“Yeah, but . . .” Malone’s gaze suddenly moved off and then she grinned. “As a matter of fact, I do have a staff.”

Ricky was sitting on the stairs by one of the exit doors with Reece when Rory came up.

“Well?” their brother asked.

“Humans have been all over here,” Reece said.

“Did they get in?”

“Nah,” Ricky said around a yawn. “But tightening security really couldn’t hurt.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, little brother,” Rory sneered. “Is this boring you?”

“A little.” When Rory’s eyes narrowed on him, Ricky quickly held up his hands. There wasn’t a lot of space in this stairwell, and that made it harder to fight his brother.

Rory looked off. “What about cameras?”

“They don’t have any in the stairwells, but I’d suggest we tell them to put some in here.”

“And full-time monitoring,” Reece added.

“Twenty-four-seven and guards trained by us. Right now the Center only has a couple of old leopards watching the place after hours.”

“Yeah. That sounds good. I’ll write the report.”

Nodding, Ricky and Reece got to their feet. Rory’s phone went off and he pulled it out of the back pocket of his jeans. He answered it and was quiet for a moment; then his eyes suddenly locked on Ricky.

“I’ll ask him,” Rory said.

“Ask me what?”

“It’s Ronnie Lee on the phone. Laura Jane is running around telling the other She-wolves that you were so disturbed by her very presence yesterday, you ran off after some jackal. Ronnie wants to know if there were really tears in your eyes when you made a break for it.”

While Reece laughed so hard he was bent over at the waist, his hands resting on his knees, Ricky took off his Tennessee Titans cap and scratched his head. Because his day had just gotten crappier.

Livy held up a color print of Bo Novikov trying to force a smile. “This is what nightmares are made of.”

“I know,” Toni agreed while she licked her spoon free of Greek yogurt. “That’s why we need you.”

“This isn’t really my thing, Toni. I—”

“If you say you’re an artist, I will hit you.”

Chuckling, Livy tossed the picture back onto Toni’s desk and ate more of the French fries she had purchased. After spending some time catching up, they’d gone to the Sports Center food court and had picked up their lunches. Fish and chips for Livy. Yogurt, salad, and a burger big enough to choke a rhino for Toni. She’d bypassed the fries, but now she was regretting it while she watched Livy eating hers.

“I was not going to say that. At least not to you.” Livy shrugged. “But I hate sports. I hate sports guys. I hate people. I hate dealingwith them. Talking to them. And portrait photography means talking to people. I also hate—”

“Yes, Livy. I know. You hate . . . pretty much everything.”

“Pretty much.”

“But this will be good money. Clean money, Liv. And God knows you can’t even think about trying to do another office job.”

“Why? I’m a fast typist.”

“Yes. But then you throw the computer at the office manager and I’m bailing you out of jail . . . again.”

“He was rude.”

“You think everyone is rude. But with shifters, you’ll be right and they can fight back. At the very least they’ll be fast enough to duck a flying PC.”

“That hard drive did ram right into his head. He was out for, like, ten minutes.”

“Is that restraining order still in effect?”

“I think it expired last year. But I wasn’t planning on going back to Utah anytime soon.” Livy took a handful of her fries out of the newspaper they were nestled in and dropped them on the plate with Toni’s burger. “Honestly, though, how much money could this really get me?”

“A lot.”

“Really?”

“You should think about it. You’d be able to live some place you’re paying for rather than just crashing on someone’s couch . . . like the couches of people you don’t know.”

“It’s called squatting and it has its place in society. And one paycheck isn’t going to—”

“I realized that. So I talked to a few of the other teams’ promotions people here and in Jersey.”

“Which means what?”

“I’ve got you other jobs with the local shifter teams.”

Livy smirked. “So you’re my agent now?”

“If I have to be. Clearly your agent doesn’t understand your true needs and skills.”

Livy thought a moment. “Well . . . it would be nice having a place of my own eventually.”

“Where are you living now?”

“Some guy left his window open on Thirty-Second Street and Fifth, so I—”

“Okay. That’s enough.” Toni shook her head to remove the image of her best friend climbing into some guy’s temporarily vacant home so she had a place to sleep for the night. It was in Livy’s nature, Toni understood that. But it was in Toni’s nature to put her siblings in burrows . . . she didn’t actually do that, though, now did she? “The family is in Manhattan for the summer, so you can stay with us. But come end of August, you’d better have your own, rented apartment, Olivia. You can’t keep living this way. It’s not right, especially when you don’t have to be homeless!”