Page 17 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

K eane watched, in horror, his younger brother beaten into the ground by two hundred pounds of pure fury. Paws hit his face. Claws tore across his chest. Drool poured into his mouth. And all his brother could do was scream like a panicked child. “Get it off me! Get it off me!”

Disgusted, appalled, Keane folded his arms over his chest and allowed the devastation to continue raining down on his brother, completely ignoring the cat’s pleas for help.

“What is wrong with you?” his even younger brother wanted to know, shoving Keane aside with a big shoulder. “Why won’t you help him?”

That’s when Keane realized his brother Finn was talking to him.

“Why won’t I help him?” Keane watched Finn pull their massively sized brother to his feet. “I don’t help weakness.”

“Give him a break,” Finn ordered. “He just got run over by a tank.”

“A tank?” Keane barked, incredulous. “What tank? There is no tank.” He pointed. “That’s a dog!”

“Two-hundred-pounds-of-pure-muscle dog.”

Shay, panting like he’d run a marathon, held up a small capsule. “I was just trying to give him this pill, and he went insane.”

Finn took the pill from Shay’s hand and held it out. “Here. You give it to the dog.”

Keane looked around the yard they were all standing in. “I know you are not talking to me.”

“Why can’t you ever help?”

“I help by not beating you both to death from base disappointment.”

“He has to take it!” Shay argued, sounding pathetic. “He has an infection. It’s an antibiotic.”

“I am not getting anywhere near that thing.”

He turned away from his brothers, only to face his ten-year-old niece, Dani. She looked so angry down there, trying to appear as if they were eye-to-eye. It was adorable.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

“You are so mean !”

“It’s not my dog. And—” Keane blinked. “What the hell is that on your wrist?”

She held her arm up in reply but, for some reason, she thought he couldn’t see it well enough, because she abruptly demanded, “Daddy!”

Shay immediately came over and lifted his daughter so that she could put the new watch directly in Keane’s face.

“Really?” he asked his brother as the further proof of weakness was displayed for the world to see.

“It’s either this or she starts the squealing again. She can hit notes that break eardrums.”

“This exquisite watch,” his niece began to intone, “is from Switzerland, and these are pink Swarovski crystals. It keeps exact, precise time and is water resistant up to three hundred meters and will never leave my wrist for the rest of my entire existence on this planet.”

“What is wrong with this family?” Keane asked, as he always asked, even though he never got a satisfactory answer.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” his niece went on.

“It looks expensive.”

“Probably!” she eagerly agreed. “The crystals alone most likely cost millions of dollars!”

“I doubt they cost that—”

“Millions!” she insisted.

“Fine.”

“Down, Daddy,” she ordered, and her father did as she said, because Keane came from a very weak line of Mongolian-Irish cats, apparently.

“Now let’s get this done,” Shay said, holding out the capsule again for Keane to take.

“I am not dealing with this dog.”

“You’re not going to help at all?” Finn asked, appearing stunned, which just confused Keane.

“You wanted those dogs—”

“No, I didn’t!”

“—you can deal with those dogs! Because if I had my way,” he continued, walking toward the MacKilligan sisters’ house, “I’d have tossed all of them, including their puppies, into the damn dumpster!”

“You are a bad uncle!” Dani accused, pointing an accusatory finger. “A very bad uncle!”

The back door opened, and Charlie MacKilligan walked out.

She wore a black apron over her jeans and green T-shirt, but he could easily see all the flour and sugar on her that told him she’d been making delicious baked goods for the last few hours.

It was all over her. Why even bother with the apron?

Shouldn’t it be more effective than that?

“What’s all the yelling?” Charlie asked. She was very calm because she’d been doing so much baking. It was something that calmed her. Like football calmed Keane.

“They’re having trouble giving that idiot dog a damn pill, and they want me to help. I don’t help with dogs.”

“That’s beneath you?”

“They’re dogs ,” Keane insisted, positive he was making his point.

Charlie grinned, and as pretty as it was, it was surprising.

The woman didn’t smile much. Not that she had that much to smile about when she had so much on her plate.

A psychotic, unstable younger sister and, also, Max.

Dealing with a psychotic female who could snap at any time and cause great damage like Stevie had to be much easier than being responsible for Max MacKilligan.

Walking past him and over to his brothers, Charlie took the capsule Shay still held and motioned to the dog he’d been struggling with.

It came instantly and sat without being asked.

She then held out the capsule, and he took it without prompting.

He gulped it down and then sat staring at the wolf-badger hybrid no one really understood.

After digging into her front apron pocket, Charlie produced a couple of meaty treats and gave them to the dog.

She then motioned it away with a swipe of her hand, and the dog took off to play with its brother while its sister was probably somewhere else in the house taking care of the pups that also none of them had wanted.

“See?” Charlie asked, facing them. “So easy.”

“How did you do that?” Shay asked, in awe. “When I tried, he went for my face.”

“He was playing.”

“Didn’t feel like he was playing.”

“If he wanted to tear your face off, Shay, he would have torn your face off. Trust me. He was playing.” She winked and gave Keane’s niece a high-five as she walked back to Keane.

“So I assume you guys are here for a reason,” she prompted.

“What exactly did you do in Italy?”

“Nothing you want to know about.”

“So you go to Italy and you start a war.”

“We didn’t start anything. They did.”

“Yeah, well, they’ve come here, I think. Nelle got attacked in Chinatown.”

Charlie waved that away. “That wasn’t them.”

“How do you know that?”

“Nelle and I talked about it. It wasn’t the de Medicis. It was probably the Simons.”

“Who are the Simons?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?”

“Why do none of you ever give a straight answer?”

“For so many reasons.”

The back screen door opened again, and Max leaned out. “You better get in here, Charlie. The bears are out front, and they’re getting restless. They want treats.”

“You shouldn’t feed the bears,” Keane told them.

Charlie chuckled, but it eventually faded away. “Oh. You’re not joking.”

“I don’t joke. You feed the bears, they become a nuisance. They lose their natural fear of humans and become aggressive.”

Frowning, Charlie asked, “Wait . . . are we talking about full-blood bears or shifter bears?”

“There’s no difference between the two. A bear’s a bear’s a bear.”

“Okay, I’m . . . I’m . . . um . . . going inside . . . now.”

Shay and Finn came to stand beside Keane.

“What did you say to Charlie?” Finn asked.

“I told her not to feed the bears.”

“Oh, my God. Not your ‘a bear’s a bear’s a bear’ speech again.”

“It’s not a speech. It’s a simple fact of life.”

“You just don’t like bears.”

“I really don’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

Keane heard annoying and constant crunching noises and turned toward a large tree. Hanging from one of the low branches by his knees swung Shen Li, chewing his bamboo and being annoying just by existing.

“See?” Keane pointed out to his brothers. “Annoying.”

“Suck in that jealousy, kitty cats!” Li happily shot back between bites of bamboo. “Because we all know, everybody loves pandas!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Keane sighed before heading back inside the house.

* * *

Nelle sat on the love seat across the living room from the big couch that could fit at least two Alaskan grizzlies in their bear form.

That’s where Keane Malone sat and, with the angriest, most confused scowl she’d seen on anything not in a superhero comic book, he watched Charlie walk back and forth from the kitchen to the front door to hand out different treats to all the bears.

They were lined up down the block, hoping she’d have enough for all of them.

She didn’t always, and that’s when—according to Max—they found their neighbors, in their bear forms, digging through their garbage at night, searching for any mistakes Charlie might have tossed out.

Bears didn’t mind if something was burned around the edges or a little uncooked in the center.

Charlie didn’t allow her “failures” to be handed out to anyone, so the garbage diggers usually found something to eat.

Cats were not exactly known for their patience.

And the longer Charlie took to finish her current, self-imposed task, the more pissed Malone became.

He wanted answers, and he wanted them now, but he’d already learned a very valuable lesson when it came to Charlie MacKilligan. She wouldn’t be rushed. Ever.

Over the years, though, less-intelligent people had tried.

They would try to rush or push Charlie. Especially in high school, when the government kept wanting to force their way into Stevie’s education and move her into a more contained job.

Something that they had complete control over.

They thought they could push her along and into college and out from under Charlie’s watchful gaze, but all those government bigwigs managed to do, instead, was make her mad.