Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(82)

“I don’t know why he’s mad at me,” Mads complained beside Tock while Tock just kept sniffing. “It’s not like I invited that coyote and his family into my home. He was already there. He had imminent domain.”

“It’s eminent and I don’t think you’re using that term correctly. At all.”

“I just don’t think it’s fair to consider running off a coyote that’s not bothering us when he’s just trying to take care of his family.”

Tock stopped by a large container and sniffed the door. She kept smelling bears. Bears everywhere! She continued moving.

“Don’t you think it’s dangerous to have an animal on your property that could be riddled with disease and fleas?”

“He’s very clean. He doesn’t have fleas.”

Again, Tock stopped, but this time she faced Mads.

“What?” Mads asked.

“Have you bathed that animal?”

“Of course I do. When we’re not home, he gets into the house and sleeps on our sheets.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You’re just uptight.”

“When it comes to vermin . . . yes, I am.”

“Coyotes are not vermin.”

“Just because it’s cuter than a rat, that does not make it any less vermin-y.”

“I thought we were working.”

“I’m working,” Tock reminded her teammate. “You’re obsessing over your boyfriend not liking the wild animal you’re trying to make into a house pet.”

“Finn is not my boyfriend.”

Tock stopped a third time and faced Mads. They stared each other down the way they would a player on an opposing team.

“Fine,” Mads said when the insane staring went on for way too long. “He’s my boyfriend. But, quite honestly, I don’t know if I’m his girlfriend.”

“He puts up with the rabid animal you allow to sleep on your clean sheets. Trust me. He’s your boyfriend.”

“He’s not rabid. He’s had his shots.”

“The vermin-y dog or the oversized cat?”

Mads shrugged. “Both.”

Disgusted her normally sensible teammate would do any of that for a dog that wasn’t even domesticated, Tock started walking again, her nose high, each sniff bringing her closer to . . . something. She just hadn’t figured out what yet.

They came around the corner of a container but found their way blocked. Not by another container or even a wall but by big cats. She glanced over her shoulder and found even more behind her and Mads.

The tigers—their massive size that told her they were Amurs—appeared to be dockworkers; a few were even wearing badges identifying them as such.

“Badgers,” one of them said, “lurking around these containers make us very nervous.”

That actually made complete sense to Tock. When honey badgers “lurked,” it was usually because they were about to steal something.

Having decided not to bring her guns when the docks were filled with federal agents and cops, Tock only had a tactical knife on her. But that would do the job. She started to reach for it, but before her hand could wrap around the handle of the weapon strapped to her back, Mads was holding up her smartphone toward the cat that had spoken.

The tiger looked down, leaned in a bit, and squinted. “Finn?” he finally asked the screen image. “Is that you?”

“Back off, Donovan,” Finn warned over the phone.

“Or what?” the cat scoffed.

“Or I tell your mother what you did in the fifth grade.”

The cat’s expression went from mocking to fear to anger. “My own cousin . . . the disloyalty.”

“Disloyalty?” Keane exploded from the other end of the phone.

Tock couldn’t see Keane’s face but she could easily imagine him snatching the phone from his younger brother and yelling into it. And watching the restless reactions of the cats standing right in front of them, they’d heard all this before. “You’ve got the nerve to spout off about disloyalty to us, motherfucker? Fuck you!”

“Okay,” the cat said over Keane’s ranting. “Okay! But they better not be here to steal. That’ll be a problem.”

“They’re not,” she heard Finn reply. He must have taken the phone back from his brother. “Just back off.”

The cat nodded and Mads lowered the phone, disconnecting the call. The tigers moved off without saying another word, leaving Tock and Mads alone among an endless sea of shipping containers.

“Did you tell Finn what we are doing here today?” Tock asked Mads when they started searching again.

“No. Why?”

“But he blindly backed you with his borderline-criminal Malone cousins anyway?” Tock waited until Mads looked in her direction and then she mouthed, Boyfriend.

*

“I can’t believe they actually said that to us.”

Shay cringed. His male cousins weren’t always the brightest. For the Malones, the true intelligence went to the females of the family. The males ranged from their dad—smart enough to be recruited by the CIA—to their Uncle Seán, who thought it was a good idea to tell his wife that she did look nice in that dress . . . but she was prettier when she was twenty-two.