Page 12 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

C harles had parked the car around the corner and was standing across the street from Weng-Lee’s office. He never parked in front of where he left the Zhao family. He’d learned that the hard way a long time ago.

He’d been working for the family for more than thirty years.

Scraped off the pavement in Perth by the Zhao family matriarch when he was thirteen, he’d been a shifter cub about to hit puberty when helped by the Zhaos.

That meant losing temporary control of his fangs, claws, and fur as his body taught itself to become a snow leopard.

And once he got through all that, the question became, what was he going to do with his life?

They gave him options, the Zhaos did, but the best options involved staying around to “help” the family.

He wasn’t stupid. He was a cat. And he knew “help” was “work,” but unlike some other big families that did that sort of thing, the Zhaos didn’t mean some brutal, demeaning form of slavery.

They paid well and treated everyone who worked for them as employees.

With time and training, Charles was moved into security, and that’s where he’d stayed.

Mostly. The Zhaos put you where they needed you, when they needed you there, and you didn’t question, you just did your job.

For instance, being the “protection” of Gong Zhao.

Some of the newer guys handling Zhao family security thought getting the job of protecting Gong Zhao was some kind of insult.

The black sheep Zhao daughter was considered a non-entity among most of the staff and some lesser cousins, but that was foolish.

Nelle, as she preferred to be called, was a favorite of her father and had a reputation among the elder family members as someone to be avoided.

Not only because she’d once tossed her own sister out an open hotel window, thirty floors up, but because they all found her rude and disrespectful.

Nelle’s mother often blamed her daughter’s “Americanized attitude” on “the trash she insists on hanging around,” but no.

That was too easy an excuse. Nelle was simply who she was and, like the tiger he’d just driven to Chinatown had pointed out, she really didn’t need Charles’s protection .

. . and that wasn’t really why he was here.

The truth was, he’d been put here by the matriarch for one reason and one reason only: to keep an eye on what Nelle Zhao was up to at any given time. And each day was a new and exciting adventure in insanity.

The white, paneled van Charles had noticed driving around the block six times in the last hour finally came to an abrupt stop, and three men jumped out. One looked around before heading to the door of Weng-Lee’s office. The other two stood outside that door and waited.

Charles finally sent the text he had already typed out, and then, he waited.

* * *

Your past is coming to haunt you . . . again.

Nelle let out a sigh at Charles’s text just as the jingle from the front door went off and she looked up to see a Beretta pointed at her face.

“Get up,” the man ordered her, “and go outside. Now. And, if you try anything . . . I’ll blow the little shop girl’s head off.”

She glanced at Layla and saw the Arctic fox’s eyes grow wide before she crouched behind the counter. Like badgers, foxes—another small predator breed—were very good at disappearing when things got out of hand.

Always a good trait to have when hanging around honey badgers.

* * *

“How much longer do I have to sit here?” Keane demanded. He was bored and freaked out. Was acupuncture supposed to involve this many needles? It seemed like a lot. Like a crazy lot.

“You’ll know when it’s done,” the doctor told him while he continued to work on papers at a small desk. The first thing the wolf had done was take an X-ray of Keane’s shoulder, and while staring at the results, Keane heard the canine mutter, “Wow. That’s a mess.”

Not exactly reassuring words. But then, while Keane sat on the exam table, the doctor began putting in the acupuncture needles. It didn’t sting like he thought it would. Just felt weird. But then the wolf had kept going . . . and going . . . and going.

Keane looked at himself in the stainless-steel paper towel dispenser over the sink.

“How many needles is this?” he finally asked.

“A few hundred.”

Keane frowned. He really didn’t know much about any of this stuff, but even to him, that sounded weird.

“That seems . . . excessive?”

“Not for you. You are one tight, stressed-out ribbon of muscle and bone. If you were full-human, you’d absolutely have to get a shoulder replacement. But, because you’re a big cat, you just need to get your body to do what it already does naturally.”

“Which is?”

“Heal itself. But, I think you’re so wound up about . . . whatever. . . that your body can’t make that happen. These needles will stimulate that process, though.”

“Good. Because I can’t afford a—”

“Titanium replacement. I know. Do you think you’re the first pro player I’ve ever worked with?

You’re not. The beauty is, you’re a shifter.

So you won’t have to suffer months and months of rehabilitation or any surgeries.

Just a few minutes with some needles and you’ll be fine.

Just calm down. Stress does not help the process. ”

Deciding he was done talking to the canine, Keane debated just tearing out the needles himself, but the vast number was daunting.

He didn’t even know how he’d get started.

But before he could come up with a plan of attack, he heard noises from the other side of the door.

He looked at the doctor, and the wolf was already standing.

“What is that?” Keane asked.

“I think Nelle may have brought some drama to my little office.” Weng-Lee shrugged those massive wolf shoulders. “It happens sometimes.”

“Of course it does,” Keane growled, automatically feeling angry. “Because my life is never easy !” He spit out the last word between clenched teeth, and his shoulders automatically began to tense from his annoyance.

“Maybe you should calm—”

“If you tell me to calm down,” Keane warned, “I will wait until you shift and then tear your goddamn tail off.”

The wolf wisely took a step back. “All right then.”

Keane heard bodies slam against the office door. He sniffed the air and caught fox, honey badger, and full-human male, but he didn’t scent Nelle’s useless security guard. Where was he? Why wasn’t he in the other room, helping the woman he was being paid to protect?

Knowing he’d have to get involved—and not really wanting to—Keane slid off the exam table.

Glaring at the door, he took in a deep breath, but when he released it, the deep breath turned into a roar that shook the small, darkened windows, and his body must have tensed at the same time, because all the needles in his arm shot out and embedded into the wall on the other side of the room.

He barely glanced at the weird design he’d just accidentally created and stalked over to the door.

He yanked it off its hinges and stepped into the storefront.

The first thing he saw was the full-human male. He was still standing but bloody. And wrapped around his neck were the long legs of Nelle; the muzzle of a gun pressed to the top of the man’s head while she used her other hand to control him by his hair.

Keane took three big steps across the room and, once he reached Nelle’s side, immediately grabbed her hand, lifting it so she couldn’t destroy the man’s brain with one shot.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, working very hard to keep calm in the moment.

Blinking those dark eyes at him, Nelle glanced around a bit, like she was searching for something, before announcing, “Uh . . . killing this guy?”

“You can’t do that.”

He watched her fight a smile, which just pissed him off, because usually his glower terrified people into submission. He found her smirk just . . . rude.

“I can’t?” she asked. “Why can’t I?” The smirk grew a bit. “Is this a moral issue?”

“That’s part of it. Also, bullets are loud.”

“It’s New York. Who will notice?”

“There will be blood to clean up.”

“That’s what cleaning companies are for.”

“The body.”

“I’ll call a hyena I know. His clan loves a good meal.”

“Hard prison time.”

“Zhaos never go to prison.”

“You in an unflattering orange prison outfit.”

“I look fabulous in orange. And he started it. It’s self-defense.”

“No one’s going to believe that.”

“He did start it,” a squeaky voice said from behind the counter. Keane assumed it was the She-fox.

“I don’t care,” he informed all of them. “You can’t just go around shooting people in the head.”

“I’ve seen you tear people’s heads off.”

“Yes, but it was tiger me. Tiger me does what tigers do. We kill our enemies. But when I’m human—”

“Aren’t Malones known as leg breakers?”

“Some of us. But not the Malone brothers.”

“You’re all the Malone brothers.”

“Just let him go.”

She took a moment to seem as if she were actually debating about it, before unwinding her long legs from around the man’s neck.

Before she could jump to the floor herself, Keane let go of her hand to grab her body and bring her safely to the ground.

That’s when the man turned and reached for the gun that Keane now realized must have been his in the first place.