Hot and Badgered. Shelly Laurenston
away tears, Stevie straightened her back and focused on Charlie.
“Charlie?”
“Hey, bubs.”
“Charlie!” Now Stevie was in her arms, hugging her tight, and Charlie hugged her back because she was no longer worried about getting her face ripped off.
“You didn’t leave me. You didn’t leave me,” she chanted.
“Of course we didn’t. We were just trying to find a way to get to you without the staff knowing.” She stroked Stevie’s hair. She’d started dyeing it a nice, safe blond. Charlie kept hers brown, and Max dyed hers any color she was in the mood to see for a few weeks or months. They did this to avoid the questions. So many questions about their hair.
“How bad is it?” Charlie asked.
Swallowing, Stevie took a step back, her gaze focused on the trees behind Charlie’s head.
Charlie knew that look.
“Is anyone dead?” Charlie now asked, worried about her sister’s answer.
“No! No.” Her voice lowered even more. “No.” Stevie cleared her throat. “Someone may have lost an eye, though.”
“Okay.” Charlie grabbed her sister’s arm and quickly led her to the SUV, pushing her into the backseat and getting in beside her.
“Go, Max.”
The car took off and Charlie held her baby sister’s hand and calmly spoke to her. “Deep breath in. Deep breath out. In. Out. Close your eyes and just focus on the engine sounds. The road beneath the wheels. The air against the car.”
“Your whining against my nerves,” Max joked from the front seat.
Stevie’s gold eyes popped open and she rammed the flat of her hand against the back of Max’s seat.
“Hey!” Max barked.
“Do you know what I’ve been through?” Stevie yelled. “Do you have any concept?”
“Keep yelling at me, and I’ll give you something to really whine about.”
Unable to stand another second, Charlie slapped her hands together several times and yelped, “That is enough! We don’t have time for you two psychotic females to be bickering like we’re still in grade school!”
“Wait,” Stevie said, the anger in her voice gone, unfortunately replaced by hysteria. “Do you hear that?”
“Stevie, you need to—”
“No. Listen.”
Charlie did . . . and she heard it too.
“Is that a chopper?”
As soon as Charlie asked the question, the military-type chopper charged past them, so close, Charlie was surprised it didn’t hit the roof of the car.
Max slowed to a stop.
The chopper turned and came back, hovering about fifty feet away.
“Dude!” Max demanded, trying to look back at Stevie over her seat. “What kind of mental hospital did you go to?”
* * *
The target and her sisters waited in the SUV.
“Stay here,” he ordered the pilot. “Give them a minute to figure out what’s about to happen.”
“Got it.”
The original plan had been to take the target in the clinic, but he’d just been heading toward the building when she’d run out, hysterically screaming. He’d immediately gone back to the copter. Especially when he realized the two older sisters were still alive.
His orders had been painfully simple. Pick up the target and bring her to the safe house. Two other teams had been dispatched to take out the troublesome older sisters so they couldn’t get in the way. Apparently they had a reputation that had his clients concerned. But somehow those two had gotten away from full tactical teams. He still wasn’t sure how they’d managed that.
The sister on the driver’s side eased out and headed toward the back of the SUV.
“Want me to take her out?”
“No,” he replied immediately. “We keep them alive until we have the target. They’ll keep her pliable.”
“She’s probably going for a weapon.”
He wasn’t worried. The copter could handle a few gunshots.
Tapping the mic, he began the negotiation process.
* * *
Still in the backseat with Stevie, Charlie focused on her baby sister and ignored whatever the man in the chopper was saying. Most would be concerned with the chopper guy, but he was the least of her problems. Already Charlie could see the panic welling up again in Stevie. And if Stevie snapped . . .
“What’s going on? Who are these people? They’re not from the center! What did Dad do now?” Stevie spit out in rapid succession. Then she asked, “Why are they doing this? What are we going to do?”
There it went. That high-pitched squeal that said Stevie was moments away from going into full panic mode.
“Don’t worry about them,” Charlie told her sister. “Let’s focus on your breathing.”
Stevie calmed down enough to glare at Charlie. “Seriously?”
“I’m trying to help.”
“I’m not an infant.”
“Fine. Then balls the fuck up!”
“Don’t snarl at me!” Stevie shot back, her panic finally overridden by anger, which Charlie welcomed. “If you only would—”
Both sisters screamed and ducked down, hands over their heads; the entire SUV bucked from the explosion. They waited a few seconds before sitting up and staring out the front window with their mouths open, as the remains of the chopper landed all around their vehicle.
And with the chopper were the remains of several men, their charred bodies—and pieces from those bodies—banging against the vehicle and ground with nauseating thuds.
Charlie heard Max humming and turned to see that she had the back door open and was returning the weapon she held to its case.
“A rocket launcher?” Charlie exploded.
“Oh, my God!” Stevie gasped.
“Have you lost your mind?”
Max shrugged. “What? I wasn’t about to get into a shoot-out with them. That’s a military chopper. Did you see the Gatling guns on the sides?”
“I don’t care, you idiot! What are we supposed to tell the Swiss authorities?”
Frowning, Max asked, “Why would we talk to anybody about this?” She closed the back door, went around the SUV, and got into the driver’s side. She stared out the front window for a moment, got back out of the SUV, and walked around the front, kicking bodies and big, burning chunks of the helicopter out of the way to make a path through the debris.
When Max returned to the vehicle, she buckled her seat belt and glanced back at Charlie and Stevie. “Ready to go?” she asked, smiling. Chipper even. In fact, extremely chipper. Like they were going to brunch.
How did she do that? Unlike her sisters, Max was all honey badger, and yet she had the most pleasant, happy, almost sunny disposition Charlie had ever known.
Charlie had never met another honey badger like her.
“Stop smiling,” Charlie ordered her sister.
And, of course, Max’s smile grew until it took up most of her face.
Charlie nearly had her hands around