When they landed at a private airstrip, Shay wouldn’t move until everyone else had grabbed their stuff and exited the jet. Then he stood and stepped into the aisle.
Tock hadn’t said a word to him the entire time, finally focusing on her phone for the last leg of the trip. Now she moved past him without a word, and grabbed her overnight bag from where she’d placed it in an empty seat. She headed out.
Shay quickly grabbed his bag, too, and followed. He wanted to be ready if the pair got into it again.
Once they were on the tarmac, though, Tock suddenly moved quickly and cut in front of the badgers. Shay exchanged a panicked glance with Finn and they began to move toward the group with big strides.
Tock reached behind her and Shay had a memory of all the weapons she’d carried on her—in her clothes—just the other night. He was only a foot or two away, about to grab her arm, when she pulled out her phone rather than a small nuclear device. She held it up in front of her friends.
“Did you guys see this yet?” she asked.
Mads took the phone from her and began reading while the other three looked over her shoulders. After a few seconds, she looked up and stared into Tock’s eyes. She tossed the phone back to her and followed Max, who was already moving on.
“I’ll call you later, Finn,” Mads told his brother without even looking back at him.
Tock gave Shay a short wave before going after her friends.
Then they were gone.
“What the hell just happened?” Finn wanted to know.
But none of them had an answer. Because even for badgers. . . that was just plain weird.
Chapter 7
They barely arrived in time. Max parked the car with the front passenger wheel over the curb and on the grass. They all got out of the vehicle and ran toward the house, leaping over the low picket fence and reaching the stoop from different sides.
Max slid in front of the two males, arms thrown wide, blocking them from the front door they’d been moments from knocking on. Tock took a spot in front of the door with Mads beside her. Nelle came up on the left; Streep on the right.
“Hello!” Streep called.
The two wolves looked over the five badgers, clearly uncomfortable at their sudden appearance. But Dutch Alexander, Max’s best friend since junior high, had sent a group text to warn them, giving them enough time to get here and stop what was about to happen.
“Uh . . . ladies,” the older wolf announced. “Nice to see you all again.”
“Is it?” Max asked.
Seeing them again? Tock didn’t remember the pair. Not surprising, though. She had too much in her head to recall useless information, like wolves she had no intention of dealing with on a daily basis or how the English language started. Seriously? The man knew 1066 just off the top of his head? Why would anyone who wasn’t a teacher or a television historian know that?
“Is there something we can help you with?” Nelle queried, keeping her tone polite.
“We want to visit Charlie. Is that a problem?”
“Probably,” Tock muttered.
“Can you smell it?” Mads whispered to her.
“Everyone smells it,” Tock replied. Because there were bears lurking all around the house. The entire street of bear families had left their homes with central air-conditioning so they could sit and wait outside in the intolerable heat of the final days of summer, in the hopes that Charlie would give them what they wanted. They could rip the doors off the hinges and crash through the windows so they could get inside and simply take what they wanted, but they’d learned a long time ago that Charlie wasn’t one to push around. She did not take it well. And despite her small size and inability to shift, she was meaner and more dangerous than any hungry grizzly could ever dream of being.
These wolves didn’t even know what they’d walked into, but their natural arrogance preceded them, along with their model looks. Even the older one was stunning. Those cheekbones! Who naturally had cheekbones like that?
The Van Holtzes. That’s who. Tock normally couldn’t tell one pack from another. Wolves were wolves were wolves unless they played on her basketball team. But the Van Holtz Pack, whether from here or their original home country of Germany, stood out among the other shifter wolves because they all seemed to be stunningly beautiful and fucking arrogant.
And, normally, that made them perfect for Max to torture. Nothing she loved more than torturing arrogant beings of any gender, race, religion, breed, or species; but today she wasn’t going to do that. Not today.
Because Charlie had been baking.
It was why all the bears were lurking. They adored Charlie’s baking and would eat it every day if she’d open a bakery. But Charlie didn’t want to make baking a job; she wanted it to be a stress reliever. In fact, baking might be the only reason she wasn’t a homicidal maniac.
“You can’t see her now,” Max told the two canines. “That would be a very bad idea.”
“It’s important.”
“Don’t care.”
“Yes, but—”
“Do you see me smiling?” Max abruptly asked.
The older wolf blinked before replying, “Uh . . . no.”
“Right. And I always smile. I smile so much, I freak out my own mother. Do you know why I smile? Because I’m a fucking happy person. I love life. I love everything about life. I especially love making other people miserable. I’m good at it. And yet,” she continued, “I’m warning you away from seeing my sister despite what I know she’ll do to you. That should tell you something.”
“So, you’re seriously telling us—”
“If you walk into that house, you ain’t walkin’ out again. Instead, I’ll be searching out hyena territories to bury your bones.” That last part . . . she did say with a smile.
The wolves looked at each other, then back at Max.
“Fine,” the oldest canine replied. “But can you let her know I stopped by, and I’d like to talk?”
Max nodded. “I can do that. Do you have a business card I can give her?”
The two wolves gazed at Max, looked at each other, then back at Max.
“You don’t know who we are?” the eldest asked.
“Should I?”
“You and Charlie have been to my office to meet with me. You sort of work for us through Imani.”
“I know Imani!” she said cheerfully. “Still don’t remember you.”
“How is that possible?”
“You mean nothing to me, so why would I think about you?”
“And your sister? She’d remember us.”
“Doubtful.”
He handed her a business card pulled from a pocket inside his expensive suit jacket.
Max looked at it and announced, “Niles Van Holtz. What kind of name is Niles? Didn’t your parents love you?”
Nelle smoothly took the card from Max and pushed her out of the way. “We’ll make sure to let Charlie know you came by.”
“Thank you.”
The younger wolf was already heading back to their sleek black limo, but the older one stopped and looked over at Tock.
“Is your grandmother in town?” he asked her, but Tock wasn’t about to answer that question. She never answered that question, no matter who asked. One time Kissinger asked her that question . . . she didn’t answer him either.