Cheyenne stared through the walls, seeing the hazy layout of the inside of Major Carson’s house without having to close her eyes or touch a wall. About damn time my drow sight leveled up.
A quick scan of Sir’s home showed no shimmering lights around humanoid bodies. No cars in the garage. Blinking quickly to clear the x-ray drow vision, Cheyenne looked back toward the road and the driveway-sized sliver of it visible on the other side of the hedges. I can wait. Especially for something this worth it.
Ten minutes later, a beige Toyota Camry slowed on the quiet neighborhood street and turned into the driveway. Cheyenne hid behind the huge tree, silent as she watched the driver’s side door open and Guy Carson step out of his vehicle. For the first time since she’d met him when she was strapped to a hospital bed with dampening cuffs at the FRoE compound, Sir wasn’t in his military fatigues. No uniform, just a pair of bright blue Levi’s and a maroon polo.
She forced herself not to laugh when she glanced at his shoes. White New Balances. Are you kidding me? He’s taking this whole fake-civilian-life act over the top.
With his arms full of paper grocery bags, Sir stepped onto his front porch, keys jingling. He didn’t see the two golden eyes glowing at him from behind the tree in his front yard. He unlocked the door, opened it, and took two steps into the house.
Cheyenne made her move.
She darted across the yard and up the porch stairs in a blur. By the time Sir heard the noise and turned around, she’d dropped back into real-time so she could slam the door shut behind her without splintering it into a million pieces.
His keys and all the bags of groceries toppled from his hands and hit the floor. “Holy fucking rhino shit!”
“Almost,” Cheyenne growled and snatched the front of his maroon shirt before slamming him against the opposite wall of the entryway. Her face stopped two inches from his, and she snarled, “We need to talk.”
“You.” The man’s salt-and-pepper mustache bristled as he pressed his lips together in rage. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She thumped him against the wall again, not hard enough to hurt him but hard enough to make her point. Maybe even a little harder. “I’m the one asking questions! And you’re gonna answer every fucking one of them if you want to leave this little chat with any of your limbs still attached to your body. No bullshit. Got it?”
His dark, beady gaze flickered from one of her golden eyes to the other. “You found me.”
“I can find anyone. Now you know.”
For a second, she thought the man was having a heart attack. His eyes bulged from his head, his face turned its usual deep crimson in rage, and he shook beneath the fist clenched around his shirt.
Cheyenne loosened her grip a little. He’s helpless. No phone, no dampening gear, no brain-washed agents to do all the dirty work for him. I guess rage and terror look the same on this guy.
He finally managed to snarl, “Let go of me.”
She thumped him against the wall again and raised her other hand between them in a warning threat, purple sparks dancing across her fingers. “Not until you tell me everything you know about Colonel Les Thomas.”
“What?” Sir sneered at her. “You’ve lost your goddamn mind, halfling. Barging into my home like this and threatening to…what? Barbeque me with those cute little sparks?”
Her purple sparks flew down the hall and crashed against the far wall, leaving a huge charred hole in the drywall. Somewhere in the other room, china dishes rattled, and a picture hanging above the new hole in the wall slipped off the nail and crashed to the floor. “Not fucking cute now, are they?”
Sir stared her right in the eyes, his chest heaving beneath her hand.
At least he can look at me and not try to run away. Points for stupidity, I guess.
“Colonel Les Thomas is a superior officer in the US Marine Corps and a high-ranking FRoE officer.”
“I already know that. What’s he planning with the loyalists? He’s already got them powering their machines with his nephew’s cutting-edge tech program. What else does he know? How long have you been reporting to him about me, asshole? ‘Cause at this point, it looks a hell of a lot like you’ve been playing dumb fucking grunt to this guy and making shit worse for all of us on both sides of the Border.” Sir snorted, but his eyes widened when she slammed her free hand on the wall behind his head. Her palm left another hole in the plaster and drywall, sending white dust all over them both and two more framed pictures smashing to the ground. “Speak!”
“I’m not a goddamn dog, halfling.”
“I’ll feed you to a dog if you don’t—”
Cheyenne froze at the sound of a second car rolling up the driveway. She glanced at the closed front door, then shoved her face right back into his. “You expecting company?”
Sir swallowed. “Just my wife.”
She released his shirt and stepped back. A dozen other pictures lined the wall of the entryway. Sir in civilian clothes beside a woman in her late fifties with curly graying hair and a laughing smile. Sir and his wife at the park, a restaurant, in front of the house, standing on a beach. “Who the hell would marry you?”
“I asked myself that same question over thirty years ago.” Sir sniffed, readjusted his shirt, and peeled his back away from the wall. His gaze darted toward the front door when a car door clicked shut outside, and all the fight he had left went out of him. “Don’t drag her into this, Cheyenne. That’s all I’m asking. Whatever else you wanna know, I’ll tell you. Just leave her—”
The front door opened, and his
