Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(30)

Once she was securely inside, she leaned down and told Shay, “Meet me outside in ten minutes.” After that, she scampered off and didn’t look back.

*

Shay was still staring up at the empty hole in the ceiling when his brothers walked into the room.

“Hey!” Finn greeted him. “You’re up.”

“Way up,” Keane muttered.

Recognizing that tone, Shay immediately looked at his lap and realized the pillow was no longer covering his junk.

“Shit,” he barked, covering himself again.

“You just had artery surgery. Why do you have a hard-on?”

“Maybe he has a morning hard-on,” Finn reasoned. “I love a good morning hard-on.”

“Can we stop talking about my hard-on?” Shay pleaded.

Keane pointed. “Why’s the tile on the floor?”

“Long story.”

“Where’s Tock?” Finn asked.

Shay and his brothers looked up at the hole in the ceiling, and Keane said, “That explains the hard-on.”

Before Shay could tell his brother to shut up, the door opened again and Tock’s family came into the room.

All of them. All of them came into the room.

“Where is she?” Tock’s grandmother asked.

Shay grimaced. How do you tell an entire family that the person they’d been waiting for all night had run out on them?

You don’t. You don’t tell them anything. Instead, he simply looked up at the ceiling and all the badgers followed suit.

“Huh,” one of her cousins said, still staring at the opening. “Well, that’s rude.”

But Tock’s grandmother only chuckled. “That girl. She is just like her mother, which is probably why I want to punch her in the neck right now.”

And there it was for Shay to finally see: the family resemblance between Tock and her grandmother.





Chapter 6


Shay and his two brothers got into the SUV Keane had rented at the airport. He thought the badgers would be driving with them, but they’d opted to rent their own car, which Finn seemed glad about. “Max always drives, and she drives like a suicide bomber.”

Shay stretched out in the backseat. Although “stretched out” wasn’t exactly correct. The SUV was of average size. Fine for most people but not for a Malone brother. He had to bend his knees, and his back rested against the left-side passenger door.

He was glad to be out of the hospital, though. Glad he was okay. Now he could just relax until he got home.

Closing his eyes, Shay easily fell asleep but snapped awake when he heard his eldest brother growl, “What the unholy fuck . . . ?”

Shay sat up and looked around. “What? What’s wrong?”

Keane still drove, their vehicle now on a two-lane road. He was going pretty fast, but Keane always drove fast. Shay didn’t see anything in their way. So he wasn’t sure what his brother was complaining—

Another vehicle sped up behind them, trying to pass. The entire crew of honey badgers occupied the passing SUV—except for Tock. Tock wasn’t inside the SUV. She was on the outside. Climbing up the front grill while they raced along whatever road this was.

Horrified, the three brothers watched Tock—now in a hospital gown, which seemed a waste because it wasn’t tied so most of her naked body was exposed to the world as the material flapped wildly in the wind—make her way up to the hood. Once there, she paused to catch her breath, then started moving on all fours toward the front windscreen.

“Are we racing?” Keane suddenly asked.

Finn leaned back so he could see out Shay’s window. “Max is driving. So . . . yes. You’re racing. You better slow down,” he ordered. “Let her go a—”

“Shit!” Keane abruptly slammed on the brakes; Shay was thrown against the front seats. It was a necessary move, though. A truck came from around the corner, going in the opposite direction, and all Max did was speed up while heading straight for it. Tock still occupied the hood of the SUV.

The SUV cut into their lane just before the truck could obliterate them, the driver blasting his horn and yelling.

Tock briefly paused once more—this time so she could raise her arm high and give the truck driver the finger—before she continued making her way across the hood.

She finally reached the windshield.

Shay couldn’t see her for a few seconds; then he spotted her clinging to the side of the vehicle and finally crawling into the now-open passenger side window.

The window closed and Max hit the gas; the group disappeared around the next bend.

The brothers were silent for a bit as they drove on, all three staring out the front window.

Then Keane finally said, “I am so glad you risked your life saving that one. She so clearly needs to be saved.”

Shay could only shrug. “At the time . . . it seemed like a solid idea.”

“Yeah. And I’m sure it had nothing to do with that ass.”

“Well . . .” Shay began, but what was the point of fighting the truth? “Yeah. It was definitely that ass.”

*

Tock changed into fresh clothes in one of the private airport’s bathrooms and stepped out of the stall. Mads had brought her overnight bag from Detroit, which was great. Tock had no desire to travel in a hospital gown all the way back to New York. She didn’t want anyone assuming she was an escaped mental patient because there was nothing Max would love more than leaning into that joke until all of them were racing away from law enforcement and emergency services.