In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,108
noses twitching, their eyes watering. They began to gasp, hands going to their throats. A few coughed, the others just gagged.
When he looked at her again, she repeated, “No one but yourselves . . .”
* * *
The bar had no signage and was what Stevie would definitely call a “hole in the wall” that was buried deep in Jersey. Anyone who came to a bar like this didn’t come here to see and be seen. They came here to hide from anything that could get back to the cops.
No wonder the MacKilligans came here for their after-funeral drinks. It was a very typical MacKilligan-type bar.
As soon as Stevie walked inside, she paused at the door, her eyes watering, her skin itching, and her nerves suddenly wildly alive.
She was going to panic. She was going to freak out. Because she scented bears. Grizzlies. Grizzlies she didn’t know.
Stranger grizzlies would eat her! She knew it! They knew it! The world knew it! Everyone knew stranger grizzlies were going to use her bones like tooth—
“Want a beer?” Shen asked, placing his hand on her shoulder.
“I want a beer,” Kyle said, coming in behind Shen.
“You can have a Shirley Temple and you’ll enjoy it, child.” Shen smiled down at her. “Or something stronger?” He leaned in and whispered, “You look like you need something stronger.”
“There are bears here.”
“You mean the triplets?”’
“Of course I don’t mean the triplets.” She pointed across the bar toward the back. “I mean them.”
“Those old bears?” he asked. “You’re worried about old bears?”
“Old bears are just as dangerous—”
“Think they still have their teeth? Or do they just sit under beehives hoping honey drips into their open mouths?”
“They’re going to kill us all. Most of us are honey badgers. Nearly everyone in this room has consumed large amounts of honey in the last few days. They’re all like sacks of honey just waiting to be punctured.”
“Uh-oh,” Kyle said, gazing at her. “She’s spiraling.”
“I am not spiraling. I am stating the truth, and another thing—”
“Where’s Max?” Shen asked and Stevie suddenly realized that he was right. Where was Max?
“You haven’t seen her?” she asked.
“We left her at the graveyard . . . with your Dad.”
She spun around, her gaze searching for Charlie. “I know they’ve killed him. I mean, I wanted to kill him. I just have restraint. Max has no restraint!”
* * *
Shen watched Stevie march through the mass of her relatives in order to find her oldest sister.
“You handled that masterfully,” Kyle remarked beside him.
“What are you talking about?”
“What I’ve learned from living among canines—”
“You mean your family?”
“—is that the best way to get a wild animal off your back is to distract it. You tried one way with her and, when that didn’t work, you went with another. Brilliant.” The boy patted Shen’s shoulder. “Look at you. Thinking through those issues.”
“Is this why you never went to high school like normal kids?”
“Of course it is. Kindergarten was a nightmare of abuse. Like it was my fault they were still learning their ABCs while I was reading Chekov.”
“Who?”
The kid cringed. “Good Lord,” he muttered as he started off toward the bar. “She is really taking a step down with you, isn’t she?”
“A minute ago I was brilliant.”
* * *
“Where is Max?”
Charlie faced her sister. “I have no idea.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. I don’t know where she is.” Charlie swept her arm in a half circle. “She is out in the wild. And I forgot to tag her.”
“Amusing.”
“She’ll be here.”
“When? And will Dad still be alive?”
Charlie blinked. “What does Dad have to do with anything?”
“We left him in a filled-in grave.”
“And we both know he’ll be fine.”
“Not if you sent Max after him.”
“I didn’t send Max after him. I already told you that.”
But her sister’s pursed lips suggested she didn’t believe Charlie, which Charlie found a little insulting.
“If I ever got to the point where I’d send Max to finish him off, I’d not only tell you about it, I’d have you locked in a secure room and stuffed into a titanium cage until it was over because we both know that you’d bring down the building to save that worthless motherfucker for no other reason than he put his semen in our mothers!”
* * *
As soon as Charlie started yelling, Stevie knew she’d made a mistake. Not because she’d caused her sister to yell. Charlie was kind of a yeller by nature. It was that although she had grasped how much their father’s performance at the church and