He looked at Angela as though she were a mildly amusing, unscripted delay in his evening schedule. "Come on," he said smoothly, adjusting the lapels of his gi. "If you want to see whether our training works, pick one."
Angela said nothing, her dark eyes remaining perfectly steady.
Beside Ryan, Jason Mercer folded his arms across his broad chest. At twenty-nine, Jason possessed the restless, predatory energy of someone who sought out competition in every mundane interaction. "Ryan's too nice," he said, smirking. A couple of the younger boys near the mirrors giggled. Jason jerked his chin toward Angela. "She should pick me."
Ryan glanced sideways at him. "Why you?"
"Because I don't give people a free pass."
That drew another ripple of amusement from the onlookers.
Then Derek Sloan took a heavy step forward. At thirty-five, Derek was the oldest of the trio, and by far the largest. Weighing nearly fifty pounds more than Angela, with thick, slab-like shoulders and trunks for legs, he looked less like an elite grappler and more like a man hired to move heavy iron safes up flights of stairs without equipment. He pointed a thick thumb at his own chest.
"Take me," he grunted, his wide grin stretching across a weathered face. "Then nobody can say we gave you the easy option."
Angela let her eyes rest on Derek, then shifted them slowly to Jason, and finally back to Ryan. Only then did she look past them, toward the far corner of the mat where the light from the overhead fluorescent tubes was slightly dimmer.
Her son, Ethan, stood near the water cooler. He was sixteen years old—thin, gangly, tall, and still visibly awkward inside a body that was growing faster than his muscle structure could keep up with. Right now, his face was drained of color. He looked utterly horrified.
"Mom," Ethan squeaked, his voice cracking slightly.
Angela met his gaze. "What?"
"You promised," he stammered, taking a small, hesitant step forward.
"I promised I wasn't coming here to start a fight with anybody."
Ryan chuckled, resting his hands casually on his hips. "Honestly, ma'am, this is starting to sound a lot like trying to start a fight with somebody."
Angela shook her head slowly. "No."
She turned her head slightly to address the man standing near the edge of the mat line—Michael Delaney, the owner and head instructor of Westbridge Martial Arts.
At forty-eight, Michael was a former collegiate wrestler and a second-degree black belt who had spent seventeen years building this dojo from a rented storefront into the premier academy in the district. Unlike his senior students, Michael hadn't laughed. He had been evaluating Angela from the moment she walked through the front doors. He had observed the deliberate, unhurried way she scanned the room, the absolute posture, and the subtle ways her weight shifted beneath her feet. He had also noticed the quiet anxiety in Ethan’s eyes the second his mother stepped into the training area.