“Decomp.” She pointed at the container. “From in there.”
“Could be mob guys just working out their own shit.”
“With bears? Because that’s what I’m smelling. Dead bears.”
Pulling out her set of lockpicks from the back pocket of her jeans, Tock crouched down and got to work on the thick padlock. It was currently protected by a lockbox of some kind so she couldn’t just cut through the padlock. She had to work on it from underneath. A deterrent for run-of-the-mill thieves but not for badgers. Or wolves. Tock knew for a fact wolves could break into and out of anything.
She twisted the pick but briefly froze when she heard a new sound. Then she realized it was just Max and Streep coming around the storage container, followed a minute later by Nelle.
“You smelled it, too?” Max asked.
“Mads did,” Tock said, continuing her work.
With her teammates watching the area around them for trouble, Tock asked, “Where’s Charlie?”
“She’s already at the car. Waiting for us.”
“Should we let her know—”
“Not until we’re sure,” Max replied. “I don’t want to waste my sister’s time. She hates that.”
Tock felt the click of the padlock and relaxed when the lock finally opened. She tossed the lock aside and opened the handles near the bottom of the doors. With Mads’s help, they grabbed one of the long handles and dragged the right door open, leaving the left one closed.
The smell of decay hit hard once the door was open, but they didn’t cough or choke the way most full-humans did when hit with such a strong scent. Decomposition was just another stage of life; many predators were able to feed off decaying corpses.
Tock stepped inside, Mads behind her, and the rest of their teammates followed along.
They found the bodies at the end of the container. About eight of them. All bears. Grizzlies, one black, and a couple of polars. They smelled of death and the ocean. Not Tock’s favorite scent, but what could a girl do? Flies and maggots already swarmed the bodies, but that didn’t stop Max from digging around the pockets of the grizzlies until she found a wallet.
“Giuseppe Romanov.”
“That is not a common name,” Streep noted.
“Text Charlie and see what she wants us to—”
Max’s next words abruptly stopped when the sunlight coming in from the opening began to disappear. They all looked up in time to see a woman Tock didn’t recognize closing the door. Seconds before she closed it completely, the woman smiled and gave them a little wave.
The next second they were in complete darkness. That wasn’t a big deal, though. Badgers were nocturnal.
But still, Streep probably summed it up best when she muttered, “I don’t know about the rest of you guys . . . but I find all this disconcerting.”
*
Shay knew his brother wasn’t really concerned about “backing up” Mads and Tock at the New Jersey dock. They didn’t even know where the badgers were, and the docks were huge. He did, however, think Keane would at least pretend to be doing so. But that did not happen. Not once he spotted Seán and a healthy chunk of Malone cousins eating tacos near a food truck. They weren’t even by the docks, but several blocks away.
Why argue, though? Why bother reminding Keane that they were supposed to be in Jersey to help the badgers? Especially once Keane pulled to a stop, got out of the SUV, and charged over to their cousins like a rampaging rhino.
“You got something to say to me?” Keane challenged, stomping up to Seán, who was mid-bite of his taco. And interrupting an eating tiger . . . such a bad idea.
Instead of replying, though, Seán took another bite from his taco.
That’s when Keane slapped the rest of the taco out of his cousin’s hand.
*
Charlie leaned back against the SUV, stared at her phone, and waited for Max and her friends. Max had texted that they were “looking at one more thing,” so Charlie wasn’t too concerned that her sister and teammates were taking their time.
Besides, online shopping always kept Charlie busy when she had to wait for one of her sisters.
She was checking out a matching leash and harness that Dani could use to walk Princess and the male dogs—Charlie would normally not be okay with a ten-year-old walking a potentially aggressive dog, but she knew the father and uncles wouldn’t allow it unless they were going along to protect the kid—when she got that feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was her personal warning signal. It let her know when something bad was about to happen. It made her hyperaware of everything within a five-mile radius. Sounds. Smells. Everything.
Charlie lowered her phone and turned toward the SUV, her stomach pressing into the hood while her head moved. She could hear arguing a few blocks away. Angry arguing. The scent of pissed-off cats. She heard Keane Malone snarl in the distance, but before she could pin down his location, the air around her changed.
Jerking her shoulders, Charlie moved her head to the side as a blade slashed the air where her head used to be.
Charlie dropped her phone and spun around, slamming the back of her fist into the head of her attacker, sending him face-first into the passenger-side window of the vehicle. But there were more attackers.
And they all came at her at once.
*
Tock only had a moment to exchange a look with Mads before they hit the ground and bullets tore through the side of the storage container.
The weapons being used were definitely semiauto handguns, but the bullets . . . they had to be 50-millimeter, armor-piercing rounds. Tock would guess the Desert Eagle .50 AE. The one weapon that could actually take down a honey badger.
They all shifted to their badger forms, making them a little smaller, a little harder to hit. Zigzagging while sprinting, they headed toward the doors.
The first bullet hit Tock in her left front leg. Then her left side. Max got hit in the ass, her pained yelp almost making Tock laugh. Mads took a hit to the shoulder, causing her to flip head over tail before she got back to her feet and continued running. Somehow the rain of bullets seemed to miss Nelle completely until a shot nailed her through the neck. Nelle kept moving.
They were nearing the door when a bullet ricocheted off the ground and went into Streep’s chest. The tremendous force sent Streep sliding across the floor and into the wall; Nelle was forced to jump over her teammate’s limp, bleeding badger body so she didn’t crash into her.
*
Shay pushed his cousins away from his eldest brother’s back while Finn worked to get Keane’s hands from around their Uncle Seán’s neck.
It wasn’t that Shay didn’t think his brother was being an asshole. He was an asshole most days. But he also wasn’t going to let his cousins beat up his brother.
Sadly, this wasn’t the first time this sort of thing had happened. Their grandmother’s birthday. Their great uncle’s funeral. The Malone family reunion. That christening at the church. Of course, their priest uncle started that shit, and their cousin who had taken a vow of silence for her order broke Finn’s nose. So this fight was fairly typical.
Annoyingly . . . painfully typical.
“What is wrong with your brother? Why is he acting like this?” Georgie Malone demanded of Shay while reaching for Keane from behind.