Nobody Knows (SWAT Generation 2.0 11)

The kid looked at me and scoffed. “Sounds like a personal problem to me.”

I rolled my shoulders to relieve the tension there.

“Balder,” Malachi said. “You mind helping me out?”

Balder looked more than willing to help.

“If you folks need anything else, my manager is right inside. I’ve already sent him a text to be on the lookout for you.” This ‘friend’ Balder said to the ‘folks.’

The kid looked irate.

The dad looked as if he wanted to spank the kid right then and there.

I would.

Even at fifteen.

The kid was a selfish little prick.

Balder and Malachi came over then, neither one of them looking behind them at the very pissed off kid.

I kept my eyes on the kid, though, worried that he’d retaliate.

He didn’t, but I could see the thought pass through his mind at the thought of being dismissed by anyone.

“Jesus Christ, Lord have Mercy. Goddamn and his disciples,” Balder said as he got up to me. “That kid is something else.”

“You have no idea,” Malachi said, then went about explaining all that had happened after he’d wrecked my car.

“Well, let me tell you something,” Balder said when he gestured to the truck I’d been looking at. “He wanted one like this, only in hunter green. We have one in the back, actually. I was about to take him over there when the dad put his foot down and said, ‘you’re getting a bottom of the line work truck so it’ll get you there and back with reliance’ and the kid lost his shit. That’s when you came up.”

I looked over at Malachi who was surprisingly looking down at me. “We should get a green one.”

It was a joke at first.

But the way his eyes gleamed, I couldn’t stop the way I swayed toward him.

“Do it,” he urged. “Please.”

I gave him a thumb up. “I’ll at least go look at it.”

“Follow me inside for a sec and let me grab the keys,” Balder ordered. “Then I’ll take you to the back.”

Malachi leveled me with a look. “Stay in the truck until we come back. I don’t want you out here with him.”

His eyes went to the kid that was still throwing a tantrum, only closer to their vehicle now and not next to the truck he wanted but couldn’t have.

I nodded absently. “I’ll just read.”

His eyes twinkled for a second before he gestured to the truck.

“Get in.”

I sighed long and loud and got back into the truck.

It was only as I closed the door that he started to walk away.

Then, for added effect, he locked me in.

With the dinging.

Him having the keys meant that the entire damn time, the truck dinged.

I groaned and tried to get back into my book—Hastings’ newest that she’d just finished literally last night—and managed to get sucked in.

All too soon, though, Malachi called, sucking me right back out.

“Hello?” I answered, my eyes scanning the parking lot for him.

“Hey,” Malachi murmured softly into my ear, his honeyed, deep drawl making a sweet little shiver roll down my spine.

“Hey,” I said softly. “What’s up?”

I looked around the car lot again and didn’t see him anywhere.

“Come over here and bring my truck,” he said softly. “I want you to see the color.”

Thinking that he was in the ‘back’ like he’d said, I managed to successfully drive his truck over to him without dying. Only, when I got to the back, there was no sign of him anywhere.

I frowned hard and was just about to back up, because where I was at looked like an employee area, when the truck died.

“Shit,” I grumbled, looking in dismay at the instrument panel that’d died with the truck.

Unfortunately, since he’d taken the key with him, I couldn’t restart the truck.

Shit.

Oh well.

I pulled out my phone and texted him.

He didn’t answer.

Sierra: Where are you?

Malachi read the comment but didn’t answer.

The little shit.

I got out of the truck and started to walk.

It was only after I circled the parking lot twice that I decided to go back to the truck and wait until he actually said where he was.

Sierra: I’m getting awfully hungry. I like the color. Can we just go?

Seconds later he called.

“Where are you?” he asked, making me once again pick my head up from my phone and glance around the lot.

“Well,” I said. “I’m over by the entrance to the employee lot, I think. I was going to come back to my first spot, but it died. It was a good thing, anyway, because I was tired of listening to the horrible ding it was making since you took the keys.”

“Shit,” he said softly. “I’m all the way at the front of the car lot. They had the truck behind the building on the Chevy side.”

I frowned hard. “How the hell did you expect me to know that?”

“Because I walked right past you,” he replied sarcastically. “On my way to the other side.”