Page 20 of Forked Tongues Are Fun
I swallowed thickly. Not dead. They couldn’t be, and not just because I would therefore be dead, too, no matter what happened in the next few minutes. Those three were larger than life, powerful and sincere in who they thought I was. Not like I’d expected dragon shifters to be at all. Of course, they weren’t the ones who’d taken Asa, either, which certainly helped. They couldn’t be dead.
With my teeth gritted against a sudden urge to cry—for them, for myself, for Asa after this was all done one way or the other—I faced the safe. Despite being six feet tall, reinforced with steel, and having 1.2 million possible combinations to the lock even a computer wouldn’t be able to crack in thirty-six hours, I would have it open in less than a minute.
“And the girl?” Salt and Pepper asked, his voice drifting closer like they were about to sit at the table.
“The human?” The other shifter spat the word like it was poison. “Frail and broken like so many of them are. Only this one’s at the bottom of a cliff.”
Wrong, if they were talking about me.This one is pulling a stethoscope free from the various gadgets taped around her legs and is about to break in to your safe. Frail and broken, lately yes, though I tried to hide it. Dead, not yet.
“Then the only thing left that we need to worry about is Petra,” Salt and Pepper said. “She’s gone off the rails, proving over and over again she can’t be trusted.”
The other shifter hummed in agreement.
Trying to ignore them for a second, I plugged the stethoscope earpieces into my ears and pressed the metal part to the door of the safe while I turned the combination dial this way and that. When a certain pattern of clicks sounded, I would have it open.
“I can deal with Petra,” the other shifter said.
Salt and Pepper chuckled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I wished they’d keep it down over there. It was really hard to hear over what sounded like an assassination plot. “Deal with” only had so many meanings. Whoever this Petra was, if she was a dragon shifter, she probably deserved to be broken at the bottom of a cliff like I was supposed to be.
More clicks sounded as I turned the dial, and then...There. That was it, a particular pattern of clicks. With my heart racing, I unplugged the stethoscope from my ears and then curled my trembling fingers around the safe’s handle. Except... How should this go down? I couldn’t exactly open the safe with the two shifters in the room. They’d see it happening since the safe was taller than the chair I was currently crouched behind. Plus, I’d heard of some safes having an inner alarm once opened. They’d for sure hear that if it had one. But I didn’t have time to wait for them to leave.
It had to be now. Now or never.
While I thought quiet thoughts, I opened the safe. Just a crack, enough to peer through, but the dim light in the room couldn’t penetrate the darkness within. I pulled the door open a tiny bit more, my pulse thudding so hard I couldn’t hear a word from behind me anymore. A corner of another smaller safe on the bottom shelf caught the light. A pile of papers on the top shelf, and lying to the side, four keys tied together with rope glinted.
A burst of excitement lit up my chest, and I snatched the keys up. Would they even fit the lock of the birdcage? They were small and a tarnished silver color. The lock had been gold, though that might not matter, and I couldn’t get an accurate idea of its size with it hanging thirty feet over my head. But they were keys, and that was better than what I’d come in here with.
I closed the safe and spun the dial.
“...in the safe,” a voice said behind me.
Oh no. Were they coming over here? I crouched even lower between the chair and the safe, my gaze darting around for a quick escape. Except there wasn’t one.
“I just need your signature and where you want your payment transferred to.” The voice came closer, less than ten feet away.
My thoughts swam together, slowed by a possible concussion and panic and a terrible need to mate. The setup of the room flashed through my head, but still. There was no place for me to hide that I could get to in time.
Soft footsteps just behind the chair. Time to move. Somewhere. Shit.
Squeezing my stethoscope and keys to my chest,I skirted to the other side of the chair just before the footsteps came around the other side. In plain view of the other man who wasn’t Salt and Pepper, but what the hell else could I do? Except his back was turned. He was refilling his whiskey glass at the mini-bar.
Go time.
I started across the carpet toward the massive table on my one free hand and knees, but then hesitated. Even if I tried crawling underneath the table without making any noise, they would still likely see me. I didn’t exactly blend in with the shadows in a royal blue dress.
Salt and Pepper cleared his throat behind me and began twisting the combination dial on the safe. He’d likely see that the keys were gone.
Panicked sweat tracked down my temples, my sides, my back while I held myself in a state of limbo. A state I didn’t have time to be in.
Then a single movement shattered that state. His back still turned toward the mini-bar, the shifter pulled a gun from inside his tux jacket and laid it next to the ice bucket. Long and silver, I knew with just one glance it would be deadly to dragon shifters, and humans who happened to be in the way.
My nerves exploded into a riot of gogogo. As fast as I could, as quiet as I could, I darted for cover under the table about eight feet away.
Behind me, the safe clicked open. In front of me, the ice in the shifter’s glass clinked as he took a long drink and shifted slightly to stand in front of the gun.
Almost there. Almost within reach of one of the chair legs.
