“You’re not taking her anywhere.”
He reached for MacDermot, his hand grabbing her jacket, but MacDermot already had her hand on her gun. Still, none of them actually expected little Abby to jump between the bear and MacDermot, barking and baring her teeth, biting at his wrist so he’d release MacDermot.
“Shit,” Smith snarled, her bowie knife out, she and Cella moving fast. But before either could reach him, the bear casually kicked Abby out of the way. He knocked her into the chairs. The girl gave a surprised yelp.
They were all so focused on Abby that they didn’t see Hannah until she rammed into the tall grizzly, knocking the bigger bear into the door. Smith went to help, but Cella caught her arm, holding her in place as Hannah battered the second bear with her forearm, hitting him across the chest and then up into his jaw.
Abby shifted to human and grabbed the bigger bear by his hair. She dragged him away from the door, ignoring his surprised roar of pain, and MacDermot leaped forward to help the pup, ramming her foot into the bear’s knee.
The full-human girl, seeing her chance, charged out, barreling through the doors and into the freezing cold outside.
Smith looked down at Cella’s hand and then at her. “Reason you did that?”
“Figured the girls could handle themselves.”
The two bears got back to their feet and Abby shifted back to canine, running and hiding behind Cella. Poor thing, she never knew whether she should be escaping or fighting. Hannah, though, now blocked the door, giving the full-human girl more time to get away.
MacDermot placed her hand on the kid’s forearm and tugged until Hannah moved to her side.
“I think you need to go,” MacDermot said again to the grizzlies.
“Or what?”
She shrugged. “I’ll let a naked girl beat you up again. Because that was funny.”
One of the bears snarled, aggressively stepping into MacDermot, but then Crushek was there. He got between his partner and those bears, his hands slapping against the bigger grizzly’s head and digging his claws into his face, the pair roaring at each other. Windows and furniture rattled; Group members poured into the room, guns raised. But they weren’t needed because Crush yanked the big grizzly close, nearly tearing the other bear’s face off in the process. “My partner said it was time for you to go.” He pushed the bear into the second grizzly, sending both of them careening out the door, and roared, “So go! Go run home to Mommy!”
The grizzlies fled and Crushek stood between the two sets of doors, his back to them, chest heaving, hands now covered in grizzly blood.
The front office was completely silent, everyone staring. Which was when Smith leaned in and whispered to Cella, “You may want to take it down a notch, darlin’—your nipples are hard.”
Cella brought her fist up, her knuckles colliding with Smith’s nose, then she returned to Mikey Callahan’s side.CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Crush sat at his kitchen table, chin resting on his raised fist, and stared across the room. He’d crossed a line. Not with his boss or even his own moral code. No, he knew he’d crossed a line with Peg Baissier. She’d always hated him, which seemed only fair since she was the one woman Crush openly admitted detesting. But Baissier was very protective of the BPC “brand.” And what had happened to her “boys” tonight was not something she’d let go. Crush knew Baissier well enough to know that she’d never let this insult slide. Not her.
Yet she would never come at him directly. That was too easy. No, she’d find another way to get to him. Or, as she’d put it more than twenty years ago, she’d find a way to “make you hurt.” Since he knew she wasn’t one for idle threats, he felt pretty sure she’d make good on that promise. Especially now.
Still, Crush wasn’t worried about himself too much. Not that he wanted to suffer or anything, but it was what it was. Yet there were others who had now crossed her, too. MacDermot. Van Holtz, Smith, Malone. Even those two hybrid girls. They’d all unknowingly crossed a line with Baissier. Crush had warned Van Holtz and Gentry, who’d shown up at the Group offices an hour after everything went down. They understood, and when he and MacDermot had left, they’d been meeting with Smith and Malone, and Van Holtz had promised to ensure the girls would be protected.
But Crush couldn’t shake the feeling that ...
He heard the knock at the front of his house, and Lola raised her head from the kitchen floor. She snarled and Crush stood, removing his .45 from its holster and heading to the door. But one sniff had him lowering his weapon and pulling the door open.
“It’s you.”
“Is that any way to talk to your pretend girlfriend?”
Rolling his eyes, the adrenaline practically pouring out of his body, Crush said, “You are such a strange feline.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” She lifted her hands. “You going to let me in or what?”
“It’s late, Malone. And I’m just not in the mood to—”
“Great. Thanks.” She pushed past him and walked into his house. Gritting his teeth, he followed her into his kitchen.
As soon as Malone stepped in, Lola barked at her, running around Malone and sitting down at Crush’s feet. Still barking.
Crush reached down and picked up the fifty-pound dog. “I know, girl. I know. No one wants these nasty cats in their home. Worse than rats.”
“I can’t believe you buy into that canine-media propaganda.”
“For someone so anti-dog, seems you’re kind of close to them.”
“Well, Smith and Van Holtz aren’t like those other dogs. You know, they don’t talk like ’em or strut like ’em. They’re different.”
“I’m becoming completely uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation,” he said, ignoring her laughter.
Crush kissed Lola’s head and walked into the kitchen, going right to the cabinet where he kept all her treats and taking out an extra-large bully stick.
“Here.” He placed Lola on the floor with her treat. “I think you deserve this, baby-girl.”
“Why don’t you just accept that she’s your dog?” Malone asked, dropping into one of the chairs around the kitchen table.
“She’s a foster. One day I’ll find her a nice family with kids.”
“Why can’t she just stay here with you?”
“No one for her to play with.” Crush opened the refrigerator, glanced in, then closed the door again.
“You’re restless,” she observed.
“It’s been an ... interesting day.”
“More like average for us.”
“Great. Wonderful to hear. And good to know that I have more to look forward to. Next, I guess Gentry will ask me to ...”
“Kill someone?”
Crush shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and hunched his shoulders.
“Doubtful,” she said. “Usually MacDermot’s department is busy just cleaning up my mess and Smith’s. And Smith and I sure are messy.”
“Are you saying I’ll have to clean up corpses?”
“Oh, God, no. We have specialists for that sort of thing. I just mean that you’ll probably spend a lot of time keeping me and Smith out of prison.”
“That’s what I’m reduced to? Keeping you and your wolf friend out of prison?”
“Trust me. There will be more to it than that. In some ways our world is much more difficult than the full-humans’.”
“I understand their world. It’s easy. Dangerous, but easy.”
Malone threw her legs up on the kitchen table like she owned the joint, crossing them at the ankles.
“So you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s see. First off, you went after your two replicas—as I like to call your brothers—as if they were covered in whale blubber. And then those two grizzlies at the office—”
“They kicked a child, threatened my partner, and went after that full-human girl. What was I supposed to do? Just stand there?”
“First off—”
“Again with the first off?”
Malone scowled at him and Crush raised his hands, knowing he was snapping. “Sorry.”
“First off, what happened at the meeting—totally righteous. But you challenged them before the meeting, too.”
“So there’s no ‘second off’? You have all these first offs, but no second offs?”
Malone folded her hands over her stomach.
“What?”
“Are you going to keep playing this game to avoid telling me what’s going on? Or are you just going to talk to me?”
“About what? Because something tells me you already know.”
“That Baissier was your foster mother? That she had you quietly outed as a cop? Yeah. I know. But I still want to hear it from you.”
Crush crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t think much about the fact that Malone knew all those details about his life. She was KZS, so it wasn’t surprising. Instead, he did kind of wonder what it would be like to discuss this with someone other than himself or the dog. Usually he kept personal stuff ... well ... personal.But the crazy woman before him had little room to judge when it came to personal drama, so perhaps talking to her would be better than nothing.
“In the eyes of the law, Baissier is a foster mother. But what she was really doing was recruiting. She only took in bears under the age of twelve. I was five by the time I held my first gun. A little .38. Could fight with knives by the time I was ten, and could tell you a whole lot of different ways to kill people by the time I was thirteen.”