chapter TWENTY-TWO

chapter TWENTY-TWO“Kyle!” Charlie called out, putting his warm oatmeal and bacon on the kitchen table. “Breakfast!”Stevie looked up from her computer. “What are you doing?”“Calling Kyle to breakfast. I know he’s eighteen now, but I still like to make him breakfast sometimes.”“Kyle isn’t here. Kyle hasn’t been here for the last five days. He’s been with his family in Seattle.”“Are you sure?” Kyle was another onetime child prodigy like Stevie who’d been staying in their basement and paying rent. He was a brilliant artist and jackal who’d taken over their garage with his artwork. He was also arrogant and annoying and rude, but that just made Charlie like him more. How could she not when he managed to tick off everyone who came within ten feet of him? That was a skill even Max didn’t possess. And the extra rent didn’t hurt either.“I’m positive. He’s been texting me regularly to complain about his family, the Seattle weather, and the state of world politics. He also wants to make sure you won’t rent his room out to someone else.”“Huh. I never noticed he was gone.”“Okay. So not only do I need to wait to be a mom, but you need to wait to be an aunt.”“Oh, come on. The kid’s eighteen. I’m sure I’d be much better with a baby.”Charlie heard the front door slam open and a familiar voice cry out, “Help! I need help!” She waited while big feet ran down the hall toward the kitchen.“See?” Stevie pointed out. “Neither of us moved, even though we heard someone screaming for help.”“We were supposed to move?”The Malone brothers’ youngest male sibling, Dale, ran into their kitchen. “I need your help!”Charlie held up her phone. “You couldn’t call?”“Charlie!” Stevie snapped.“Nat’s been kidnapped!” the kid said.Charlie and Stevie exchanged glances before Charlie asked, “Sure she just didn’t run away because Stevie shoved her nose into her face?”“Valid question,” the kid replied. “And I would have thought the same thing. Just one problem.”“Which is?”“My brothers aren’t home. They went off with your sister Max and the other badgers. They’re not even in the state!”“Okay . . .”“Look, my sister is not going to dramatically run away without an audience. My mother’s not even home right now. She’s with my aunts at the Jewish rec center playing Texas Hold ’em. I’m telling you, my sister would not do the big stomp-away without someone there to give a shit. And I am not that one.”“Maybe she just went out with friends,” Stevie reasoned.“I’ve texted her all morning—she hasn’t texted me back. She always texts me back.”“When did you last see her?” Charlie asked.“She walked with me to school, where I take my advanced college courses.”“Why?”He cleared his throat and began looking really shifty.“Just tell me, kid, we don’t have time for this.”“She was drinking last night and didn’t want Mom to smell it on her.”“Drinking what?” Charlie asked.The kid cleared his throat again. “Liquor.”“Liquor with what?”He threw his hands up. “She has some badger friends, okay? And yes, she likes her vodka mixed with some snake poison. What were you doing at seventeen?”“Not drinking poison-infused vodka.”“Isn’t that because you liked your poison mixed with tequila?”“You are not helping, Stevie.”“Can I get on with this?” the kid yelped.“Fine. Go ahead.”“Anyway, I was walking up the stairs and when I looked back, she was talking to this Asian guy. Totally her type. I didn’t think much about it until I texted her from class and she didn’t text me back.”“What do you mean ‘her type’?”“Tall. Good looking. Breathing.”Stevie snorted, but quickly lowered her head.“And to keep our mother off her back, tiger,” he added.Wide-eyed, Stevie looked at Charlie, and Charlie knew that her baby sister was thinking the same thing.“Tiger? Was this Asian guy Chinese?” Charlie asked.“How the hell should I know? I can tell you he’s probably not Mongolian.”“How would you know that?”“Because that would make our mother too happy. And she will never make our mother too happy.”“Okay, okay. Fine. So the kid’s Asian.”“Wait. What does it matter if he’s Chinese or not?”“It probably doesn’t.”“Probably? Why probably?”Charlie pulled out her phone and turned away from the kid. She quickly went through her contacts until she found the name she was looking for. The phone rang twice on the other end and when it connected, she only got a “What?”“When Van Holtz spoke to the Yuns, what did they say?”“They said they’d leave you alone.”“What specifically, Smith? For most people, words have meaning. What were their words?”“Lord, let me think. He said . . . ‘We’ll stay away from the MacKilligan sisters.’”“You’re sure?”“Yes. I’m sure. Why? What’s going—”Charlie disconnected the call and again faced the kid. “What’s your sister’s legal name?”The kid blinked. “What?”“On her birth certificate? What’s her legal name? Is it MacKilligan? Is our father down as her father?”“It’s complicated.”“We’re smart.” Charlie pointed at Stevie. “She’s a genius. We can figure it out.”“Dad was already dead when she was born. So Mom didn’t put anyone down as the father.”“But she didn’t give her the name MacKilligan either.”“No. She was a Malone. Raised a Malone. Even though no one on the Malone side but us was happy about it.”Charlie closed her eyes and asked, “Did the rest of your family tell anyone that Nat was not a Malone? That she was, in fact, a MacKilligan?”“Uh . . . well . . . I think so. I think I remember my mom complaining that the Malones told everyone they did business with that she wasn’t blood related. It’s a big deal for them.”“Who do the Malones do business with?” Stevie asked.“Criminals,” the kid easily replied. “A lot of leg breakers in my family. You want someone’s legs broken because they owe you money and you don’t want them accidentally killed . . . you bring in a Malone.”“The Yuns promised they wouldn’t strike against the MacKilligan sisters,” Charlie explained to Stevie. “So they went after Nat . . . because she’s not a MacKilligan. Legally, she’s a Malone.”“Oh, my God,” Stevie said, beginning to pant. “Oh, my God!” she said again, this time a little louder.She slammed her hands onto the table, giant claws bursting out of them and her voice exploding with rage as she roared out, “Oh, my God!”Charlie waited until the windows stopped shaking, the glasses, plates, and pans stopped dropping onto the floor, and the chairs stopped skittering across the room. Then she looked up at the terrified young tiger who was hanging from a now partially broken cabinet door like a panicked house cat and said, “You should go home now, kid. Keep your phone on—we may have to call. But we’ll handle it from here.”* * *Tova pushed open the door of her home and stepped barefoot onto the grass. She held a cup of coffee as she started walking toward her daughter’s trailer, shoving out of her way a male who’d gotten too close. He apologized and kept moving, which was what Tova expected. If he’d done anything else, she’d have torn off his face.As Tova was about to knock on Freja’s door, she heard one of her grandnieces behind her.“Tova! You need to come out to the south field.”“Why?”The girl smiled. “You won’t believe who’s here.”Tova headed back to her trailer to put on her clothes and steel-toed boots. She motioned to the other trailers. “Get ’em up. Get ’em all up. Now!”* * *They dragged Nat out of the trunk and Kang Yun pointed toward a doorway that led into a long hallway. It was an empty warehouse made of concrete. Some place that Nat did not want to be, but so far all they’d done to her was shove her around and try to scare the shit out of her.Not that she wasn’t concerned. She was definitely concerned. These tigers were pissed about something and she knew her kind well enough. True, she was mostly honey badger, but she knew her brothers and mother. She knew tigers. They were vengeful, angry fucks and for some reason these particular vengeful, angry fucks were pissed at her. She knew she hadn’t done anything to them herself, but for whatever reason, she was their means to an end.The problem was, she hadn’t reached her full shifter potential yet in order to properly fight back. She could unleash her claws and begin digging but she wasn’t at the point yet where she could dig herself completely out of the building in less than a minute. That took some training and practice and she had neither. Same thing with her shifting.The tigers did seem to know she was deaf but were unaware that she could read lips. Something she might be able to use. People tended to underestimate those they considered to have a weakness, not realizing that her body had compensated for her loss of hearing in other ways.Two males held her bare arms tightly as they dragged her through the warehouse until they reached a room and threw her inside. They closed the door and stepped in front of it, facing her. Then they waited. She stood on the other side of the room and said nothing. Simply watched them.The smaller one started to sweat first, wiping his forehead a lot. His partner noticed and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”“I don’t know. I don’t feel so well.”“Suck it up. The boss is in a bad mood.” He glanced at Nat. “Poor kid doesn’t even know what’s about to happen to her. Unlike her, we will hear her screams.”“Sure she can’t hear?”“Yeah. I’m sure.”Now the taller guy wiped his forehead. “Is it me or is it getting hot in here?” He looked down at his hands, studied the palms. “Do your palms feel sweaty, too?”“It’s like my skin’s on fire.”“Yeah. Mine, too.”The smaller one pointed at Nat. “What’s she smiling about?”* * *“When will you get the money?”“I . . . I . . .”Joey didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have the money. And he’d already borrowed from everyone he knew to pay off all his old debts. He still hadn’t paid his rent and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep that from the wife. As it was, she thought he had paid the rent. But he’d thought this time the horse was a sure thing. He’d looked into the horse’s eyes! He’d thought for sure this time . . .Now he had the biggest man he’d ever seen standing over him, telling him if he didn’t pay up money he didn’t have he would not just break his legs, he would demolish his legs.Joey had always thought he was a big guy. He was a big guy! Six-three, three hundred pounds, and, like his dad and granddad before him, he worked on the docks. But the guy staring down at him with weird gold eyes . . . he was bigger. Way bigger. Taller. Wider.Joey always thought he was mean, too. Joey sent most of the guys who came around demanding money on their way with a swift kick in the ass while he and his union boys laughed about it. But this guy. This guy was definitely meaner. Colder. Impatient. Joey didn’t think he’d be kicking this one’s ass anywhere.“I asked you a question.”“Uh . . .”“Hey! Malone.”It was a woman’s voice. Coming from behind the mountain in front of Joey.The mountain turned and said, “You? What are you doing here?”She walked around him and Joey saw her and another woman. The first one was Black. Only about five-nine, but with big shoulders. Cute, though. The other one was tiny. Blond, thin, in a little sundress one of Joey’s daughters might wear. Neither of them seemed to belong on the docks. And they definitely didn’t seem like the kind of girls who should be talking to the mountain.“I’ve been told,” the Black one said, “that you do work for the Yuns.”“Look, I’m not about to get—”“They took my sister. I need to know where they would have taken her.”“I’m not getting in the middle of this. Not against the Yuns.”“I’m sorry if I was unclear. You don’t have a choice.”The mountain sort of laughed. “Really?”The Black one suddenly grabbed the mountain. By the hair, twisting him down, so that he was forced to look up to her. Her other hand, she pressed against his neck, and warned, “Move and I’ll rip it out.”The mountain stopped struggling.“The Yuns took our half-sister. They plan to torture her and kill her. This would also be the half-sister of the Malone brothers. Your cousins. While you should be worried about what I will do to you, you should really be worried about what the Black Malones will do to your entire family when they get back to New York. Because we both know that if anything happens to their sister, they will never stop until the entire Malone bloodline is wiped clean from the planet. So I strongly suggest you answer me.”Joey could see the mountain struggling. He didn’t want to answer, and Joey knew why. Ratting out the Yuns was a quick way to end up in the East River. But before the big man could make up his mind, the tiny blonde leaned over and screamed right into the mountain’s face, “TELL HER!”The containers that surrounded them, which needed to be lifted by very powerful cranes, shook from the force of the girl’s roared words.That’s when the mountain blurted out an address somewhere on Staten Island.He was released, and the blonde started walking away. The other didn’t follow immediately, though. She stared at the mountain a moment before heading off, tossing a warning over her shoulder as she did. “If that kid is hurt or dead because you didn’t give us the information right away, I promise you’ll never see me coming.”Realizing that this mountain of a man had let those two women stomp all over him and was still looking weirded out and panicked, Joey swung on him before he could get his senses back. He hit him right in the face, too. Should have knocked him out.Instead, all the mountain did was turn his head slowly to glare down at Joey. He didn’t even blink. Or move. Or appear harmed in anyway.Then he did something truly unsettling. He growled.That’s when Joey knew he was well and truly fucked.* * *Tova stood next to Freja as Mads came over the hill with her new Oriental boyfriend and his Oriental brothers. They were big tigers. All three of them.Some of her clan were in their human forms, but some were loping back and forth, sending out their whooping call. Some laughing. So Mads would not forget what she was dealing with.“Do you have it?” Freja called out to her worthless daughter.Unlike her fertile sisters, Freja had always had trouble conceiving. It hadn’t really bothered her. She didn’t like children. But if she wanted to take over, to rule when Tova moved on, she knew she’d need a daughter of her own to watch her back. She’d heard about the tough genes of honey badgers. She’d thought at worst she’d get a disturbing mix of hyena and badger. Instead, she got a weak little badger with a love of basketball. Ghetto trash with ghetto-trash friends. The Clan would have found a way to get rid of her a long time ago if it hadn’t been for Solveig.But Solveig was gone now. No one to protect little Mads anymore except three tigers and her crazy badger friends. They might not be standing right next to her, but Tova wasn’t fooled. She knew those bitches were around somewhere. Maybe under her feet. She knew they could dig. She was ready for their little tricks and moves. Even the probability that they would use weapons because their little claws and fangs weren’t strong enough to go up against hyena jaws. Tova’s Clan had weapons of their own. Just in case.“Well?” Freja pushed when the badger just stood there. Not saying anything.“I’m not here to fight you,” Mads finally said. “I’m just here to tell you that it’s over. It ends here.”“What ends here?”“The harassment. The stupid fights over swords. It’s just . . . done.”Tova dropped her head. “Lord!” she muttered to one of her nieces. “That girl is sad.”“Okay,” Freja said, her voice full of sarcasm. “It’s done. Because you want it done. Because we’re upsetting you.”“No. That’s not why. Because I’m doing what Solveig always wanted to do but never tried because she thought it was too crazy, even for her.”Confused, Tova raised her head, watching the first one trot over the hill.His big mane waved around him, thick legs standing tall and powerful, massive chest moving in and out with each breath, instincts kicking in at the mere sight of the clan standing in front of him.At first, Tova kind of laughed. Admiring the balls on the girl to come up with this crazy idea, with or without Solveig. But that laughter died in her throat when more males kept coming. Filling up the hillside. Lion males as far as the eye could see. More male lions than she’d ever seen at one time in all her life.More male lions than she had hyenas in her entire American Clan.This wasn’t a warn-off. As she’d thought it would be when it looked like the girl had only brought a few lions and her pet tigers. This was a wipeout.“You wouldn’t,” Tova snarled at her.“Better hide the children,” Mads Galendotter growled out, her badger fangs extending past her lips. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep them from going that far.”Then the evil bitch threw back her head and unleashed a Viking scream Solveig would have been proud of, sending all those lion males charging straight at Tova’s entire Clan.* * *Charlie pressed her foot on the gas and drove straight ahead, ignoring the bullets that kept slamming into the windshield. She’d borrowed a work SUV and those vehicles were mostly bulletproof, allowing her to continue driving forward until she rammed the cats protecting the front of the building, shoving them into the wall and then right through the concrete.She didn’t duck down until she realized the top of the SUV was being partially sawed off and worried her head might go with it. There was definitely no coming back from a decapitated head. Even for a honey badger.Once she cleared the wall and the near loss of her head, Charlie spun the wheel hard and hit the brakes. She grabbed the machine gun next to her and started shooting before she even straightened up. When she did sit up, she had already taken down five tigers and was gunning for three more when something slammed into her from behind. This one had shifted into his cat form. His forelegs slammed onto her shoulders with a brutal force that should have crumpled her like tin foil.Her father’s freak genes, though . . .Charlie reached back with one hand and grabbed the tiger by the extra skin of his neck and flung him into the tiger launching himself at her from the front. They slammed into each other and landed in a muddle of claws and fangs. She jumped out of the wrecked SUV and cleared the empty mag, quickly replacing it with a new one from the vest she was wearing. She started firing again at the males rushing in from a doorway.There were a lot of them. And it was clear they’d been waiting for her. So Charlie wasn’t exactly surprised when she got hit twice in the back, just above the vest she had on, knocking her to the ground. She rolled over and started to clear her empty mag again but a hand reached down and yanked the weapon from her hands. He slammed his foot against her chest. A rib cracked and Charlie yelped out in pain. He kicked her in the side a few times, then grabbed her ankle and began dragging her toward the open doorway.* * *Mads heard her mother scream orders as the female hyenas attacked from all sides. She didn’t shift and neither did they. Instead, they came at her swinging. But Mads blocked their blows with her arms and struck back with the blades she had tucked under her T-shirt. She slashed one across the face, another across the shoulder. Someone kicked her from behind and she rolled forward, came up standing. She spun around and brought the blade down, nailing a cousin in the chest.The rest shifted and scattered; lion males took off after them.She knew blood had sprayed across her face, and she had it on her hands and white T-shirt. Slowly she faced her mother and grandmother with her arms spread wide, a blade in each hand.Mads said nothing. There was nothing to say. The only thing her family could do at this point was flee.They did.* * *The banging coming from inside the SUV stopped the man dragging Charlie toward the hallway. He looked back, gold eyes narrowed. He shook his head and started dragging Charlie again. Another bang had him tossing Charlie against the wall and aiming his machine gun at the back of the SUV. He shot at the vehicle a few times. Paused. Shot it some more.Charlie rolled to her stomach, got onto her knees. She pressed her hand to her chest and forced her ribs back into place so she could breathe a little better. Once breathing was no longer a challenge, she pulled out the .40 holstered to the back of her jeans and put a round in the chamber.As soon as she did, she had to duck, because the back door of the SUV was flipping across the room as an angry, roaring Stevie emerged from the trunk.The male tried to fire again when he saw the giant, tiger-striped honey badger but Stevie didn’t even see him. She was too busy stepping on him with her giant paw as she got out of the vehicle, crushing him into the ground. Leaving nothing but his flattened, bloody remains behind once she’d stepped away.In the past, when her meds weren’t quite right and she had no real control over her emotions, this incarnation of Stevie would have been an explosion of panic and fear. But that fearful Stevie no longer existed and right now she was too angry to be afraid of anything, it seemed.More men charged out of the doorway, completely unaware of Charlie. All focused on Stevie. She gave Charlie a short nod before doing what Stevie did best . . . freak everyone out.This time it was by running across the room and up the wall to the ceiling. She hung on there for a moment until the men began shooting at her. Then she ran across the ceiling, keeping their focus on her.Charlie ran through the doorway, searching for Nat. She shot on sight any male who came at her. When she reached the end of the hall and could go neither left nor right she heard screaming.Following the screaming usually worked, so that’s what she did. The sounds took her to a steel door. She carefully tried opening it but it was locked. Charlie took a few steps back, angled her shoulder in and down, positioned both hands on her gun, and ran.She rammed the door and took it off its hinges with the first hit, sending it across the room. Inside, she found Nat on her knees, holding Kang Yun by his arms and spitting at him.No. That wasn’t right. Well, it wasn’t wrong either. She was spitting at him. Not like a scared, angry teen, but like a spitting cobra. Yeah. Exactly like a spitting cobra.And it was Yun who was screaming.Nat released the cat and he fell back, writhing and rolling over and over, his hands desperately wiping at his face.Charlie looked around the room. There were at least six male tigers, all dead. Each of them in a different state of contortion and decomposition. There was only one thing that caused a human body to react like that: the world’s worst snake venom.Grabbing her sister by her T-shirt, she lifted her to her feet and raised her arm. She sniffed Nat’s palm and her forearm.“You can release poison through your pores?” Charlie asked Nat, looking her right in the face. “And spit it? Like a reptile?”“Only after I drink it. I don’t digest it. It just sits in my system.”Charlie let out a breath. “You know whose fault this is, don’t you?”“Dad’s?”“Dad and his fucked-up genes.”The doorframe cracked and Stevie shoved her massive, tiger-striped badger head in. The legs and torso of a man still hung from her mouth, but he’d stopped kicking. When she looked around and saw nothing but dead males in the room, she spit her “toy” onto the floor and gawked at her younger sister.Charlie jerked her thumb at Stevie and said to a wide-eyed Nat, “That’s also Dad’s fault.”* * *To Finn’s surprise, some of the hyenas had guns and started using them when they realized how dire their situation actually was. Not that he blamed them. The problem was, the weapons didn’t really help. As he walked around, lion males tore hyenas to shreds like cruel boys ripping apart their little sisters’ stuffed animals.Eventually, the hyenas that weren’t killed right away started to run for their lives. Probably smart, because it had turned out to be way easier than Finn had thought possible to round up a bunch of lion males for this. All Keane had to do was put a call out to the lions in his football league. They’d only received “yes” replies and the males showed up at the airport less than twenty-four hours later on their own dime. Apparently running down hyenas for amusement was something lion males did whenever they could. Whether on the Serengeti or in Brooklyn on a Saturday night. So to be able to take on an entire clan for another player’s badger girlfriend—because Mads was now officially Finn’s girlfriend as far as the league and Finn’s brothers were concerned—was an “honor.”What was strange to Finn, though, was that he hadn’t seen any of Mads’s teammates since this had all started. They’d disappeared when Mads and the rest of them had headed toward the trailers and hadn’t been spotted since. He just hoped they weren’t about to blow the place. He wouldn’t put it past them, but he really didn’t want to have to make a run for it.Once Tova and Freja turned tail, the whole thing was pretty much over. The hyenas that were left just took off. They grabbed the kids—who had not been harmed in any way—got in their trucks and cars, and were gone.Finn went looking for Mads and found her staring out over a small man-made lake. She was covered in blood and had a few bruises, but not nearly as many as she’d had the night her cousins had ambushed her.He put his arm around her shoulders from behind and kissed the top of her head.“You okay?” he asked.“I’m fine.”“Think they’ll be back?”“Don’t know. Don’t care. I just know they won’t be bothering me. And I never have to come back here.”“This was never your home.”“It really wasn’t. Detroit was my home. Solveig was my home. Those parks and those basketball courts were my home.”She grabbed his forearms with her hands and just held them. They stayed like that for a long time until they heard a truck pull up and the badgers got out.“Where did you go?” Mads asked when she saw her friends.“Had to get some stuff for you,” Max said. “And now you owe us. Because oh my God!”“What are you talking about?”Tock carried a metal box from the back of the truck. One of those safe boxes people had in the bottom of their closets for important papers when they didn’t want to deal with a big safe.“We found this in the hoarder house.”“You went in there?” Mads took a step back. “I can’t go anywhere with you guys until you shower.”Finn covered her mouth with his hand because that was way rude.Tock opened the box. “Deed for this property. It was owned by Solveig.” She reached into the box again. “Copy of Solveig’s final will, signed and witnessed blah blah blah, leaving everything to you. Including this property.”“I don’t want this property.”“Then sell it to my grandfather,” Max said. “The wolves will love it. They can expand the Pack and keep the hyenas off it.”“Oooh. And make it a sanctuary for full-blood wolves,” Streep eagerly suggested.“Anything else?” Mads asked. “Hidden treasure worth millions?”“Dear God, you have a Basquiat!” Nelle snapped.“Oh, what? Now you’re going to bring that up every day?”“There is one more thing,” Tock said. She went back to the truck and returned holding a battered cardboard box with a few grease stains that might have come from pizza.“What’s that?”“Solveig’s ashes.”Mads’s entire body tensed. “How . . . how do you know that? Are you sure? You can’t be sure.”“Little kid hiding in the house pointed it out to us. I think she liked to play in there. I also think she saw where the adults hid it. So when I asked, she showed me.”“I’m surprised they didn’t flush the ashes down the toilet.”“What if they needed them later to use against you? Especially if you ever found out you owned the property.”Mads stretched out her arms and Tock carefully placed the box into her hands.“Thank you,” Mads said.“My friends,” Streep added.“What?”“Thank you, my friends.”Mads, Tock, Nelle, and Max stared at Streep until she snarled and stalked away.“Evil bitches!” she yelled over her shoulder.* * *Dez and Crushek gazed at the set of legs in one corner of the room, walked out, went down the hall, and found the torso and head that went with the legs in another room. The doorways of both these rooms had been torn down by something enormous and strong. Like construction equipment. Or Godzilla.There were more destroyed walls in the building. There were more bodies. Some had been torn apart. Some had been shot. All of them were Asian and male. They were also gangsters with very long criminal records who had worked for the Yun family.In fact, Kang Yun was in one of these rooms. Dead. At least Dez was pretty sure it was Kang. A good chunk of his face was gone. Like someone had thrown acid at it. But she wouldn’t know for sure until the M.E. had a look.“We’re never going to figure out what’s going on here, are we?” she finally asked Crushek.“Nope.”“I mean with the Yuns, the badgers, and the other . . . tigers. It’s just going to stay a mystery to us, isn’t it?”“Probably.”“Is it something that should keep me up nights?”“Not really.”“And why is that? Just so I’m clear.”Crushek pointed at one of the dead. “That guy there. I busted him myself for human trafficking. My least favorite thing. The Yuns bailed him out and paid for a top-notch lawyer to get him off.”Dez nodded. “Good enough for me. Hungry?”“Always.”