Badger to the Bone (Honey Badger Chronicles #3) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,82

her “afraid of nothing!” badger friends cowering under the conference room table.

“We have to get out of here,” Streep desperately whispered. “She’ll kill us all!”

“We could burrow out,” Nelle said, getting out of her zip ties easily. Actually, they all could have gotten out of their zip ties but that would have just pissed off the cops.

“We might burrow into an actual jail,” Tock explained, reminding them that they didn’t know the layout of this building.

“Let’s go for that office next door,” Max suggested, deciding it was best to get her friends out of here. “On my mark, three . . . two . . . one!”

They bolted from under the table as something—something generally human—crashed onto the floor a few feet away from them. Still, they kept moving, with Max shoving them from behind. They scrambled out of the conference room and into the office next door. When Max turned around to slam the door behind her, Imani slipped past her into the office as well.

“Don’t mind me,” she said as she moved across the room to stand by the only full-human. A Latina woman with a short haircut, a badge around her neck, and a handful of popcorn caught between her fingers.

Max moved to a part of the glass that hadn’t been damaged by the grizzly toss and watched her sister.

Charlie was attempting to make her way across the room to get to Benji but all his guards were getting in her way. One swung at her from the front, but she caught his arm and twisted. Max cringed, hearing the splintering of bone. While Charlie was busy with that male, another came up behind her with a gun and hit her in the back of the head. Should have taken her right out. Should have. Didn’t.

Still twisting the arm in front of her, Charlie reached back with her free hand and grabbed the hand holding the gun. She tightened that hand into a fist until Max could hear more bones breaking. Charlie snatched the gun from all those broken fingers and swung her arm back, hitting her assailant across the face.

Max got ready to move, terrified Charlie would do what she always did when she got her hands on a gun during a nasty fight. Go for the headshots. But with one hand, Charlie dropped the clip and cleared the chamber. Then she tossed the gun away and started toward Benji again.

The breath Max let out was shaky, but relief flooded every cell. If Charlie started killing people in the middle of a police station—shifter or no—this would end so badly, and Max didn’t even want to think about it. So she didn’t; instead, she assumed Stevie had asked Charlie not to kill anyone. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d asked and probably not the last. So she kept the request for important times like this.

The final group of six guards attacked Charlie at once, throwing her to the ground and surrounding her. She disappeared from sight as the guards swarmed her. Mads immediately put her hand on Max’s shoulder. She was afraid Max would run to her sister’s rescue.

But that was not her plan. For many reasons.

The guards continued to kick and punch for several long seconds but, eventually, they slowed to a stop and then separated, revealing a hole where Charlie should be. The curious canines practically stuck their heads in that hole while the cats and bears just dipped their fists in to see if it was a true hole.

While they were distracted, a clawed fist came up through the flooring near the door. Seconds later, Charlie crawled out, covered in concrete and wood.

“I feel like we should warn them,” Nelle softly suggested, but none of them moved. None of them tapped on the glass or gestured wildly to the angry female sneaking up behind the guards. They didn’t do any of that and Charlie went from sneaking to galloping down the length of the conference table. Literally, she galloped. On all fours. Still human but, you know, galloping.

By the time one of the She-tigers turned to see what was happening, Charlie had launched herself over the group, directly at a stunned Benji.

The guards scrambled to un-attach her from Benji’s head, but now that she had her hands on him, Charlie seemed in no mood to let him go.

She wrapped her left arm around his neck tightly, probably choking him, and fought off the guards with the other. She was mostly just pushing