He’d been warned that the main target, Max MacKilligan, was “tricky.” That was a word that could have a lot of meanings. She might be a seductress, able to turn his men against each other with great legs and a sexy smile. Or a wise owl, using that briefcase as a decoy with enough explosives to kill half his men as soon as one of them opened it.
Not in the mood to be blown up again—he’d had that experience more times than he cared to think about and the scars that went along with all that—he decided it was better to pull back now and take his time getting control of the five women before making a move on the packages.
He’d rather come out empty-handed and alive than the other way around.
He signaled for five of his men to find the women, assigned a unit to watch the packages from a safe distance, and chose two of his men to go with him. He cut behind his team and circled around to—
He stopped and looked over his left shoulder. Then his right. The men accompanying him were gone. Not down, but gone. And without a sound.
From behind, a blade pressed against the inside of his thigh. Another blade pressed against his throat. Right against the jugular.
A moment later, someone was . . . climbing him. Wrapped around him like a monkey. A mouth against his ear asked who’d sent him. He didn’t know. Money was put into his offshore account. Files were sent about his target. It was all on his phone.
Password?
He hesitated.
The blade against his inner thigh pressed hard. So did the blade against his neck.
He said the password.
He was un-climbed. The phone removed. Password used to prove it worked. Knives slipped away.
He was alone again.
Explosions went off in the distance. He knew his team wouldn’t leave the package, though. They wouldn’t fall for such a lame distraction.
But when he returned to the packages and his team, he realized it hadn’t been a lame distraction. His men were still alive, but they now stood around a giant hole where the packages had been.
“They blew the case up?” he asked.
“No,” one of his men replied, his expression confused. “They threw some explosives over there,” he said, pointing to a spot several hundred feet away. “We looked but didn’t move. But when we turned back . . .” He gestured to the hole. “There was this sinkhole.”
“Sinkhole?”
“Yeah. This big sinkhole. And the packages were gone. Few of us guys jumped in and found a tunnel.”
“A tunnel? Like an aqueduct?”
“No. A tunnel like a gopher might make. But bigger.”
“You’re telling me that five women burrowed their way out of here with their hands while carrying a big square package and a case of money?”
“No. I’m just telling you what we saw when we went into the sink hole.”
“You hear something?” another one of his men asked.
He listened. He did hear something. An engine. A speeding engine. Racing toward them. A black SUV. They faced the vehicle and raised their weapons but before they could start firing, it stopped with the back end facing them. The back window opened and he quickly lowered his night-vision goggles in time to see a woman lean out of the vehicle and aim something at his team.
“Run,” he barked, meaning to say it louder, but so shocked he’d actually whispered it.
“What?”
“Run!” he screamed just as the rocket was fired and everything around them exploded in a blaze of blinding light and dirt and human screams.
* * *
Nelle shifted the SUV into gear and took off. Mads took the rocket launcher from Max and warned her, “Don’t step on the painting!”
“I’m not! Calm down!”
“And why was there a rocket launcher in my SUV?”
“There should always be a rocket launcher in your SUV. It’s one of those good-for-all-occasions items.”
Mads tucked the weapon back into its case and secured it under the seat.
“We could have just left them, you know. We’d gotten away.”
“I’m sure most of them are just fine. I just like to leave a warning behind. To remind them not to fuck with me again.”
Max climbed over the seats, over Mads’s head—annoying! —until she reached the spot where Tock was reading off the commandeered phone.
“What have you got?”
“The message has everything about you except what you are. And everything about your dad.”
Max shook her head. “That man. He could fuck up toilet paper!”
“What does that mean?” Mads finally asked, but she didn’t get an answer.
“Mads, get my computer out,” Tock requested, still on the confiscated phone.
She did as asked, pulling out the computer, booting it up, and getting it online before handing it over to Tock.
While Nelle drove and the rest of them stared out the window, Tock plugged the phone into her system and went to work. Computers weren’t really Tock’s thing. She’d taken some college courses and learned some things from her grandparents’ contacts. But only because a lot of what she did with explosives now started online before moving to putting this thing with that thing and making it do another thing.
But she was great for quick turnaround stuff. Like finding someone who wanted to use Max to get even with her father. A thing that really pissed off the MacKilligan sisters.
After about forty minutes, Tock finally asked, “Max . . . do you know a Balinski?”
Max stared thoughtfully up at the SUV’s ceiling. “Huh? Balinski? Balinski? I know a . . . no. There was a . . . no. Nope. No Balinskis. But I’m starting to realize my dad has pissed off a lot of people with Polish names.”
“Is this person in Poland?” Mads asked. “Because we have—”
“Playoffs!” everyone said together.
“Well, we do. And we’re not missing the playoffs to go to Poland. We have a chance to get into the—”
“Championships!” they all said together.
“Well, we do!” Mads insisted. “And you bitches aren’t going to ruin this for me.”
“Don’t you mean for the team?” Streep asked.
“No. I mean for me.”
“He’s not in Poland. He’s in Chinatown. Right now. I have his itinerary. And he’s Polish-American. He’s from Chicago.”
“Chinatown here or in San Francisco?” Max asked.
“Here.”
“Oh, that’s perfect.”
“Are we going to deal with this tonight? I’ve got a Kandinsky sitting in the back of this SUV.”
“No one’s stealing that ugly painting,” Max shot back.
“That’s not a Kandinsky,” Nelle said from the front seat.
“What do you mean it’s not a Kandinsky?” Mads demanded. “I wrapped it up myself. It’s the Kandinsky.”
“That Kandinsky you were going to just give away—”
“For a house.”
“—was worth a fuck of a lot more than a few hundred thousand. It’s worth at least twenty-five million.”
Tock turned around to stare at Mads. “You were going to give those people a twenty-five-million-dollar painting for that house?”
“I guess so.”
Tock shook her head. “Oh, my God.”
“Exactly,” Nelle continued on, sounding as haughty as humanely possible. “I was not about to let her give those bears a twenty-five-million-dollar painting for that house. So I had Max switch it out when I asked you about the cash.”
“Switch it out with what?”
“That Miquel Barceló painting.”
“But I really like that Barceló painting. I was going to put that in my new house.”
“Yes, but that painting is worth about half a mil, which is the true cost of that house when combined with the cash. Not twenty-five million. So suck it up, tulip.”
“Don’t call me tulip.”
“Don’t do stupid shit.”
“But I like the Barceló mor
e.”
“I will drive us all into a wall!” Nelle yelled.
“Found him!” Max cheered as she lowered her phone.
“Found who?”
“Balinski.”
“How the hell did you do that? You never left the car.”
“The Yangs own Chinatown.”
“I love you, Max,” Nelle said sweetly, “but the Yangs do not own Chinatown.”
“Maybe not, but they do like to gamble, and so does Balinski.”
“So we’re doing this tonight?” Mads asked.
“Now that we don’t have a twenty-five-million-dollar painting in the car . . . yeah!”
“You are such a lying cow,” Mads told Max. “Even if we had the Kandinsky in the car . . . we would still be doing this tonight.”
Max laughed at Mads. “Yeah. We would.”
* * *
Keane parked next to a building that appeared to be empty, but Finn knew it wasn’t. It was the address that Charlie had texted them. She was supposed to be right behind them with her bears but she’d turned off a few streets back and they hadn’t seen her since.
Finn looked around. He didn’t spot anything except a couple of Asian guys lurking in the dark. Security for the gambling hall that was buried around here somewhere.
“I don’t know why we’re here,” Keane grumbled.
Neither did Finn, but they might as well see this shit through.
“Seems like a waste.”
“If it helps us get some information—” Shay began.
“Shut up, dog lover,” Keane snapped.
Finn rubbed his nose to stop from laughing. Keane had been giving Shay a hard time since before they’d left the house. Actually, as soon as he’d found one of the dogs asleep on his bed—not next to it, not under it, but on his bed—Keane had been on a mission to destroy Shay Malone.
It had been pretty fucking funny.
“You know, if you’re just going to be an asshole all—”
The body landed hard on the hood of Keane’s SUV, cutting off Shay’s potential rant. The three of them leaned forward to study what had dented Keane’s ride.
“Is that . . . ?”
“I think it is . . .”
The three of them got out of the SUV and met on the passenger side of the hood, staring down at the physical evidence that would one day be used in a murder trial.
Mads was lying on her side, arms and legs curled in, a knife sticking out just below her left clavicle. Blood flowed from both nostrils and from her mouth.
Finn thought she was dead. He was sure his brothers did, too. She wasn’t breathing. He was positive her heart had stopped. The animal inside him knew a carcass when it saw one.
Out of due diligence, though, he reached over to place two fingers against her jugular to check her pulse. Maybe he could get her heart started again. The MacKilligans loved to talk about how hard it was to “kill a honey badger,” and he was willing to test that theory.
Finn had barely touched the badger’s skin, though, when her eyes opened and she scrambled to her feet.
“Shit!” he barked, stumbling back.
Shay roared and bared his fangs.
Keane just yelled, “Kill it with fire!”
The badger squatted in the dent of Keane’s hood, her blood-covered arms resting on her blood-drenched knees. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she attempted to focus while more blood poured down a wound under her right eye.
Finn moved closer to the car and Keane immediately grabbed his arm.
“What are you doing?” his brother asked.
“Don’t get close to it,” Shay warned.
“I’m just going to check on her.”
“It doesn’t look right,” Keane insisted.
“Stop calling her ‘it.’ ”
Finn took another step closer but now both his brothers grabbed his arms and they jerked him back.
She closed her eyes, and he thought she was going to pass out. It might be in her best interest to pass out. Comas happened for a reason.
Her still-crouching body weaved a bit and she pressed her right hand into the hood of the car. After a few seconds, she lifted that hand and Finn noticed the fingertips were covered in blood, too. She pressed them against her forehead and slowly dragged them down the front of her face until she reached her top lip.
“What’s happening?” Shay asked.
“War paint,” Keane whispered.
She was motionless for another twenty, maybe thirty seconds. . . then her eyes snapped open. They weren’t black. Or gold. Or brown. Or even Nordic blue as usual. They were red.
Red with rage.
Then she was moving. Leaving nothing in her wake but blood, a massive dent in Keane’s SUV hood, and a giggle.
A really disturbing giggle.
After a moment of stunned silence, Shay said, “Your girlfriend was really mad.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Finn growled back. Because she wasn’t. “I just sent her flowers because her great-grandmother died.”
“You didn’t do that when your actual high school girlfriend’s great-grandmother died.”
“She barely knew that woman.”
“Are we supposed to actually do something?” Keane asked Finn and Shay. “Or wait for more falling honey badgers to fuck up my car?”
“I don’t know if the yelling is necessary,” Shay pointed out as they all moved toward the building.
“Shut up, dog lover.”
Keane abruptly stopped, opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue.
“Tigers,” he finally said. “Lots of tigers, including females.” He sniffed the air a few times. “Bengals. South China. Sumatrans. Whoever those badgers came to get, the guy surrounded himself with cats.”
Shay shrugged his lineman shoulders. “Or cats lured the badgers here with that human.”
Finn and Keane looked at each other, then slowly turned to Shay.
“What?” he asked when they just stared at him.
* * *
Mads dug under the foundation and through the walls until she reached the third floor. She poked her head up, took a quick look around, and hauled herself out when she found it safe.
She was tempted to pull the knife out of her chest, but she wasn’t sure if she should. Would she bleed out? Since she wasn’t sure, she just left the blade in and kept moving.
This had started out easy. Find Balinski, let Max scare the shit out of him for a few minutes, pick up some McDonald’s, buy a house. See? Easy.
But as soon as they’d dug their way into the basement, Tock said, “Something isn’t right.” She couldn’t tell them what wasn’t right, but they trusted her instincts. She’d been trained by Mossad operatives since birth. The woman knew when “something isn’t right.”
Nelle was the only one not with the rest of the team. She’d headed toward the hidden entrance with the rest of the gamblers. Since she spoke both Cantonese and Mandarin, had lots of contacts, and was exceptionally hot and wealthy, they all knew she could get into the establishment without any trouble. Yet they weren’t about to desert her while they made a run for it because Tock had a bad feeling; they simply had to handle things differently from their original plan.
Max had sent Mads to the roof to get a look from “higher ground,” and the rest went into the walls to track down Nelle.
Mads had just pushed open the door and stepped out onto the roof when big hands grabbed her from behind, yanking her arms back. She started to wrestle herself away from those hands when another big body appeared in front of her. Silver glinted in the city lights and she saw the knife in time to jerk her body just enough so that the blade didn’t hit her in the heart but under her left clavicle. Then she’d been punched in the face, punched in the stomach, and tossed over the side of the building.
She thought she’d hit the concrete street below but thankfully that SUV had broken her fall. She’d heard someone talking to her but her ears were ringing so she was unable t
o make out who it was. And then there was her rage.
She was in a realm of rage that blinded her to anything but finding her teammates and killing anyone who’d had anything to do with this. Mads used to get ambushed by her cousins all the time when she was a kid. It used to set her off then, too, when she was young and weak and couldn’t really fight back. And it set her off now, when fighting back was a moral imperative.
Mads moved toward the only door in the small room but she could hear footsteps coming and she quickly pressed her back against the wall. A few seconds later the door flew open, but the knob hit the wall before the door touched her.
Two males stalked in, their footsteps heavy.
“I smell her.”
“You threw her from the roof of a twenty-two-story building after stabbing her in the chest. I doubt she’d—”
“I missed the heart.”
“Barely.”
Mads heard a strange sound and she listened hard to decipher it. She heard it again. And again.
She smiled despite the pain it caused in her broken jaw.
Aluminum against flesh. One of them was slapping an aluminum bat against his palm. She knew the sound because she used to do it all the time that summer Solveig made her join a baseball team. She’d been worried that Mads was “Just too involved in all that basketball shit. Try a little baseball. See if you like that more.” She hadn’t, but the experience did have its long-term perks.
The door was yanked away from the wall and the Bengal tiger that had tossed her off the building roared down at her. Already crouching, Mads slashed her claws across his upper thigh. The cat dropped to one knee and she grabbed the hand holding the bat and shoved it forward, hitting him in the face. With the tiger stunned, she yanked the bat from him and blocked the other bat a South China tiger was swinging toward her head.
Mads held the cat off with one hand and reached into the sheath attached to the back of her jeans with the other. She jerked the bowie knife out and slammed it into the tiger’s boot-covered foot. His roar shook the room as she climbed up and over him. When she landed on the other side, she raised the bat over her shoulder and took her best swing.
The bat connected with his right shoulder, bone splintering. He screamed out and grabbed at it with his other hand.
She danced back several steps; the Bengal tiger was already moving on her. Already swinging at her with his big fist.
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