“Okay,” Kelly finally cut in when she began to become concerned the woman would keep talking until every bit of air left her body and she would end up slumped over dead on Kelly’s very expensive rug, which she’d had flown in from Israel less than a month ago. “I’m going to stop you here and suggest that we start with something a little simpler than world politics and your dog’s hacking problem.”
“Simpler? Such as?”
Kelly gave a little smile before suggesting, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe . . . your name?”
* * *
Dr. Deb Ortiz-Paredes was marking corrections on her latest manuscript when her door was kicked open and Becca stomped into her office with a threatening honey badger dangling from her fist.
“I’ve got one for you.” She dropped the badger into a chair and then held the poor woman in place by pressing her hand against the top of her head. It was like she was trying to squash her.
“I have quite a full plate,” Deb replied, trying very hard not to laugh.
“Ohhhh, it doesn’t matter. This is one you make room for. Trust me.”
Deb placed the proofs on her desk aside and studied the growling female under Becca’s hand.
As a forensic psychologist who specialized in sociopaths and criminally violent schizophrenics, Deb knew that Becca had wonderful instincts . . . plus Deb had another book due after the one she was currently working on. So maybe her friend and business partner of the last fifteen years had found Deb her next study subject.
“Okay,” Deb told Kelly. “I can take it from here.”
“Great.” Kelly walked out, closing the door behind her.
The badger still sat in the chair, her gaze searching the room.
“So,” Deb began, “Ms.—”
“MacKilligan.”
“—Ms. MacKilligan.”
“Just call me Max.”
“Fine. Max. So what brings you here, Max?”
Deb expected a lot of “I don’t belong here” type stuff, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the woman’s gaze slid across the room and over Deb’s desk, until those dark, dark eyes locked on her, and the badger said nothing. Just stared at her.
Grinning, the jaguar leaned back in her chair and said, “Let’s begin . . . shall we?”
* * *
Dr. Morgan returned to her office, closed her door, and came over to her desk. She sat down and let out a sigh before grabbing a fresh legal pad from a stack on the table behind her desk. She spun her chair around, took out a pen, and looked at Stevie.
“Okay, Dr. MacKilligan,” she said, smiling at her. But, for once, Stevie didn’t feel threatened by that grizzly smile. It just seemed . . . friendly. Nice. Just a nice smile . . . from a man-eating grizzly bear. “First, let’s talk about what you need from me.”
chapter SIX
When Shen found the little rip in the wallpaper behind his head and began to pull at it—he thought maybe something was behind it and he wanted to see!—the pretty receptionist who had become a lot less nice the longer Shen sat in her waiting room came over and slapped his hand away.
“Can you not sit still for three minutes?”
“It’s been like ten hours.”
“Less than an hour. Just sit. And stop playing with everything. You’re worse than the grizzlies!”
Still bored, Shen took out his phone again and went to his favorite news sites, then checked his texts. A full-human woman he had been trying to set up a date with had finally gotten back to him but—to his horror—she was suggesting dinner with her parents. Shen couldn’t tell if she was trying to get him to run away screaming or was seriously asking him to dinner with her parents. For their first date.
Unsure, he forwarded the text to his two sisters. Kiki responded first with one emoji after another. All of them suggesting she was laughing hysterically at him.
Zhen texted back a simple message: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.
Shen was trying to figure out how to nicely decline the date since he didn’t like the idea of being one of those guys who simply didn’t respond. He had two sisters who had been forced to deal with assholes like that for years, and he wasn’t about to become one himself.
But before he could gently explain that he had to move back to China for the foreseeable future, the three sisters returned to the waiting room with what seemed to be three different therapists.
So each sister had gotten her own therapist? That actually made sense to Shen. A lot of sense.
The sisters stood silently as Stevie’s doctor arranged additional appointments and handed her a prescription slip. “You can get this filled downstairs. You’ll need to use our pharmacy, of course.”
Stevie nodded, but that was it.
Once done, and without a word, they headed to the elevator and went down to the pharmacy on the first floor. Another twenty minutes there to get the medication and then they were on the road heading back to Queens.
The sisters said nothing the entire way home, each looking out a window.
Shen stopped at the McDonald’s near the Queens house and picked up a few burgers and several large orders of fries. Each sister declined to order with a shake of her head and continued silence.
He parked the SUV in front of the house and everyone got out. Shen dropped off his food on the coffee table in the living room. He walked to the first-floor bathroom, washed his hands, then went to the refrigerator in the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water. On his way through the dining room, he grabbed one of his duffel bags filled with bamboo stalks and returned to the living room.
Putting the food out and turning on the television, Shen only took one bite of his Quarter Pounder before Stevie suddenly walked into the living room, turned, and proceeded to scream back toward the dining room.
Shen tried to understand her, but then Charlie and Max joined in and the three sisters stood right in the archway, just screeching.
Screeching so intensely, the veins on Stevie’s neck bulged, appearing ready to explode. Her face was beet red and she was talking with her hands. Well . . . screeching with her hands. All three gestured wildly but Shen had no idea what anyone was saying because they were not only screeching but screeching fast. Like speed-screeching.
After about three minutes of this, Stevie suddenly leaned her head back, and the roar that exploded from her throat shook the windows and . . . maybe . . . the entire house? Shen wasn’t positive but the roar was powerful.
Charlie and Max stopped their own screeching. Stevie lowered her head, and, slicing her hands through the air, announced, “That. Is. It!” There was a long silence, and the MacKilligans stared at each other until Stevie added, “You both know what I’ll do. And you both know I’ll do it. We’re not having this discussion again.”
“I need to bake,” Charlie announced, heading to the kitchen.
Max just walked away, the back door slamming shut a minute later.
Stevie, her jaw tight, stood in the archway for another two or three minutes until she finally sighed and swung her giant backpack off her shoulder. Digging around for a bit, she eventually pulled out the paper bag she’d gotten from the pharmacy. She took out the bottle of pills and read the label.
“I need to take this with food.”
Shen picked up one of the Quarter Pounders and held it out to her, but Stevie’s nose crinkled in distaste. “No thanks.”
She turned, started toward the kitchen. Stopped when she heard pots banging. Spun around and headed toward the front door, but the local stray cat came charging in from one of the open windows, followed by a shifted Max, who didn’t seem to care it was the middle of the day.
“Leave that cat alone, Max!”
A few seconds later, they heard Charlie bark, “Max!” and then the back door opened and closed, probably meaning the cat and the badger had been tossed out of the house.
With a long sigh, Stevie faced Shen and he motioned to the pile of burgers he had on the coffee table, again offering what he had.
Stev
ie came over and picked one up. “Thank you,” she said with a sigh and moved back to the other side of the room, heading toward one of the wing-backed chairs across from Shen. She was turning to sit down when big hands slapped against the window, causing Stevie to scream and drop the burger as one of the MacKilligans’ grizzly neighbors put his face close to the glass and yelled, “Is your sister baking? I thought I heard baking noises!”
Shen shook his head, annoyed with his fellow bear. He would think the locals would have stopped doing that sort of thing by now. The MacKilligan sisters were not the kind of women a bear, cat, wolf, or man would want to startle. They made the horror of grizzly-boar rage seem like a toddler’s temper tantrum. Not only because Stevie shifted into . . . whatever the hell it was she shifted into, but also because her sisters didn’t really bother with shifting when they were startled or confronted. Charlie had a way with firearms that he hadn’t seen even from trained military professionals, while Max did love her edge weapons. She could slice and dice like an old-school butcher, but she moved like a dancer or gymnast. And she really enjoyed it. She enjoyed hurting those who hurt or attempted to hurt those she loved.
That made her more than a predator. It made her a killing machine. A shark in a honey badger body.
Shen picked up the SUV keys, his wallet, and sunglasses, and walked over to a panting Stevie, who was trying desperately not to panic. He slung her backpack over his shoulder and took hold of her arm.
“Come on,” he said, pulling her along behind him.
“Where are we going?”
“To get you some food and a break from . . . everything.” He glanced back at her. “I think after the day you’ve had, we can both agree that you deserve it.”
* * *
Coop placed a plate of cookies in front of his twin sisters, Zia and Zoe. He then sat down across from them while his sister Cherise poured milk into two tall glasses.
“We need to discuss this,” Coop said. Twin sets of brown eyes stared at him. “You do understand that what you did was wrong, don’t you?”
They chewed Oreos, their mouths moving in unison, while they continued to stare and not answer. It was something they did to unnerve people. Even blinking at the same time. And all that did unnerve Coop. But he refused to let nine-year-old brats terrorize him by pretending they were live-action dolls from The Shining.
“Are you listening to me?” he demanded.
The expressions on those cold, blank, adolescent faces suggested that no they weren’t listening to him. But those expressions changed when an arm came around Coop’s shoulder and a hand slammed onto the table, making the twins jump and their eyes go wide.
Toni, Coop’s eldest sister, who’d been called home after what they were now calling “the incident,” leaned down so she could look right into the twins’ faces.
“Do you two know what you did?”
Instead of attempting to intimidate Toni—something that would never work on the She-jackal who ruled this family with an iron paw—they began making excuses . . . and lying. Lots of lying.
“Quiet!” Toni barked after a minute or two of said lying. She threw her messenger bag behind her, uncaring there was a laptop inside. Luckily, her wolf mate, Ricky Lee Reed, was standing behind her and caught the bag before it hit the floor. “I don’t want to hear another lie from either one of you.”
Zia began to lie in . . . Russian? Coop wasn’t positive. And Zoe chose to lie in French. As language prodigies—to the point where they’d created several of their own—that was their go-to move when they knew they were caught. But Toni knew the twins’ moves better than she knew her own.
“That is enough!” Toni bellowed.
The twins immediately stopped speaking, looking down at the kitchen table.
“I can’t believe that you two would do something so stupid and mean as poisoning Lame. And she’s always been so nice to you two!”
Zia frowned. “It’s Blayne.”
“And we gave her soda, not cyanide,” Zoe stated.
“Knowing what that would do to her! Have you seen the living room? The living room we do not own!”
“That wasn’t our fault!” Zoe argued.
“Yeah. That was that giant thing!” Zia pointed in the direction of the damaged living room. “It was trying to kill her!”
“You hopped up Blayne on sugar,” Coop reminded his sisters, “and then she startled poor little Stevie.”
“Not our fault,” Zoe said while Zia shook her head. Neither willing to take blame.
“Bullshit.”
A little shocked, they all looked at the end of the table toward Cherise. When no one said anything, she reiterated, “Bullshit. They know it”—she pointed at the twins, then at herself—“and we know it.”
“And if you think this is the end of your problems—” Toni began but was cut off by a scream coming from the second floor.
Toni looked around the room. “Mom? Aunt Irene?”
“Went over to the wild dog house,” Coop explained. “They haven’t come back.”
“The boys?”
“Went to the library.”
“Alone?”
“Dad took them. They won’t be long.”
Kyle ran into the room and stood behind Cherise’s chair, using her as his human shield.
“Really?” Coop had to ask.
“She has that crazy look in her eyes and I’m willing to sacrifice Cherise to save my beautiful, beautiful hands.”
“What about my hands?” Cherise wanted to know.
“Oh, please,” Kyle huffed. “You play the cello. The cello.”
Their twenty-one-year-old sister stomped into the kitchen holding a pair of jeans in each hand.
“Where is it?” Oriana demanded, glaring at everyone.
“Where’s what?” asked Toni, the only one among them brave enough to talk to Oriana when she was like this.
Oriana had been a little on edge lately. A ballerina prodigy since she was five, Oriana had finally gotten her chance to dance with the Fuller-James Ballet Company of Manhattan and was well on her way to becoming the company’s prima ballerina. However, that position was currently being held by a tough full-human Russian who had been playing this game a lot longer than Oriana had. That was hard for Coop’s younger sister. Oriana had always gotten everything she’d wanted in the dance world, and her battle with the lead dancer was—from what Coop had heard—getting pretty nasty.
He knew his younger sister too. Knew she would never give “some bitch” the pleasure of seeing her sweat, which Coop completely understood. There was a twelve-year-old Italian prodigy pianist that Coop called “The Asshole” every time the kid showed up on TV.
So he knew what his sister was going through. Unfortunately, unlike Coop—who took his rage out on his piano or by playing video games on his computer that required him to kill a lot of zombies or World War II Nazis—Oriana tended to pour her rage and panic into being obsessive. And she could be pretty obsessive. Like now.
Shaking her clothes at her family, Oriana barked, “Where are my jeans?”
“You’re holding them,” Coop kindly pointed out, which nearly got his head bitten off.
“Not these jeans, you idiot! The jeans between these jeans. Those are the jeans I want! I had them organized in a certain way, I go to class and rehearsal, and come back . . . and now things are displaced. Why are they displaced?”
Cherise muttered, “Wow,” and lowered her eyes so as not to challenge her fellow canine.
Toni raised her hand toward Oriana, palm out. “Maybe you should calm down.”
“I want my jeans back.”
“How about I buy you a new pair of jeans?”
“I don’t want a new pair. I want the pair that belongs between these two!”
“You need to stop yelling!”
“I’ll yell if I want to!” Oriana screeched, her voice so high that the twins began to yelp and howl in response.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle inte
rrupted, unable to help himself. “You notice your jeans are ‘displaced’”—he said with air quotes—“but not that there’s a giant hole in the middle of the grand ballroom?”
“Did my jeans cause the giant hole?” Oriana asked.
“No.”
“Then I don’t give a fuck! I just want my jeans back!”
In a Badger Way Page 8