the distance, trying to see who it was. Who had shot her?
“Come out, Max! You and your sisters! Show yourselves!”
It hurt to breathe, but the shots to the chest hadn’t hit the right spot.
She glanced down and thought it again: The shots hadn’t hit the right spot.
Whoever had shot her, it wasn’t one of the sisters. They knew how to take down a badger better than anyone.
Then who—
The blade slid into the back of her neck. Right where the spine and the skull attached. Blood poured from her mouth and her body began to convulse.
Mairi turned and faced the deaf girl. She held the bloody blade in her hand; Freddy was still hog-tied in the boot.
Two more rifle shots hit Mairi in the chest, right through the heart. And she knew where the next shot would be coming. But it didn’t matter. Not anymore.
* * *
The last shot went through Mairi MacKilligan’s head and Dee-Ann nodded at Cella Malone. “Not bad.”
“What do you mean, ‘not bad’?” Malone asked. “I nailed that bitch with each shot. Center mass and head.”
“But she still didn’t go down.”
“Not my fault. Bitch is a honey badger.”
“What about your cousin? Should we go get her?”
Malone began carefully taking her rifle apart. “No way. I get near her and there will be another civil war between the Malones.”
“I don’t understand you cats. Smiths never have these problems. Someone gets out of hand, the Pack just turns on ’em, then we go about our day.”
“It’s always fascinating when you tell your family stories.”
“Now, now. Don’t be jealous, darlin’. Not everyone can be lucky enough to be a Smith.”
* * *
Natalie waited to see if there would be any more shots. There weren’t. Apparently, all they’d wanted was Mairi MacKilligan.
She stared down at her body. Could still feel the honey badger’s hand around her neck. It had been risky, taking her on. But she hadn’t had a choice.
She reached down and searched the body. She took some cash and the car keys.
Once she had what she needed, she looked down at Freddy MacKilligan. The biggest mistake of her life.
But she was ready to rectify that, too.
She took the bandana she now held and shoved it into his open mouth. He was probably screaming at her. He always thought if he screamed loudly enough, she could hear him. He didn’t seem to understand what the word “deaf’ actually meant.
Once she knew she’d made him quiet, she retied his bindings so that he couldn’t slip out of them for a few hours.
Then she closed the trunk, grabbed her bags and laptop, and got in the car.
It was a Mercedes, which was a very nice car. She started it up and moved on to the last phase of this huge fuck-up.
chapter THIRTY
Their games—playoffs, finals, or otherwise—didn’t end like the ones people watched on TV. There was no media, no interviews, no discussions about gameplay with anyone beyond the coaches. Instead, players just returned to the locker room, showered, changed clothes, and sometimes went to an after-game party or dinner.
Zé waited with Max’s sisters and friends for her to make her way down the gauntlet of fans. She and the others signed autographs, hair wet from the shower, game bags slung over their shoulders. Looking at Max and the rest of the Butchers’ “Badger Force”—which was what the triplets now called her four honey badger teammates—he couldn’t tell that they’d just taken down a shifter-run kidnapping ring. Quickly, efficiently, and—according to his chat with Charlie during an interesting halftime show with giant panda rappers directly from Hong Kong—without any loss of victims or serious harm to her team.
That was huge, considering the number of victims they’d had to deal with.
Because the team had only won their first playoff game—they had quite a few games to go before they made it to the finals—their celebration consisted of a dinner at a shifter restaurant in Chinatown. Although Shen pointed out that this particular restaurant was not run by giant pandas but a South China tiger family, Zé noted that the menu still catered to the pandas. He’d never seen bamboo combined with so many things before. And Shen ordered at least half of them.
As the team and their friends and family enjoyed the night and their win, Max was surprisingly quiet. She didn’t smile as much as she usually did either.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked her when she rested her head on his arm.
“We should have been better. Our timing tighter.”
“During the game? Are