As soon as their eyes locked, Max put on her biggest grin and happily waved at Dee-Ann with her zip-tied hands.
The men and woman laughed as Dee-Ann snarled and looked away from her.
Yup. Her favorite person to torture!
Before she could lower her bound hands, one of the cops grabbed them.
“These were behind your back.”
“Were they?” she asked.
He released her and snarled, “Fucking badgers.” Then he stormed away, leaving her alone.
About thirty minutes later, Max was shocked to see her teammates dragged in. Why were they here? They hadn’t done anything.
Each of them was led to a chair and pushed into it by a much bigger uniformed shifter. Then the cops left and a new team came in. They were all dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, each with a single holstered firearm, but none of them had badges, so they weren’t detectives Max would expect. She was always interrogated by detectives—at least in major American cities. In other countries, it varied.
After the five of them were seated and the very large, unidentified shifters were comfortably situated around the room . . . nothing. For at least forty-five minutes. Max wasn’t exactly shocked, though. It was an interrogation move. Keep the perp waiting in the hopes that he or she would get worked up and reveal all when the cops entered the room. Although the police outside the room, the ones Max could see through the glass, didn’t seem the least bit interested in them. When a few did notice, they just appeared confused by what was going on. Probably because the NYPD had other rooms that were used specifically for interrogation. So why were she and her team here? In this big glass room? And who were their guards? Max didn’t recognize any of them.
Eventually, while Max was wondering if she could jump out the window and fly—she wasn’t planning on doing that, but she did enjoy wondering what it was like to fly—three males entered the room along with a black woman who looked familiar to her.
“Hello, ladies,” the lion male said. “I’m Benjamin.”
“Benji!”
The lion smirked before correcting Streep. “Benjamin.” He gestured to a grizzly. “This is Oliver.” Then pointed at the shifter beside him, whose animal scent Max didn’t recognize. “And this is Bryan.”
“Benji, Ollie, and Bri!” Streep cheered.
The three men glared at her but the lion quickly continued. “Anyway, I know you’re wondering why you all have been brought here and—”
Tock pointed at the black woman, who was now quietly sitting in a corner, drinking from a large travel cup. “Who’s that?”
“That’s Imani. She’s here to observe.”
“Why didn’t you introduce her? Are you dismissing her very presence because she’s a woman?”
Uh-oh. Tock was putting on what the entire team called her “Feminist Warrior Wear—trademark pending.”
Unfortunately, Tock always seemed to aim her anger-spears at the wrong targets.
“Can I go on?” Benji asked.
Poor kid. He’d only spent three minutes around them and already he was annoyed. Imani, however, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself.
Max remembered her now. She lived a few streets over, in lion territory. She’d been there when Max was trying to protect Zé.
“Please,” Nelle said, flashing her award-winning smile and ingrained old-money politeness. “Go on.”
“As I was saying,” Benji began, “I know you’re all wondering what you’re doing here and—”
“Ohhhh, shit,” Mads breathed out, cutting the cat off, and Max saw the color drain from her teammate’s face.
As one, they all looked at the front of the room through the glass and Max immediately realized that things had just gone to shit.
* * *
Dez watched Smitty pull back a bit.
“Do y’all see that?” Smitty said in his Tennessean drawl. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen a honey badger show fear.”
“Who is that?” Mace asked, enjoying the bag of popcorn he’d brought with him. Dez had invited him and his best friend, Smitty, because she sensed there would be drama and her hubby, lion male that he was, did love drama that he was not involved in. Smitty had also brought along his cousin Dee-Ann, but unlike the boys, she saw the woman standing outside the conference room and instantly shook her head, pulling out her phone.
“Who are you calling?” Smitty asked.
“Everybody,” she muttered.
An answer that Dez found particularly disturbing.
* * *
Apparently Zé hadn’t understood her command not to call her sister. Because here Charlie was, gazing at them with a completely blank expression on her face from outside the room.
Benji stupidly motioned her in with a twitch of his hand and Charlie slowly entered. She didn’t speak, just looked at everything. Sizing it up, figuring it out, judging and preparing.
“You must be the big sister, huh?” Benji asked. “I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Benjamin and—”
“Oh, my God!” Tock suddenly snapped. “Just get on with it! You are taking way too much time with this.”
“Fine.” Benji motioned for Charlie to take a seat but she just stood there. Still not speaking, that blank expression on her face.
Honestly, Max found that blank expression much more terrifying than Charlie’s obvious-anger face. But that could be because she really hadn’t seen that expression before. It was new and Max wasn’t crazy about new when it came to her family.
Benji took a moment to let the silence settle before he said, “We want you five to work for us.”
“We’re not rats,” Mads announced. “I won’t tell you anything about my family.”
Nelle cringed and Max informed her teammate, “That’s not what he’s talking about.”
“It’s not?”
“No. So shut the fuck up.”
“Your teammate’s right, of course. You see, we know how talented you all are and we want to put those talents to work for us.”
Nelle smirked. “So you’re starting a basketball team?”
“Of course not.” He stretched his arm out, hand open, and the grizzly turned over a batch of red folders. “We’d like to utilize your other talents.”
“Our other talents?”
“We’re not fucking anyone for some spy job.”
Max turned in her chair so she could look at her teammate. “Again, Mads, I don’t think that’s what he means so maybe shut up.”
“Again, she’s right,” Benji said with a smile. “I’m talking about your other skills.”
He tossed one of the folders across the table so it landed in front of Tock. “Three months ago, uranium stolen from a Russian lab, the entire event somehow managing to take thirty minutes—precisely.”
Another folder landed in front of Nelle. “A year ago, a truckload of gold bars taken from outside the Vatican.”
A folder in front of Streep. “Six months ago, a billionaire—who escaped justice even though he liked his conquests . . . rather young—found with a bullet to the back of his head and his two-hundred-million-dollar impressionist art collection gone.”