Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,5

from behind and yanked her deep into the alley that she realized the bitch had been standing behind her.

Flung to the ground, her ice cream tossed off somewhere, Max didn’t even have time to put her arms up to protect her face before she was hit again and again. First with a fist and then . . . ? A crowbar?

Christ! What was with this woman? Why did her cousin hate her so much? This was the second time she’d tried to kill Max. The second time she’d come after Max specifically. Not even sending someone else to do the job, but coming herself. Why did the bitch have it in for her? Max didn’t even know Mairi MacKilligan personally. She was from the Scottish side of their family and even the American side barely recognized Max and her two sisters. Until recently, the Scottish had paid them absolutely no mind.

Maybe this was a hate crime. Maybe Mairi just hated Asians. Max was half Chinese. Honestly, Max really didn’t know. Usually people had to get to know Max MacKilligan before they started hating her.

But then Mairi screamed and Max was able to look up in time to see that her cousin had been shot several times in the chest and stomach by a long-range rifle. She praised her solid decision not to do all this alone and scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her face and skull from where her cousin had cracked her with that damn crowbar.

Of course, this beating of one cousin by another was pretty meaningless. Because Mairi and Max were honey badgers. Gunshots to the chest and stomach . . . ? That didn’t kill their kind. Crowbars to the head? Nope. That wouldn’t kill their kind either. It took much more than any of that to actually do serious damage to a MacKilligan.

Still, Max was on a mission here, so she moved with purpose, scrambling over her cousin and charging out of the alley, across the busy Leiden street, and directly into the plain white van that held the men hired to kidnap her.

When Max hit the inside of that vehicle she looked at the men, expecting a sense of urgency about their job. But all they did was gawk at her. Like idiots. What were they doing? Didn’t they have a kidnapping to perform?

She waited another few seconds until she saw her cousin, bleeding from all her gunshot wounds, stumble out of the alley. Max didn’t have time to wait for these men to get their shit together.

“Go!” she ordered them, pulling the black hood over her head. “Go! Go! Go!”

* * *

Mairi MacKilligan stood on the corner and watched the white van speed off. People ran up to her, speaking to her in some fuckin’ language she didn’t understand, attempting to help her. As if she had time for any of that. She wasn’t like these people. Boring, useless full-humans. Easily destroyed by the slightest shot to the body. So, no. Mairi didn’t need an ambulance and Christ knew she didn’t need the fuckin’ coppers.

So, she turned away from all those panicked people and headed down the street to her car. Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she stopped long enough to answer.

“What?” she demanded, slapping away the people still attempting to help her.

“Bosses want you back,” a male voice ordered. “Our people will pick you up at the airstrip.”

The call disconnected. Not even a time given! Idiots!

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” she raged, realizing she had to get back to Rome right away. She had to get to that fuckin’ airstrip before her twin aunts’ hired men came looking for her. Mairi wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be going after her cousin.

But she really hated that bitch, and nothing would make her feel better about life and the world in general than seeing the little twat dead.

* * *

The black hood came off and he saw her for the first time.

This was her? This tiny woman with purple hair and a few bruises on her face? She was the reason an entire unit of ex-military had been hired to snatch her off the Netherland streets?

He didn’t understand why they were here. Why they’d grabbed this girl. Especially when their jobs mostly consisted of wiping out small villages at the behest of cold-blooded warlords. But the man who’d hired them wanted her, and he wanted her alive, although he didn’t seem to care how she was treated in