Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)

“What is?”

“My mom has always said the same thing. And she hates basketball.”

*

“What are they wearing?” Jerry asked his coworker Gregg.

Jerry didn’t mind Gregg. True. The others found him freakish and cold and a little terrifying. But the dude was just tall. And wide. Like a Mac truck or a building.

It wasn’t just his massive size, though. It was the silence. Gregg didn’t say much unless he had something to say. He would just stand there, staring. It was easy to be freaked out by that. But since Jerry was one of the few who didn’t mind being around Gregg, they were always assigned to work together.

Jerry was okay with that. He made lots of extra money at times like this due to Gregg’s connections. But this was the first time Jerry had ever felt the need to involve himself beyond letting people in and out and pretending nothing had happened. This time, however, how could he ignore what he was looking at?

Both women looked like they’d been in a bad 1970s baseball-related soft porn. Both wore cutoff denim shorts, sweat socks, sneakers, and blue baseball jerseys. The sleeves had been torn off the slightly taller one’s jersey, revealing giant shoulders; and the dark-haired hottie—who was actually chewing gum like a true seventies’ soft porn star—had a cutoff jersey that barely covered her ample chest. Both also had on blue baseball caps, but the hottie had hers turned backward, so you could easily see her pretty face. The other one, though, had her cap pulled so low you could barely see her eyes. Her cold, weird, off-putting eyes.

The plan had been like all the others: to allow two people inside to pick up their “cargo,” and get them out before anyone asked any questions. The problem now, though, was how could that happen when the two people who had been sent were these women. And they were looking like that?

“He’s kind of right,” Gregg grumbled to the women.

“Sorry, but we just came from a game,” the hottie said.

“Softball league?”

“The Malone Pub against Dolly’s Dinner Den.”

“Did you win?”

“Got our asses handed to us.” She shook her head. “We’re kind of the worst at softball.”

“It’ll be fine, y’all. Let’s just go,” the tall one muttered with an accent that made his skin crawl. Made him think of the movie Deliverance. He had seen that movie when he was twelve and he had never recovered.

“Yeah,” the hottie said. “We’re supposed to be meeting people for beers.”

“But,” Jerry argued, “they’re going to have to walk past—”

“It’ll be fine,” Gregg insisted with a sigh.

Look, if that’s what they wanted, Jerry wouldn’t argue the point. But if he was female . . . he’d never do it. To walk past prison bars and have the scum of the earth say things to him that absolutely no one wanted to hear . . . Well, it was up to these women and Gregg. Jerry just wanted to make his money.

Gregg unlocked the gate and Jerry walked through, leading the women toward the closed-off room at the end of the long hall.

As soon as the two women walked in, the men they had temporarily locked up in these cells until they could be moved into more permanent housing, slammed into the bars, arms reaching out, trying to grab them; jeering and yelling. It went from generally loud to unbearable in less than a second.

Jerry was sure it wouldn’t stop until they got the women out of here and even then, it would continue for days. Already Jerry was wondering if the money was truly worth it.

He started to walk faster so he could rush the visitors down the hall. He expected them to keep their heads down and their bodies as close to the far wall as possible so no one could put hands on them.

But the women abruptly stopped moving and, to Jerry’s horror, turned and faced the bars. The uproar should have gotten worse at that very moment. The yelling. The screaming. It should sound like the beginning of a riot. Except . . . it was as if a switch had been hit or a weird lever pulled. Because the noise stopped. Instantly. It didn’t peter out. All that yelling and screaming and attempted grabbing simply stopped in that very moment.

Staring at the women, the men lowered their arms and shut their mouths.

Jerry had only seen this sort of thing happen when Gregg suddenly entered without warning. But Jerry had always assumed that was simply because the men were intimidated by the man’s size and silence, just like everyone else.

But these were . . . women. Guys who ended up in these particular cells weren’t intimidated by any woman, whether they were guards or cops or nurses trying to help a wounded inmate. Women meant little to them except as something to grab and harass. At least that’s how it had always been . . . until now.

Fascinated and more than a little terrified, Jerry watched the women silently walk toward the bars. As they did, the men on the other side stepped back and back . . . until they were by the far wall. As far away from these two as they could get, but Jerry had the feeling that still wasn’t far enough.

Though the men moved away from them, the women continued to stand there, staring boldly at each inmate, locking eyes until each and every man looked away. They looked down, looked up, turned away . . . anything to avoid the direct eye contact that seemed to be terrifying them.

That’s when Gregg stepped in and led the way down the hall, toward the last door. Jerry followed, glancing over at the inmates to see at least two of the men quietly crying.

Maybe the women were the girlfriends of high-level gang members or something. Although when he thought about that even a little bit, it didn’t make sense. Not if Gregg was involved. He was the cleanest guy Jerry knew. Even moving these inmates didn’t seem like a backroom deal of some kind, but a government-run thing that helped keep the identities of those being moved a secret.

He’d helped Gregg with these kinds of transfers before and they’d always been relatively easy: Guys in suits would come in, quietly remove someone from a cell, and Jerry received an envelope filled with a healthy amount of cash. Funky, yes. But he knew fellow government employees when he saw them.

But these two women and the energy they brought to what should be another run-of-the-mill, underground event was just plain weird.

Finally, they all reached the end of the hall. Jerry was surprised that the inmates remained quiet. Not a sound from any of them. They were never quiet. The place was filled with noise day and night. Until right now.

“You ready?” Gregg asked the women.

The taller one rotated her finger while muttering, “Let’s just get this over with.”

“All right.” Gregg unlocked the metal door and pushed it open.

The inmate sat at a large table bolted to the floor. His legs were also shackled to the floor, and his arms were shackled to the chair.

“You’ve got five minutes,” Gregg told them.

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