“I know.” Max drank more coffee before asking, “So this new job of yours . . .”
“I haven’t officially signed up yet. It’s just a test job.”
“When is it?”
“I don’t want you coming.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“Max.”
“I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. I’m going. I will have your back. It’ll be like old times.”
“Old times. You mean a couple of weeks ago when we charged into that lab to get Stevie?”
“That, too. Anyway, I’m doing this. With you. Whether you like it or not.”
“Max—”
“If you say ‘no’ again, I’m unleashing my anal glands. Right here. While you’re making your cinnamon buns.”
“Come on, Max! You know that leaves a residue I can’t get off the furniture! Remember when we were living with the Pack? Pops never forgave—”
“Hey, hey, hey! That was because of that sneeze. When Stevie blew pepper in my face. I didn’t do that one on purpose.”
Charlie finished rolling her dough and cut the log into equally sized circles. She was putting them on a metal baking sheet when their front door slammed open. Max wondered if the Malones had returned but it was her teammates who busted into their kitchen.
They were all talking at once, trying to tell Max something. But she couldn’t understand a word. It was Charlie who silenced them with a barked “Shut up!”
They did, moving behind Max. That’s when she noticed that Mads wasn’t with them.
“What’s going on?” Charlie asked.
“It’s Mads,” Nelle said. “We all just got here to pick up Max for shootaround—”
“For what?”
“Informal practice before tonight’s playoff game. Anyway, we were just walking through your gate when Mads’s family showed up.”
Max put her coffee down. “All of them?”
“No. But a few of the stronger males.”
“We tried to intervene but things were about to get nasty and—”
“Yeah.” Max pushed away from the table. “I’ll deal with it.”
It was an old trick Mads’s Clan had learned when Max and her team were in junior high together. They didn’t try to fight Max and the others. They knew how dangerous that was because honey badgers didn’t back down. Even young ones. And each of them had a family or, at the very least, a Pack that wouldn’t let the hyenas get away with killing them outright. So they used a different, crueler tactic: They made Mads suffer for what her friends did. So, if the team tried to pull Mads away from her cousins to get her out of a bad situation, it was Mads who got the wounds. Who got the scars.
It was shitty but very hyena.
Of course, they were no longer in high school and Mads didn’t have to go anywhere with anyone if she didn’t want to.
When Max and her teammates made it outside, one of Mads’s male cousins was already pushing her into the back of a truck. It wasn’t that Mads couldn’t fight them, it was that she wouldn’t. To this day, she still felt like she owed these assholes.
Max, however, was about to show Mads that she didn’t owe them anything.
The teammates had almost reached the truck but the hyenas decided to meet them, their claws already unleashed as they came face-to-face . . . well . . . it was more like face-to-chest since most of them were several inches taller than the badgers. But that was okay. Her team knew how to take on bigger players.
Max reached under her shirt to get one of her blades but before it even cleared the holster, one of the hyenas went down. Then another. Both screaming from the pain in their legs. More of Mads’s hyena cousins jumped off the back of the truck but as they advanced, they went down one by one. Looking over her shoulder, Max saw her sister standing on the porch. She had a .9mm with a suppressor attached so the neighbors wouldn’t complain about the noise.
Charlie jumped over the railing with her hands wrapped around the gun, finger still on the trigger. As she moved closer, two more hyenas attacked . . . two more leg shots. Actually . . . knee shots. She shot them in the knees, ensuring they went down and stayed down at least for a couple of days. Knee damage wasn’t as easy to get over as a regular leg break.
Max’s teammates scrambled back, away from Charlie as she strode across the yard, then jumped over the fence to land next to the truck. She aimed her weapon at the skull of the last hyena standing. She walked him back until he couldn’t go any farther because of his vehicle, and pressed the weapon against his head.
“I know you,” Charlie said after staring at him for a few seconds. “We went to high school together. You used to call me ‘fat thighs’ behind my back.”
Max and her teammates cringed. That was not something a man wanted to be remembered for saying to a woman when that woman now had a gun pressed to his forehead.
“Listen,” Charlie went on, “I’m going to explain something to you: You don’t come to my territory and fuck with my sister’s friends. Because if they’re my sister’s friends, they’re under my protection.”
One of the hyenas on the ground attempted to stand up, so Charlie shot him once in the shoulder blade.
Max knew her sister’s precision with a gun was not in question. Charlie would make sure she didn’t hit any major arteries or organs. But what she did do, what Max was sure her sister did do . . . was cause as much pain as she possibly could.
The hyena’s intensified screams proved that.
“So, if I were you, I’d leave now. Mads, out of the truck, please.”
Mads slipped out of the vehicle and went to stand behind Max with their teammates.
“All right,” Charlie said, stepping back and motioning with the gun. “All hyenas in the truck. Time to go. Come along, fellas, let’s hop-hop-hop along. Thank you!”
Not once did Charlie raise her voice. Not once did she lose her temper. Because she didn’t have to do any of that.
The hyenas fled and, after lowering the weapon, Charlie faced them.
“You all right, Mads?”
“I’m . . .” Mads cleared her throat. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Any more problems with them . . . you let me or Max know. Okay?”
“Sure.”
Charlie headed back to the house, then stopped, looked at them. “I’ve got muffins if you guys want some.”
Everyone nodded but continued to stand behind Max. Clearly they were still terrified of Charlie and this probably hadn’t helped.
But once she reached the front door, Charlie stopped and barked, “The muffins are not getting any fresher.”
Max watched her friends power-run to the house, terrified to piss off the most dangerous woman they knew, but also the only woman willing to protect them when they needed it.
chapter TWENTY-SIX
The first half hour of their meeting involved listening to their coach yell at them because they had not been at the team meeting with everyone else. They were video chatting through Max’s laptop so that they could witness the full extent of Coach’s rage and not just hear it over the phone. Not that her anger wasn’t valid. They did have a playoff game that night and “You five idiots have the nerve not to be here?”
“It’s not my fault,” Max argued. “I was busy having sex!”
The entire team of Wisconsin Butchers cheered until Coach Fitzgerald snarled and barked, her wolf fangs fully extended.
“And she was attacked!” Nelle threw in, attempting to help.
“By her own cousin!” Tock added.
“If she were my cousin, I’d beat the shit out of her, too!”
Streep burst into tears. “Why are you being so mean to us?”
“Oh, stop it!”
The tears ceased immediately and Streep flatly replied, “Fine.”
After that, the rest of the meeting involved going over plays and plans and warnings about the kind of death they’d be subjected to if they were even a minute late to the pregame bus that would pick up the te
am at the Kingston Arms.
“Can’t we just meet you at the arena?” Tock asked, looking at her watch.
“What did I just say?”
“No need to yell!”
When they finally logged off with Coach and the rest of the team, Mads leaned back in her chair and remarked, “You had sex on this table.”
The rest of the team reared back, lifting their arms and hands off the hard wood, but Max quickly pointed out, “I cleaned it. Before we sat down.”
“You didn’t clean it that well.”
“Shut up.”
That’s when Nelle adorably crinkled her nose at her.
“What the fuck was that?” Max asked.
“You and Zé.” She crinkled her nose again.
“We’re not doing this.”
“We’re not doing what?”
“Doing this girlfriend thing.”
“Aren’t we girlfriends, though?” Streep asked. “Aren’t we best friends? Friends forever. B-F-Fs!”
“No!” the other four said.
“So no cute shit,” Max informed them. “No girly shit. Or I start throwing people out the window.”
“We’re on the first floor, so no one cares, Max.”
“Thank you, Mads.”
“I saw Imani talking to your sister,” Tock suddenly announced. “In the club last night. What was that about?”
“Shhhhh!” Max stood and did a quick check of the kitchen, living room, and the backyard. When she saw Charlie outside with Zé, Shen, and Berg, playing with the basketballs she and her teammates had left lying around the yard, she returned to the dining room.
“Okay. This is the deal: Charlie agreed to work for Imani. On a test job.”
“What?” Nelle asked. “Why the hell would she do that?”
“Is Imani blackmailing her?” Mads wanted to know. “Because if she is, I’m going to chew that She-cat’s legs off.”
“That seems excessive.” But a very hyena thing to say. “And unnecessary. Imani’s not blackmailing her. Charlie wants to do this. She wants a job.”
“Can’t she just bake professionally?” Tock asked. “Once I hit that diamond shipment, I can definitely buy her a store.”
“And then you’ll use her to launder the money.”
Tock nodded. “Probably.”
“I think she’s trying to get away from that.”
“Is she going alone?” Streep asked. “Is she a Dee-Ann Smith now? ”
Every shifter involved in work outside the norms of society—or at least shifter society—knew the Smith name. They were the ones you went to when you needed untraceable weapons or a car stripped and made to disappear or a whole hog for a luau—that was because quite a few of them had wild hog farms. But Dee-Ann Smith and her daddy, Eggie Ray Smith, were known for being killers. Nothing more, nothing less. They didn’t do rescue missions. They didn’t do heists. They didn’t involve themselves with anything except taking out people who had done something that had made them a liability. Luckily for the world, they’d both ended up working for the Group, which meant they used their kills for good. Or what Tock, the team’s philosopher, called “relative good.” Mads, however, had played Dungeons & Dragons since she was eleven and she liked to call it “chaotic good.”
Whatever one called it, that’s what Dee-Ann Smith and her tiger girlfriend, Cella Malone, did for a living and they were very good at it. The question for Max was what was her sister about to get into? Could she be like Dee-Ann Smith and just kill on order? Charlie had done a lot of things over the years, but there had always been a reason. Maybe not a valid one, depending on whom one spoke to, but at least Charlie felt it was valid. That’s what Max needed to make sure of. She needed to know that her sister was going to do something that, at the end of the day, she could be proud of. Or at the very least, something she could live with. A MacKilligan with PTSD was like a Godzilla with rabies: a situation that was not going to end well for anyone.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” Mads guessed.
“I have to. She’s my sister, I don’t know who her team will be; I need to make sure this thing is legit. Not a setup. Not a way to use her for something else down the line. And I want to have her back.”
“Then we’ll go, too,” Nelle said, looking around at the others for agreement. “We’ll all go . . .” Everyone’s gaze settled on Tock.
“Can you fit that into your schedule?” Mads asked Tock.
With her gaze locked on them, Tock stretched out her hand, picked up her phone. She put in her twenty-digit passcode and opened up her schedule program without even looking at her phone. Just at them. “What day?” she asked Max.
“Tonight. After the game. But I can’t ask you guys to—”
“It’s in my schedule,” Tock said after typing into her phone again.
“How many thirty-minute blocks did you give us?” Mads asked with great sarcasm.
“Hopefully enough for your lazy ass.”
“Okay!” Nelle cut in before it became nasty. “That’s it. We’re all in this. We’re going to do this to support a woman that at least four of us are absolutely terrified of. But we’re going to do it because she had Mads’s back when she didn’t have to. So we do this together,” she said, swinging her forefinger in a circle, “because we are . . .” She prompted again as they all gazed at her continuing to make that big circle with her fingers. “Because we are . . .”
“What?” Max finally asked.
“Girlfriends!”
Streep clapped happily in agreement. Tock looked again at her watch. Max and Mads just made sounds of disgust until Mads suddenly said, “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“We’re not alone.”
They all sniffed the air and then looked up.
“Why are you up there?” Max asked her baby sister, who hung from the ceiling.
“I wasn’t going to stay, because it looked private, but then it got interesting. So I stayed.”
“I thought you were doing that ballet thing.”
“I did. But Oriana was a little hungover and she vomited on the current prima ballerina of the company and . . . at that point, I figured I’d just go home.”
“And listen in on my business.”
“I don’t know why you’re getting so bitchy. It’s not like any of you have inside voices.”
“Not a word to Charlie. Understand? And get down from there!”
“Be caref—” Nelle winced when Stevie hit the table.
Mads shook her head. “You’re half cat, but you didn’t even try to land on your feet.”
* * *
Zé walked into Max’s bedroom. She was stretched out on the mattress, gazing up at the ceiling, her hands behind her head. He stretched out beside her.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“Thinking.”
“About what? Life? Death? Existence?”
“Underwear.”
“Underwear?”
“Yeah.”
“Lucky underwear?”
“No. Just underwear that matches my uniform.” She sat up. “You are coming tonight, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Your sister already invited me.”
She got up and went to a pile of dirty clothes on the floor. He would need to get her a proper laundry basket. Just having dirty clothes lying around one’s room was tacky. “Stevie must like you if she invited you.”
“Stevie didn’t invite me. It was Charlie. I’ll be attending with her and the triplets.”
Max faced him, three pairs of bright yellow panties in her hand. “Wait . . . Charlie’s coming? To the playoff game?”
“Yes. Then she said you, your teammates, and Charlie would be going off to kill a bunch of people after the game.”
Max’s eyes widened and she might have stopped breathing. “Charlie told you that?”
“No, that was Stevie.”
Those wide eyes slammed shut and she now gripped her dirty underwear. “She can’t keep h
er mouth shut!”
“It’s not her fault. I just happened to overhear her talking to Shen, who swore up and down he wouldn’t say a word, but I was on top of the china cabinet again.”
“What is it with you and that china cabinet?”
“I don’t know, but I am so comfortable up there.” He watched her for a moment, then asked, “Want me to back you up?”
“No. I want you to protect Stevie.”
“She’s got a giant panda to protect her.”
“And he loves her. He’ll make stupid mistakes because of that. You won’t.”
“You worried about your crazy cousin?”
“Yes. We want to lure her out or track her down or something—”
“Bring the fight to her.”
“Something like that, but we don’t know how yet. Until we get her, though, anyone close to me is in danger because that bitch is nuts.”
“Am I close to you?”
“Yeah, but you can take care of yourself. Also . . . you can take out my cousin without taking out the entire neighborhood. I can’t count on that with Stevie.”
“Because she’s a genius and might blow up the place?”
Max gazed at him for several long seconds before replying, “Sure. Let’s go with that.”
“You know, based on your tone, I feel like there’s something about your baby sister you’re not telling me. Is there?”
“No.” She started toward the door.
“Are you lying to me?”
“Probably.”
“You going to wash those in the sink?”
“Ewwww. No. I’m putting them in the washing machine.”
“Don’t most women hand-wash their underwear?”
“I’m not one of those. I don’t buy underwear that can’t handle the delicate cycle on a washing machine. Who has time for that shit?”
“Many women. Some of whom I’ve known.”
“Good for them. They can have their delicate lacy things. I like my shit cotton and sturdy.”
“There’s something you should know,” he called after her just as she’d stepped out the door.
“God,” she whined. She walked back into the room. “What else did Stevie say?”
“A lot of things but nothing you have to worry about.”
Badger to the Bone Page 35
