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Synopsis
She's the woman he's been hired to kidnap. But ZeZé Vargas has other ideas . . . like getting them both out of this nightmare alive. Just one problem. She's crazy. Certifiably. Because while he's plotting their escape, the petite Asian beauty is plotting something much more deadly . . .
Max "Kill It Again" MacKilligan has no idea what one of her own is doing with all these criminal humans until she realizes that Zé has no idea who or what he is. Or exactly how much power he truly has.
But Max is more than happy to bring this handsome jaguar shifter into her world and show him everything he's been missing out on. A move that might be the dumbest thing she's ever done once she realizes how far her enemies will go to wipe her out. Too bad for them Zé is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her alive . . . and honey badgers are just so damn hard to kill!
Contains mature themes.
Release date: March 31, 2020
Publisher: Kensington Books
Print pages: 400
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Badger to the Bone
Shelly Laurenston
Nine years later . . .
Max MacKilligan didn’t see it coming. For once. But how could she when she’d been so focused on the white kid nap van and her ice cream cone? It wasn’t until her psychotic cousin grabbed her from behind and yanked her deep into the alley that she realized the bitch had been standing behind her.
Flung to the ground, her ice cream tossed off somewhere, Max didn’t even have time to put her arms up to protect her face before she was hit again and again. First with a fist and then . . . ? A crowbar?
Christ! What was with this woman? Why did her cousin hate her so much? This was the second time she’d tried to kill Max. The second time she’d come after Max specifically. Not even sending someone else to do the job, but coming herself. Why did the bitch have it in for her? Max didn’t even know Mairi MacKilligan personally. She was from the Scottish side of their family and even the American side barely recognized Max and her two sisters. Until recently, the Scottish had paid them absolutely no mind.
Maybe this was a hate crime. Maybe Mairi just hated Asians. Max was half Chinese. Honestly, Max really didn’t know. Usually people had to get to know Max MacKilligan before they started hating her.
But then Mairi screamed and Max was able to look up in time to see that her cousin had been shot several times in the chest and stomach by a long-range rifle. She praised her solid decision not to do all this alone and scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her face and skull from where her cousin had cracked her with that damn crowbar.
Of course, this beating of one cousin by another was pretty meaningless. Because Mairi and Max were honey badgers. Gunshots to the chest and stomach . . . ? That didn’t kill their kind. Crowbars to the head? Nope. That wouldn’t kill their kind either. It took much more than any of that to actually do serious damage to a MacKilligan.
Still, Max was on a mission here, so she moved with purpose, scrambling over her cousin and charging out of the alley, across the busy Leiden street, and directly into the plain white van that held the men hired to kidnap her.
When Max hit the inside of that vehicle she looked at the men, expecting a sense of urgency about their job. But all they did was gawk at her. Like idiots. What were they doing? Didn’t they have a kidnapping to perform?
She waited another few seconds until she saw her cousin, bleeding from all her gunshot wounds, stumble out of the alley. Max didn’t have time to wait for these men to get their shit together.
“Go!” she ordered them, pulling the black hood over her head. “Go! Go! Go!”
Mairi MacKilligan stood on the corner and watched the white van speed off. People ran up to her, speaking to her in some fuckin’ language she didn’t understand, attempting to help her. As if she had time for any of that. She wasn’t like these people. Boring, useless full-humans. Easily destroyed by the slightest shot to the body. So, no. Mairi didn’t need an ambulance and Christ knew she didn’t need the fuckin’ coppers.
So, she turned away from all those panicked people and headed down the street to her car. Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she stopped long enough to answer.
“What?” she demanded, slapping away the people still attempting to help her.
“Bosses want you back,” a male voice ordered. “Our people will pick you up at the airstrip.”
The call disconnected. Not even a time given! Idiots!
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” she raged, realizing she had to get back to Rome right away. She had to get to that fuckin’ airstrip before her twin aunts’ hired men came looking for her. Mairi wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be going after her cousin.
But she really hated that bitch, and nothing would make her feel better about life and the world in general than seeing the little twat dead.
The black hood came off and he saw her for the first time.
This was her? This tiny woman with purple hair and a few bruises on her face? She was the reason an entire unit of ex-military had been hired to snatch her off the Netherland streets?
He didn’t understand why they were here. Why they’d grabbed this girl. Especially when their jobs mostly consisted of wiping out small villages at the behest of cold-blooded warlords. But the man who’d hired them wanted her, and he wanted her alive, although he didn’t seem to care how she was treated in the interim. Again, strange. Usually the ones who made these kinds of orders had very specific requests—whether to treat the victim as a princess or to manhandle her for some sort of petty revenge—but this guy had been beyond vague. The only thing he’d been specific about? To not trust her. To use metal cuffs and make sure they were tight. And not to ever let her “off the leash.” Usually kidnap victims were so terrified and panicked that they could be released from bondage after a few days. They never tried to make a run for it, always assuming their rich families would pay the ransom demand.
This girl, though . . . she was literally a nobody.
Crouched in front of her, he brushed her hair off her face, and dark brown eyes locked on him. He didn’t see panic in those eyes, though. Didn’t see fear; despite the fact the kidnappers were all wearing black balaclavas to cover their faces.
Her unconcerned gaze looked the group over, studying them. Patowski, standing behind him, said, “If I were you, little girl, I would just stay quiet and wait until this is over. Don’t give us a problem and you’ll be just fine.”
One of the men turned on more lights in the private airport hangar and Zé took in the bruises on her face. The blood dripping down her swollen chin from her damaged lip.
Anger welled up inside him. An anger he’d been well known for when he was a U.S. Marine. His anger and, as one fellow Marine put it, “your sense of annoyance at the very presence of most human beings,” had gotten him some nicknames that should have insulted him more than they did. “Lord Unhappiness” was a personal favorite and “Colonel Fussy-Bottom” was another that almost made him smile. But the one his former teammates used the most was “Captain Destructo.”
Seeing this girl’s face made him feel very Captain Destructo.
Assuming he knew who had done this, he stood and pushed the kid, Anderson. Although Anderson had gotten an honorable discharge from the Marines, Zé could sense that was only by the skin of his teeth. He was sure the kid had wanted to stay but the Marines had wanted him out. And seeing the way the boy enjoyed hurting others, Zé wasn’t exactly surprised. Why the team leader had picked Anderson for this job, Zé would never understand, but he wasn’t close enough to anyone to find out. Maybe it was simply because the kid would do anything they told him to. Anderson didn’t have much of a moral compass.
Zé snarled at the kid. “What did you do to her?”
Anderson’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me. What did you do?”
“Nothing! One second she was disappearing into an alley and a few seconds later, she was charging into the van.”
Zé frowned, confused. “She what?”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“It wasn’t him,” a female voice announced, and they all looked down at her. Once the hood had been removed, she’d been sitting there, gagged, her arms handcuffed behind her back. Now the handcuffs and gag were on the floor, and her free hands were briefly scratching her scalp.
Pointing at her face, she said, “This was courtesy of my cousin. I guess she followed me here, to the Netherlands. The woman is obsessed with me.”
She opened her swelling mouth wide and immediately winced at the pain, placing her hand against her jaw.
“It’s not like I was the one who left her in prison all those years,” she muttered. “Why is she coming after me?”
“Get me an icepack,” Zé ordered Anderson before crouching in front of her.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Trying to make me feel safe there, green eyes?”
“Not particularly, no.”
She laughed at that but abruptly stopped, frowned, and then out of goddamn nowhere, she leaned in to him and pressed her nose against his neck. And Zé could be wrong, but it seemed like she was . . . sniffing him?
Zé froze, wondering what the fuck was happening. It was over in less than five seconds, but in that brief time, this tiny woman had managed to completely disturb him. And it didn’t help that when she leaned away again, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
He had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t matter. The other men heard it and their attention was immediately on him.
Confused, Zé admitted, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You have to know what I mean. What are you doing here”—her gaze bounced from man to man for a moment—“with them?”
Christ, this idiot was going to get them both killed.
Zé tried again. “Lady, I don’t know you. And you can’t even see my face.”
“No. But I can smell you. And, of course, you don’t know me . . . but you know me.”
Now just annoyed, Zé snapped, “What the fuck does that even mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.” She frowned in confusion and her head tilted to the side. “Oh, my God,” she said softly, her eyes widening, “you honestly don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
Zé felt the muzzle of a semiauto pressed against the back of his neck.
“Yeah,” Patowski growled, “he doesn’t know what?”
“He doesn’t know what he is, and I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“What he is?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, smiled. “He’s a cat.”
Which was weird enough, but then to illustrate this comment, she lifted her hands, curled her fingers like they were claws, and made what could only be called a “rowrrr” sound.
A moment before, the barrel against his neck had been pressing down hard, but now it loosened and Patowski asked, “What?”
“You know. Kitty. He’s a kitty-cat.” She shrugged. “Well . . . actually . . . he’s a jungle cat, I think. Cats definitely aren’t my thing, but he’s not a lion or a tiger. Those are scents I’m well acquainted with.”
The gun moved away from his neck and Zé stood.
“Oh, boy,” Patowski sighed, removing the balaclava and revealing his face. A move that didn’t bode well for this woman. And when all the others did the same . . .
Uh-oh.
But Zé also understood their reaction because this woman was clearly insane. He needed to save her, but she was insane, which would only make his job that much harder. He’d thought he’d be dealing with some scared-to-death rich girl that he could move around as needed while he got her out of here and took down Patowski’s operation at the same time. That was his current assignment. Look, he knew from personal experience that leaving the military life behind was not easy. Civilian life had many challenges and none of the camaraderie most of these men had been used to. But to simply forget about the laws of the land so one could make a few bucks by kidnapping, murdering, or doing anything else someone with cash asked one to do was a shitty life decision in Zé’s estimation.
As a former Marine himself, Zé knew there were better choices to be made. He’d made them—why couldn’t these guys?
But this kind of mission was a lot easier when the victim one was trying to save was a bit more . . . pliable. This tiny woman might be too crazy to be pliable.
Zé pulled off his own balaclava and looked down at her. And she smiled back. A wide, breathtaking smile that made no sense in the current situation. Was, in fact, miles from sense.
“Let’s get the cuffs back on her,” Patowski softly suggested to Zé, something Zé was not about to do. But he didn’t have a chance to do anything.
Picking at something on her thumb, she said, “That’s not gonna happen.”
Patowski, known for his short fuse, glared down at her. “Pardon?”
Zé quickly raised his hand, hoping to cut off the man’s anger, and again crouched in front of her. “Look—”
She placed her forefinger against her lips. “Shhhhh.”
Annoyed—Zé hated when people shushed him—he asked, “Why should I?”
“Because we both know you don’t belong here. At first, I thought, ‘Why is this dude hanging around a bunch of ’”—she stuck her tongue out and made a “bleh” sound—“ ‘full-humans? ’ No offense, but . . .” she said to the other men before sticking out her tongue again and making that “bleh” sound. “But then I realized you don’t belong with them at all.” Her smile grew wide. “You’re an infiltrator.”
The men all stared at him, and although she was absolutely right, he still had to ask these idiots, “Are you really taking the girl who thinks I’m a cat seriously? Really?”
They exchanged confused glances.
“Look, you guys,” she said, smiling at them, “I’m here for one reason. I need you to tell me where Devon Martin is.”
Zé glanced at Patowski. “Our benefactor,” Patowski replied.
“Yeah. Your benefactor, but my pain in the ass. He keeps sending people after me, and I need it to stop. I’ve got too much going on right now.” She began to count off on her fingers. “I’ve got my sisters to deal with, the crazy cousin who did this to my face, the twin aunts who blew up my uncles on their plane, and now my uncles have moved into our house and I’ve got to fix that.”
“Your blown-up uncles live with you?” Zé asked.
“Of course they do. They don’t want to go back to Scotland until they figure out what’s going on, but . . . a bomb on a plane? Whose bright idea was it to do that? Everyone knows you can’t kill honey badgers just by blowing up the plane they’re on,” she scoffed.
“Your uncles are honey badgers?”
“Well, so am I.”
“Of course you are.” Zé sighed.
“Okay, we’re done,” Patowski said, and Zé knew he meant it. But before he could move, Patowski motioned to Anderson and Anderson took the butt of his pistol and bashed the woman on the side of the head. It was an unnecessarily hard hit. She should have dropped instantly. She didn’t.
“Owwwwwww!” she whined. Then, in retaliation, she punched Anderson in the nuts.
He roared in pain and anger, bending over before wrapping his hand around her throat and squeezing the life from her.
Gasping for air, her hands swinging out wildly, she locked her gaze on Zé.
“Let her go!” Zé bellowed at Anderson. When the kid didn’t, Zé shot up and turned to Patowski. “Now! Let her go!”
“She’s right about you,” Patowski guessed, his gaze sizing the taller man up, “isn’t she?”
Instead of stopping Anderson from killing the woman, the other men began to slowly move toward Zé, but when they heard it, everyone froze.
When they heard her laughing.
Zé looked down. She was no longer in the chair, but on the floor, on her back, with Anderson’s hand tight around her throat. But she was no longer struggling to breathe. She was laughing.
Frustrated and snarling, Anderson tightened his grip but . . . she only laughed harder.
Then Zé saw it. It was just a flash. Just a moment. But for a brief second, she moved her head so the bright lights hit her eyes—and they changed, becoming glassy and reflective. Like a dog’s standing under a streetlight.
“Fuck,” was all he got out before the knife she’d been hiding under her long-sleeve tee appeared. Gripping it tight, she rammed it into Anderson’s throat, hitting him directly in the artery.
Shaking, squealing, and pissing himself, Anderson released her and stumbled back, trying to stop the spouting blood with his hands.
She got to her feet, her gaze locked on Zé. Another teammate went to grab her, but without moving her gaze from Zé, she brought her blade up, back, and across, cutting the guy’s throat from ear to ear.
Then it hit him. This was not some crazy girl who happened to get her desperate hands on a knife. This . . . this was a well-trained killer. And staring at him, that well-trained killer put her blood-covered forefinger to her lips and said, “Shhhhh.”
It had all been so simple. Or so she’d thought.
Allow herself to be kidnapped by Devon’s men, go with them to a secondary location—risky but necessary in this particular case—meet Devon or, if he wasn’t with the mercenaries, find out where he was, track Devon down, kill Devon.
This was not a complicated plan. And it should have had her back home in no time, her elder sister none the wiser.
But the cat . . . the cat had thrown her off. She hadn’t expected to find a shifter here among all these shitty full-humans. Then, even more confusing, he was clearly here for some other reason. Not just to make some easy cash and damn whoever might get killed in the process.
When she’d realized there was a shifter among the group, she’d moved quickly to get him out of the way. Unlike the full-humans, a cat would know how to neutralize her kind quick, before Max could make a move. But his reactions? His confusion? He sincerely thought she was delusional.
Then it hit her: he really wanted to help.
Max was not a cat person, normally. Big or little, she wasn’t a fan. But she knew this guy was trying to help her. He didn’t belong with these full-humans: ex-military who turned from a life of good works and heroic risks to brutal mercenary work and murder for profit. But the cat . . . he was here to stop them.
How did she know? He had that look. Her mother called it, “The good-guy look. You have to watch out for them, honey. For those good guys,” she used to tell eight-year-old Max. “Your gut will tell you what they are; then just look in their eyes. You’ll see it in their eyes, and you’ll be able to spot them a mile away. They’re the ones who’ll get in the way of your taking what you want. Don’t let them.”
And this cat had that “good-guy look.” But what really had Max concerned about this guy was the fact that he didn’t know what he was. Just as her twin aunts hadn’t known they were honey badgers for decades, he didn’t know he was a jungle cat, and that put him at a great disadvantage among these killers. If he didn’t know what he was, he didn’t know the level of his power. He didn’t know what he could do. He didn’t know he could unleash fangs and claws and tear these useless full-humans apart. He didn’t know any of that, which meant Max had to protect him.
Her mother hadn’t taught her that. Her big sister had. Charlie, whether she meant to or not, had that “good-guy look,” too. She cared about others. She didn’t want “innocents” caught in the cross fire of any fight and, if they were caught, she wanted to make sure they didn’t end up getting killed. It was one of the main reasons she was such an awesome shooter. The last thing Charlie ever wanted to do was to accidentally kill someone who didn’t deserve it.
Although Max’s desire to protect innocents wasn’t as intense as Charlie’s or Stevie’s, she still felt a sense of responsibility. Especially to a fellow shifter. Max could have easily dug her way out of this hangar in seconds and disappeared into the surrounding territory, out of real danger. But if she did that, she couldn’t bring the cat with her.
So she would stay. And she would help.
Of course, Max’s idea of “help” was . . . well . . .
Max wrapped her hand around the gun raised behind her, easily pushed away the strong arm holding it, and rammed her blade into the throat of the shocked mercenary gawking at her.
Gunshots rang out from another mercenary and Max grabbed the cat by his Kevlar vest and yanked him to the ground. She landed on top of him and grinned down into his shocked face.
“Who’s a cutie kitty?” she asked, loving his appalled expression. “Who is? You are!” She then slapped her hand over his face so she could lever herself up. She threw her blade at the shooter, nailing him in the throat.
More shooting now from different directions and the cat rolled them over so he was on top. He already had his semiauto out and immediately began firing, pushing Max under a large nearby table at the same time.
It was cute. How he was trying to protect her.
The poor guy! He was like an adorable kitten. Just so weak and defenseless he might as well be a full-human.
A sexy, Latin full-human.
His seemingly black hair was cut in jagged layers that kept falling into his face, the ends nearly reaching his shoulders. And his eyes were a bright green that she assumed would turn gold should he ever learn to shift to his true form. The shape of his eyes was definitely like a cat’s, too, as was his flat and wide nose. Just like a cat muzzle.
In other words . . . how could he not know he was a cat? How could no one have guessed? The man was a walking, talking jungle cat in human form! And it boggled Max’s mind that absolutely no one he’d previously known was a shifter or had pointed out the fact to him. Especially if he’d once been in the military. Tons of shifters joined the military and worked for the government. Max had been actively recruited by the CIA for years before she was even eighteen, but Charlie had put the kibosh on that. Unsure of what her big sister had done to discourage that interest—the CIA was not an organization that was usually put off by an easily stressed eighteen-year-old who loathed her father and had been fired from Dairy Queen once because she’d put a mouthy patron in a headlock—Max came to realize that organizations like the CIA, the FBI, or the military weren’t for her. They were too regimented. Too cautious. You had to take orders. Max hated taking orders from anyone but Charlie.
Just ask Stevie. If Stevie gave her an order, Max went out of her way to do the exact opposite or, at the very least, to let Stevie believe she’d done the exact opposite. Just to piss the kid off. And that was her sister. Imagine if some guy she didn’t know, who had never saved her life and thought he was in charge simply because of his rank, tried to give her orders . . .
Nope, nope. The regimented life was not for Max. She needed at least the illusion that she was free to do what she wanted. That was important to her, even if it was a lie.
Getting to one knee, the cat raised his weapon and shot. Men went down, one after another, hit either in the head or face, each careful shot avoiding the protective vests altogether.
Max was impressed. She’d only ever seen her sister handle a gun that well. Charlie was still better, but that was because no one matched her skill level.
“We need to get out of here,” the cat told her, and Max saw from her spot under the table that more men were running toward the hangar from outside, automatic weapons already drawn.
She looked around while the cat continued to fire, stopping only to reload. She saw a door that led to offices in the back of the hangar. If she could get the cat back there, they could wait it out until her backup arrived. Because—as she’d learned from her sister a long time ago—she always had backup.
As Max started to pull herself out from under the table, she saw that one of the shooters was smarter than the others. Instead of trying to hit the cat with a spray of bullets, he aimed above the table and hit the chains that held one of the long fluorescent lights above their heads. The cat turned, ready to shoot the mercenary, but the light crashed down, ramming him in the back of the head, knocking him down and out.
The mercenary ran forward and re-aimed, about to shoot the cat at point-blank range. Max, now out from under the table—but without her knife—charged forward and launched herself at the shooter. Slamming into him, she dug her claws into his shoulders and took him to the floor with one hit. She unleashed her fangs and bit into the side of his neck, ripping out his artery in one move.
When she got to her feet, she spit the blood and flesh into the face of the closest mercenary, shocking him long enough for her to snatch his military-grade knife from its holster. She cut that one’s throat and dashed to the next closest. That one opened fire and Max dropped to her knees so that she slid across the smooth floor and into his legs. She shoved the blade into one of his thighs, opening the artery buried there.
When he dropped, she grabbed his body and used it as a shield against the fresh round of gunfire sprayed exactly where she was kneeling.
But a stray bullet grazed her leg and, at that point, Max got a little angry. Because if she got shot, she’d have to explain to Charlie how that happened. She could dismiss lacerations and bruises, but not bullet wounds. Those she couldn’t explain away, which meant that now she’d have to get very nasty . . .
The agony in his head blinded him, made him sick. Zé couldn’t believe how painful it was. He felt weak, confused. He just wanted to go to sleep. But he knew he had to help . . . somebody. For some reason. It was all a bit sketchy, but he didn’t have the time or ability to figure out why he was doing what he felt he needed to do; he just knew he had to do it. Now. Something.
Yeah, he was confused, but . . . oh well.
Zé turned over and began to drag himself out from under the debris. He lifted his head, blinked hard once . . . twice . . . Then he watched as a pretty Asian woman launched herself into several armed men who had been firing directly at her. And, as she moved through the air, she changed from a woman into a . . . rat? Was that a giant rat? Like the capybara? No. He didn’t think so. He’d grown up in the South Bronx. He knew a rat when he saw one, and that was definitely not a rat. But it wasn’t a woman either. Whatever it was, though, it was pissed, tearing into those men with claws and fangs and absolutely zero pity.
Still holding his . . . um . . . uh . . . what were these called again? Oh. Yeah! His gun! Still holding his gun, Zé raised the weapon to shoot the other men who, after a moment of stunned screaming, launched themselves at the . . . thing? Yeah. The thing that was attacking their teammates.
But Zé didn’t get to pull the trigger before more of those giant not-rat things showed up. They joined the attack, dragging the men to the ground, ripping them apart. Body parts and blood flew. Men, begging for their lives, screaming in panic and fear, were dragged across the floor in front of Zé.
At that point he didn’t know whether to shoot, ask questions, or just go back to sleep. He was thinking sleep when a Latina woman he didn’t recognize stepped in front of him. She was armed with a very expensive automatic weapon. She gazed down at him with cold, dark eyes before raising the gun and aiming it at his head.
It didn’t occur to Zé that she was about to blow his brains out because he wasn’t sure about anything at the moment. But by the time he realized what was about to happen, a voice said, “No, Streep! Not him!”
The Asian woman reappeared, only now she was naked and covered in blood. She stood next to the Latina, smiled down at him. “That’s my kitty cat. You can’t shoot my kitty cat.”
“Wait . . . is this that Denmark Syndrome thing?”
“It’s Stockholm syndrome, Einstein, and no. He’s not with these guys. He tried to protect me.”
The Latina sneered down at him. “Good job.”
The Asian woman crouched in front of him, gently took his gun away, then stroked her hand over his head. “Don’t worry, kitty cat, we’ll take care of you. You just get some sleep.”
He wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t take him from the scene. That, for some reason, he needed to stay . . .
But he was just so sleepy and his head hurt so bad and he was sure if he didn’t go to sleep, he’d vomit instead and he really didn’t want to do that so . . . yeah . . . sleep.
The cat’s head dropped and he was out cold. Max felt his forehead. He was already slipping into what shifters called “the fever.” It helped seriously injured shifters heal if they weren’t killed outright. At least that’s what she’d heard. Max had never had the fever and, according to Charlie, none of the three MacKilligan siblings could get the fever, no matter how badly they’d been hurt and, of course, that anomaly was their father’s fault. Their father and his fucked-up genes.
The rest of Max’s teammates now stood around her: Streep, Tock, Mads, and Nelle. The most loyal bunch of outstanding ladies Max had ever known. They’d played basketball together since junior high. But their relationship had always been more than mere teammates. All five were honey badgers in a land of wolves, bears, and cats; most of them had family issues beyond “Daddy works too much and Mom is always in a yoga class”; just in general, they simply didn’t fit in with anyone. Not with other badgers. Not with other shifters. Not with other people. But they fit each other for some strange reason and that made all the difference.
Max had realized, even as a young teen, that if these girls were going to be part of her life, they would need to know how to protect themselves. How to fight, how to hurt, how to destroy. As honey badgers, they had a natural instinct for all that but Max had always agreed with Charlie: just being shifters wasn’t always enough. Especially when it came to protecting their baby sister. So Max and Charlie had learned how to protect themselves when human, too. They learned how to use guns and knives as well as hand-to-hand combat. And what Max had learned, she’d taught to her
Max MacKilligan didn’t see it coming. For once. But how could she when she’d been so focused on the white kid nap van and her ice cream cone? It wasn’t until her psychotic cousin grabbed her from behind and yanked her deep into the alley that she realized the bitch had been standing behind her.
Flung to the ground, her ice cream tossed off somewhere, Max didn’t even have time to put her arms up to protect her face before she was hit again and again. First with a fist and then . . . ? A crowbar?
Christ! What was with this woman? Why did her cousin hate her so much? This was the second time she’d tried to kill Max. The second time she’d come after Max specifically. Not even sending someone else to do the job, but coming herself. Why did the bitch have it in for her? Max didn’t even know Mairi MacKilligan personally. She was from the Scottish side of their family and even the American side barely recognized Max and her two sisters. Until recently, the Scottish had paid them absolutely no mind.
Maybe this was a hate crime. Maybe Mairi just hated Asians. Max was half Chinese. Honestly, Max really didn’t know. Usually people had to get to know Max MacKilligan before they started hating her.
But then Mairi screamed and Max was able to look up in time to see that her cousin had been shot several times in the chest and stomach by a long-range rifle. She praised her solid decision not to do all this alone and scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her face and skull from where her cousin had cracked her with that damn crowbar.
Of course, this beating of one cousin by another was pretty meaningless. Because Mairi and Max were honey badgers. Gunshots to the chest and stomach . . . ? That didn’t kill their kind. Crowbars to the head? Nope. That wouldn’t kill their kind either. It took much more than any of that to actually do serious damage to a MacKilligan.
Still, Max was on a mission here, so she moved with purpose, scrambling over her cousin and charging out of the alley, across the busy Leiden street, and directly into the plain white van that held the men hired to kidnap her.
When Max hit the inside of that vehicle she looked at the men, expecting a sense of urgency about their job. But all they did was gawk at her. Like idiots. What were they doing? Didn’t they have a kidnapping to perform?
She waited another few seconds until she saw her cousin, bleeding from all her gunshot wounds, stumble out of the alley. Max didn’t have time to wait for these men to get their shit together.
“Go!” she ordered them, pulling the black hood over her head. “Go! Go! Go!”
Mairi MacKilligan stood on the corner and watched the white van speed off. People ran up to her, speaking to her in some fuckin’ language she didn’t understand, attempting to help her. As if she had time for any of that. She wasn’t like these people. Boring, useless full-humans. Easily destroyed by the slightest shot to the body. So, no. Mairi didn’t need an ambulance and Christ knew she didn’t need the fuckin’ coppers.
So, she turned away from all those panicked people and headed down the street to her car. Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she stopped long enough to answer.
“What?” she demanded, slapping away the people still attempting to help her.
“Bosses want you back,” a male voice ordered. “Our people will pick you up at the airstrip.”
The call disconnected. Not even a time given! Idiots!
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” she raged, realizing she had to get back to Rome right away. She had to get to that fuckin’ airstrip before her twin aunts’ hired men came looking for her. Mairi wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be going after her cousin.
But she really hated that bitch, and nothing would make her feel better about life and the world in general than seeing the little twat dead.
The black hood came off and he saw her for the first time.
This was her? This tiny woman with purple hair and a few bruises on her face? She was the reason an entire unit of ex-military had been hired to snatch her off the Netherland streets?
He didn’t understand why they were here. Why they’d grabbed this girl. Especially when their jobs mostly consisted of wiping out small villages at the behest of cold-blooded warlords. But the man who’d hired them wanted her, and he wanted her alive, although he didn’t seem to care how she was treated in the interim. Again, strange. Usually the ones who made these kinds of orders had very specific requests—whether to treat the victim as a princess or to manhandle her for some sort of petty revenge—but this guy had been beyond vague. The only thing he’d been specific about? To not trust her. To use metal cuffs and make sure they were tight. And not to ever let her “off the leash.” Usually kidnap victims were so terrified and panicked that they could be released from bondage after a few days. They never tried to make a run for it, always assuming their rich families would pay the ransom demand.
This girl, though . . . she was literally a nobody.
Crouched in front of her, he brushed her hair off her face, and dark brown eyes locked on him. He didn’t see panic in those eyes, though. Didn’t see fear; despite the fact the kidnappers were all wearing black balaclavas to cover their faces.
Her unconcerned gaze looked the group over, studying them. Patowski, standing behind him, said, “If I were you, little girl, I would just stay quiet and wait until this is over. Don’t give us a problem and you’ll be just fine.”
One of the men turned on more lights in the private airport hangar and Zé took in the bruises on her face. The blood dripping down her swollen chin from her damaged lip.
Anger welled up inside him. An anger he’d been well known for when he was a U.S. Marine. His anger and, as one fellow Marine put it, “your sense of annoyance at the very presence of most human beings,” had gotten him some nicknames that should have insulted him more than they did. “Lord Unhappiness” was a personal favorite and “Colonel Fussy-Bottom” was another that almost made him smile. But the one his former teammates used the most was “Captain Destructo.”
Seeing this girl’s face made him feel very Captain Destructo.
Assuming he knew who had done this, he stood and pushed the kid, Anderson. Although Anderson had gotten an honorable discharge from the Marines, Zé could sense that was only by the skin of his teeth. He was sure the kid had wanted to stay but the Marines had wanted him out. And seeing the way the boy enjoyed hurting others, Zé wasn’t exactly surprised. Why the team leader had picked Anderson for this job, Zé would never understand, but he wasn’t close enough to anyone to find out. Maybe it was simply because the kid would do anything they told him to. Anderson didn’t have much of a moral compass.
Zé snarled at the kid. “What did you do to her?”
Anderson’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me. What did you do?”
“Nothing! One second she was disappearing into an alley and a few seconds later, she was charging into the van.”
Zé frowned, confused. “She what?”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“It wasn’t him,” a female voice announced, and they all looked down at her. Once the hood had been removed, she’d been sitting there, gagged, her arms handcuffed behind her back. Now the handcuffs and gag were on the floor, and her free hands were briefly scratching her scalp.
Pointing at her face, she said, “This was courtesy of my cousin. I guess she followed me here, to the Netherlands. The woman is obsessed with me.”
She opened her swelling mouth wide and immediately winced at the pain, placing her hand against her jaw.
“It’s not like I was the one who left her in prison all those years,” she muttered. “Why is she coming after me?”
“Get me an icepack,” Zé ordered Anderson before crouching in front of her.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Trying to make me feel safe there, green eyes?”
“Not particularly, no.”
She laughed at that but abruptly stopped, frowned, and then out of goddamn nowhere, she leaned in to him and pressed her nose against his neck. And Zé could be wrong, but it seemed like she was . . . sniffing him?
Zé froze, wondering what the fuck was happening. It was over in less than five seconds, but in that brief time, this tiny woman had managed to completely disturb him. And it didn’t help that when she leaned away again, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
He had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t matter. The other men heard it and their attention was immediately on him.
Confused, Zé admitted, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You have to know what I mean. What are you doing here”—her gaze bounced from man to man for a moment—“with them?”
Christ, this idiot was going to get them both killed.
Zé tried again. “Lady, I don’t know you. And you can’t even see my face.”
“No. But I can smell you. And, of course, you don’t know me . . . but you know me.”
Now just annoyed, Zé snapped, “What the fuck does that even mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.” She frowned in confusion and her head tilted to the side. “Oh, my God,” she said softly, her eyes widening, “you honestly don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
Zé felt the muzzle of a semiauto pressed against the back of his neck.
“Yeah,” Patowski growled, “he doesn’t know what?”
“He doesn’t know what he is, and I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“What he is?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, smiled. “He’s a cat.”
Which was weird enough, but then to illustrate this comment, she lifted her hands, curled her fingers like they were claws, and made what could only be called a “rowrrr” sound.
A moment before, the barrel against his neck had been pressing down hard, but now it loosened and Patowski asked, “What?”
“You know. Kitty. He’s a kitty-cat.” She shrugged. “Well . . . actually . . . he’s a jungle cat, I think. Cats definitely aren’t my thing, but he’s not a lion or a tiger. Those are scents I’m well acquainted with.”
The gun moved away from his neck and Zé stood.
“Oh, boy,” Patowski sighed, removing the balaclava and revealing his face. A move that didn’t bode well for this woman. And when all the others did the same . . .
Uh-oh.
But Zé also understood their reaction because this woman was clearly insane. He needed to save her, but she was insane, which would only make his job that much harder. He’d thought he’d be dealing with some scared-to-death rich girl that he could move around as needed while he got her out of here and took down Patowski’s operation at the same time. That was his current assignment. Look, he knew from personal experience that leaving the military life behind was not easy. Civilian life had many challenges and none of the camaraderie most of these men had been used to. But to simply forget about the laws of the land so one could make a few bucks by kidnapping, murdering, or doing anything else someone with cash asked one to do was a shitty life decision in Zé’s estimation.
As a former Marine himself, Zé knew there were better choices to be made. He’d made them—why couldn’t these guys?
But this kind of mission was a lot easier when the victim one was trying to save was a bit more . . . pliable. This tiny woman might be too crazy to be pliable.
Zé pulled off his own balaclava and looked down at her. And she smiled back. A wide, breathtaking smile that made no sense in the current situation. Was, in fact, miles from sense.
“Let’s get the cuffs back on her,” Patowski softly suggested to Zé, something Zé was not about to do. But he didn’t have a chance to do anything.
Picking at something on her thumb, she said, “That’s not gonna happen.”
Patowski, known for his short fuse, glared down at her. “Pardon?”
Zé quickly raised his hand, hoping to cut off the man’s anger, and again crouched in front of her. “Look—”
She placed her forefinger against her lips. “Shhhhh.”
Annoyed—Zé hated when people shushed him—he asked, “Why should I?”
“Because we both know you don’t belong here. At first, I thought, ‘Why is this dude hanging around a bunch of ’”—she stuck her tongue out and made a “bleh” sound—“ ‘full-humans? ’ No offense, but . . .” she said to the other men before sticking out her tongue again and making that “bleh” sound. “But then I realized you don’t belong with them at all.” Her smile grew wide. “You’re an infiltrator.”
The men all stared at him, and although she was absolutely right, he still had to ask these idiots, “Are you really taking the girl who thinks I’m a cat seriously? Really?”
They exchanged confused glances.
“Look, you guys,” she said, smiling at them, “I’m here for one reason. I need you to tell me where Devon Martin is.”
Zé glanced at Patowski. “Our benefactor,” Patowski replied.
“Yeah. Your benefactor, but my pain in the ass. He keeps sending people after me, and I need it to stop. I’ve got too much going on right now.” She began to count off on her fingers. “I’ve got my sisters to deal with, the crazy cousin who did this to my face, the twin aunts who blew up my uncles on their plane, and now my uncles have moved into our house and I’ve got to fix that.”
“Your blown-up uncles live with you?” Zé asked.
“Of course they do. They don’t want to go back to Scotland until they figure out what’s going on, but . . . a bomb on a plane? Whose bright idea was it to do that? Everyone knows you can’t kill honey badgers just by blowing up the plane they’re on,” she scoffed.
“Your uncles are honey badgers?”
“Well, so am I.”
“Of course you are.” Zé sighed.
“Okay, we’re done,” Patowski said, and Zé knew he meant it. But before he could move, Patowski motioned to Anderson and Anderson took the butt of his pistol and bashed the woman on the side of the head. It was an unnecessarily hard hit. She should have dropped instantly. She didn’t.
“Owwwwwww!” she whined. Then, in retaliation, she punched Anderson in the nuts.
He roared in pain and anger, bending over before wrapping his hand around her throat and squeezing the life from her.
Gasping for air, her hands swinging out wildly, she locked her gaze on Zé.
“Let her go!” Zé bellowed at Anderson. When the kid didn’t, Zé shot up and turned to Patowski. “Now! Let her go!”
“She’s right about you,” Patowski guessed, his gaze sizing the taller man up, “isn’t she?”
Instead of stopping Anderson from killing the woman, the other men began to slowly move toward Zé, but when they heard it, everyone froze.
When they heard her laughing.
Zé looked down. She was no longer in the chair, but on the floor, on her back, with Anderson’s hand tight around her throat. But she was no longer struggling to breathe. She was laughing.
Frustrated and snarling, Anderson tightened his grip but . . . she only laughed harder.
Then Zé saw it. It was just a flash. Just a moment. But for a brief second, she moved her head so the bright lights hit her eyes—and they changed, becoming glassy and reflective. Like a dog’s standing under a streetlight.
“Fuck,” was all he got out before the knife she’d been hiding under her long-sleeve tee appeared. Gripping it tight, she rammed it into Anderson’s throat, hitting him directly in the artery.
Shaking, squealing, and pissing himself, Anderson released her and stumbled back, trying to stop the spouting blood with his hands.
She got to her feet, her gaze locked on Zé. Another teammate went to grab her, but without moving her gaze from Zé, she brought her blade up, back, and across, cutting the guy’s throat from ear to ear.
Then it hit him. This was not some crazy girl who happened to get her desperate hands on a knife. This . . . this was a well-trained killer. And staring at him, that well-trained killer put her blood-covered forefinger to her lips and said, “Shhhhh.”
It had all been so simple. Or so she’d thought.
Allow herself to be kidnapped by Devon’s men, go with them to a secondary location—risky but necessary in this particular case—meet Devon or, if he wasn’t with the mercenaries, find out where he was, track Devon down, kill Devon.
This was not a complicated plan. And it should have had her back home in no time, her elder sister none the wiser.
But the cat . . . the cat had thrown her off. She hadn’t expected to find a shifter here among all these shitty full-humans. Then, even more confusing, he was clearly here for some other reason. Not just to make some easy cash and damn whoever might get killed in the process.
When she’d realized there was a shifter among the group, she’d moved quickly to get him out of the way. Unlike the full-humans, a cat would know how to neutralize her kind quick, before Max could make a move. But his reactions? His confusion? He sincerely thought she was delusional.
Then it hit her: he really wanted to help.
Max was not a cat person, normally. Big or little, she wasn’t a fan. But she knew this guy was trying to help her. He didn’t belong with these full-humans: ex-military who turned from a life of good works and heroic risks to brutal mercenary work and murder for profit. But the cat . . . he was here to stop them.
How did she know? He had that look. Her mother called it, “The good-guy look. You have to watch out for them, honey. For those good guys,” she used to tell eight-year-old Max. “Your gut will tell you what they are; then just look in their eyes. You’ll see it in their eyes, and you’ll be able to spot them a mile away. They’re the ones who’ll get in the way of your taking what you want. Don’t let them.”
And this cat had that “good-guy look.” But what really had Max concerned about this guy was the fact that he didn’t know what he was. Just as her twin aunts hadn’t known they were honey badgers for decades, he didn’t know he was a jungle cat, and that put him at a great disadvantage among these killers. If he didn’t know what he was, he didn’t know the level of his power. He didn’t know what he could do. He didn’t know he could unleash fangs and claws and tear these useless full-humans apart. He didn’t know any of that, which meant Max had to protect him.
Her mother hadn’t taught her that. Her big sister had. Charlie, whether she meant to or not, had that “good-guy look,” too. She cared about others. She didn’t want “innocents” caught in the cross fire of any fight and, if they were caught, she wanted to make sure they didn’t end up getting killed. It was one of the main reasons she was such an awesome shooter. The last thing Charlie ever wanted to do was to accidentally kill someone who didn’t deserve it.
Although Max’s desire to protect innocents wasn’t as intense as Charlie’s or Stevie’s, she still felt a sense of responsibility. Especially to a fellow shifter. Max could have easily dug her way out of this hangar in seconds and disappeared into the surrounding territory, out of real danger. But if she did that, she couldn’t bring the cat with her.
So she would stay. And she would help.
Of course, Max’s idea of “help” was . . . well . . .
Max wrapped her hand around the gun raised behind her, easily pushed away the strong arm holding it, and rammed her blade into the throat of the shocked mercenary gawking at her.
Gunshots rang out from another mercenary and Max grabbed the cat by his Kevlar vest and yanked him to the ground. She landed on top of him and grinned down into his shocked face.
“Who’s a cutie kitty?” she asked, loving his appalled expression. “Who is? You are!” She then slapped her hand over his face so she could lever herself up. She threw her blade at the shooter, nailing him in the throat.
More shooting now from different directions and the cat rolled them over so he was on top. He already had his semiauto out and immediately began firing, pushing Max under a large nearby table at the same time.
It was cute. How he was trying to protect her.
The poor guy! He was like an adorable kitten. Just so weak and defenseless he might as well be a full-human.
A sexy, Latin full-human.
His seemingly black hair was cut in jagged layers that kept falling into his face, the ends nearly reaching his shoulders. And his eyes were a bright green that she assumed would turn gold should he ever learn to shift to his true form. The shape of his eyes was definitely like a cat’s, too, as was his flat and wide nose. Just like a cat muzzle.
In other words . . . how could he not know he was a cat? How could no one have guessed? The man was a walking, talking jungle cat in human form! And it boggled Max’s mind that absolutely no one he’d previously known was a shifter or had pointed out the fact to him. Especially if he’d once been in the military. Tons of shifters joined the military and worked for the government. Max had been actively recruited by the CIA for years before she was even eighteen, but Charlie had put the kibosh on that. Unsure of what her big sister had done to discourage that interest—the CIA was not an organization that was usually put off by an easily stressed eighteen-year-old who loathed her father and had been fired from Dairy Queen once because she’d put a mouthy patron in a headlock—Max came to realize that organizations like the CIA, the FBI, or the military weren’t for her. They were too regimented. Too cautious. You had to take orders. Max hated taking orders from anyone but Charlie.
Just ask Stevie. If Stevie gave her an order, Max went out of her way to do the exact opposite or, at the very least, to let Stevie believe she’d done the exact opposite. Just to piss the kid off. And that was her sister. Imagine if some guy she didn’t know, who had never saved her life and thought he was in charge simply because of his rank, tried to give her orders . . .
Nope, nope. The regimented life was not for Max. She needed at least the illusion that she was free to do what she wanted. That was important to her, even if it was a lie.
Getting to one knee, the cat raised his weapon and shot. Men went down, one after another, hit either in the head or face, each careful shot avoiding the protective vests altogether.
Max was impressed. She’d only ever seen her sister handle a gun that well. Charlie was still better, but that was because no one matched her skill level.
“We need to get out of here,” the cat told her, and Max saw from her spot under the table that more men were running toward the hangar from outside, automatic weapons already drawn.
She looked around while the cat continued to fire, stopping only to reload. She saw a door that led to offices in the back of the hangar. If she could get the cat back there, they could wait it out until her backup arrived. Because—as she’d learned from her sister a long time ago—she always had backup.
As Max started to pull herself out from under the table, she saw that one of the shooters was smarter than the others. Instead of trying to hit the cat with a spray of bullets, he aimed above the table and hit the chains that held one of the long fluorescent lights above their heads. The cat turned, ready to shoot the mercenary, but the light crashed down, ramming him in the back of the head, knocking him down and out.
The mercenary ran forward and re-aimed, about to shoot the cat at point-blank range. Max, now out from under the table—but without her knife—charged forward and launched herself at the shooter. Slamming into him, she dug her claws into his shoulders and took him to the floor with one hit. She unleashed her fangs and bit into the side of his neck, ripping out his artery in one move.
When she got to her feet, she spit the blood and flesh into the face of the closest mercenary, shocking him long enough for her to snatch his military-grade knife from its holster. She cut that one’s throat and dashed to the next closest. That one opened fire and Max dropped to her knees so that she slid across the smooth floor and into his legs. She shoved the blade into one of his thighs, opening the artery buried there.
When he dropped, she grabbed his body and used it as a shield against the fresh round of gunfire sprayed exactly where she was kneeling.
But a stray bullet grazed her leg and, at that point, Max got a little angry. Because if she got shot, she’d have to explain to Charlie how that happened. She could dismiss lacerations and bruises, but not bullet wounds. Those she couldn’t explain away, which meant that now she’d have to get very nasty . . .
The agony in his head blinded him, made him sick. Zé couldn’t believe how painful it was. He felt weak, confused. He just wanted to go to sleep. But he knew he had to help . . . somebody. For some reason. It was all a bit sketchy, but he didn’t have the time or ability to figure out why he was doing what he felt he needed to do; he just knew he had to do it. Now. Something.
Yeah, he was confused, but . . . oh well.
Zé turned over and began to drag himself out from under the debris. He lifted his head, blinked hard once . . . twice . . . Then he watched as a pretty Asian woman launched herself into several armed men who had been firing directly at her. And, as she moved through the air, she changed from a woman into a . . . rat? Was that a giant rat? Like the capybara? No. He didn’t think so. He’d grown up in the South Bronx. He knew a rat when he saw one, and that was definitely not a rat. But it wasn’t a woman either. Whatever it was, though, it was pissed, tearing into those men with claws and fangs and absolutely zero pity.
Still holding his . . . um . . . uh . . . what were these called again? Oh. Yeah! His gun! Still holding his gun, Zé raised the weapon to shoot the other men who, after a moment of stunned screaming, launched themselves at the . . . thing? Yeah. The thing that was attacking their teammates.
But Zé didn’t get to pull the trigger before more of those giant not-rat things showed up. They joined the attack, dragging the men to the ground, ripping them apart. Body parts and blood flew. Men, begging for their lives, screaming in panic and fear, were dragged across the floor in front of Zé.
At that point he didn’t know whether to shoot, ask questions, or just go back to sleep. He was thinking sleep when a Latina woman he didn’t recognize stepped in front of him. She was armed with a very expensive automatic weapon. She gazed down at him with cold, dark eyes before raising the gun and aiming it at his head.
It didn’t occur to Zé that she was about to blow his brains out because he wasn’t sure about anything at the moment. But by the time he realized what was about to happen, a voice said, “No, Streep! Not him!”
The Asian woman reappeared, only now she was naked and covered in blood. She stood next to the Latina, smiled down at him. “That’s my kitty cat. You can’t shoot my kitty cat.”
“Wait . . . is this that Denmark Syndrome thing?”
“It’s Stockholm syndrome, Einstein, and no. He’s not with these guys. He tried to protect me.”
The Latina sneered down at him. “Good job.”
The Asian woman crouched in front of him, gently took his gun away, then stroked her hand over his head. “Don’t worry, kitty cat, we’ll take care of you. You just get some sleep.”
He wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t take him from the scene. That, for some reason, he needed to stay . . .
But he was just so sleepy and his head hurt so bad and he was sure if he didn’t go to sleep, he’d vomit instead and he really didn’t want to do that so . . . yeah . . . sleep.
The cat’s head dropped and he was out cold. Max felt his forehead. He was already slipping into what shifters called “the fever.” It helped seriously injured shifters heal if they weren’t killed outright. At least that’s what she’d heard. Max had never had the fever and, according to Charlie, none of the three MacKilligan siblings could get the fever, no matter how badly they’d been hurt and, of course, that anomaly was their father’s fault. Their father and his fucked-up genes.
The rest of Max’s teammates now stood around her: Streep, Tock, Mads, and Nelle. The most loyal bunch of outstanding ladies Max had ever known. They’d played basketball together since junior high. But their relationship had always been more than mere teammates. All five were honey badgers in a land of wolves, bears, and cats; most of them had family issues beyond “Daddy works too much and Mom is always in a yoga class”; just in general, they simply didn’t fit in with anyone. Not with other badgers. Not with other shifters. Not with other people. But they fit each other for some strange reason and that made all the difference.
Max had realized, even as a young teen, that if these girls were going to be part of her life, they would need to know how to protect themselves. How to fight, how to hurt, how to destroy. As honey badgers, they had a natural instinct for all that but Max had always agreed with Charlie: just being shifters wasn’t always enough. Especially when it came to protecting their baby sister. So Max and Charlie had learned how to protect themselves when human, too. They learned how to use guns and knives as well as hand-to-hand combat. And what Max had learned, she’d taught to her
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Badger to the Bone
Shelly Laurenston
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