Breaking Badger

by Shelly Laurenston

“Well, Stalin knew how to make our lives hell,” Tock muttered.

  “Wasn’t he one of us?”

  “No!” everyone snapped at Streep.

  “I don’t mean he was honey badger, but wasn’t he, like, bear or something?”

  “Absolutely not,” Tock asserted. “He was appallingly full-human.”

  “Lenin and Trotsky,” Nelle said, removing all the cash from Mads’s duffel bags so she could obsessively place it into a black metal briefcase, “they were badgers.”

  “Remember how hard it was to kill Trotsky?” Max asked. “They had to cave his head in. That wouldn’t really work on me, though. I’ve got a MacKilligan head. It’s like a bowling ball.”

  “It really is,” Mads agreed. “I threw a baseball bat once. At this guy. Really winged it, too. But Max got in the way and it hit her in the back of the head. She didn’t even yelp.”

  “Max didn’t just get ‘in the way,’ ” Nelle corrected with air quotes. “She jumped in front of that bat.”

  Confused, Mads asked, “Why the hell would you do that?”

  “You don’t realize how hard you threw that thing,” Max explained. “And that kid wasn’t wearing a helmet. You would have definitely done some time. And you were not cut out for life in the system.”

  “How would you know? You’ve never been in the system either.”

  “But half my family has. On both sides. On different continents.”

  “And?”

  Max threw her arms out to her sides. “And can you just appreciate that I have a head as hard as a bowling ball and that I used my hard head to protect you?”

  Mads shrugged. “Yeah. I can do that.”

  “Thank you!”

  * * *

  “Who just leaves their team?” asked Charlie, who now sat at the kitchen table.

  Although she really wasn’t asking anyone in the kitchen. Finn realized she was actually talking to herself. Or the air. But he was worried that she was somehow expecting an answer.

  “When people count on you, you’re supposed to be there,” she went on. “All they had to do was fly a fucking copter and pick up my sister and her team. Not exactly brain science.”

  “I think you mean rocket—”

  “I know what I mean!”

  Shay backed away from her, and Keane insisted on staring down the smirking bears.

  “Your sister didn’t tell you any of this?” Finn asked Charlie.

  “She knew what I’d do.”

  “What would you do?”

  “You don’t want to know what I would do.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to know what you would do?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want—”

  “Would you two stop it!” Keane growled out, no longer interested in smirking bears. “You’re driving me nuts!”

  One of the dogs out in the backyard barked a warning and Finn heard his mother bolt toward the front door.

  “Ma!” he yelled out. “Don’t harass the neighbors!”

  “You know that bastard next door is near our property again!”

  “He’s allowed to be—” Finn sighed, hearing the door slam against the wall after his mother yanked it open. “And she’s gone.”

  “You have dogs?” Charlie asked.

  “Yes.”

  She sniffed the air. Stood. Sniffed the air again. Walked around the kitchen. Sniffed. Walked up to Keane. Sniffed him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” one of the bears asked.

  “If you have dogs, why don’t I smell dogs?”

  Keane looked around. “What?”

  “You have dogs but you don’t allow them in the house?”

  “Why would we allow dogs in the house?”

  One of the bears crossed their eyes and another muttered, “Uh-oh.”

  Charlie’s mouth dropped open as she openly gawked at Keane.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he asked the bears when her gawking continued for nearly sixty seconds.

  “Why would you . . . how could you . . .” Charlie pointed in the direction of the backyard. “You just leave them out there? All night? Alone?”

  “They’re not alone. They’ve got each other. And squirrels.”

  “They’re dogs. They’re meant to be with their people. Kept warm in the house. Cuddled up with you all night.”

  “I don’t want them bringing their funky asses into my house.”

  “It’s my house,” Finn corrected. “But he’s right. We have a really nice rug in the living room. Our mother brought it back from Mongolia. I don’t want them dragging their nasty asses over it.”

  “If you don’t want dogs in the house, why do you have dogs?”

  “Basic protection. What else?”

  Charlie pointed her finger at Finn and Keane. “I’m going out there to check on those dogs. And if they are in any way neglected or mistreated . . .”

  She grabbed them by their T-shirts and with what was a surprising amount of strength for a hybrid canine and badger, yanked them close and whispered, “I will crush you both!”

  With that, she shoved them away. What shocked Finn was that he couldn’t stop himself. His body went back and the only thing he could manage to do was not fall on his ass. But he couldn’t stop himself from going back several feet. So did Keane. It was something they were not used to, not even from guys six times bigger than some hybrid. Making it kind of devastating coming from Charlie MacKilligan.

  So it was a little terrifying when she walked back into the kitchen a couple of minutes later. Finn couldn’t remember the last time he’d even looked at the dogs they kept in the backyard. Hell . . . he hadn’t even been in the backyard since the summer began. He’d been too busy. For all he knew, there could be only one dog left and the other dogs dead. Just skeletons.

  If that woman found a dead dog back there—

  “Okay,” Charlie said, smiling as she re-entered the kitchen. “I’ll talk to Max. I’ll make her help you. Because we’re family. Speaking of which . . . is Nat around? I want to say hi.”

  “Upstairs in her room.”

  “Cool. I’ll be right back.”

  She slipped out of the kitchen and Finn immediately turned to Shay.

  “What did she see?”

  Shay shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re the one who feeds those dogs. Because you and I both know we don’t care about those dogs. So what did she see?”

  “I make sure they’re fed. That way they remain loyal.”

  “Keane,” Finn ordered.

  Their oldest brother walked out, but he was back in two minutes, his face red.

  “Heated dog houses?” Keane demanded.

  “Are you kidding me?” Finn yelled in shock.

  “They were cold! In the winter.”

  “Why are those houses also air conditioned?”

  “Summers, they were hot.”

  “You’re pampering those dogs!” Finn accused his brother.

  “I like dogs, okay?” Shay admitted. “I like dogs! They’re friendly. And they’re happy to see me when I go back there. They don’t call me stupid when I trip over my own feet, which, if you hadn’t noticed, are very large and easy to trip over. And the only time they hit me is accidentally! Not once have they thrown me at a wall on purpose!”

  “You stole the last brownie!”

  “I was hungry!” Shay threw his shoulders back. “So, yeah. I like those dogs. And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to invite them into the house. My house! Because they’re welcome here!”

  “It’s my house,” Finn corrected, “and they’re not welcome in here because they’re not going to drag their dirty asses over the family rug!”

  Shay pushed past Finn but Finn grabbed his brother by his neck and dragged him back. Shay shoved him into the refrigerator but by the time Finn got back to his feet, Keane had Shay in a headlock.

/>   Finn was helping Keane drag the idiot to the ground so they could beat some sense into him when four giant black dogs ran past them and into the house. The She-bear smiled down at them.

  “I let the dogs in,” she announced with great cheer. “And before you three think about taking me on, I play pro hockey against Russian bears, many of them female with children . . . so please try me.”

  Keane wisely ignored the She-bear and instead growled at Shay, “You have pit bulls watching our backyard?”

  “They are not pit bulls.” Shay stood. “Those are one-hundred-and-ten-pound cane corsos and descend from Ancient Rome.”

  “‘And descend from Ancient Rome,’” Keane repeated mockingly.

  Their mother, having returned at some point from harassing their neighbor, appeared in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips.

  “Why is there a giant pit bull dragging its dirty ass on the rug we got from Mongolia?”

  Finn threw his hands up in Shay’s face. “Told you!”

  * * *

  Nelle, their “money girl,” did one more recount of the cash in the case while the rest of them carefully wrapped up the painting. It was a lot more involved than people realized to keep a painting of this caliber safe so that it was not damaged in transport.

  Once done, they headed out to the SUV Mads had stashed a mile or so away. She made sure to lock up the storage unit carefully since there was a goddamn Rembrandt in there—possibly more than one. She had spotted several boxes marked with the Vatican logo, but quite honestly she didn’t want to think about what else her teammates had been up to—and they all retraced their steps until they were out of the storage compound.

  Once they were safely in the SUV and on their way, they would text the limo driver a hefty tip for his wasted time and—

  They all froze, midstep. There was a wall of loaded automatic weapons aimed at them.

  Mads’s immediate response was shaking rage, because she assumed the holders of the weapons were family. But then she scented full-human male.

  She knew good and well her family would never send full-humans after her. They were too cheap to hire and arm the kind of full-humans that would actually have a chance in hell of taking the five of them down. So her anger quickly subsided, which led to that damn giggle.

  Her team glared at her.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “Sorry.”

  “Put down the money and the painting . . . then walk away.”

  Now all badger eyes moved to Max. None of them had to say it, but they all knew.

  If it wasn’t Mads’s family, then this obstruction was because of Max’s dad. Max knew it. The team knew it. The old Norse gods knew it. Everybody knew it.

  How did Charlie always put it when talking about her father? “That man could fuck up toilet paper.”

  Mads never knew what that phrase meant, but she knew Charlie didn’t mean it kindly.

  Now here they all were. In the middle of nowhere, New York, surrounded by—she quickly counted—thirty-seven heavily armed men with a painting worth a small fortune and a case holding half a million in cash.

  So they handled the situation by screaming like little girls and running away.

  * * *

  Finn loved his baby sister but he didn’t appreciate how kind she was. She needed to get that Siberian-tiger edge. Or, at the very least, that honey badger–rude edge. He knew the species had it. He’d experienced it more than once. So what had happened to his baby sister? Must be some mutant kindness gene floating through his sister that had prompted her to not only invite Charlie MacKilligan to their dinner table but also those damn bears.

  He thought his mother was going to have a stroke when Nat did it. Invited them. In ASL and verbally!

  Then that idiot, Dale, followed it up with, “That would be awesome!” Which got him a swift punch to the back of the neck from Shay. That led to much whining. Big baby. Would the kid ever toughen up?

  So now they were trapped at the dining room table—they usually ate in the kitchen, in silence, except for the TV—because there were so many of them, forced to eat with strangers they didn’t like and share their beef Stroganoff. And based on the way these bears were packing that food away, Finn and his brothers wouldn’t have any leftovers for a late-night snack.

  “Do you guys do well in school?” MacKilligan asked his baby sister and the idiot.

  Nat only shrugged but before Dale could say anything, Keane growled, “He better.”

  “Why ‘he better’?”

  “We’ve got plans for him.”

  MacKilligan frowned. “What kind of plans? Evil, rule-the-world plans?”

  Now Keane frowned. “What?”

  “He just means,” Finn quickly jumped in, “that we want him to go to college and have a career. Have a better future.”

  “Oh. I get that. Everything Max and I’ve done is to ensure that Stevie’s brilliance is only used for good. Never for evil.”

  One of his aunts snorted. “Brilliance? A honey badger? Seriously?”

  Charlie’s fierce gaze cut across the table without her head moving an inch. She coldly studied Finn’s aunt for a long moment before she leaned back in her chair and said, “My sister conducted one of her symphonies in front of the Queen of England by the time she was six. They had to get her a tall box to stand on so the London Symphony Orchestra could see her over the conductor stand. By the time she was nine, she’d finished all her college requirements and had gotten a perfect score on her SATs. By the time she was sixteen, she was running a lab at the University of Oxford, but she was considering a serious offer to move to Switzerland to work at the CERN laboratory. Now, I know you may be worrying that CERN may one day open a black hole, but that’s doubtful. And my sister had already done that in her bedroom when she was eleven with her mid-level PC from Circuit City and some other materials she really wasn’t supposed to have. Then she almost sucked me and Max into the pits of hell with her, but we really aren’t supposed to talk about that because the Russians and Saudis and our own government already tried to kidnap her in the hopes that they could use her brilliance for evil. And if they find out that hell is an actual location that one can arrive at through a black hole that my sister has the coordinates to, I’m afraid they’ll try to take her yet again. Forcing Max and me to do horrible things that all of you will feel very uncomfortable about. We’ll do them, though, to protect our amazing baby sister. But, hey, you go on thinking she’s not special.”

  For a table that was normally silent because—when the aunts weren’t there—they only spoke in ASL, this particular silence was unusually awkward. Until Charlie’s phone vibrated.

  She pulled it out of her back pocket and glanced at it.

  “Rude,” another aunt muttered.

  And Keane had to ask, “Have you learned nothing?” Because why would any of them attempt to challenge this woman again? Why?

  “Huh,” Charlie said after gazing at her phone.

  Finn was horrified to see his baby sister point at him and then at Charlie. She wanted him to find out what was wrong. Not because she couldn’t but, he knew, she was trying to get her brothers to be friendlier to the woman she considered her half-sister. To be closer. Even though she knew that her family—her real family—didn’t want that at all.

  When he shook his head, she widened her eyes and bared her fangs.

  Finn dropped his elbows on the table, buried his hands in his hair, and took in a deep breath, then let it out.

  After a few seconds, he unwillingly asked, “Problem?”

  “Max is in it again.”

  “Who did she kill now?” Keane asked around his beer. Quickly followed by, “Owww! Don’t kick me!” to their baby sister.

  “No one yet,” Charlie replied, her fingers quickly moving across the screen of her phone.

  Then she added with a wide smile, “But the night is young.”

  “Do we need to go?” a bear asked.

  She sighed. “Yeah, I . . .” />
  As soon as she lifted her gaze and locked it on Finn, he knew he was in trouble.

  “No,” he immediately told her. “No, no, no.”

  “If you help now,” she told him in a singsong voice, “then I can batter her like a ram until she has no choice but to help you guys.”

  “No.”

  “That’s Yangs all over the world assisting you,” she reminded him, still smiling. “You really can’t do better. They know everybody. I mean, it won’t be resolved overnight, because Yangs have pissed off almost everybody, too, but still . . . you’ll be closer with Max than you would be with anybody else when it comes to getting the information you need.”

  “Look, I’ve seen your sister work. Unless she’s down the block, by the time we get there—”

  She waved off his concerns with her phone-holding hand. “I wouldn’t waste your time with that. I know my sister. First she deals with these guys, finds out who sent them, and then she does what she does.”

  “And then you want my beautiful sons to kill people for your sister?” Finn’s mother demanded, tears welling in her gold eyes. Not that Finn believed any of that performance art. Like any true cat, his mother could turn on the tears without much effort. It was a gift for her, but a curse for her sons, who loved her dearly.

  “I would never ask someone to kill for my sister. That’s what I’m here for.” Charlie smirked. “And I’m very good at my job.”

  Keane knocked his fist on the table and when Nat and Dale had focused on him, he signed, You two, upstairs.

  “I want to hear the rest of—”

  “Dale!”

  Nat quickly stood and grabbed her brother by the scruff of his neck. She dragged him from his seat and out of the room.

  “Look,” Charlie kindly said, “if you really want my sister’s help, you all need to realize something.”

  “And what’s that?” Keane asked.

  “That at the end of the day . . . my sister really only helps family. And right now”—she looked around the table—“y’all ain’t family.”

  chapter NINE

  “That was easy,” one of his men said low.

  Yeah. Too easy. He gave a hand signal for everyone to pull back. They did. Moving away from the items the five women had left behind.