Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(38)

“Probably nothing.”

“Just great.” Van stood, began to pace.

“As little as Katzenhaus cares about the honey badgers, they care even less about full-humans.”

“This whole thing with the badgers started when the de Medici father disappeared,” Ric noted. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Mira?”

“Me? Why would I kill that mean bastard? Personally, I think his sons did it. They wanted to be in charge and now they are.”

“He was their leash. If he’s dead . . .”

“Och!” Mira slashed her hand through the air. “I am tired of treating these bastards like they run the Holy Roman Empire.”

“No one sane, Mira, wants to go up against the de Medicis,” Imani insisted.

“I know. That’s why I called in those who have no sanity.”

Van didn’t like the sound of that at all. Nope. Not at all.

“Who?”

Now Mira shrugged. “I called in Tracey Rutowski and her—”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Oh, Mira. No!”

“I went to a show at Rutowski’s gallery in Manhattan a couple of months ago. It was amazing.” Ric blinked, looked at all of them before adding, “But I guess that’s not the point of this conversation.”

“Didn’t she start Chernobyl?” Imani asked.

“No! That was propaganda from Russian cats. She was nothing but a child then.”

“She did extend the Cold War,” Van reminded her.

“She did not extend it. She simply made it a little more difficult to end. And you forget she was a teen then, dabbling in things she didn’t understand.”

“A teen starting shit with her honey badger friends. In foreign countries. Involving Gorbachev. And now you bring her into this?”

“What do you want me to do? The cats won’t help,” she said. “Neither will bears. And if there’s anyone who can find out what’s going on and maybe unearth the information that will get Katzenhaus off their collective asses, it is Tracey Rutowski and her honey badger friends.”

“Is this because of your granddaughter?” Van asked. “Are you putting us all at risk to protect her?”

“My granddaughter can take care of herself. But I will not put my species at risk. If that means pulling the craziest of our kind out of retirement to help, then that is what will happen.”

Mira stood. She put the straps of what had to be a fourteen-thousand-dollar designer purse over her forearm and paused to brush long lion hair off her black suit.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I have other things to get to. I just thought you should know where we all stood at the moment. And I will ask both of you to let Rutowski do her work.”

“And if she blows up half of Manhattan . . . so be it?”

“Oh, puhleese, little dog. Such lies you all tell. Besides,” she added, pushing past Ric, “the Berlin wall had to come down sometime, and she was smart enough to make it look like everyone was involved!”





Chapter 8


“Tock?”

Tock froze. She’d been trying to sneak through the kitchen, hoping Charlie wouldn’t notice her. Charlie was at the sink with her back to Tock, washing the last of the utensils she’d used to create her amazing baked goods. Tock had assumed she’d just be ignored now that the bears had been fed and had finally lumbered off.

She was wrong.

So she stood there, frozen.

Charlie shut off the water, shook her hands over the sink, and grabbed a paper towel to dry them. As she turned toward Tock, she asked, “Did you eat something?”

“Uh . . .”

“You need to eat. After what your body went through, food is the most important thing right now.”

“I, uh, had a muffin.”

“One muffin?”

“I only wanted one muffin.”

“Sit,” Charlie ordered and Tock immediately sat down. “You need something a little more substantial than a muffin. You don’t want to suddenly pass out, do you?”

“No?”

Charlie frowned at her weak answer, then went to the freezer. “Let’s see what we have . . .” She let out a sigh. “I can see Dutch has been in my freezer again. This is what happens when you have a breed that can eat frozen meat without thawing it first. He’s eaten most of the bison I had in here. I have regular beef, though.” She leaned out and looked at Tock. “Do you want regular beef?”

Tock didn’t know what “regular beef” meant, but she was too afraid to ask. “Sure.”

Charlie again looked in the freezer. “There are pork chops. Thick-cut ones. Oooh. There’s a leg of lamb. Do you want lamb?”

“Uh . . .”

“You know, you probably need carbs, too. I can make you my spaghetti and meat sauce. You want that?”

“Okay.”

“Great.” She pulled big packages of ground meat out of the freezer. From the cabinets, she took out big cans of tomatoes, and several pounds of pasta followed.

Charlie quickly got to work, putting big pots on the stove to make her sauce in.

Not given permission to leave, Tock just sat there.