“No. But I can tell you and Max are close. She just wants you to be happy and you just want her to be happy. The pair of you are running around, trying to make each other happy. It’s sickeningly sweet. Or would be if she wasn’t always covered in military knives under her clothes and even now you have a .45 holstered to the back of your jeans.”
Charlie looked over her shoulder. “Oh, can you see it?”
“No. The T-shirt covers it.”
“Great.” She gave a small smile. “You really care about Max, don’t you?”
“She’s insane and dangerous and has managed to convince my old team leader that I am taking advantage of a mentally unstable woman. How could I not care about her?”
Charlie’s snort turned into a laugh, her wide smile lighting up her face.
“Come on.” She grabbed his hand. “Let’s go find her. I’ll slap her around a little bit, then you can take her home.”
“That’s big of you, Charlie.”
She wrapped her arm around his back. “Isn’t it?”
* * *
Max lost Imani in one of the hallways. She sniffed the air but there were tons of cats and dogs in the club, making it hard to focus on just one scent.
Thinking she caught the female’s scent going down a flight of stairs, Max followed. But when she opened the first-floor door it was another hallway with exit doors at each end.
“Fuck.”
She sniffed the air again but she couldn’t catch anything specific.
Making a guess, she took a right and went through the exit.
Imani had already made it to the end of the alleyway by the time Max stepped outside. She followed, but abruptly stopped.
“Seriously?” she demanded, turning to again face the cousin who wouldn’t let it go. Whatever “it” might be. “Woman, what is wrong with you?”
“Just wanted to tell ya,” Mairi said, “I’m going to find your da and bring him to Uncle Will. Let him deal with his bastard half-brother.” She suddenly grinned. “He’s gonna rip ’im apart.”
Max waited for more but when she didn’t get any, she shrugged and said, “Okay.”
Her cousin continued to grin for a little longer but it eventually faded and she asked, “What do you mean, ‘okay’?”
“Is there another meaning for ‘okay’? Some Scottish slang meaning I’m unaware of?”
She took a few steps closer to Max. “You know what Uncle Will’s gonna do to him . . . yeah?”
“I’m aware. So’s Charlie. You might make Stevie cry . . . for about five minutes. If that’s the reaction you’re hoping for. Other than that, I don’t know what you want from me. Or why you’re even bothering to tell me.”
This time, Max stepped closer until she was inches from her cousin. “What do you really want from me, cousin?”
“I guess just a challenge. Something fun to do.”
“You think this is fun? Tracking me down at a party you weren’t invited to, hiding in an alleyway that you hope I’ll come through at some point in the evening, and talking to me when neither of us likes each other? You think that’s fun?”
“Terrorizing you is fun.”
“So you don’t have friends.”
“What?”
“If you had friends, sweetie, you’d be hanging out with them. Not ‘terrorizing’ me. And yet here you are. Have you thought about joining a club? You’re . . . foreign. Don’t your people love soccer?”
“Football.”
“Oh, come on. That’s not really football. Until you people have a Mean Joe Green on your team, you don’t know what football is.”
“Who?”
“One of my grandfather’s favorite football players. He was amazing. You can catch some of his plays on You—”
“Stop talking!”
“There’s no need to yell. I understand your unhappiness.”
“I am not unhappy.”
“Really? Because you don’t really appear happy.”
“You know what I really want from you, cousin?” Mairi exploded.
“Again with the yelling.”
“I want to see you suffer!” Mairi suddenly hissed, true badger rage filling her up, turning Mairi’s pale skin a bright, angry red. “I want to see you in torment before I finally end you.”
“God, sweetie,” Max told her with intense honesty. “That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Mairi’s entire body twitched a bit. “What?”
“Don’t you think that’s a sad way for you to live? You don’t even know me, but you spend your days hating me. Plotting what you’re going to do next. And I know you want me to hate you back so we can have this big . . . badger war? I guess. But I could not give a flying fuck about you.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”
That badger rage exploded and her cousin grabbed Max by the throat, slamming her against the wall.
That’s when Max began laughing. She couldn’t help it. Because even when the crazed bitch was punching her in the face, even when she was choking her with her bare hands, even when she was reaching for one of the knives Max had on under her T-shirt . . . Max couldn’t get past the fact that the terrifying and horrible Mairi MacKilligan was letting Max get to her simply by doing what her mother had sort of done to Charlie earlier that day.
With one hand still gripping Max’s throat, Mairi used her free hand to raise the blade she now held high above her head. Based on her aim, Max knew that she wasn’t going for the heart, which was the second-best way to kill a honey badger. She wanted to stab her in the face. She wanted to scar her.
It was like she had something to prove, but Max didn’t know what it was. That she was a better fighter than Max? That she was stronger? Meaner? Deadlier? Did any of that matter? Even with Max dead, Mairi’s life would still suck. Max’s death wouldn’t fix that for her.
The knife came down, and Max raised her forearm at the last second. The blade tore through skin, flesh, and bone.
And still Max laughed. Despite the pain.
Then Charlie was there. Coming in behind Mairi and yanking the blade away from them both. She yanked their cousin to her feet and began stabbing at her. Hitting her in the neck, the chest, even the face; gripping Mairi’s hair so she couldn’t get away without losing a good chunk.
Something that she actually did when she couldn’t stand being hit with the blade anymore.
Max cringed when she heard that horrible sound. Charlie left standing there with a blood-covered knife and part of Mairi’s scalp dangling from her fist.
Charlie screamed as their cousin sprinted away from her. A scream of rage and warning.
Until she winced from pain, Max hadn’t realized that Zé held her arm.
“Charlie!” Zé ordered, getting her sister’s attention. “Hold Max’s arm. I’ll be right back.” He waited for Charlie to replace him and then he ran back into the club.
They didn’t speak to each other but they were no longer mad either.
Zé returned quickly with a club T-shirt. He crouched beside her and began to wrap the wound. “We should take her to the hospital.”