Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Tall but not insurmountable, even with the spikes. “I can jump the gate, see if I can find a way through for you.” Bears weren’t the most limber or graceful climbers, but they were strong, and in human form, that strength made up for their lack of fluidity.
“No, wait.” Theo put her hand on the lock, tilted her head to the side for a full minute. “Yes,” she said at last. “I can unlock it.”
That was when he remembered what Silver had said—that Theo Marshall was a Tk who could move tiny parts around with her mind. “Telekinesis?”
A curt nod, her attention clearly on whatever it was she was doing to the lock.
He actually heard a tiny click before she stepped back, rubbing the palm of her hand against her skirt. “It should open now. I didn’t break the mechanism, so we can lock it back up when we leave.”
Yakov whistled. “I didn’t know Psy could do that.” Computronic locks like this were considered highly secure, since they had few if any moving parts that could be “picked.”
“Most can’t.” Theo’s voice had gone oddly flat, devoid of the hum of contained emotion that was her trademark. “It’s a skill so rare that there’s probably less than five people in the world capable of it. I just happen to be one of them.”
Yakov wanted the real Theo back. “Could you walk into a bank and unlock their vault?” he joked.
But her response was serious. “Likely.”
“Paired with a teleporter, you’d make one hell of a heist team.”
She shot him what should’ve been a flat glance—but there was too much mobility to her face, too much energy. “I’m not a criminal.” Hard words.
Yakov realized that while he’d broken through the flatness, he’d also hit a nerve. Then again, it could be deflection, because what Theo had just done wasn’t exactly a minor skill. It was, in fact, a very useful one for a family that wanted to keep secrets and take advantage of the secrets of others.
What exactly had Theo Marshall done while flying under the radar?
And who had she done it for?
Bear rumbling inside him because the damn animal liked the scent of Theo Marshall, but also saw her as a possible threat—and couldn’t forget that she was part of a family that had made a profit out of maiming people—he reached out to push open the gate. It stuck and he realized it had a redundancy in the form of two bolts behind it. “Can you move these?”
Theo tried, shook her head. “No. I’m only a 2.7.” And that trick with the lock had taken a large amount of her power reserves—it was harder than it looked from the outside. “They’re too heavy.”
Yakov stepped back. “Guess I’m jumping the gate after all.”
Theo’s entire body tensed, her gaze jerking to the spikes, then back to him. Her hand lifted on the instinctive urge to grab him, stop him.
* * *
* * *
“HEY.” Eyes kissed by amber meeting Theo’s. “Bears aren’t as clumsy as we look. We only run into things fifty percent of the time.”
“Be careful of the spikes.” Theo didn’t realize she’d risen onto her toes until she settled back down. “They aren’t decoration and you are a bear. My source on changelings states that bears constantly overestimate their ability to be graceful.” He didn’t need to know that her source was Wild Woman magazine.
A sudden grin from Yakov that made her stomach clench. “Watch this,” he said, then jogged back several meters before running full tilt at the gate.
Her mouth fell open as he hauled himself up with a power and speed she’d never have expected from a bear changeling. Close to the top, he all but vaulted over the spikes and came to a firm landing on both feet on the grassy and cracked drive on the other side.
Wild Woman didn’t know what it was talking about! She had half a mind to write a letter to the editor demanding a retraction of the slander against bears. But the magazine had been right when it had called bears “an arsenal of brute power.” Yakov clearly had muscles atop muscles.
Her heart was still thumping when he began to slide open the bars that acted as deadbolts, his biceps flexing and the veins in his forearms standing out against the burnished brown of his skin. That took enough time that she had some control over herself when he opened one side of the gate. It was big enough to drive through.
“I’ll drive in,” he said, jogging back out, “then we should lock things up. There’s a reason security is stringent—we don’t want to risk others coming in, or getting out. For all we know, this place was hidden because it’s where your grandfather housed dangerous criminals he had a use for.”