“Does he remember you guys are in the room?” Shen asked her.
“Wow,” Kyle said from her other side. “I thought telling my kindergarten teacher I was an only child and an orphan was bad . . . I was wrong.”
Stevie sighed. “But you were in kindergarten, Kyle. Not a grown man.”
“I still don’t know what’s happening,” Shen muttered. “But I do want to call my dad and tell him I love him.”
“And you should also thank him for not being an asshole.”
“Oh, I will.”
“Sons,” her father went on . . . still oblivious, “give a man something that no woman—related or not—can ever give him. An empire.”
“I guess all those royal daughters in the middle ages who married to solidify power were meaningless,” Stevie said with a head shake.
“Pete was truly blessed to have as many sons as he did,” Freddy went on, ignoring Bernice as she tried to stop him or, at the very least, remind him that he had daughters sitting in the room, “Because sons are so important. They’re the most important thing a man can have in his life. Sons are everything. I know this because, unlike Uncle Pete, I was never blessed with sons. Imagine . . . going through life childless.”
“Oh!” Stevie gasped in surprise, “he just forgot he had daughters . . . altogether. How nice for him.”
Freddy stared at the sons and grandsons of Pete MacKilligan. The confused men and boys gawked back . . . their sisters, wives, and daughters beside them.
The silence went on for a very uncomfortable amount of time . . . until laughter rang out in the church. Hysterical, unstoppable laughter.
Stevie felt those eyes on her again but the family soon understood it wasn’t her. The crazy one. Nope. It wasn’t Stevie. It was Charlie.
Charlie was laughing so hard, she was the one crying now. She had her arms around her stomach and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop. It got so bad, she finally stood and waved at the priest.
“Sorry . . .” she managed between the wheezing. “I have to . . . I have . . . go . . . bye!”
Now coughing, wheezing, and laughing, Charlie made the long walk down the aisle of the church to the exit.
“I’ll . . . uh . . . I’ll go with her,” Max said before jumping up and running after her.
After the pair disappeared out the big double doors, Freddy shook his head in disgust and said, “Well . . . that was inappropriate.”
That’s when Stevie lost it too. She slapped her hand over her mouth to stop the laughter but it wasn’t helping.
With tears filling her eyes, she stood and followed her sisters. Desperate to get out. Desperate to not be the one laughing at a funeral.
But come on! What else did anyone expect?
* * *
It amazed Max that sometimes her sisters—whom she knew so damn well—still managed to surprise her. She’d been thinking that, by now, she’d have to peel the remains of her father off the church altar, find an exit strategy from the country for Charlie, and calm down a hysterically crying Stevie.
But that didn’t happen. Even after their father had insulted them and seemingly forgotten they existed, Charlie didn’t go after him the way she had in the past for much lesser offenses.
Instead, Charlie and Stevie were leaning against a black Escalade, still laughing.
When the laughter didn’t stop after a few minutes, but Max could tell that the funeral was coming to an end, she suggested, “Why don’t we just go home? Or get something to eat.”
“No way,” Charlie said, straightening up; using the back of her hands to wipe her eyes. “We’re going.”
“Why?” Max had to ask because . . . seriously . . . why?
“Because, they should have to face what they’ve done.”
“You mean not killing Dad at birth?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
Organ music played, heralding the beginning of the procession of the casket to the hearse, and Max quickly pulled her sisters away from the SUV and over to the stairs.
“Now stop laughing,” she ordered.
In silence, the casket began down the steps and, once it was in front of them, Stevie snorted, and then all three of them were laughing so hard Max began to wheeze.
Then they were moving; someone had grabbed them by the backs of their necks and was yanking them over to one of the family limos. They were forced inside and the door shut. When Max was able to see through the tears in her eyes, it was their Aunt Bernice staring at them. Her daughter Kenzie sitting beside her, also trying hard not to laugh.
“You three,” Bernice said. “Laughing at a funeral.”
“Dad’s fault,” Charlie replied. “That was all Dad.”
“Oh, I know,” Bernice confirmed tiredly with a wave of her hand. “Your father—”
“Your brother,” Max corrected, not willing to let anyone in that family dismiss the problem they had created.
“He was born a fuckup,” Bernice went on. “My sister was right. We should have taken that little pillow that was in his crib and put it over his face and—”
“Ma!” Kenzie exploded in giggles, shaking her head at the same time. “I do not want to hear this!”
Bernice lifted a small door near her, revealing a row of liquor bottles. She grabbed the scotch and poured herself a splash in a crystal glass. “You can’t say these girls wouldn’t be better off if we’d done that.”
“If you’d done that, they wouldn’t be here.”
“I’d be here,” Stevie said, gazing out the window. “I was meant to be here. Genius like mine doesn’t just come around every day.”
Bernice shook her head. “The fact that your father would show his face here . . . with your Uncle Will in town.”
“Why is he here?” Max asked.
“Not sure.” Bernice swallowed her scotch in one gulp and began pouring another. She shrugged her big, honey badger shoulders. “Maybe he thinks he can get money.”
“In what world . . . ?”
“He definitely wants money,” Stevie said flatly and without doubt.
“He can’t truly believe—” Charlie began.
“Wait.” Bernice let out a bitter laugh. “When all the family members’ accounts were hacked and their money stolen . . . no one touched Uncle Pete’s or his sons.”
“Do you think he’s actually stupid enough—”
“Yes.”
“—to think because he didn’t steal from Uncle Pete—”
“Yes.”
“—that Uncle Pete’s sons will give him money?”
Bernice gazed at Charlie over her empty scotch glass. “Child, what part of yes are you not grasping?”
* * *
It took some time to find the limo that the sisters were in. They hadn’t arrived in a limo and Shen didn’t think they’d be going anywhere in one. The limos, he’d been told, were for “family only.”
But, apparently, the MacKilligans were beginning to see Stevie, Charlie, and Max as family because they were in one of the limos with an aunt and a cousin.
Shen knocked on the window and the door opened.
Stevie leaned out. “Where’s Kyle?”
Shen had thought the kid was right behind him. Sighing, he looked around. Not hard, because the honey badgers weren’t very tall. But there were a lot of them at the moment.
The Dunns were still standing on the church stairs. “Hey!” he called out to them. “Do you see Kyle?”
Dag pointed. “With the coffin.”
Shen briefly closed his eyes. “What is wrong with that boy?”
“He’s simply fascinated by death and rituals,” Stevie explained. “It’s a phase many artists go through.”
“Is it? Really?”
Kyle arrived before Shen could retrieve him. Britta’s hand tight on his arm, she shoved him into the limo and followed him in.
“Do not be weird,” she told Kyle as she settled into a space.
Shen entered the l
imo and was just sitting down when the Dunn brothers arrived. Berg started to step inside, but a foolish wolverine pushed past him and dove into the spot next to Max.
“Miss me?” he asked, grinning.
“Of course, my sweet love!”
“I didn’t miss ya,” Charlie coldly stated. “Liked it when you were gone.”
“Damn, Charlie,” Dutch laughed. “I don’t even get props for manhandling your father for you? In front of a priest, no less.”
“You’ve gotta give him points for that,” Max insisted.
“No, she doesn’t,” Berg stated, settling into a spot next to Charlie. “She doesn’t have to give him shit.”
“Why?” Dutch asked. “Because you say so?”
The bear took his time turning his big bear head. When he finally faced Dutch, he let out one of his grizzly huffs, and the wolverine instinctively jerked back in his seat. He then turned red because he’d gone on instinct rather than the practical logic that Berg wasn’t about to shift into a bear in the middle of this funeral limo and attack him.
But the look of fear on the wolverine’s face was enough to have Charlie grinning like a little girl while Max laughed in her best friend’s face.
“See why I love him?” Charlie asked, stroking Berg’s arm.
The limo door closed and the procession began to move. Their driver was moments from pulling away from the curb when a knock startled them all. They looked to see Freddy waving at them through the window. He tried opening the door but it was locked. So he knocked again and pointed toward the door handle, urging his daughter to let him in.
“He must be kidding,” Bernice said in awe.
Charlie and her father stared at each other for several long moments. Then, Charlie raised her fist and, after that, just her middle finger.
Snarling, baring his fangs, Freddy stepped back, raised his leg, and kicked at the door.
“Don’t worry,” Bernice said, shaking her head in disgust. “The limos are bulletproof. He can’t get in.”
Stevie frowned. “Well . . . maybe we should just let him—”
“Stevie!” her sisters barked.
Stevie shook her head. “Forget I said anything.”
Their father continued to kick the door. Again and again, getting madder each time he did.
“Open the fucking door!” he yelled.
Charlie raised her other fist, then her middle finger. So now she had two middle fingers raised at her father.
The limo was beginning to pull out into traffic, and Freddy seemed to know he was running out of chances. When he took several giant steps back, Shen assumed he was going to throw everything he had at the limo in the hope of—
“Oh!” they all gasped as a semitruck sped by, going in the opposite direction.
Freddy hit the grill and went down, disappearing underneath the vehicle, which didn’t even slow down.
Stevie spun around, her knees on the seat, her arms on the headrest.
“He’s back up,” she announced, and Shen almost laughed when he heard everyone else sadly sigh.
There was just so much disappointment in the collective sound.
“Yeah, he’s fine,” Stevie said, settling back into her seat.
“How is he fine?” Britta asked. “The man was hit by a semi.”
“Dad’s not very bright,” Stevie admitted. “But he is resilient.”
Gazing out the window, Charlie sounded on the verge of tears. “The motherfucker just won’t die.”
chapter TWENTY-ONE
After she knocked, the door opened and Cella Malone threw her arms around the priest who answered.
“Uncle Jimmy!”
“My sweet Cella. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Fine.”
“Come in, come in,” he said, stepping back.
Cella walked into the office. Uncle Jimmy wasn’t the only priest among the Malone clan, but he was the one based in a Manhattan church and not one of the other boroughs or Ireland. Jimmy had been running this church for nine years and, thankfully, had never been called to the Vatican to face disciplinary action. Unlike some of the other Malones who’d made their lives in the Church, including a few aunts and cousins who had literally been sent to Siberia. A punishment that would have destroyed other women, but Malones were Siberian tigers . . . they ended up battling Cossack polar bears so that they could take over the towns around the nunnery. And, in typical Malone fashion, once the aunts and cousins had control, they began to run some very successful scams and offered brutal protection for the towns. Gangsters soon learned the local nuns were not to be fucked with.
Uncle Jimmy, though, was “a good lad,” according to his mother, which meant he didn’t like doing anything with his church except help others and worship God. A life Cella could never get into herself, but she understood how relaxing it must be not to have to deal with the family. She knew for a fact that the Vatican was easier to deal with than the Malones.
“How did the funeral go?” she asked, sliding onto his desk so her feet dangled. She’d been sitting on Uncle Jimmy’s desk like that since as long as she could remember, and not once had he slapped her off with his paw. Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same about a few of her other older cousins.
“A church full of honey badgers?” He shrugged. “It could have definitely gone worse.”
“Do you have the video?”
“I just finished downloading.” He pulled a USB drive out of his laptop, but when he faced Cella, he didn’t hand it to her right away. “Now why do you need this again?”
“Nothing bad.”
“Marcella Malone.”
“It’s not! We just need to see who was here. Scottish gang members were in your church, Uncle Jimmy. I’m here to ensure they don’t do anything to upset things.”
“I know what you do for a living,” he reminded her. “And I don’t like it.”
“You and my daughter. But we both know that what I do is important. I don’t, however, do it recklessly. My jobs mean too much to me to screw around with either of them.”
He handed her the drive. “I don’t know why you can’t just coach. The team’s doing great.”
“I know,” she replied, smiling. “Chances are we’ll be going against the Swedes this year. You do know they’re mostly descended from grizzly bear Vikings?”
“And you have the descendent of Genghis Khan as your power forward.”
“Yes, I do.” Cella couldn’t help but smirk. “And Novikov can’t wait to destroy them.”
Uncle Jimmy’s smile faded and he placed his hand on her shoulder while a frown pulled down his thick brows. “Will MacKilligan was here,” he said. “Along with his sons.”
Cella nodded. “We knew he was coming.”
“The three girls were here too. The ones you wanted me to keep an eye out for.”
“You’re sure?”
“I didn’t see any other African American or Chinese girls here. So I’m going out on a limb—”
“Got it. Got it,” Cella said on a laugh. “That was definitely them.”
Again serious, her uncle said, “I need you to be careful, Cella. Will MacKilligan . . . he’s—”
“I know.” Cella took her uncle’s hand to reassure him. “But don’t worry about me. I’ve got my backup.”
Her kindly, God-loving uncle sneered dramatically. “You mean that dog?”
Cella giggled. “Uncle Jimmy, be nice. I am the godmother of that dog’s child.”
“I am aware of that and, speaking for the family, we’re all disgusted by that fact.”
* * *
Dee-Ann Smith planted herself on top of the mausoleum and took her time assembling the Israeli-made sniper rifle she’d brought with her.
She tightened the scope, loaded the weapon, and stretched out, stomach down, near the very edge of the building. Pressing her left eye against the scope, she searched for her target. He stood on one side of Pete MacKilligan’s casket, his sons and the sons of his un
cle beside and behind him. On the opposite side stood the rest of the American MacKilligans, including the three daughters of Freddy MacKilligan. And boy did those three little ladies stick out among this group.
They seemed out of place and bored.
Max yawned. Stevie stared at the dirt at her feet and made shapes in it with the tip of her shoe. Charlie blatantly focused on her phone.
“Smith? You there?” Malone’s voice spoke in her ear.
“I’m here,” she said softly.
“Do not shoot Will MacKilligan.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me, Marmaduke.”
“You always get so moral after you’ve seen that priest uncle of yours.”
“Now, now, Smith. Your Southern Baptist is showing.”
“Look, I’ve got a clean shot. I’ll be gone before they even know—”
“No. Just watch and report back. Think you can handle that?”
“Fine.”
“Thank you. And the sisters are there, too, right?” Malone asked.
“Yep.”
“Did they see you?”
“No. And I don’t appreciate your tone.”
“Just face it, Smith. You’ll never be as good as me when it comes to being invisible.”
“Please. With that big ass? That thing is like a neon sign.” Dee-Ann continued to study the burial through the scope while the casket was slowly lowered into the grave, but she removed her finger from the trigger. Real shame, though. It was an easy shot.
But just as she was questioning Malone’s decision to keep Will MacKilligan alive, the three MacKilligan sisters suddenly looked up at Dee-Ann. She knew she was too far away for them to see her.
And yet . . . all three of them were staring right at her, their heads angled the same way, tipped a little to the left, gazes narrowed.
They might not be able to see Dee-Ann, but they all knew she was here.
“Goddamn,” she muttered.
“What is it?”
“I find these girls just . . . wrong, Malone. Real wrong.”
In a Badger Way Page 27
