Read Online Dragons' Bond by Berengaria Brown - Free Book Online Page A

was certain Mallory would appreciate having some, plus it seemed only polite to offer the locksmith a cup of coffee and a muffin. And milk! Mallory obviously drank her coffee black, but personally a little cream in it made it much better in his opinion, and the locksmith might prefer some, too.
    Promptly at ten, the museum door chimes rang, and Mallory hurried to open the door. She’d already removed the bars—against Angus’s expressed opinion—but left the locks in deference to his arguments. Only the knowledge that he was right there to protect her had prevented him from re-barring the door the moment she’d acted.
    The locksmith was not at all what he’d been expecting. She was the tiniest little blonde, wearing jeans with her knees poking out of holes in them, and a huge bunch of keys on a carabiner at her waist. Her pixie face widened into a grin as Mallory opened the door.
    “I see why you need me. A ten-year-old with a paperclip could open that.” The locksmith waved dismissively at the door.
    “I had a feeling you were going to say something like that. Let me show you the back door and the fire door,” said Mallory, leading the way down the hallway.
    Trudy nodded and muttered as she inspected the building, stopping at the first display room and gesturing to the windows. “Want me to look at them, too?”
    “I don’t think—”
    “Yes, please do,” Angus overrode Mallory firmly. When they both stared at him, he shrugged and eased off a little. “She’s here. You may as well get all her advice.”
    “Okay.”
    Trudy moved fast from room to room, her eyes flicking to doors, windows, ceilings. Damn! I hadn’t even thought of that. There could be bugs in the ducting or anything .
    They finished up in Mallory’s apartment on the top floor, with Trudy inspecting her door out to the roof garden and shaking her head. “The security here is shit. Honestly, I could break in here at four different places in less than three seconds each without even needing a picklock.”
    She pulled her cell phone our of her jeans pocket, scrolled through it a bit, and handed it to Mallory. “This is what you need as a bare minimum. I don’t know what your budget is, but you also need the window security to be much better, and I’d like to check the roof access, too.”
    Mallory seemed resigned and was looking at the phone, so Angus stood up and said, “Let’s go out onto the roof. You’d better look at it while you’re here.” He ushered Trudy out and followed her around, watching her shake her head. This was going to cost a lot of money, he could tell. Well, if the museum directors—especially Teivel—wouldn’t allocate the funding, they’d pay for it themselves. Their woman needed to be safe, and the artworks were damn valuable and needed a decent security system.
    When Trudy had left, promising to e-mail a quotation through that evening, Mallory turned to Angus, her forehead creased with worry lines. “The directors aren’t going to agree to a huge expense, are they? No one has broken in here, and Mr. Tanner wasn’t concerned about the security, so I expect they’ll pay for new locks for all the doors, but they aren’t going to want to install a full security system, or add extra railings to the roof, or anything like that.”
    He couldn’t resist pulling her into his arms and kissing the worry lines then smoothing her forehead with his fingers, willing her stress to go away.
    “Mr. Tanner didn’t need the income from the museum. He was independently wealthy and old and tired. The new directors do want to get the museum up and running profitably. However, they likely don’t want their assets stolen, and once the museum becomes better known, and some of the artworks start going out to other exhibitions, word will get around in art circles that The Magic Dragon Museum has some very valuable pieces. That, in turn, will make it a target for art thieves, so if you explain all that to them, it’s sound