“Except?”
“The Malone brothers wouldn’t stop looking for the people who killed their father,” Mads said.
Savta nodded. “Yes. They still weren’t much of a problem because they weren’t close to the rest of their family or involved in the government. But then”—she stared hard at Tock and her teammates—“they joined up with you.”
“And they knew we’d never stop either.”
“You are also unaffiliated but still have many contacts. Including me. The mistake, it seems, was for Giuseppe to come here to talk to Charlie MacKilligan on his own. And you can stop smirking,” she said to Max.
But Max couldn’t stop smirking. She even tried, but the smirk stayed on her face.
“What can I say?” Max finally asked. “She’s my hero.”
Before her grandmother could say something vicious to the honey badger she loathed most of all, Tock said, “You need to go.”
Shocked, Savta looked at her. “Emily—”
“You need plausible deniability, Savta. You need to go.”
“Whatever you’re thinking—”
“We never stop. We never back off. And we never lose with grace.”
“The honey badger motto,” Rutowski said with an approving nod.
Staring at Tock for a few more seconds, Savta grabbed her purse and sunglasses and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Tock then looked at Mads’s aunt and her friends, but Rutowski smiled and shrugged. “We’re in. Like you, we’re also unaffiliated, which really pissed off Reagan . . . and Bush.” She smiled at her friends. “Such good times.”
*
Shay sat on a picnic table, watching the dogs sleeping under the summer sun, his daughter in his arms. She’d climbed into his lap to give him a hug and then fell asleep with her head against his chest and her arms and legs tight around his body. He didn’t want to wake her from her nap, so he just held her.
And when Tock placed her head against his shoulder, nothing had ever felt so perfect before.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m great. You?”
“Good.”
“How long do we have to stay here?” he asked.
“Rutowski said you and your brothers could stay as long as you want.”
“Tell them thanks, but no thanks.” Keane stood in front of them as Finn and Mads came up from behind. “We’re going home. I already called Mom. She’s coming back. Bringing the aunts. It’s time for us to decide where to go from here.”
“And where’s that?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not going to stop until every de Medici is dead.”
Shay nodded. “So a thoughtful, rational plan. Good to know.”
*
It took a while to track Charlie down. But only because they never bothered to look up. While everyone else was on the ground floor, she was sitting on the roof of the Van Holtz Hamptons mansion. Just staring.
Everyone worried when Charlie started baking, especially what Max called Charlie’s Extreme Baking, when she just baked and baked and baked until she’d driven herself to exhaustion. And there was good reason to be worried about that.
But for Max, the real concern came when all Charlie did was silently stare. No screaming at Max. No worrying about Stevie. No cuddling with Berg. No giving a Van Holtz the finger. Not even thinking about her dogs. Because all she was doing was staring. To Max, that was the most frightening Charlie of all, and Max didn’t get frightened.
She sat by her sister, their feet braced against the roof tiles—the only thing holding them up there. Sure, Charlie could have stared from the part of the roof that had been built to hold a large number of people for a party, including chairs, a barbeque, and a wine fridge. But nope. She’d decided to hang out on the steeply sloped part of the roof like an angry bat contemplating the end of the world.
“So what do you want to do?” Max asked her sister. “Anything you say . . . we’re in.”
“This is normally where I say we run them to ground and we kill them all. But I’m not in the mood to hunt right now. In fact”—she put her arms behind her, propping herself up a bit—“I’m feeling a bit more . . . Max-like, at the moment.”
Max grinned. “Really? So you wanna start some shit?”
“I do. And if the de Medicis want a war, I say we give them a war. A badger war.”
“Okay,” Max replied. “And what’s the first step in a badger war?”
Charlie finally looked at her, and the grin she now wore was broad and beautiful.
“First,” Charlie said, “we make them bleed.”
“Because they already made us bleed?”
“Yes. And now they’re gonna bleed, too. Only not just with blood.”
Chapter 24
“I know you guys are ready to leave,” Charlie said to Keane. “But I’m going to ask you and Nat and the kid to stay here another two days.”
Keane faced her. “Why?”
“I have something to do with Max and the rest of them. I’d feel better if Nat and the kid were here, though. But I don’t want them here without you guys. Maybe you could also help keep an eye on Stevie? She’s still working, trying to figure out the origins of that poison, and it’ll take the Group a couple more days to reinforce her lab so she’ll be safe.”
“Yeah. I can do that. But you need to understand something: Paolo de Medici is mine.”
“That’s fine. Because this shit is just starting.”
He glanced off, then nodded. “Okay. We’ll stay.”
“Good.”
“But we’re in this together, MacKilligan.”
Charlie studied him a moment, before replying, “We’re in this together.”
She headed back to the house, but his voice stopped her. “Charlie?”
She faced him again.
“I’m really sorry about your mother.”
She took in a shaky, angry breath. “And I’m really sorry about your dad.”
They nodded at each other, and Charlie walked out, leaving Keane to continue staring off across the compound, while the Van Holtz wolves watched him for signs of murderous intent toward their pack.
*
Max walked up to the bear standing guard at the front gate. “Hi!” she said, smiling at him. She wore a cute, loose summery dress with white high-top Keds, and her hair in two ponytails. She’d just bought the dress and loved it. She liked how it moved around her thighs and knees.
The bear glared down at her and immediately told her to “leave” in Italian. Instead, Max went up on her toes and slammed the blade she’d tucked into the pocket of her dress into his neck, severing the artery.
Another bear came at her from her left. She yanked the blade out of the first bear, dropped to her haunches, and stabbed up and into the thigh of the second. The third, armed with a machine gun, pulled the weapon from his shoulder and aimed it. But Streep attacked him from behind, landing on his upper back. Screeching and stabbing at the man’s head, neck, and face, she slammed her knife into the bear over and over. The bear roared, reached back to grab hold of Streep, and threw her off. She hit a nearby tree trunk, her body slamming into it with mighty force. But she rolled off and got back to her feet. Then she charged at the bear again.