Nelle crossed her arms over her chest. “We were attacked. We were ambushed. For once, in fact, we did nothing wrong.”
The doors to the Mercedes opened and Charlie got out of the passenger side. Max jumped out of the van then, running into her sister’s open arms.
“Are you okay?” Charlie demanded. “Are you?”
“I’m fine.”
That’s when Charlie pulled away and slapped the back of her sister’s head.
“What did you do?” Charlie barked.
“Nothing! I swear!”
“Then it was Dad.” Charlie became somber. “We’ve gotta kill Dad.”
Max shrugged. “Okay.”
“It wasn’t Fred MacKilligan,” a dark-haired She-badger said as she closed the driver’s-side door and moved around the front of the Mercedes. “Although none of us are shocked you’d jump to that conclusion. I’ve never met a greater fuckup.”
“Oh, my God,” Tock heard from behind her. She glanced back at Mads. Her teammate had been sitting next to Finn with her head on his shoulder for almost the entire ride. But now, eyes wide as she reacted to the female speaking, Mads slowly got to her feet.
“What’s wrong?” Finn asked.
Mads didn’t answer, but instead asked, “Aunt Tracey?”
The She-badger grinned. “Hi, sweet girl.”
Mads bolted forward, pushing her way through everyone in the van until she could jump off the vehicle and right into the female’s arms.
Tock knew of Mads’s Aunt Tracey. The pair had stayed in communication through discreet emails over the years. That was all they could do because Mads’s bitch of a mother had made it very clear that if Tracey—or anyone in the Rutowski family—tried to have anything to do with Mads, she’d be killed. It was a threat they’d taken very seriously because they all knew that Mads’s mother was mean enough to do it, and her hyena clan would happily join in. It was too great a risk to hope someone in that clan would have a moral issue with killing a kid. So, the Rutowskis had stayed away. Until now. Until Mads was old enough and powerful enough to take not only her mother and grandmother down, but the entire clan. All with the help of football-playing lions who loved nothing more than destroying hyenas for shits and giggles.
Putting her arm around Mads’s shoulders, Tracey Rutowski turned her niece around to face their small group.
“Now, I know we need to go, but I just want to take a few seconds—”
“It’s always a few seconds with you, and then we’re running from the KGB,” one of the older She-badgers complained.
“Anyway . . . I want to introduce you, Mads, to my very best friends.” She pointed at the Latina. “This is Cecilia álvarez. We all call her CeCe. You might know her as C. E. álvarez.”
“The painter and sculptor?” Charlie asked.
“Yes.”
“Hey!” Max said, “I stole one of your paintings. Sold it to my fence for, like, a mil-five.”
Rutowski blinked. “Huh.” After a quick head shake, she motioned to the Asian She-badger with the partially shaved hair. She had lots of earrings on that side and several big scars on her neck. But the prettiest smile Tock had ever seen on a woman not selling toothpaste.
“This is Stephanie Yoon.”
“Just call me Steph.”
“Steph Yoon?” Tock asked. “The founder of Yoonotics? The company that created the killer robots and drones that turned on their human handlers?”
“That is an incorrect summation of what transpired and something I can’t talk about until the lawsuits are resolved. But yes . . . that’s me.”
“I bought a drone from your company and the first time I used it, it definitely attacked me.”
“Yeah . . . it probably did. But we have a patch for that now you can get off our website.”
“And,” Rutowski quickly cut in, moving everyone’s attention on to the last of her friends with a sweep of her arm, “this is Oksana Lenkov.”
“Doesn’t she have an adorable nickname, too?” Max asked, her voice so cutesy, it could only be mocking.
“Yes. We all call her Ox.”
Tock looked at “Ox.” She was blond. Stunning. With big blue eyes and sharp cheekbones. Dressed in thousands of dollars’ worth of designer clothes and shoes. She also had what could only be called a permanent sneer. She looked like she was ready to kick someone in the face with those designer shoes for doing nothing more than passing her on the street and saying, “Excuse me.”
“That is my nickname,” Ox sneered at a silent Max in a European accent of some kind. Tock would guess Russian. “I like it. Do not annoy me, tiny Asian badger.”
Eyes wide, Max looked at Tock; and as soon as that grin spread across her teammate’s face, Tock knew Max was going to make it her mission in life to torture Ox.
It wasn’t surprising, though. Max hated being called “tiny.”
*
Listening to the badgers banter back and forth was irritating Shay to no end. He wanted to get to his daughter. He wanted to make sure she was okay. He wanted to wash the blood out of his hair. He wasn’t worried about his mother. He just had to give her a heads-up and she would go underground with her sisters. She’d done the same thing with her sons when his dad was murdered. They’d almost missed the funeral the Malones had the nerve to arrange.
Yeah. He needed a phone and to get moving.
Oh. And he should check on his baby brother, too. He kept forgetting about Dale.
“I need to get my daughter,” he repeated when there was a brief lull in the conversation.
“How?” álvarez barked; clearly fed up with him. “Again. You are covered in blood and naked. There’s no way to get from Jersey to the Island without people noticing.”
“How the fuck do you know we live on the Island?” Keane demanded.
“Maybe it’s your annoying accent.”
“Okay,” Tock interjected as Nelle again placed her hand on Keane’s chest to prevent him from attacking. “Before this gets out of hand, Shay and I will go get his kid and then we’ll meet you wherever you say. Sound good?”
“Absolutely,” Rutowski replied. She handed over the keys to her Mercedes. “Take the car and meet our choppers here in”—she looked at her watch—“four hours?”
Tock looked at her big watch. Nodded. “Got it.”
“Like a last flight out of Saigon, huh, Tock?” Max joked before glancing at Stephanie Yoon. “No offense.”
“That was Vietnam,” Yoon sighed out. “I’m Korean. Dumbass.”
“Does anyone care that I’m in here dying?” Streep called out from deep inside the van.
“No,” all her teammates replied.
*
Tock texted one of her cousins—grudgingly—and found out there was a safe house not far from where Mads’s aunt would have choppers waiting for them. She drove Shay there while he stayed low in the backseat. While he took a shower in the upstairs safehouse bathroom, another one of Tock’s cousins showed up with appropriately sized clothes for the extremely large cat and Tock.
“How are you doing?” her cousin asked.