Page 185 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

“I see it. Stay back.”

“Do you?”

The man swung.

I caught the baton on my forearm because arrogance was apparently contagious inside Dimitris’s house.

Pain locked my muscles. It wasn’t ordinary electricity. Something tuned to shifter physiology. My arm seized, shoulder to fingertips, and the thief used the opening well. He drove a knee toward my ribs. I turned enough to take it on my hip, shoved him back, and felt the current bite again when the baton grazed my side.

The second man pulled a matching device.

Small crew. Professional. Prepared for someone like me.

That wasn’t reassuring.

I let heat build in my throat.

“No fire,” Quinn snapped.

I froze.

She was looking past me, not at the thieves. At the open cases. At the small gray blocks packed beside the gallery door, wires coiled neatly near them.

“I thought C4 was stable,” one thief said, almost conversationally.

“It is,” Quinn said. “The detonators are less so.”

The man blinked at her.

That was the moment Max moved.

Quinn gave one clipped command. “Suchen.”

Max lunged.

He hit the thief nearest the detonator bag hard enough to drive the man off balance and away from the wires. The thief cursed and swung his arm down. Quinn was already there, grabbing a marble bust from a pedestal. She was abysmal at following my directions, but she was magnificent.

For one absurd second, some museum-trained part of my brain registered the object as Ptolemaic, possibly original, likely priceless.

Then Quinn hit the thief in the shoulder with it.

He went down.

The bust didn’t break.

“Oh, thank God,” she panted. “I was worried it would break.”

The second thief came at her.

I caught him by the front of his jacket and threw him into the wall hard enough to crack plaster. The baton fell from his hand. He reached for a knife, and I pinned him there, teeth aching with the urge to shift, but there was no room.

Behind me, the first thief groaned. Max stood over him, teeth bared, waiting for one wrong move.

“Call off the mutt,” the man rasped.

Quinn, breathing hard and still holding the bust, said, “Try asking with manners.”

He stared at her.