Page 68 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

N elle and Keane walked into the kitchen, and álvarez greeted them with a, “There you are! Sit, sit.” She gestured to the big wood table as she and Rutowski began placing big bowls of pasta, platters of steak and fried chicken, and fresh bread and bowls of vegetables on the table.

Wine had already been uncorked and was now being poured into stemware.

An icy bottle of beer, however, was placed in front of him.

Yoon was already sitting at the table and working on a laptop. The Russian was talking on her phone to someone, but Keane couldn’t understand what was being said, because it sounded like she was speaking. . . German?

Nelle pulled out a chair and sat down. She crossed her arms over her chest and one leg over the other. She said nothing, but Keane knew that wasn’t a good thing.

With the food placed, the four She-badgers sat down. They took what they wanted, like he did, but Nelle simply sat there. Not moving. Not speaking. Just waiting.

“You’re not going to eat anything?” álvarez asked.

“I’m not hungry at the moment.” Her gaze moved over to Rutowski. “I have a lot on my mind.”

“Like what?” Rutowski asked, managing to smile while asking a question and eating steak.

“I know you four are up to something . . . I just don’t know what.”

“Sweetie . . . we’re always up to something.”

* * *

“Whose house is this?”

Nelle asked because she smelled wolf everywhere, but there was nothing that told her that any of these four badgers actually lived or owned this place.

Between bites, Rutowski replied, “It’s Edgar’s.”

Nelle glanced at Keane, but he was so busy shoving food into his face . . .

“Edgar?” she repeated. “Edgar Van Holtz? The wolf who clearly hates you?”

“He doesn’t hate us, ” álvarez said.

“He hates Trace,” Yoon finished.

“And me,” the Russian tossed in. “But it is mutual and built on the fires of a very cold war.”

“Why would you bring us here? Won’t he—”

“Even if Edgar knew we were here, he’d never rat us out to the cops.” álvarez pulled a baguette into two, handing the second piece to Rutowski.

“Plus, when we stay here, we reroute the security system,” Yoon explained. “As far as he’s concerned, no one is here. If they’re searching for us, it’s probably in Germany or Lithuania.”

“Lithuania?” álvarez repeated. “Why Lithuania?”

“You know. Lithuania . . .”

“Ohhhh. Right. Lithuania. Yeah. She’s right. He’d be looking for us in Lithuania.”

Nelle held her hands up. “I don’t want to know about Lithuania.”

“You’re right. You don’t.”

“What I do want to know is why Edgar Van Holtz would be looking for us at all?”

“Well, it may not be him. But it might be others.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You look concerned.”

“Not used to my own kind trying to hunt me down.”

“Really?” Yoon asked, clearly shocked.

“When you say ‘your own kind,’ do you mean badgers or shifters in general?”

“Either.”

“Huh.”

“So now I have to worry about The Group? Katzenhaus? BPC?”

“More like the CIA. FBI. Homeland Security.”

“The Hague, if this is ever considered a war crime,” álvarez added.

Nelle glanced down at the steak knife next to her plate and debated using it to kill all four She-badgers, but then Keane spoke.

“Am I going to prison?”

Nelle immediately saw that the color had drained from Keane’s handsome face as he held an uneaten drumstick in his hand.

“I’m going to prison, aren’t I, Nelle? I bit a man’s head off.

I tore out another man’s spine. They definitely send you to prison for that.

I’m going to prison forever. Even worse, they’re going to bury me in the ground, aren’t they?

They have some underground prison, just for shifters, and they’re going to bury me in it.

Aren’t they? Some place no bigger than this room!

I’m going to die in an underground prison, aren’t I? ”

With an annoying amount of I told you so in the gesture, álvarez used both hands to point at Keane.

Nelle’s contrary nature wanted to simply leave the room so the four crones would be forced to deal with a panicked tiger on their own, but she cared too much about him. Not them . . . him !

Reaching over, she grabbed his chicken-free hand and squeezed. “You’re not going to prison.”

“You promise?” Keane asked, sounding more desperate than she’d ever heard him before.

“I promise.”

“We would kill you long before that anyway,” the Russian dryly volunteered.

“Shut up!” Nelle snapped.

“Don’t worry!” Rutowski quickly stated, pressing her hand to her upper chest. “We protect our own.” When Nelle scoffed at that particular lie, the female added, “As I’ve always said .

. . killing together, brings friends together.

” The She-badger had her hands clasped, as if she were giving a state of address to the United Nations.

“I understand now,” Nelle flatly told her. “You’re insane.”

“Not clinically!”

“There is nothing to worry about. This is already being cleaned up,” álvarez told them.

“By whom?”

“By those who know it would be very unfortunate if we were ever captured and interrogated,” Rutowski said, with a smile that was so off-putting, Nelle continued to hold Keane’s free hand just to keep herself grounded.

“We know things,” the female continued, still smiling. “We’ve done things. If they capture us, all hell would break loose, and they all know I won’t care.”

“Trace is right,” Yoon muttered around her food, the hood of her black sweatshirt pulled over her head, as if she were trying to hide her identity from her own friends. “They can’t afford any of that.”

“So, I’m not going to prison?” Keane asked.

“You’re not going to prison,” álvarez promised.

“And if you are ever captured, I will put bullet in head before they can ever put you in cage.”

Keane nodded at the Russian. “Thank you, Oksana.”

“No, no!” Nelle snarled. “No ‘thank you, Oksana!’ Do not thank her for offering to kill you!”

“But I don’t wanna go to prison.”

“You’re not going to—”

Nelle stopped when she realized she was screaming; clenched her free fist and took a deep breath to calm herself down.

“She’s right,” Rutowski told Keane. “You’re not going to prison. And even if you did—”

“Which is not going to happen,” álvarez insisted.

“—we got her”—she pointed at the Russian—“out of East Germany when there was still an East Germany.”

“So, we can easily get you out of the American prison system,” Yoon said.

“Which we have done several times in the past anyway.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” álvarez said to Rutowski. “We are legally obligated not to discuss that.”

“Right, right. I forgot.”

At that point, Nelle released Keane’s hand so she could use both her own to rub her eyes and silently wish for death for four old crones.

* * *

“Can I tell you something without you coming across the table to kill me?”

“No.”

Nelle said that so flatly, Keane had to look away before he started laughing. She was so sick of these four females, she didn’t know what to do with herself. It would be hilarious if he wasn’t still recovering from the trauma of traveling underground.

“Well, that makes this awkward,” Rutowski replied to Nelle’s admission.

“I’ll grab her before she gets across the table,” Keane promised.

“Oh. Okay. Yeah. Because you’re really fast. Cat fast.” Rutowski nodded. “Cool. Anyway,” she said to Nelle, “do you remember when you told me not to talk to Charlie?”

“Yes.”

“I talked to Charlie.”

Keane shoved the drumstick into his mouth, bone and all, so he could catch Nelle when she launched herself over the table.

As he held her with both arms, Nelle desperately struggling to be free, she still managed to ask through gritted fangs, “Why would you do that? Just because I told you not to?”

“Partly. But mostly because I like her. I like her a lot.”

“Of course you do,” the Russian said, “because she is part dog.”

“We did bond over the dogs,” Rutowski admitted. She grinned. “There were puppies! I love puppies!”

Nelle allowed Keane to put her back in her chair, but it wasn’t until she retracted her fangs and her growls only came low and from the back of her throat, did he completely release her.

When Nelle felt confident she had most of her control back, she ordered, “Just tell me what you did.”

“As I said, I talked to her before we left. I told her about my brilliant idea and what you were going to be up to in order for it to happen, and she was totally cool with it. Like, she didn’t go on a rage or anything.”

“Did she start baking?”

“She was baking when I told her.”

“Oh, God.”

“First, you need to know that our thing wasn’t to crash your thing,” Yoon said.

“And what, exactly, was your thing?”

“I had to pull my baby brother’s underwear over his head.”

Keane watched Nelle mutely stare at the Russian. He was glad he wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what the fuck that woman was talking about.

“His underwear needed pulling,” she insisted.

“Okay,” Nelle said quickly, “what does this have to do with you talking to Charlie when I expressly told you not to?”

Rutowski took a long moment, staring at Nelle the entire time, before replying, “Nothing.”

“Then why did you bring it up?”

She cleared her throat. “Clarity.”

“Oh, my God,” Nelle said, looking at him, but he had no idea what these ladies were on. Weed? Snake venom? Ricin? What?

Nelle blew out a long breath before asking, “Why did you tell Charlie anything?”

“To keep her in the loop.”

“You do not keep Charlie MacKilligan in the loop. Not without going through me .”

“Why not?”

Nelle lifted a finger, her focus on the table. She stayed like that for a few seconds before she asked Rutowski, “What did Charlie tell you to do?”

“She wants us to finish our deal with the Kopanski-Müllers.”

“With France now accusing us of being terrorists !”

Keane flinched at Nelle’s yelling.

“They’re not accusing us of being terrorists. They’re just saying they were attacked by terrorists. Which is wrong, but, ya know . . . who cares?”

“You idiot.”

“What now?” Rutowski sighed out in teenage-like exasperation.