Page 31 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

“I wanna know: Why do you guys always have weapons just lying around?” Shay questioned. “It’s like you don’t want my daughter to visit.”

“How could you five not know we were here?” Rutowski abruptly focused on Nelle, Max, Tock, and Streep. “I am trusting you four with my niece’s safety.”

Max frowned. “You are?”

“Why?” Nelle wanted to know.

“Since when?” Tock asked.

“Mads, do you feel weak? Are you dying?” Streep began to cry. “You know we’ll all take care of you on your deathbed.”

“I’ll probably just put a pillow over your face to end it quicker,” Max admitted.

“Which is what I would demand,” Mads snarled.

“How comforting for me,” Rutowski said with great sarcasm.

“We have been here for, like, an hour,” álvarez said with a laugh, before dropping into one of the empty club chairs. She swung her feet up onto the ottoman and threw her hands out so they rested on the armrests. “We had dinner while we were in your kitchen. How could you not know?”

“Dinner?” Max repeated. “What dinner?”

“Beef stew.”

“That was my beef stew,” Max complained.

“It was ,” Steph Yoon said. “And it was delicious.”

“Who knew a grizzly portion of beef stew was enough for four badgers with healthy appetites?” álvarez happily taunted.

“Did you have to put your dentures back in to eat it?” Max snarked back.

álvarez laughed, but Yoon and Rutowski had to grab the Russian She-badger’s arms to hold her back. Fangs out, the crazed female snarled at Max.

“One day,” the Russian threatened, “I will cut off your head and wear it like hat on head!”

“That’s enough!” Mads yelled, standing between the warring factions. “Do any of you understand what’s going on right now? What’s happening right in front of us? Do you ?”

Nelle leaned in close to Keane and whispered, “Wait for it.”

“Championship!” Mads bellowed.

Rutowski looked at her friends. “I have to admit . . . I really thought she was going to talk about the whole killer lions thing.”

“We have a championship coming up,” Mads elaborated, “and you four are doing nothing but distracting us!”

“Championship?” Rutowski softly repeated. “Is that seriously what you’re worried about right now?”

“Yes! Because that’s all that matters!”

“Okay,” Rutowski said, immediately changing her tone to calm her niece down while raising her hands up to her waist, palms out.

“I understand your concern. But you do need to remember that we’re all in danger right now.

Not just you guys. Not just us. But our families.

They just sent killers to our homes and—”

“And you killed them all!” Mads reminded them. “So sitting around, worrying about more killers that you can probably handle, seems like a waste of everyone’s time.”

“Okay. I understand. You want to focus on this.” Rutowski glanced at her friends. “We can work directly with Charlie.”

“No!” Nelle and her teammates immediately screamed. The older badgers jumped but, again, the tigers didn’t react at all. They seemed to be getting used to life with honey badgers. Something that was not easy for anyone.

Eyes wide, Rutowski raised her hands until they were in front of her chest, palms still out.

“How about we all calm down?” she asked.

“How about you not talk to my sister?” Max shot back.

“Why?” Yoon asked. “Why can’t we talk to her? Unlike you, she seems completely reasonable.”

“The fact that you don’t know why you shouldn’t,” Streep sweetly replied, “is why you shouldn’t.”

“That makes no sense.”

Nelle stood and stepped over Keane’s long legs, moving toward the four She-badgers.

“Look,” she began gently, “we understand you want to be helpful.”

Rutowski’s eyes narrowed. “Uh-huh.”

“And I’m sure you can be. Maybe with . . .” Nelle paused, trying to think of something that could keep these four females busy for the next few days, and out of everyone’s hair. “Um . . . your husbands!” she said, suddenly remembering three of the women were married.

“Our husbands?”

“Yes. You can speak to them and see if they can get their uncles and . . . the, uh . . . pack or whatever . . . to help. That would be so awesome! Right, Mads?”

Mads looked up from the playbook she was scanning. “What?”

Rutowski’s eyes were so narrow now, they were practically slits. “So you’re saying we can’t actually help you guys?”

“No, no. That’s not what we’re saying.”

“It isn’t?”

“Max!” Nelle snapped.

* * *

Keane finished his bottle of Guinness and placed it on the big coffee table next to his brothers’ finished bottles of beer.

He heard the others bickering about dogs or wolves or husbands or whatever, but didn’t want to get involved.

So he stared at the empty beer bottles that were unconsciously being lined up as each person finished their own particular brand of beer.

After about five minutes, when everyone was done with their beers, Keane leaned in and, using his forefinger, inched each bottle to the very edge of the table, ensuring they were all perfectly aligned, before knocking each one off.

After they’d all hit the floor but didn’t shatter against the rug Keane had just noticed, he heard Finn let out an annoyed sigh .

. . then his brother placed each bottle back on the table in a perfectly straight line.

Keane again aimed his forefinger at the first bottle when Mads suddenly growled, “You’re setting those bottles up for him again ?”

Startled, Keane looked up to find all the badgers staring at him and his brothers, watching him knock the bottles off the table while Finn would set them up again.

A little ritual the three brothers could do for hours, much to his mother’s annoyance and something they’d been doing since they were toddlers.

And Shay? Well, after stretching his arms up above his head, he had been using the tips of his claws to tear at a small spot where the paint had split a bit, and by now, he had removed a several-inches-wide section off Mads’s wall.

Keane noted that the previous interior color had been a very light blue.

Nice, but not really Mads’s taste, he was guessing.

“I’m out of here,” Rutowski snarled, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a set of keys.

“Look, look,” Mads said, getting to her feet. “We’re sorry, Aunt Tracey.”

“We are?”

“Max!” the four of them snarled at their teammate.

“There’s just so much going on,” Mads tried again, stepping closer to her glowering aunt. “And we’re really not trying to be difficult. I mean, if you need anything from us, please. Let us know. I want you guys to be safe, too.”

“That’s great.” álvarez finally slid off the chair and put her hands on Rutowski’s shoulders. “And since you offered to help out, why don’t you take care of Trace’s dogs tonight?”

“Dogs?”

“Yeah. She needs a break, and you so kindly offered.”

Mads lowered her gaze, and Keane watched her expression change from helpful niece to grudging acquaintance at the sight of the five panting beasts surrounding their owner.

“You want me to take care of those things?”

“They’re Belgian Malinois and have already eaten,” álvarez went on, as she gently pushed her friend toward the front door. “A few treats and some friendly petting should keep them happy.”

“I’m not really a dog person.”

“Really? Then why do you have a big food bowl filled with kibble in your kitchen?”

“That’s for the coyote.”

Yoon took the car keys from Rutowski, then froze. “You have a coyote?”

“I thought I smelled coyote,” álvarez muttered. “But I thought maybe it was just the first signs of a brain aneurysm.”

“I don’t have a coyote,” Mads nonsensically explained. “He just lives here.” The four older females stared at her. “Under the house. Squatter’s rights.”

“On that note . . .” álvarez pushed Rutowski toward the front door.

“We’ll pick the dogs up tomorrow,” Yoon said to Mads, even as she gazed at her like a mutant.

The Russian followed after the other three, her gaze for Max and Max alone.

When she reached the door, she abruptly stopped.

“One day,” the Russian threatened Max, elegantly drawing one claw across her throat. “One day.”

When the front door closed behind the She-badgers, Max joked, “I love them! They’re fun!”

“Max!” Streep snapped. “Why are you being so mean to those poor old ladies? Tracey Rutowski is the only member of Mads’s family willing to acknowledge her existence! Not one blood relative loves Mads or even likes her besides that woman! We have to be nice to her and her friends.”

“Thanks, Streep,” Mads replied with great sarcasm.

Keane was starting to like Streep. She was brutal, but always in the nicest way possible.

“Should we be concerned about what those four may be up to that they can’t bring the dogs?” Tock asked. “When my grandmother has that expression walking out the door, someone’s nation is taking a hit.”

“I say we don’t ask questions,” Streep suggested.

“At times like this, with Charlie baking, all these organizations pissed off, lion males willing to kill cubs and pups, old badgers starting shit out in the wild, and dogs we now have to”—she twisted her lips in disgust—“ pet . . . plausible deniability is our friend.”

* * *

“Hi, Daddy!” Nelle greeted her father, waving at him on her phone.

“Is that Mr. Z? Hi, Mr. Z!” Max said from behind Nelle, resting her chin on Nelle’s shoulder. “It’s been ages, huh?”

“It has. How are you, Maximilian?”

“It’s just Max. And I’m great!”

“Haven’t you all been attacked by big cats and are currently in constant danger?”

“Yeah!” Max said with a smile before walking away.

“Your friend has not changed.”

“I know, Daddy.”

“So . . . you’re calling. Why?”

“Well, I’m trying to find contacts we can—”

“No.”

“No?” She stared at her father’s video image. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“You and your friends will have to work this out on your own.”

She immediately started speaking Cantonese. “But . . . I’m your little bird.”

“No. I said you were my little crested serpent eagle.”

“I like bird.”

He smiled. “I have faith in you, Nelle. You don’t need me.”