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A glance around the room made this gig seem easier and easier...as long as Tank stayed out of my way. To start with, a bank of screens broadcasting camera data from inside the museum was fully visible without the need for human fingers to scroll through it. My own lupine face stared back at me from one image...but stepping a yard away from the computer terminal shielded me from view.
Well, that will be easily avoided.
Meanwhile, the door leading from the guard room to the rest of the museum had no swipe plate beside it. So I wouldn’t need to pretend to be dying of thirst in order to get through that barrier.
Scene surveyed, I settled myself in a perfect “Stay” position while Harper gave the illusion of prattling while actually following through on phase two of our plan. “Is Princess okay? I hope she doesn’t look agitated?”
“No, ma’am. Both of your dogs are very well behaved.”
That was Harper’s cue to get the guard outside as soon as possible. So she did, diving back into her concern about a supposedly faulty direction sense. “I suppose I should just get a PGS,” she said, purposefully mangling the acronym. “But I’m so concerned about the radiation damaging my poor doggies’ brains.”
“Don’t worry about it.” The guard patted me once, did the same for Tank who had sunk down beside me, then turned back to the outside door. “I’ll be waiting for you on the front steps. I’m wearing a blue uniform and....”
His voice was cut off by the only real barrier to entrance. I was inside the museum and the guard was outside. It was hard not to be smug.
Still, I waited fifteen seconds just in case the guard remembered something. Then I sidled backwards into the small camera-free zone beside the interior door and shimmered upward into humanity.
My hands were at my throat, pulling items out of the pouch I’d attached to the inside of my collar, when warmth pressed up against my bare back. “What are we doing?”
Ripples of awareness swam through me. Tank was there, behind me. Naked just like I was, our bare skin separated by nothing but air and not much of that. I swallowed.
His voice was irresistible. Even though I knew better, I angled my chin to see what he looked like without any clothes.
Muscles. Shadows. A hint of stubble on his jaw....
He wasn’t looking at me, though. Instead, his face was partially averted. As if my nakedness held no appeal.
Annoyed by my own focus on the immaterial—or, rather, the very material—I swiveled to face my un-asked-for companion head on. “We’re doing nothing,” I snapped back. “You’re pretending to be a good dog while I visit the museum for a couple of minutes. After that, we’re parting ways and will never see each other again.”
Tank totally ignored the part of my statement I’d intended to be incendiary. Instead, he straightened his neck until his face came back into view.
I felt the moment his gaze struck my nakedness. Heat flooded my body and I smelled a surge of awareness emanating from him as powerful as my own.
Okay. Not so uninterested then.
Still, his words were flat. “You’re stealing art from a museum.”
There’d been no overt judgment in his tone, but I responded as if there had been. Fighting was safer than dealing with this whatever spinning between our wolves and our bodies.
“I’m stealing art on loan to a museum. Art belonging to a rich guy. He won’t miss it and neither will the museum.” Because, yes, I’d double-checked the ownership issue. Harper’s needs aside, I didn’t willy-nilly deposit that check.
Tank leaned in a hair closer. His heat pressed up against my chest, my throat, my stomach. We were separated by a millimeter of air space. That distance suddenly felt like far too much.
Until his words slapped me. “When the museum’s insurance premiums go up, they’ll miss whatever you take.”
His business card, I remembered now, had been succinct yet edifying. Tank Morales. Attorney-at-Law. The profession explained why he jumped straight to rising insurance rates. But I had an answer for that as well.
“The rich guy has it insured. The museum doesn’t. That fact was in the newspaper article. A quote of appreciation from a board member. The museum won’t lose out.”
As I spoke, I dropped the small block of wood from my collar pouch to the ground, kicking it close to the door and preparing to wedge the space open for easy retreat. Finally, I shook a mini pry bar out of the pouch, letting it fall onto my palm.
No fingerprints on either item. There wouldn’t be, even after I was finished. Just wolf saliva. My preparations were complete.
“Are we done with the inquisition?” I demanded, preparing to turn the door knob. I was frustrated by my own reaction to Tank’s presence. I needed to focus and the hormone storm inside me was making that difficult.
Taking a deep breath, I ran through the plan one last time. The door knob was the only part I needed human fingers for, and if I smeared as I turned there would be no prints left behind. After that, I would be an unidentifiable wolf. It would work....
“Ready,” Tank agreed, reaching around me to yank the door open. Wedging his body into the gap, he used the back of his hand to smudge away any evidence of his grip.
That solved the fingerprint problem, but a question ripped out of me anyway. “What are you doing?”
The faintest smile pulled subtly lopsided lips upward in a gesture that was almost beautiful. “Every thief needs a good lawyer. I’m coming with.”
***
THERE WASN’T TIME TO argue. Not when opening this door would make the first warning ping show up on the guard’s cell phone.
So I gave in. Shimmered back down to wolf form in tandem with Tank, falling through the doorway even as the door glided shut.
Or, rather, not quite shut. The wooden block stopped the metal barrier one inch shy of its frame just as I’d intended. Meanwhile, my second tool—the iron pry bar—lay cold against my tongue.
Then I was running, counting down the seconds. I had no way of dodging motion sensors, so I didn’t try to. Which meant the security guard would be getting a second alert right about now. The question was, would Harper be able to talk him into ignoring the double dose of digital caution? How long did we have before he realized notifications were more than a malfunction and alerted the police?
Despite the countdown, I was exhilarated as my nails clicked against smooth marble. The scents of old paint and new floor cleaner curled around me. Tank, at my shoulder, was a presence that felt strangely right.
Then the ancient British exhibit loomed before us. The plexiglass case that covered the bracer wasn’t alarmed or high-tech, its purpose just to shield the art from sticky fingers. My pry bar would do the trick.
I’d practiced this with wolf teeth. Tricky to hold the tool between sharp canines, but doable. Trickier, I found, to try the same while standing up on my hind legs.
The pry bar made my teeth feel brittle. The beveled end should have slid into the crack, but it refused to do so. Instead, the tool bounced off, the other end biting into the soft interior of my cheek.
Despite myself, I whined. This wasn’t going to work. Seconds were ticking by faster and faster. I couldn’t leave Harper on the phone long enough for cops to be alerted and start tracing the call to Highlands....
I huffed out frustration. I’d have to abort.
***
THEN TANK WAS ABOVE me. His furry body cupped mine far too intimately. As if I really was in heat and he was an animal guided only by the urge for reproduction.
I froze.
He responded by biting me. Gently, on my nose. Not an animal bite. A human bite, telling me to hurry up.
To shift. Use human fingers while his body shielded mine from the inevitable cameras.
That required trusting him. Trusting a male. Worse, a male werewolf. Something my past promised was a very bad idea.
But this wasn’t depending on a guy to watch my back for the long term. This wasn’t signing on the dotted line and giving a drunk access to my bank account. This wasn’t agreeing to be part of a pack.
No, this was one moment of accepting assistance from a willing companion. I wasn’t so emotionally scarred that I couldn’t do that.
So I slid into humanity. Tank’s fur brushed against my bare skin, making me shiver. Ignoring the sensation, I spat the pry bar into shaking fingers, forced the narrow end into the gap between plexiglass lid and matte black pedestal, then pounded down on the other end of the lever with my fist.
The hinges snapped. The plexiglass lid toppled off. The bracer before me gleamed in the dim light of the glowing exit sign.
I tensed, waiting for Tank to snatch up the precious artifact. After all, why else had he come along? Did he intend to turn me in or take the prize for himself?
Neither. Tank nipped me again, even gentler than before as if he was well aware of the effect wolf teeth would have on the thin, human skin of my shoulder. He hovered above me, a protective presence, while I thrust the pry bar back into my collar—wouldn’t have to leave it behind after all. Then I shifted and plucked up the bracer between lupine teeth.
Only after Tank saw that I had what I’d come for did he leap down and take the lead for our retreat.
We sprinted back through the dark museum together. Retraced our footsteps past the stairs I’d hurried down yesterday in an effort to escape the Samhain Shifters, back through the staff-only hallway, all the way to the door I’d doctored with my wooden door stop.
It was still open. But my conversation with Tank plus my moment frozen by the bracer had added up. Harper must have gotten off the phone just when I told her too...which ended up being one minute too soon.
Because the security guard was coming back through the outside door just as we reached the cracked opening of the inner door. His eyes were trained on the bank of monitors, not noticing that we were mere feet away.
The external door was slowly sliding shut behind him. If we were fast, Tank and I could make it out before it clicked shut and required a shift to humanity to reopen.
But the guard blocked the exit. The room was too small to be sure we could rush past him. And I was wearing the collar I’d used to stash my tools in. A collar that would be easy to grab....
Tank leapt at the guard before I could decide on the best course of action. His scent was perfectly calm, yet he snapped and snarled like a wild animal. One bite that didn’t quite connect. A bone-chilling growl. Then he’d slid past the guard and into the night.
He meant to clear the way for me. I knew that. After all, any normal rent-a-cop would have been traumatized by Tank’s behavior. Would have backpedalled and provided me with an easy escape.
But this security guard was a dog person. He wasn’t traumatized and his eyes were keen. “What’s in your mouth?” he demanded, lunging for me.
I tried to sidestep, but I wasn’t quite fast enough. The guard caught my right hind leg just as I made it to the exterior door.