Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(93)

“Good to know.” She gave a vague gesture. “Your head feeling any better?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need anything else? You seem a little anxious.”

“Me? No. I’m fine. I’m fine!”

Rutowski placed her hands over Charlie’s, and Charlie realized that all ten of her fingers were tapping incessantly against the marble counter.

“Sorry. Sorry.” She pulled her hands away and began rubbing them against her bloodstained jeans. She just needed to think. To figure out what to do next. To manage the situation.

Sitting here, though, in these high chairs at a marble counter that might cost more than the SUV she’d left behind in Jersey, with these old She-badgers watching her . . . that was just not working for her right now. Nope. Not at all.

*

Tracey watched, fascinated, as the eldest MacKilligan sister jumped off the chair and began moving around the family kitchen. She thought the kid just needed to pace. Badgers could be pacers when they were thinking, planning, plotting. But things only got weirder from there when, while talking nonstop, the kid began going through the kitchen cabinets.

“Does anyone know what’s going on?” MacKilligan asked. “Who targeted us? The ones who came after me were Italian. I know that. But what does that mean? Does it mean anything? Or was it just a cheap hire? And did they lure us all to the docks? How? And why? Should I get my sisters out? And are you sure my father has nothing to do with this? He usually does.” She briefly paused, a five-pound bag of flour clutched in her hands. “You have geese,” she noted, gazing out the big windows. Slowly, Tracey and her friends turned in their chairs and stared at the geese walking by the big double doors.

“I don’t understand,” the kid said, suddenly speaking again. “For once we didn’t do anything. We weren’t there to start shit. We were just . . . investigating. And they tried to kill all of us. Do you have more flour than this?”

Tracey blinked. Surprised by the second sudden change of topic. “Um . . .” She pointed at a door that led to the pantry.

The kid disappeared inside, gasping at the sight of everything that Trace knew was in that room. Just wait until the kid got a look at their walk-in freezer.

Tracey could hear that the kid was still talking. She couldn’t make out the words but she had a feeling the girl was still analyzing what had happened that day. She was beginning to feel sorry for the poor thing. She was half wolf. Maybe that’s where all that self-analyzing came from. Honey badgers didn’t really do that. They might analyze why a heist went wrong or why they’d ended up in jail, but only so that sort of thing wouldn’t happen again. What they didn’t do was tear themselves apart over emotional bullshit.

The kid walked out of the pantry with two unopened sacks of flour, each fifty pounds. She carried them with ease but that wasn’t Tracey’s concern. Instead, it was knowing how crazy her husband would get when he saw his pantry had been invaded.

“Oh, honey,” Tracey said, slipping off the stool and moving toward the kid, “maybe you should not—”

“Uh . . . Aunt Tracey?”

Tracey stopped and looked at the doorway that led into the hallway. Her niece stood there. So strong and fierce. She’d survived a really shitty childhood as only a true honey badger could. She doubted her niece spent any time overanalyzing emotional bullshit like MacKilligan.

“Could I speak to all of you?” Mads motioned with her hand. “Please?”

Gesturing to her friends, Tracey headed out of the kitchen and into the hallway. Mads kept walking, so Trace kept following until they reached the foyer.

“Is Charlie . . . baking?” Mads asked when they’d stopped.

“I think so. She started going through the cabinets and then the pantry—”

“She turned the oven on,” CeCe noted.

“Okay . . . yeah.” Mads nodded her head while her face cringed. “You need to stay away from her right now.”

“Uh . . . my husband isn’t going to be okay with her baking in the family kitchen.”

“I say this with love, but he’s going to have to suck it up.”

“Pardon?”

“When Charlie gets like this,” Mads explained, “when Charlie starts baking . . . just back off and hope we’re all alive when it’s over.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

*

“You were right,” Mads said when she walked back into the bedroom where they’d put Streep. Their wounded teammate was stretched out on a queen-sized bed, appearing feverish and pale. Her chest was covered with blood-soaked bandages that had been traded out many times in the last couple of hours by a nurse and doctor. Both were cats and had no patience for the honey badgers in the room, but Mads and her teammates were not about to trust some cats with Streep’s life. So they refused to leave . . . no matter how many times they asked. Or demanded. “Charlie was baking.”

“I knew it,” Max said. “You got your aunt out of there, right?”

“Yeah. But she wasn’t happy. Apparently, her husband is real protective of his kitchen or something.” She shrugged. “I have no idea who her husband is so I don’t know how deep his panic might go over a single room in his giant house.”

“You don’t know her husband?”