orc jerks had to take all night?” She snorted. “No one ever. But now I have a few more names.”
Once in her apartment, Cheyenne kicked her shoes off by the door and dropped her keys on the counter. She took a bottle of water from her fridge, then sat at her computer and put her hand on the mouse to wake her monitor. The first thing in front of her was a message from gu@rdi@n104.
You like what you find?
It was time-stamped 9:31 p.m., which would’ve been right around the time she’d climbed into the orc van and booked it out of the lot behind Radzu’s shop. She narrowed her eyes. The goblin had mentioned this guy by name.
She responded asShyHand71.That’s a little nosey. Thought I had to keep my opinions to myself for 48 hours??Cheyenne sat back and waited for a reply, which took about five seconds.
gu@rdi@n104: Took you long enough. Have fun?
“What the hell? Why does he assume it was me?” There was nothing tying her handle on this forum to her car or her phone or the fact that she’d had them both with her when she stopped by a goblin-run boutique. She sucked on her teeth. This was not good. “Maybe… Could he have somehow hopped through my VPN and saw I pulled up the address?” She groaned. “Dammit.”
She chewed on the inside of her bottom lip
