Pissed, Max put away her gun and took out another tactical knife.
She moved her shoulders to loosen them up and waited for her sister. Her team leader.
Charlie found the room where the most voices were coming from. She started to move to the door but stopped, looked up . . . and grinned.
Max raised her gaze and saw the air vent. She loved air vents.
* * *
Zé looked away from all the ballerinas twirling on the stage and glanced at his watch again.
“We’ve got tons of time. Stop worrying.”
He nodded at Shen’s words, glad there was at least a five-second break from the goddamn chewing. Because the panda never seemed to stop chewing. How did Stevie put up with it? She said she found it soothing, but . . . how? How did anyone find that noise soothing?
Zé dug his fingers into his hair and scratched before he looked at Shen and said, “Can I ask you a favor?”
Shen grinned around the bamboo stalk in his mouth. “Sure!”
“Go away.” Zé pointed at the audience seats across the aisle. “Over there.”
To his surprise, Shen’s grin didn’t waver. “It’s the chewing, right?”
“I like you so much, dude, but the chewing.”
The panda stood, chuckling. Though he was a couple of inches shorter than Zé, those muscular and massive shoulders, chest, and arms made him much wider. There was no denying the damage the man could do if he was pushed too far. But at the same time, there was something about him that still suggested “adorably rolly-polly,” like any panda in the zoo.
“Look,” Shen said before moving away, “I’ll check in with Stevie, give her a little reminder that we’ve got somewhere to be. Okay?”
“Thank you.”
“No problem. Just relax. No one likes an anxious cat. I’m worried I’m going to find you hanging from those chandeliers up there.”
Zé nodded but then quickly asked, “Wait. Is that something I can actually do?”
Shen shrugged. “Probably. But I wouldn’t do that here. I’m pretty sure those chandeliers would cost a fortune to replace.”
Deciding not to focus too much on whether he could hang from the ceiling or not, Zé realized the panda was right. Zé was anxious about getting to the Sports Center on time, which really surprised him. Max was playing in a basketball game, not making a speech at the United Nations.
Still . . . he wanted to be there early so he could get his seat, a hot dog, and beer, and watch his girlfriend—
Hold up. Girlfriend? He was thinking of Max MacKilligan as his girlfriend? The crazy female who’d decimated an entire team of well-trained mercenaries with her badger teammates? Or who didn’t seem too concerned that he’d almost eaten a child? That woman he was thinking of as his girlfriend?
It was true, Zé really didn’t have a type, but if he did, it sure as fuck wouldn’t be a Max MacKilligan!
“Hi!”
Zé jumped a little, surprised by the female voice beside him.
“I’m Mandy.” She held out her hand. “And you’re Zezé Vargas.”
He looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“I see.” She lowered her hand. “A little paranoid, are we? Understandable, I guess, considering your line of work.”
“Do I know you?”
“No. That’s why I introduced myself. Remember? I’m Mandy.”
“Why are you talking to me?”
She smiled. “I have an offer for you.”
“You have an offer for a man you don’t know? So you’re a prostitute?”
That smile disappeared and those eyes went from brown to a bright and dangerous blue.
“Do I look like a prostitute to you?”
“Well—” Zé blew out a long sigh. “I don’t know how to answer that without getting punched in the face, soooo . . .”
* * *
Charlie waited until Max and Mads had disappeared into the air vents. Then she waited another forty-five seconds before she kicked the door in.
Her weapon was already raised and she nearly took her shot, but the bears were ready for her. And smart. They were using some of the full-humans as their shields. One bear had two in his arms, raising them so high, they protected his head.
“Hello there, pretty girl,” he said behind the two sobbing women he was holding hostage. “Smelled you badgers coming a mile away.”
Pressing the left side of her body against the doorframe, her weapon raised so that she was locked on target, Charlie said, “Hello, Paddington. How are we going to play this?”
“First, before we can do anything . . .”
Charlie heard him grunt and one of the bears behind him punched his fist into the ceiling. A few seconds later he yanked Mads out of the air vent, slamming her to the ground with such force, Charlie was worried he’d sent her through the floor. The same bear reached back up and snagged a snarling, hissing Max out of the vent, too. Her sister put up much more of a fight, trying to wiggle out of the grip that held her.
But neither badger could get away, and their guns and a few knives were tossed aside before they were pinned to the floor by several bears.
“Now that we’ve got that cleared up,” the lead bear went on, “let’s discuss whether you’re going to sacrifice all these full-humans just to get to us?”
* * *
“Katzenhaus?” Zé repeated, staring at the business card Mandy had given him. “You guys run that snobby library, right?”
“That library—” Mandy stopped, took a moment to stare off at the stage filled with dancers. When she seemed calmer, she cleared her throat and said, “Katzenhaus is a protection agency. We protect the cat nation all over the world.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m a recruiter.”
He held up her card. “Yeah. I read that.”
“And you seem to have what we may be looking for.”
“You do know I just found out I’m a cat.”
“Yes. I’m aware. And we’re the ones who can teach you what you need to know.”
“Could you teach me to hang from the ceiling?”
She frowned. “Why would you want to hang from the ceiling?”
“Why wouldn’t you want to hang from the ceiling?”
“Okay.” Mandy stood and Zé had to admit that the woman definitely moved like a cat. Of course, she also moved like a hooker. “When you want to be serious, call the number on the card, and we can talk about your future. Sound good?”
“Yeah.”
“Excellent.”
She turned away from him and strutted off without making a sound, despite those six-inch heels.
Zé leaned back in his seat and studied the card in his hand.
“Hey, darlin’,” a new female voice said from his right.
Zé jumped again, this time hissing a little.
“Sorry ’bout that,” the woman wearing a Tennessee Titans baseball cap mocked. “I always forget how nervous y’all are.”
“You’re not a cat,” he told the woman sitting next to him.
“Definitely not.”
“Pitbull then?”
Her yellow eyes narrowed. “Gray wolf. And a Smith.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Dee-Ann Smith’s the name.”
“And howling is your game?”
Those eyes narrowed even more. “You really didn’t know all this time that you were a cat? Because you sure as hell sound like one.”
* * *
Charlie lowered her weapon.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t hurt full-humans just to get to you.”
“That’s excellent,” the lead bear said, although he didn’t lower his shields. “Now we can have a nice discussion about how we should move forward from here. Because you need to understand something. The people we work for, they won’t tolerate some worthless badgers fucking with their money stream. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“I underst
and.”
“So, maybe it’s best that you and your friends walk away before we crush you like the beer cans we drain on a Saturday night.”
“That’s a good plan.” Charlie threw her gun on the ground and the bears slowly lowered their human shields.
The lead bear released one of the women so he could point a gun at Charlie’s face.
He smirked, putting his finger on the trigger. “Now I’m debating what I should do.”
“Really?” Charlie asked. “Because I’m not.” She took in a breath, then bellowed, “Badger fight!”
* * *
Darren didn’t know how he’d gotten here, why he was here, or if he’d leave here alive. He just knew he was chained and about to be moved to another location. The bizarrely large men who seemed to love anything with honey on it had been getting ready to give them all injections. Those injections were filled with something that knocked all the captives out. Every time Darren got one of those shots, he’d wake up in a new place. At this point, he no longer knew which country he was in. He assumed he was in America, though he’d started in Canada.
But as the large men had been getting those shots ready, they’d suddenly stopped what they were doing and lifted their heads, sniffing the air. And, as they’d sniffed, they’d begun to growl at each other. Like some kind of weird warning. A few minutes later, they’d grabbed several of the prisoners to use as shields seconds before that woman had busted through the door.
At first, Darren had thought she was a policewoman, coming to rescue them. But she’d been alone and other than the body armor and her weapons, she’d had no badge or any markings on her equipment that suggested she was law enforcement. Then her friends had been dragged out of the ceiling and he’d given up all hope, ready to be taken wherever the large men were planning to take them.
Until the woman had screamed something. Darren couldn’t quite make it out. Whatever her words had been, her friends seemed to understand. Despite the grip the men had on the backs of their necks, the women were able to turn and face their captors; their skin stretching in a way that was terrifying to say the least. Then Darren saw claws and fangs and those two women attacked with such viciousness, he backed up even farther against the wall he was near and began to pray.
The attacking women climbed the large men holding them and dug their claws into their necks and faces. They used their fangs to tear off bits of them. The nose of one. The lips of the other.
The other large men jumped in to help, grabbing the women from behind. They ripped off one and threw her across the room. She hit the wall and landed on the ground. Not even a second later, she rolled over and got on all fours. With a snarl, she charged, climbing the back of another large man and slamming her claws into his skull.
By now, the woman who’d kicked in the door had picked up her weapon and she began firing. Carefully, though. Not spraying the room. No, she shot with precision. Head shots when she could get them. Neck or chest shots when she couldn’t. It took at least two head shots to take down each large man. At least six shots to the throat or chest to kill them that way.
Before Darren knew it, the large men were bleeding out on the floor and the women were unlocking his chains.
“You all right?” one of them asked.
“Yes,” he said, unable to look at her. Her face and neck were completely saturated in blood and bloody drool still poured from her mouth.
But still, she was letting him go. He would always be thankful for that at least.
* * *
Nelle opened the locks and removed the chains.
“Come on!” she ordered the full-humans. She didn’t yell, but she made sure to command them. That always worked better in situations like this. Then she said it again in a few other languages just in case.
Streep and Tock helped move the people out of the house. Just as they got them into the yard, a semitruck came toward them on the driveway. The transportation for the “product” they were selling, which was how the shifters had referred to the full-humans.
“Go!” Nelle yelled at Streep and Tock. “Get them down to the buses!”
While her teammates took off, she charged back into the house. As she went for the stairs that led to the lower floors, Charlie and the others were coming up, with even more freed full-humans. Her friends were covered in a good amount of blood, so Nelle wasn’t too concerned about anyone not friendly coming up from the basement.
“Truck coming,” she warned.
“You and Mads take these people out,” Charlie ordered. “Get them to the buses. Max and I will meet you back at the van.”
* * *
“How do you want to do this?” Max asked her sister. “Straight on or roundabout?”
Charlie motioned to the office window and the lawn outside it. “How about underground?”
* * *
Nelle and Mads handed the full-humans in their care over to Streep and Tock. “Meet us at the van!” she yelled, running back to Max and her sister.
She didn’t feel right about leaving them on their own—
Mads caught her and they stopped, watching as the MacKilligan sisters came up through the ground and jumped onto the truck from opposite sides.
They climbed up the doors and leaned into the open windows.
Max had one of her blades in her mouth. When she reached the window, she grabbed it and began stabbing the driver.
Charlie, a clean killer, just fired her weapon twice into the cab.
Max leaned farther in, her little legs just sort of hanging out the open window, making Nelle and Mads laugh, but she still managed to stop the truck before it ran directly into the mansion.
Done, the sisters jumped down and motioned toward the van.
* * *
Charlie reached the van and got in. The rest of her team followed seconds later.
The buses had already driven off and were going in another direction, into another state. There the full-humans would be cared for until they could figure out what was next for them. These weren’t necessarily undocumented workers or women about to be sold into sex slavery. They could have been picked up for no other reason than some freak shifter was in the mood to hunt and eat a blonde.
Whatever the original plans had been for them, Charlie had made it clear to Imani: no matter what these full-humans might have seen . . . no one was allowed to kill them to keep them quiet. They could threaten. They could blackmail. They could give them money to shut them up. But Charlie wouldn’t be part of any operation that involved killing people who had just been unlucky enough to be kidnapped by shifters.
Tock headed the van back to the city. They weren’t returning to the office they’d started at. They didn’t have time.
“To the Kingston Arms,” she told Tock.
“Don’t we have to get this back to the office where Imani met us?” Max asked.
“Tock!” Charlie barked.
“We’ve got two hours to get back to the city, get showered, and meet the pregame bus!”
Max rubbed her nose to hide her smile.
“Are you coming to the game, Charlie?” Nelle asked.
“Yes. I want to see my sister play.” Charlie paused for a few seconds, then added, “So you bitches better win—or I’m going to be upset.”
Slowly, Charlie turned her chair around to focus on the computer screen while Max’s teammates shrank down in terror.
Charlie glanced at Max over her shoulder, but the sisters had to look away from each other before they started to laugh hysterically.
Because that would be wrong. Wouldn’t it?
chapter TWENTY-NINE
At the arena, they had floor seats. Zé might not have been impressed by that if the entire arena had not been filled to capacity. The crowd was already cheering and antsy, desperate for the game to begin. It was like watching an NBA game with half the audience sporting green and white and the other half yellow and blue.
An entire world underneath the full-human one and Zé h
ad never felt more at home.
Zé sat with Charlie and the triplets on his left and Stevie, Shen, and Dutch on his right. Dutch had originally sat down next to him, grinning like an idiot. But when Zé slapped the man’s popcorn, soda, and giant pretzel with cheese onto the floor, Stevie insisted he move.
“Not long now,” Stevie said, clapping her hands together.
“You are so excited.”
“I love watching Max play. She’s not just a good athlete. She also has winning showmanship.”
“I hear you did, too. When you were six.”
“I still do. Someday you’ll have to hear me play with my band. They’re all former child prodigies, too. And I do a mean Jimi Hendrix.”
“On guitar?”
“That, too.”
Zé was going to ask what she meant but she said to him first, “Hear you are my babysitter tonight.”
“I doubt you’ll need it. You have a giant panda.”
Shen held out a bamboo stalk. “Want a bite?”
“No.”
“You guys don’t know what you’re missing,” he said before beginning his nonstop chewing.
“That doesn’t irritate you?” he asked Stevie.
“I fall asleep to it. It’s the most soothing thing to me. And I’m the one who finds Enya’s music a little loud and abrasive.”
* * *
They waited in the hallway, the two teams side by side; Max already bouncing on her toes. Ready to go. Ready to destroy the other team. But in a totally nonlethal way, of course.
Nelle was on her phone, taking selfies. Streep was doing yoga stretches to stay limber. Mads was staring down tigers on the opposite team. Tock was looking at her watch. It was the same thing every time, but Max never got bored by it. Only this time, both her sisters were in the crowd. Charlie hadn’t been to a game since Max was in high school. And once she’d found out Nelle had a limo driver to take the five of them to and from the games, she’d stopped coming altogether. It didn’t bother Max as much as it would have probably bothered others. Actually, it hadn’t bothered Max at all. Not when she knew her sister had a lot more important things to focus on. Like keeping them alive.
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