The bellowing roar it let out was a friendly reminder he’d skipped using the washroom before heading out.

Homie’s ride bucked once as the driver put it into gear and blasted down the street while “Gangsta ’Ero” boomed out of its speakers.

He was left on the sidewalk with nothing between him and a ton of angry bear except for the bag holding the laptop.

He did the only sensible thing—he spun around on a heel and ran.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Garage

Homie wasn’t much of a runner.

He wasn’t in bad shape. His diet was a bit crap, and his exercise routine . . . nonexistent, but he was thin, with a great metabolism, and the drugs he took did wonders for his gut.

The fact remained, though, that he hadn’t actually run for the sake of running since high school, and that was a few years back.

He was running now, running faster than he’d ever run before, all thanks to the motivational push that came from having a two-ton grizzly bear roaring after him.

The bear roared some more and redoubled its speed. All Homie could think was that nothing so big should have been able to move that fast.

And then he came around a corner, and his salvation was in sight. A garage, old and rather decrepit, with a couple of used cars parked out front. Its front door was wide open, and Homie could make out the rough shapes of a pair of mechanics tinkering on the underside of an old pickup.

It wasn’t just any old garage, though: it was one he had frequented in the past, one that paid protection money to the boss, one that he had spent hours in while changing oil and fixing brakes in his normal identity.

It wasn’t one of his safe houses or one of the places he knew well, but he’d spent time there, and that was enough.

He zigged and zagged around a few parked cars, darted across the street to the sound of someone honking at him, then bolted through the parking lot before the garage and into its poorly lit interior. “Move!” he shouted.

The guys working within took one glance at him, some of them looking like they were going to complain about his entrance. He could see the moment they saw the bear running after him.

They left with no protest.

Homie had all of thirty seconds to ready his power. Usually it was a slow process, like a seeping, invisible miasma that enveloped everything in a room and filled his mind with a hyperdetailed image of where everything was and what it was meant to do.

Now he let loose the floodgates and swamped the room with his power. The moment it reached the controls near the door, he tugged at them and the electric motor near the ceiling came to life.