Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(101)

The wolves stopped pacing long enough to stare at Tracey Rutowski, but none of them entered.

Leaving the doors open, Tracey came over to their table and sat down.

“They never listen to me. More than thirty years and they still don’t trust me.”

“Are you the . . . Alpha here?” Max had to ask.

Rutowski and her friends laughed.

“God, no!” she said. “They loathe me. Wolf’s sister is Alpha Female. That one,” she said, pointing at a black wolf staring into the house, “Carrie Van Holtz. Head chef of the Van Holtz Steakhouse in the Village, Alpha Female of the New York Pack, and eternal pain in my ass.”

“So you’re just here, making friends and choosing love?” Tock joked.

“I fell in love with the man. Not his family. Definitely not his pack. But they’ve never given me a chance. And I have to say, I am fucking delightful.”

“They’re probably worried you’ll steal something.”

“Anything of importance the Van Holtzes have is in Germany. . . and we already got that shit.”

When Tock and her teammates stared at her, Rutowski just smiled. It was off-putting.

Rutowski’s phone vibrated and she looked down at it, made a face, and dismissed the call.

“Any news?” Mads asked between bites of a puff pastry filled with blueberries.

“I have every organization trying to contact me, but I don’t want to talk to them yet. Not until I have the information I need.”

“This wasn’t our fault,” Nelle said.

“No. It wasn’t. But tigers running loose in the city . . . that can be a problem.”

“What did you want them to do?” Mads asked.

“Not shift into tiger. Even their idiot cousins didn’t do that.”

Mouths full of food, the three tiger males turned on their high stools and glowered at Rutowski.

“What?” she demanded. “Each of you is nearly a thousand pounds and more than seven feet tall. Even in fucking Manhattan that’s not going to be ignored.”

With an angry snarl, Keane got off the stool, shifted to tiger, shook off his clothes, and charged out the open double doors.

The wolves outside barked and growled at the sudden invasion of big cat, but—wisely—scattered so that the cat could make his way around the compound on his own.

Sighing, Finn followed his older brother. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” he said to Shay before shifting and running out.

Grabbing several more Danish and a paper towel, Shay also walked out. As human and in the opposite direction from his brothers. Tock guessed he wanted to check on Dani.

“That went well,” Nelle sneered.

“I am not here to baby a bunch of cats,” Rutowski snapped back.

“They haven’t done anything wrong,” Streep argued, rubbing her sore chest through the fabric of her T-shirt.

“They wouldn’t let it go.”

“They wouldn’t let what go?” Mads asked, but she only got a raised brow from her aunt. “You mean the death of their father?”

“The murder of their father,” Max amended.

Tock folded her arms over her chest. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“That’s what I’m waiting to find out.”

“From the Group?” When she only got another raised brow . . . “My grandmother? You’re working with my grandmother? You have to be kidding.”

“Don’t get your titties in a vise.”

“Ew. What?”

“We’ve been working with your grandmother for decades. She already knows us.”

“ ‘Working with,’ ” álvarez said with finger quotes, “is a generous way to describe our relationship with Mira, Trace.”

“That’s true. But only because that woman does know how to hold a grudge.”

“So you work for Mossad?”

Rutowski and her friends burst out laughing.

“Fuck no!” álvarez finally said when she could manage to speak.

“We don’t really have an affiliation with anyone,” Yoon added. “We’re what you would call . . . independents.”

“We had a lot of impact, though,” Rutowski added. “I mean, do you really think the Berlin Wall just came down due to the desire of the German people and the end of the Cold War?”

Tock looked at her teammates and, together, they replied, “Yes.”

“No,” she immediately replied. “It was us. It’s amazing how much damage four honey badgers can do to a concrete foundation when they keep burrowing under it to escape into and out of East Germany.”

“Why were you escaping into East Germany?” Tock asked.

The four older honey badgers studied her with narrowed eyes before Rutowski said, “You ask a lot of questions.”

“I really don’t.”

*

“Did you know that, according to my sources, your father came into the States about five days ago?”

The lion male finally faced her, his gold eyes wide. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t know?”

“That can’t be right. Did he arrange all this as a distraction or something?”