Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,142
don’t scare me.”
Watching her leave the diner, Miki took out her phone. She’d hoped to avoid this, but . . .
“I found them,” she said when she got an answer. “But I’m thinking that you better move fast.”
* * *
Charlie had slipped into the role of team leader quite naturally. Of course, Max’s teammates made that easy. They started off joking and not taking things as seriously as they should, which had always been their way. But when Charlie snarled, they reacted so quickly and intensely, the question of who was in charge never came up.
Body armor was put on while Max and Charlie made decisions about what weapons to bring. They packed up a black van and, with Tock driving, headed off.
They were nearing the docks when Charlie got a text on her phone. She looked down and said, “They’re already on the move.”
She typed into the keyboard and called out, “New address on the GPS, Tock.”
“Got it.”
“You ready for this, Streep?” she asked, since Streep was the only one not in body armor.
“Yep.” Then she dug into her purse and pulled out lip gloss.
“Seriously?” Mads asked.
“Shut up.”
chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
He heard the knock at the door of the house they were “borrowing” and opened it.
She was tiny but cute, staring up at him with bright eyes and glossy lips.
“Hi!” she said. “My car broke down and I was wondering—”
He closed the door in her face.
“That was rude!” she yelled.
“Go away, badger. I’m not in the mood to play with you.”
One of the bosses helping to take inventory came out of the office. “What the hell was that?”
“Some badger. Probably came to rob the place.”
“Kill her,” he said, turning back toward the office.
“Really?” That seemed a little harsh. Even for grizzlies doing illegal shit.
“Just do it. No witnesses.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
Opening the door, he stepped outside. The badger was walking toward the long driveway. “Hey!” he called out. “You can use the phone.”
“Great! Thanks!”
She ran back and, with a big smile, stepped past him into the house. He waited until he closed the door, then grabbed her around the throat and crushed her scrawny little neck. When she stopped moving, he tossed her by the stairs and walked to the office.
“All done,” he told the bosses.
“Good. Deal with the body when we move out tonight.”
He nodded and turned back toward the door he was guarding. But he stopped and looked at the staircase. The empty staircase.
“Uh . . . gentlemen?”
“What?”
“I think we have a—”
She plunged the blade into his inside thigh. When he grabbed it to stop the bleeding, dropping to his knee, she rammed the same blade into his throat.
He dropped to the ground and she gazed down at him for the brief moment he had left. And he watched her crack her neck one way, then the other. Bones knitting themselves back together in a way that didn’t seem possible. But it didn’t matter anymore, did it? Not anymore.
* * *
Who invites a girl in just to crush her neck? Rude! Good thing she was a honey badger or she’d be dead! How tacky would that be?
“What the hell’s going on out here?”
Streep raised the Desert Eagle .44 she’d taken from the weapons room—a gun that she’d always wanted but never wanted to blow the money on—and took quick shots. A weapon of this power was an absolute necessity in a room with six big bears in it. She caught three with one shot each to the neck, chest, and gut respectively. Not sure she’d be able to hit her targets with the rest of the bears coming at her so fast, she ran to the front door, pulling it open. She dropped to a crouch and waited.
The first bear ran out of the office but Charlie was now in the doorway and she pulled the trigger of her own weapon. Clean headshot. The second bear came out and she got him, too. Also a clean headshot. Streep had always heard from Max what a good shot her sister was, but . . . wow.
The third bear avoided the office doorway altogether and came through the wall next to it, tackling Charlie to the ground. But Max was on top of him and she hammered one of her tactical knives into his throat. There was so much blood, so quickly, Streep knew her friend had hit the aorta.
No matter where on the body she struck, Max always hit an artery if she wanted to.