Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,39
that every time Dutch went there for dinner or just to chat with his boss, he got food for free. Considering how much Dutch could eat when hungry and that Van Holtz Steakhouses were shifter friendly and offered the kind of meats one could usually only obtain by big game hunting, this was one of the best job perks Dutch could get.
“Can you wait a couple of days before you tell anyone else?” he asked.
“Sure. No one’s looking for her, so it’s not a problem.”
“Thanks, Hannah.”
“Need me to do anything else?”
“Find out when she gets to the States.”
“You sure she’s coming here?”
“Trust me . . . she’s coming this way.”
Dutch started toward the door, but quickly stopped, facing Hannah again. “Any sign of Freddy?”
“MacKilligan?”
“Yeah.”
Hannah spun her chair around. “I thought you said that guy was dumb.”
“Dumb as they come.”
“I don’t see how. He’s always one step ahead of me. And I’m good.”
“Could he be working with somebody?”
“He must be. Maybe he has a new girlfriend to help him out.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Also . . . someone else is looking for Freddy. That I can tell you.”
“Do you know who?”
“No. Want me to find out?”
Dutch shook his head. “Don’t bother. We need to just find him. Preferably before he gets himself killed.”
“It’s nice you care,” she said with a smile.
“I don’t. Not about him, anyway. And Max doesn’t care either. I just don’t want Stevie to cry. I hate when she cries.”
“Softy.”
“Again, thanks, Hannah.”
She faced her multiple screens. “Anytime.”
* * *
“I tried to eat a child?”
Max nodded. “Sort of. I mean, we assumed you were trying to eat him. You had him by the back of the neck and had dragged him off to a nearby tree. But that tree has a lot of leaves, so we couldn’t exactly see what you were doing. For all we know, you were just playing with him. You know . . . testing your claws and things.”
Vargas did that thing again. He had done it a lot in the last fifteen minutes. With his elbows on the table, he buried his head in his hands and dug his fingers into his scalp. It was like he wanted to massage his brain but the skull kept getting in his way.
Finally, he looked up again. “Was anyone hurt?”
She waved his obvious concern away. “The kid’s fine. His father and uncles are a little pissed but the Kapowskis are always pissed. They’re like the pissiest grizzlies on the block.”
“I think I’d be pissed, too, if someone tried to eat my kid.”
“Allegedly.” He frowned and Max explained, “In case there’s any legal trouble. We go with ‘allegedly.’ ”
“Legal trouble? As in getting arrested for eating a child? That seems like something one should go to prison for.”
“Allegedly eating a child . . . actually, allegedly attempting to eat a child. And you were having a rough moment. We thought you had completely healed up but it seems the damage to your brain was worse than we thought, so it took a bit longer for your recovery. You feel fine now, though, right?”
“Even if I can’t tell whether this is reality or a fantasy world where I’m a cat?”
“Christ, we’re not still arguing about that, are we?” Max didn’t even bother to keep the annoyance out of her tone. If he couldn’t accept this shit after everything that had happened, he’d never be able to move forward, and Max wasn’t one to linger on things for long. What was the point? “You now know what you are . . . right?”
Vargas looked down at his hand, watched as claws came out of his fingertips. Watched the skin become covered in fur.
He shook his hand out as if he’d just burned it. But he was just trying to turn it back to human. Something every kid shifter tried in the beginning.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah, I know what I am. I know.”
“It’s not a bad thing. It’s actually amazing.”
“Is it?” he asked.
“Of course it is.”
“But I tried to eat a child—”
“Allegedly.”
“—then I was hit by a tranquilizer dart—”
“You needed the rest.”
“—and I keep ending up naked on your china cabinet.”
“Yeah . . . that is weird.”
In confusion, his head tilted to the side. “Really? That’s the weird one?”
“To me. I’m not much of a climber. But I’ve got a hell of a jump shot. Oh!” She snapped her fingers. “I wanted to ask you if the team you said you were working with knows you’re still aliv—”