It took a while to track Charlie down. But only because they never bothered to look up. While everyone else was on the ground floor, she was sitting on the roof of the Van Holtz Hamptons mansion. Just staring.
Everyone worried when Charlie started baking, especially what Max called Charlie’s Extreme Baking, when she just baked and baked and baked until she’d driven herself to exhaustion. And there was good reason to be worried about that.
But for Max, the real concern came when all Charlie did was silently stare. No screaming at Max. No worrying about Stevie. No cuddling with Berg. No giving a Van Holtz the finger. Not even thinking about her dogs. Because all she was doing was staring. To Max, that was the most frightening Charlie of all, and Max didn’t get frightened.
She sat by her sister, their feet braced against the roof tiles—the only thing holding them up there. Sure, Charlie could have stared from the part of the roof that had been built to hold a large number of people for a party, including chairs, a barbeque, and a wine fridge. But nope. She’d decided to hang out on the steeply sloped part of the roof like an angry bat contemplating the end of the world.
“So what do you want to do?” Max asked her sister. “Anything you say . . . we’re in.”
“This is normally where I say we run them to ground and we kill them all. But I’m not in the mood to hunt right now. In fact”—she put her arms behind her, propping herself up a bit—“I’m feeling a bit more . . . Max-like, at the moment.”
Max grinned. “Really? So you wanna start some shit?”
“I do. And if the de Medicis want a war, I say we give them a war. A badger war.”
“Okay,” Max replied. “And what’s the first step in a badger war?”
Charlie finally looked at her, and the grin she now wore was broad and beautiful.
“First,” Charlie said, “we make them bleed.”
“Because they already made us bleed?”
“Yes. And now they’re gonna bleed, too. Only not just with blood.”
Chapter 24
“I know you guys are ready to leave,” Charlie said to Keane. “But I’m going to ask you and Nat and the kid to stay here another two days.”
Keane faced her. “Why?”
“I have something to do with Max and the rest of them. I’d feel better if Nat and the kid were here, though. But I don’t want them here without you guys. Maybe you could also help keep an eye on Stevie? She’s still working, trying to figure out the origins of that poison, and it’ll take the Group a couple more days to reinforce her lab so she’ll be safe.”
“Yeah. I can do that. But you need to understand something: Paolo de Medici is mine.”
“That’s fine. Because this shit is just starting.”
He glanced off, then nodded. “Okay. We’ll stay.”
“Good.”
“But we’re in this together, MacKilligan.”
Charlie studied him a moment, before replying, “We’re in this together.”
She headed back to the house, but his voice stopped her. “Charlie?”
She faced him again.
“I’m really sorry about your mother.”
She took in a shaky, angry breath. “And I’m really sorry about your dad.”
They nodded at each other, and Charlie walked out, leaving Keane to continue staring off across the compound, while the Van Holtz wolves watched him for signs of murderous intent toward their pack.
*
Max walked up to the bear standing guard at the front gate. “Hi!” she said, smiling at him. She wore a cute, loose summery dress with white high-top Keds, and her hair in two ponytails. She’d just bought the dress and loved it. She liked how it moved around her thighs and knees.
The bear glared down at her and immediately told her to “leave” in Italian. Instead, Max went up on her toes and slammed the blade she’d tucked into the pocket of her dress into his neck, severing the artery.
Another bear came at her from her left. She yanked the blade out of the first bear, dropped to her haunches, and stabbed up and into the thigh of the second. The third, armed with a machine gun, pulled the weapon from his shoulder and aimed it. But Streep attacked him from behind, landing on his upper back. Screeching and stabbing at the man’s head, neck, and face, she slammed her knife into the bear over and over. The bear roared, reached back to grab hold of Streep, and threw her off. She hit a nearby tree trunk, her body slamming into it with mighty force. But she rolled off and got back to her feet. Then she charged at the bear again.
Lifting his machine gun, the bear now aimed it at Streep, but Tock grabbed the barrel and snatched the weapon up before placing the muzzle of her own .45 Glock against his temple and pulling the trigger.
Once he went down, she tossed the gun to Mads. Her teammate crouched into a combat position, raised the weapon and, with short, controlled bursts of gunfire, took out the other three bear guards with head shots.
Charlie walked past them all to the entry pad to open the gate. She punched in the code Mads’s aunt had obtained for them, and the big gates opened. They each grabbed a body or two and walked inside. Charlie followed, dragging a sack that leaked fluid all the way behind them.
*
The grand double doors that opened into the palatial Northern Italian home of the de Medicis were unlocked. Because who was going to try to sneak into this place knowing the de Medicis lived here? Well, who besides Tock and her teammates? But, of course, they were here for a reason.
The small group stepped onto Italian marble floors and looked at the gilded staircase leading upstairs; vases from Ancient Roman times that were nearly as tall as Tock and antique wooden tables that had been around since the Victorian era dotted the long hallway leading into the heart of the house. It was all a little ostentatious for Tock’s tastes but it wasn’t tacky. This was Old World money.
They waited for Charlie to come into the house, and then they followed her, avoiding the fluid being left on the floor as she dragged her sack. They reached a large dining room. Charlie walked in, looked around, and nodded. Max and Streep followed Charlie.
Tock and Mads headed upstairs; Nelle went down the hallway. They were in search of dens or offices. Tock found an office on the second floor. She went to the computer. It was all in Italian—a language she could read pretty well, though her pronunciation was terrible. Her Russian was much better.
She used a device Stevie had built for Max a couple of months ago when she was bored. It would find the password for the laptop while Tock and Mads went through all the file cabinets. They pulled out folders that would be helpful and placed them on the desk. By then, Stevie’s device got them in to the computer system.