Page 68 of Chosen By Monsters

"Yes," I say. "She does."

Merek huffs out a breath that's almost a laugh. "Fine," he says. "Fine." He looks at me, and his face softens. "But I'm walking you to the ward stone."

"Fine."

They split up. Merek goes for the radios. Lenart makes two short calls from the desk in the corner, in a language I don't know, and then goes to stand with William at the far end of the room by the monitors, their heads close. I stay by the door, out of the way, with a bottle of water and my hair still tangled from the wind.

Pell has come up from downstairs with a clear plastic evidence bag, sealed and labeled in marker. William holds it under the desk lamp. Inside is a short piece of steel, a broken linkage bar with one bright, clean end. On the monitor beside him, his photographs of the vault door are up on the screen, one after another.

He doesn't know I can hear him. He's talking very low.

"The release was cut," William says. "Same as the freezer."

Chapter eleven

Tara

Merek’s front door is nine feet tall, and I kick it shut behind me with my heel.

It’s three-forty in the morning. I put my palm on the ward stone at midnight with Merek standing on the narrow stairs behind me, filling them, his tail blocking the whole doorway like a velvet rope. Then I stayed on the premises until close, because that’s the rule, and I’m not losing my inheritance to a cut wire. I spent three hours at the main bar with Kit, cutting limes I didn’t need to cut, while William and Lenart and half the security staff opened every door in the building.

Now the house is dark and warm, and it smells like woodsmoke, and Billy Bob is pulling on his leash toward the fireplace.

I unclip him. He goes straight to his moose blanket on the rug, turns around three times, and drops onto it with a groan like he’s the one who got locked in a vault.

“Same, buddy,” I tell him.

I pull off my boots, one and then the other, and throw them. The first one hits the wall. The second one lands on Merek’s couch.

Merek watches the boot land. He locks the door and heads into the kitchen.

“Somebody cut the emergency release,” I say, following him. “Again. They disabled the lights, the ventilation, even the goddamn radio. Who does that?”

“Somebody who planned it.” He opens the fridge.

“And the security camera wasn't working. How does nobody notice that?”

“William's looking into it.”