That was bad enough, but then they were on the floor of the aisle, trying to throttle each other.
Shay got out of his seat and reached in to grab Tock. He was glad to see his brother attempting to do the same with Mads. It was necessary, too, because their fellow teammates weren’t helping at all. Nelle continued to read a recent copy of Italian Vogue. Max kept eating honey-roasted peanuts by the handful while gleefully watching the fight. And even sweet Streep, who seemed to hate it when her friends fought, continued to text someone on her phone rather than intervene.
He was not, however, surprised that Keane didn’t do anything but roll his eyes and try to go back to sleep. Worthless. His brother was worthless.
It took a bit to get the women apart. Their claws were out and caught on pieces of fabric and tangled in each other’s hair. Once they did manage to separate them, Shay carried a hissing Tock to the back of the jet.
Shay put Tock in the very last seat and then pinned her there until she finished hissing in rage.
It took nearly five minutes until he could release her. And even then, he just took his hand off her face. He’d had to pin her head against the window to prevent her from biting his nose off.
Was this what it was like to work in a zoo? Did the caretakers have to worry about getting their noses bitten off? He doubted it. Those wild animals were behind several layers of fencing and metal doors. He had nothing to protect him from rabid badgers with rage issues.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Tock looked out the window that one side of her face had been pressed against and seethed.
Yeah. That was the best way to describe it. She seethed. He hadn’t known she could seethe. He’d seen her annoyed. Restless. Frustrated. But he’d never seen her seething. Not even with her cousins when she’d tried to choke one of them to death.
He suddenly had a bad feeling. Was this the end of the honey badgers’ friendship? Were Tock and Mads no more? That would be awful. They’d always been so close. He’d once had an argument like the one they’d just fought with a buddy on the team. It had been over his daughter’s mother and it had ended their friendship then and there. Half the team held Shay back and the other half held back his fellow cat. His buddy actually transferred to another team, refusing to even be in the same room with Shay during team meetings. And life in the locker room had been way too tense. Years later, they only met on the gridiron, and it was always the most brutal game of the season.
He’d hate to see that happen between Tock and Mads. Thankfully, the flight back was short, and the only other harm done was to the air quality because of all the carbon the jet had unleashed into the atmosphere. Not that Nelle or her family seemed to care about that at all. Finn had told him they had a fleet of jets. A fleet. How rich was Nelle’s family anyway?
When they landed at a private airstrip, Shay wouldn’t move until everyone else had grabbed their stuff and exited the jet. Then he stood and stepped into the aisle.
Tock hadn’t said a word to him the entire time, finally focusing on her phone for the last leg of the trip. Now she moved past him without a word, and grabbed her overnight bag from where she’d placed it in an empty seat. She headed out.
Shay quickly grabbed his bag, too, and followed. He wanted to be ready if the pair got into it again.
Once they were on the tarmac, though, Tock suddenly moved quickly and cut in front of the badgers. Shay exchanged a panicked glance with Finn and they began to move toward the group with big strides.
Tock reached behind her and Shay had a memory of all the weapons she’d carried on her—in her clothes—just the other night. He was only a foot or two away, about to grab her arm, when she pulled out her phone rather than a small nuclear device. She held it up in front of her friends.
“Did you guys see this yet?” she asked.
Mads took the phone from her and began reading while the other three looked over her shoulders. After a few seconds, she looked up and stared into Tock’s eyes. She tossed the phone back to her and followed Max, who was already moving on.
“I’ll call you later, Finn,” Mads told his brother without even looking back at him.
Tock gave Shay a short wave before going after her friends.
Then they were gone.
“What the hell just happened?” Finn wanted to know.
But none of them had an answer. Because even for badgers. . . that was just plain weird.
Chapter 7
They barely arrived in time. Max parked the car with the front passenger wheel over the curb and on the grass. They all got out of the vehicle and ran toward the house, leaping over the low picket fence and reaching the stoop from different sides.
Max slid in front of the two males, arms thrown wide, blocking them from the front door they’d been moments from knocking on. Tock took a spot in front of the door with Mads beside her. Nelle came up on the left; Streep on the right.
“Hello!” Streep called.
The two wolves looked over the five badgers, clearly uncomfortable at their sudden appearance. But Dutch Alexander, Max’s best friend since junior high, had sent a group text to warn them, giving them enough time to get here and stop what was about to happen.
“Uh . . . ladies,” the older wolf announced. “Nice to see you all again.”
“Is it?” Max asked.
Seeing them again? Tock didn’t remember the pair. Not surprising, though. She had too much in her head to recall useless information, like wolves she had no intention of dealing with on a daily basis or how the English language started. Seriously? The man knew 1066 just off the top of his head? Why would anyone who wasn’t a teacher or a television historian know that?
“Is there something we can help you with?” Nelle queried, keeping her tone polite.
“We want to visit Charlie. Is that a problem?”
“Probably,” Tock muttered.
“Can you smell it?” Mads whispered to her.
“Everyone smells it,” Tock replied. Because there were bears lurking all around the house. The entire street of bear families had left their homes with central air-conditioning so they could sit and wait outside in the intolerable heat of the final days of summer, in the hopes that Charlie would give them what they wanted. They could rip the doors off the hinges and crash through the windows so they could get inside and simply take what they wanted, but they’d learned a long time ago that Charlie wasn’t one to push around. She did not take it well. And despite her small size and inability to shift, she was meaner and more dangerous than any hungry grizzly could ever dream of being.