He’d never been so attuned to anyone before. The closest was his teammates when they were on a job, but that was about life and death. About surviving when the firefight started.
This, though . . .
He hadn’t wanted her to go but he’d scented someone new in the room and that’s when he discovered that he not only knew what Max’s sisters smelled like, but if one stood behind him, he knew exactly which one it was.
Smirking a little, he sat up and dropped his legs to the floor. He studied his hands and, with just a thought, he changed his hands to claws.
Texts began pouring into his phone at that moment. All from Kamatsu. She wanted to meet him at a Starbucks in Manhattan at noon. He knew he had to go, even though he had no idea what he was going to tell her. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that if he tried to put her off . . . she’d keep digging. It was in her nature. She never backed off anything.
Yeah, it was better if they met and talked. Otherwise, she wouldn’t stop.
Deciding he needed a shower and to change his clothes first, Zé quickly texted Kamatsu back, agreeing to her demand. Just as he hit Send, he heard screeching tires and car doors being slammed. He didn’t think much about it, assuming it was some local teens acting like idiots. But then someone banged on the front door.
Zé stood and moved through the living room until he reached the doorway into the day room. He was about to walk to the front door, where someone was still banging, when the door was torn off its hinges and the thick wood came slamming into the room.
And all Zé could think was, Charlie is definitely not going to want to pay for that.
* * *
They went out the back door into the yard. Kyle was already up and setting off on a jog, with Dutch along to keep the kid out of trouble. Although Shen had been officially hired to protect Kyle, they all kind of kept an eye on him. None of them really minded. The kid was obnoxiously cute, with ego enough to fill Penn Station, but there was still something about him that stopped at least Max and Charlie from killing him.
“So,” Bernice began as soon as they were alone, “which one of you geniuses told your Uncle Will your father was back in town? ”
Stevie raised her hand and Charlie blinked, eyes wide. “You did?”
When Stevie nodded, Charlie and Max began to politely applaud.
“Stop that!” their aunt barked at them. “Your idiot father—”
“Or your idiot brother,” Max muttered.
“—actually requested a sit-down with your Uncle Will to ‘discuss’ all this.”
Max and her sisters stared at their aunt, their minds attempting to grasp what she’d just told them. When they finally understood, Stevie merely shook her head and sadly sighed out, “Oh, Dad.” But Max and Charlie just started laughing and didn’t stop.
Their father had to be the dumbest motherfucker! Will would do nothing but kill him.
Charlie was the first to get herself under control. “What exactly does he think that ‘discussion’”—she asked, using air quotes, like her aunt—“is going to accomplish?”
“He says he’s got the money,” Bernice replied.
“I thought the twins had the money,” Max said.
“They did, but then he took it back. Now he has it.”
“How is that possible?” Charlie wanted to know. “The man can barely tie his shoes, much less use a computer to transfer money anywhere.”
“Obviously he’s working with someone else; we just don’t know who.”
“I’ve been trying to find that out.” Max pointed to Charlie. “Irene Conridge set me up with some full-human hacker she knows. They’ve been working on it for a bit now.”
Stevie suddenly snarled. “Conridge? Why that bitch?”
Max raised a finger to her sister. “You need to get over whatever issue you have with Conridge.”
“Contact Conridge,” Charlie told Max. “Find out if the hacker knows anything yet.”
“Why are we getting in the middle of this?”
And, again, Charlie and Max looked at their sister in surprise. Usually she wanted to help everyone. She felt for everyone. Maybe now, though, with the help of her new medications, she understood that not everyone deserved her help.
“Because part of that is our money,” Bernice reminded them. “And Will is so pissed, he’ll just kill your father without waiting to find out where it is. It could be anywhere in the world, and the family wants it back.”
“Except the family doesn’t consider us part of it,” Max reminded her.
“Well, if ya wanna be, get our money back.”
“Yeahhhhh, we don’t.”
Bernice’s eyes narrowed and she took a step toward Max, but Charlie quickly stepped between them.
“Let’s play nice, ladies,” Charlie said, before telling their aunt, “Although my sister has a point. Why should we get involved? This is Dad’s fuckup and your fuckup for letting him get away with it in the first place. I don’t think that falls on us.”
“You ungrateful little—”
“We’re being ungrateful?” Stevie suddenly yelped, moving around a stunned Charlie so she was right in their aunt’s face. “All of you went out of your way to make sure we felt as excluded as possible; you let Charlie’s poor grandfather take the full financial responsibility of raising three girls even though only one was his actual blood relation, when any of you could have taken us in or just sent us a little money to get by. And you have the nerve to stand there and call us ungrateful?”
“What’s happening? ” Max asked Charlie. Like her older sister, she was stunned and impressed by Stevie’s outrage and ability to explain it without breaking down into sobs or shifting into a two-ton animal that could destroy the neighborhood.
Bernice pointed an angry, damning finger at Stevie, and Max waited for the vitriol that would follow. But, after a few seconds, she lowered her hand and softly admitted, “You’re right. We were cunts.”
“Seriously, Charlie,” Max said, turning to her sister, “what’s happening? ”
* * *
There were three of them. Big. Tall. With black hair and gold eyes.
The one in front, the biggest of the three, barged in, those gold eyes sweeping the room.
“Where is she?” he growled out.
Since Zé didn’t know what or whom he was talking about, he didn’t respond.
The man stormed closer. “I said”—now he stood over Zé—“where is she?”
The roar of words blew Zé’s hair off his face and he went from a human wondering what was going on to a cat that sensed danger.
He backed up, moving into the living room, his fangs easing out of his gums, claws bursting from his fingers. He shifted, shook off his clothes, and let out his own roar.
The raging man took a moment to look at the two men with him. Then he shifted and turned into what kind of looked like a tiger, but not one Zé had ever seen before. Because despite a few orange stripes he could barely make out, most of the tiger’s fur was black. As black as Zé’s.
Then, still towering over Zé, the tiger roared. It wasn’t like a lion’s, but it made Zé’s sound like a squeak. Yeah, it was loud and powerful and shook the windows of the house.
At that point, Zé was pretty sure he was dead, but that had never stopped him before. He charged the much bigger cat, but ended up flying across the room and out the window with one paw-slap to the head.
* * *
Max ran into the room just in time to see poor Zé slapped out of a closed window, the glass exploding across the yard.
Pissed, Max hissed and launched herself at the tiger, shifting in midair.
“Badger!” one of the other tigers warned. “Badger! Badger! Badger!”
She landed on the shifted cat’s back and dug her fangs into his fur-covered neck, hoping to reach an artery.
The tiger shook himself, sending Max flying. She hit the wall, dropped to the floor, and scrambled back to her feet. Sh
e hissed again and charged. The cat tried to slap at her again, but she ducked under his legs, ran under his chest, and latched onto his balls. As she sank her fangs into the skin, he went up on his hind legs and roared, trying to slap her off with his front paws.
“Jesus Christ!” one of the other tigers yelled. “Get her off! Get her off!”
Human hands grabbed her around the waist, but a separate fist began punching her.
“Let him go!” one of the other men yelled at Max.
A flash of black dashed past Max and Zé returned, tackling the one punching her. That man shifted to tiger and their roars and growling rumbled across the floor as they knocked over furniture and got dangerously close to the TV Max loved. Small price to pay, though, for this much fun.
“Fuck!” the last human male exploded. “More badgers!”
Her teammates leaped onto the Siberian tiger and did their best to work their way either up to or down to major arteries. Behind them, Zé and the other tiger rolled by. Considering how much smaller he was than the other cat, Zé was doing pretty well for himself.
They all heard it then, and everyone froze. Because they all knew the sound of a Mossberg 500 tactical pump-action shotgun. Okay, maybe no one but Max actually knew that’s what it was, but still . . .
Charlie stood under the archway, her grip on the weapon steady and in control.
Christ, Max adored her big sister.
“Now,” Charlie began, their aunt Bernice standing behind her, “we can all relax and retract fangs and claws from important body parts, put our clothes back on, and have a calm, rational conversation. Or,” she added with a big grin, “I can start murdering everyone that’s not related to me by blood!”
That’s when Max’s teammates made a run for it, disappearing up the stairs. Disgusted, Max released her grip on the tiger’s balls, dropped to the ground, shifted, and yelled after them, “Are you fucking kidding me? She didn’t mean you!”
Charlie shrugged. “I kind of meant them. Wouldn’t do to have witnesses.”
* * *
Zé had claw marks on his sides and back, and fang bites on his neck. There was blood pouring from his wounds and his head hurt, but despite all that . . . he’d never felt so fucking amazing before in his life.
He pulled on jeans, and a now dressed Max came over to clean up his wounds.
“Don’t sweat it,” she said to him. “The bleeding will stop in a few minutes, these will be completely healed in less than twenty-four hours, and you’ll probably only have one or two scars where that tiger went a little too deep.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Max kept her face down, focused on his wounds.
“Keep looking at me like that,” Max warned, “and I’m going to fuck you right here.”
“Promise?”
“Hey!” that growly voice barked at them. “I want my sister! Where the fuck is she?”
Max handed Zé the alcohol wipes and started to walk across the room to the tigers, but Charlie said, “No, Max.”
Max stopped immediately. When they’d started training with their neighbor, Charlie had made Max agree to one thing: “When I tell you to stop, you stop.” Even then, at fourteen, she’d had that calm delivery. Not soft-spoken so much as rational. Very rational.
At the time, Max had easily agreed, not thinking it would be that hard to comply. It turned out that it was surprisingly hard to stop in the middle of a fistfight or firefight. Especially if someone had managed to piss her off. In the end, though, it was the rule she’d been most glad her sister had made her commit to. Charlie had saved her life with that one short sentence—“No, Max”—more than a dozen times.
Charlie still held her weapon but had the barrel pointing at the ground. She motioned Max to step back with a jerk of her head.
“Stevie,” she said when Max had moved back to Zé’s side. “Come down.”
“Nope.”
The only order that Charlie had ever forced Stevie to follow was “run.” So if they asked her to do anything else and she wasn’t in the mood or too freaked out, she just didn’t do it.
The tigers looked up to find Stevie hanging from the ceiling above them.
“Stevie,” Charlie tried again. “Get down here.”
“Forget it. There’s three of them. Three man-eaters! Why not just serve us up with some Tabasco sauce?”
Charlie closed her eyes, took a breath, and ranted, “Stevie MacKilligan, get your ass down here!”
“Okay, okay.” She could have just dropped to the floor but she scuttled across the ceiling and down the wall until she could stand directly behind Charlie.
“Are you hiding behind your sister?” Bernice asked.
“Don’t harass me.”
Charlie ignored the bickering behind her and informed the invaders, “I don’t know who your sister is.”
“You’re lying.”
“Call my sister a liar again,” Max warned.
“Okay.” The one who hadn’t bothered to shift at all quickly stepped into the middle of the room, a forced smile on his face. “How about we take this down a notch and I start off with introductions. We’re the Malone brothers. I’m Shay.” He pointed at the smaller brother—small being relative at six-four. “That’s Finn. And this big lug here”—he dropped his hand on the biggest brother’s massive shoulder and was immediately tossed off—“is our older brother, Keane.”
“And your sister is Cella Malone?” Max asked. But the look she got from all three tigers told her, in no uncertain terms, that they were not the brothers of Cella Malone and how dare she even suggest such a thing!
“Sorry. Just a question.”
“Our sister is Natalie Malone and—”
Keane yanked his brother out of the way and finished his sentence. “—she’s seventeen, deaf, and was last seen in the company of Freddy MacKilligan. That was a week ago.”
Max locked gazes with Stevie. A lifetime of conversation passed in those two seconds before Stevie pointed at her unadorned wrist and said, “Look at the time! I, uh, need to go get ready. I’m supposed to be doing something with ballet and my music in the city so . . . yeah . . . I need to go. Away.”
Like Max’s teammates, Stevie disappeared up the stairs and Max whispered to Zé, “If I tell you to run, you run.”
Then she turned and faced her eldest sister. She raised her hands to her chest, palms out, and slowly and carefully moved toward Charlie.
“Now, Charlie, I know that’s not what you wanted to hear. That’s not what anyone wanted to hear. And I’m sure that—” Stevie silently ran back down the stairs with her backpack slung over her shoulder, Max’s teammates following behind. She paused long enough to grab their aunt and, as a group, they all quickly rushed toward the kitchen to escape what was about to happen. “I’m sure that we can all discuss this without anyone getting—”
Before Max could get out “upset,” her sister’s roar of rage exploded all around them.
* * *
The males of Imani’s Pride had just pushed the cubs out of the kitchen chairs so they could eat the children’s eggs and toast. Imani was about to yell at them—again—and order them not to do that anymore, when the entire house shook.
The males bolted from the table, one of them roaring, “Earthquake! Run for your lives!” before they all ran outside into the streets.
One of her young granddaughters turned to Imani and asked, “Why do the males get to eat first again?”
Imani crouched in front of her and answered to the best of her ability: “Because the gods have a terrible sense of humor.”
* * *
Keane Malone knew he was angry. He was proud of his anger. He kept it close to him; tended to it like a lover. But even he had to admit, his anger was nothing compared to Charlie MacKilligan’s rage.
For the last ten minutes—while he’d pressed an ice pack to his abused balls—they’d all stood there while she ranted and screamed and threatened death to the man she
still called “Dad.” At first, he’d thought it was a performance. Something to get him off her old man’s back, but as it continued and her face got redder and her muscles pulsed and he was sure her increasing blood pressure was going to make her heart explode, he realized, nope. This was not a performance.
This was hatred. He knew hatred and this was definitely hatred.
Keane’s hatred and anger were directed at those who had killed his father all those years ago, when he and his brothers were still young. But Charlie MacKilligan’s hatred and anger were directed right at her father. And, if Keane were Freddy MacKilligan, he’d be hiding right now.
But he couldn’t let himself be distracted. He wanted his sister back and he wasn’t going to stop until he got her.
“Look—” he began but the younger badger shook her head at him and her eyes were really big and she looked about ready to panic, which was strange. Honey badgers weren’t prone to panic.
Once Keane stopped talking, the little badger crouched in front of her now seated sister.
“Hey,” she said softly, “why don’t you go bake something, sweetie? It’ll help you think.”
Bake? She wanted her sister to bake? His baby sister was out there somewhere with an idiot and these heifers wanted to bake?
Again, Keane opened his mouth to speak and again the badger gave him that crazy look.
“Yeah,” Charlie MacKilligan said. “Yeah. I’ll bake. Baking’s good. Bears love when I bake.”
And like that, she got up and walked out of the room.
Pressing her hand against her upper chest, the small badger let out a very shaky breath and stood. She was cute but she reminded Keane of a Muppet. Maybe it was the size and the purple hair.
“Okay, now that I’ve got that managed—”
“My sister,” Keane pushed.
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Look, I don’t know what to tell ya. We always knew our father was an asshole but we didn’t know he was this much of an asshole. But the one thing I can tell you is that he would never tell us about your sister. Not in this world or the next.”
Charlie walked back into the room. She was already mixing batter, a stainless steel bowl tucked into the crook of her arm; the other hand stirred its contents with a wooden spoon.
Badger to the Bone Page 26
