“What about a car?” Streep offered. “Some of us . . .” And she let that “us” linger out there for a moment before she continued. “. . . are very good at obtaining vehicles.”
“Streep is right,” Max said. “We can get you a brand-new Bugatti in about a week.”
“You want us to have a three-million-dollar car just sitting in front of our house with no explanation?” Finn had to ask. “Don’t you think the neighbors will find that odd?”
“Three million?” Max said with a short laugh. “That’s for the basic package. I’ve met your mother. She’d want that bitch flexed out, so we’d get her the works.”
Finn raised his arms, palms facing out. “I’m going to stop you right there. We don’t want a car of any price. Nor any paintings, statues, or anything else you’ve stolen. Nor do we want you to kill anyone for us. But thanks for the offer. Instead, I’d really prefer that you just left. There’s the door . . . head for it.”
“Why are you being so difficult?”
“I’m not being difficult. I’m just trying to get you out of here before—”
Finn cringed. The heavy, damning thud from upstairs shook the entire house.
“Too late,” he muttered seconds before Keane stormed down the stairs and into the kitchen, with Shay right behind him.
“Keane, I’m handling—” was all Finn got out before his eldest brother grabbed the back of his neck and shoved him into Shay so he could stand right in front of the females and unleash the Malone tiger roar with all the subtlety of a rampaging elephant herd.
“ GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
The badgers should have reacted. They should have jumped up in panic. They should have dropped things, fallen over. At least one should have bolted for the door. Finn had used that bellow before himself, and it was always the reaction he’d gotten from shifters and full-humans alike. Except, of course, lions. They just roared back. And grizzlies. You never wanted to use that roar on unsuspecting grizzlies. Because they were startled all right . . . but that just led to maulings. Shay still had the scars from a startled grizzly mauling on his shoulder and back, and you never really knew who’d come out on the winning end of that particular matchup.
But these guys? These honey badgers? They were one of the smallest of shifters while Amur tigers were biggest among cats and only second and third among grizzlies and polar bears. What did these tiny badgers do when faced with the Malone roar?
Nothing. They did nothing.
Well, to clarify, they did do something but it wasn’t anything meaningful. It definitely wasn’t what Finn would call a “normal” reaction. Not by full-human or shifter standards. Not by anyone’s standards, really.
Max held up a plate of Danish with a smile. She didn’t say anything, though, because she already had one treat stuffed into her mouth. Raspberry filling smeared her nose and, somehow, her forehead. Finn didn’t want to know how that happened.
Nelle, who’d been painting her toenails, closed another bottle of polish and put it in a leather bag. Then she proceeded to take pictures. Of her toenails. She didn’t even seem to notice that Keane was in the room . . . or on the planet.
Streep had been on her phone when the roar happened and never stopped scrolling.
Tock, still writing in her notebook, casually gestured at a duffel bag by her feet with a tilt of her head and calmly noted, “Wouldn’t do all that screaming. Have some sensitive stuff in here.”
That comment seemed to garner more of a reaction from the females than anything Finn’s brothers had done because the badgers immediately went wide-eyed and Max demanded of Tock, “Are you walking around with explosives in there?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what do you have that’s so sensitive?”
“Kitten.”
“Oh.” Max blinked, thought a moment. “Why are you walking around with a kitten in a duffel bag?”
“You with so many questions.”
“Oh, my God, Tock!” Streep demanded. “Are you going to blow up that kitten?”
Tock rolled her eyes. “Of course not.”
The women stared at her, seemingly unwilling to accept that answer.
“It’ll be fine,” she insisted.
Still didn’t seem good enough for her friends.
“I promised you guys I’d never try that again. You know . . . for moral reasons.”
Try that again?
More staring.
“I can’t believe you’re still holding that against me! I was fourteen! It was for science!”
Staring.
Now she simply stared back at the others. The standoff lasted a solid two minutes until she could no longer maintain eye contact and turned her gaze to Finn and his brothers. “You guys want a cat?”
“No,” Finn immediately replied.
“Fine,” Tock snapped. “I’ll throw it in the backyard.”
“We have dogs in the backyard,” Shay pointed out.
Streep frowned. “Why do cats have dogs in the backyard?”
Keane locked gazes with Max. “To deal with all the vermin.”
Max blinked, startled. “Why are you looking at me? I’ll have you know that honey badgers are an important part of the ecosystem or whatever.”
Tock winced a little at that wording but she shook it off like a champ.
“And,” Max continued happily, “we came here today with pastry and to thank you.”
“We don’t need anything from you. Not your nasty pastries”—Max gasped at that insult but considering Shay was on his fourth Danish, she shouldn’t have taken it so personally—“not your annoying presence, not your weird badger smell!”
“That weird badger smell, as you call it, is the latest French perfume from that designer I can’t pronounce—”
“She really can’t,” Nelle muttered.
“—that costs seven hundred and eighty-nine dollars an ounce and that I managed to steal from their Fifth Avenue boutique without getting caught just last week!”
“Oh, my God!” Keane exploded. “You’re a walking felony and you’re in my house! Get out! Now!”
Max stood against Keane’s rage in a way that Finn had absolutely never seen before: by simply gazing at him, appearing a little shocked and confused.
After a few seconds of silence, she reminded Keane, “But . . . I brought you Danish.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m being nice.”
“Still don’t care.”
“I offered the services of myself and my teammates to kill your enemies or to steal you cool stuff. Do you have any idea how hard it is to steal a tricked-out Bugatti? It’s super hard! And now you come down here and you . . .” She glanced at the floor, the ceiling, then Keane. “You’re mean to me? When I, Max MacKilligan, was nice. To you?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I did,” Keane told her. “Now do you get it?”
And that’s when Max went for Finn’s elder brother. Not with fang and claw but a giant hunting knife that she pulled out of somewhere on her person. She charged him with such speed and intent that the three of them just stood there, not doing anything. Not fighting back or protecting Keane or even jumping out of the way.