“In the backyard, eating his morning bamboo and hanging from trees,” Stevie replied. “Just follow the crunching.”
Max stormed out the back door.
Mads blew out a breath and, unable to help herself yet again, she said, “I wouldn’t worry.”
Stevie carefully placed the kitten on the kitchen table. “About what?”
“About Max’s reaction to your having a baby. She’ll get over it and be a wonderful aunt. I’m sure of it.”
She snorted. “I’m not having a baby.”
Mads blinked and took a step back. “Wait . . . what?”
* * *
Finn and his brothers got back into the SUV and Keane grabbed the bags of bagels, glancing into each one to hand out the correct bagels to Finn and Shay.
Once they each had their food, they began to eat and sip their Starbucks coffee. Shay ate his bagels with big slathers of cream cheese. Keane liked his with just thin layers of butter. But Finn just ate his plain. They didn’t speak during their meal. They rarely did. Eating wasn’t a time to talk; it was a time to feed.
When the bagels were finished and the brothers gazed out the windows and sipped the remainder of their coffee, Finn asked, “Think we went too far?”
“Nope.”
“People are going to be pissed.”
Keane glanced at him. “People?”
“Katzenhaus Securities. And those other people.”
“What other people?”
“I don’t know. And that group run by dogs.”
“Who cares?” Shay barked from the backseat. “None of those people have ever cared about what happened to Dad. Why should we care now about anything they have to say? They’re just lucky we’re not leaving a trail of shredded and half-chewed bodies up and down fucking Fifth Avenue. That’s what I feel like doing to the bastards we even think had something to do with Dad’s murder.”
Finn reached into the backseat and wrenched the steel thermos out of his brother’s hand. “No more coffee for you before practice.”
* * *
Stevie picked up the kitten again so it didn’t walk off the table and said very definitively, “I am not having a baby.” Then she added, “I mean, one day Shen and I plan to have a baby. When I’m in my thirties. By then I’m sure I’ll have worked out something very specific and detailed with my doctors regarding my meds, and Shen and I will have our own house. Don’t know if we’ll be married, though. I personally think marriage is a sham forced upon us by the patriarchy. But, yeah. Marriage, no marriage . . . doesn’t matter. We’ll have a kid one day. Maybe two. But that’s a good decade away.”
“Oh.” Confused, Mads scratched her head. “Then why did you tell Max . . .”
“The other day there was this ad on TV for a department store and it was about this mom who was taking her daughter to college for the first time. And it was really sweet and at the end, the girl calls her mom from her new dorm room and she says, ‘I love you, Mom,’ and the mom says, ‘I love you, baby,’ and I started to cry, and right off the bat, Max goes—”
“ ‘Did you take your meds today?’ ”
“Yes!” Stevie gasped. “So I decided to fuck with her. Because she pissed me off and I’m sick of it. I manage my mental health quite well, thank you very much, and have since I was seven years old and realized I had some issues. What I don’t need is my big sister treating me like I have ever been an out-of-control psychotic that she has to hover over. Besides . . . the question was rude.”
“You’re right. It was rude.”
She smirked at Mads. “So are you going to rat me out now? I know how close you five are.”
“I learned a long time ago not to get between sisters.”
Stevie rolled her eyes. “Is this where you tell me some long, shifter-centric story about that’s how you got that scar on your neck?”
Mads pointed at the scar that lashed across the left side of her throat. “This scar? No. This scar I got from my mother when she let my father know that if he ever tried to get custody of me again, she’d make sure to go deep enough to open up the jugular.”
Leaning across the table, Mads gently closed Stevie’s now open mouth. “Sorry, sweetie. I forget sometimes you’re not used to my stories the way Max and my teammates are.”
* * *
“Do you think O’Connell told us the truth?”
Keane shrugged. “If he did, then we don’t really have anywhere to go, do we?”
“I was just thinking that.”
“We’ve run out of contacts. And those we can trust.”
“We never had many of those to start with.”
Shay leaned forward, resting his arms on the front seats. “So now what?”
“I think I know someone who might be able to help. Maybe.” Finn felt the need to stress.
“A friend?”
“No. Gambler. At least he used to be. Both you guys met him, but trust me . . . you don’t remember him. He does know everybody, though, and he’s got a lot of contacts.”
“Why didn’t you ever go to him before?” Keane wanted to know.
“Because he’s annoying.” Finn snarled. “And a dog.”
“Sirens,” Shay announced. “We better go.”
Keane started the SUV and pulled away from the curb. When he reached the end of the street, he stopped at the red light and looked from Finn to Shay.
“I don’t want you guys to worry. We’re going to find out who killed Dad. And everyone who was involved, who had a hand in it. We’re going to kill ’em all. You have my word on it.”
Shay reached between the seats and patted Keane’s shoulder. “You give the best pep talks, man.”
Finn quickly looked out the passenger window so he wouldn’t laugh in Keane’s face. His brother hated that. Besides, he knew the sound of Keane’s elbow slamming into Shay’s face so well by now, he didn’t really need to see it to know when it happened.
* * *
Dez MacDermot had been a cop for a long time. In fact, if you ever talked to her father, he’d say that she’d been born a cop. Still, there was a time when a murder scene like this would have confused and freaked her out. But now . . . ? Not so much.
She always examined a scene like this herself so she knew exactly what she was dealing with . . . because she could already tell it was going to be a massive issue. Especially because no one was dead.
Two men had clearly been mauled by something . . . animal. They were alive but barely and had already been taken away by ambulance.
Usually, shifters kept their shit quiet, and cleaned up after themselves. She knew this from experience. Her husband and son were lions. Two of her best friends were wolves. She’d been part of this world for years now and she knew how careful shifters were. How careful they had to be in order to protect not only themselves but those they loved. Unfortunately, it usually meant that when a full-human saw something he wasn’t supposed to see, hard choices had to be made. At least that’s how her husband always put it. If possible, the shifters just acted as if the full-human was simply insane or had been drunk or high when they saw whatever they saw. If that didn’t work or if they tried to move some video, then things got very difficult.
Thankfully, shifters were positioned everywhere protecting their own. It was something they all had to do in order to ensure that none of them ended up test subjects for government agencies looking for the next super soldier.
That’s how Dez had gotten her job. She’d started off just being a cop. An everyday, run-of-the-mill cop. Now here she was . . . staring at an ear on the floor, busy trying to figure out which species had ripped it off a man’s head.
My, how things had changed.
She tore her gaze away from that mangled ear and took another look around the bar until it rested on the bar owner, Tommy O’Connell. Dez had known O’Connell a long time.
Dez stepped closer to him as the EMTs tied his screaming son to a gurney; he didn’t even bother to look up. “So you’re sure
you didn’t see anything?” she asked. “Absolutely nothing at all?”
O’Connell, who’d inherited this bar from his old man and had been working in it from the early seventies when the Manhattan streets were beyond tough and terrifying, stared blindly across the room and muttered, “I didn’t see anything. I got here and . . . it was like this. My guys all fucked up. The bar looking like this. And my guys . . . they won’t remember nothin’ either. I can promise you that.”
Yep. O’Connell was lying. It wasn’t just the way he kept repeating that same little speech over and over that gave away his lie either. It was the way his bar had been torn up. She’d seen a lot of destroyed bars in her time. She’d also seen quite a few places destroyed by big guys who shifted into wild animals. This had that wild-animal flavor. Plus, her entire team—made up of varying types of shifters—had done nothing since they’d walked through the door but sniff the air like they were locking on a herd of water buffalo.
Dez, however, didn’t have to sniff the air to know this could get messy. They’d sent away the full-human cops who’d arrived first at the crime scene. That had already caused a conflict she would be hearing about later.
“Tigers.”
She glanced up at her close friend and former partner, Lou Crushek, who now reported directly to her in their mostly shifter-only precinct. “What?”
“Tigers.”
“What about them?”
“They peed everywhere.”
“Ewww. What is wrong with you people? You’re fucking up the crime scene.”
“Not our tigers. Other tigers.”
Dez scrunched up her face. She couldn’t help it. “Why? Why would anyone do that?”
Crushek, a polar bear, shrugged massive shoulders. “Honestly? That’s what tigers do when they’re really mad.” He pointed toward the deep recesses of the building. “There’s a load of shit in the back rooms.”
She let out a long, painful sigh. “Just lock it all down. Only our people, in or out.”
Crushek smirked. “Sometimes you hate this job . . . don’t you?”
“You have no idea.”
chapter FIVE
Mads walked into the Sports Center with her duffel bag and her training plans. She’d be meeting the rest of her team later that evening on Staten Island for practice. This was training just for her. To be the best, one couldn’t just show up for the games. Well . . . you could if you were Max. But Mads wasn’t a MacKilligan. She didn’t have the luck of the Scottish. Or was it Irish? It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, she didn’t have it.
She took the secret stairs down to the main floor of the shifter-only part of the Sports Center. This set of stairs was monitored by fellow shifters to ensure that full-humans didn’t accidentally wander down to locations they shouldn’t be in. It wasn’t as if they’d necessarily see jaguars romping around with sloth bears right off the bat. It was rarely that obvious. But they would notice some differences right away. Like entire families that stood over seven feet tall chatting with a couple of short, white-haired “friends” who might or might not be picking pockets when the opportunity presented itself. Or maybe they’d notice how fast some of the children could run. Or how high some of the other children could climb when startled. Or how easy it was to get packs of children to howl.
Yeah, it was best to just keep the full-humans away from the many floors that were off-limits to them.
Mads’s first plan was to hit the treadmill in the gym. After that, some weight training and then some court time, and then maybe—
She hit the wall and quickly backed up, realizing she hadn’t been paying attention again. But when she took several steps back, she noted that she hadn’t really walked into a wall.
“Oh. It’s you.”
The tiger glared down at her.
“Sorry.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
They nodded at each other and Mads stepped to the left to go around him. But he also stepped to the left. So Mads stepped to the right, which he also did. She stepped to the left again. But so did he.
She stopped and let out a frustrated breath. Like her, he was carrying a duffel bag but his had a team logo and the team’s bright colors. He also hand-carried his helmet and shoulder pads. They were so large, she doubted it would be easy to find a bag large enough for them.
They nodded at each other again and this time Mads took a step to the right. But so did the cat.
Fed up, she finally snapped, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Annoyed that he seemed to think it was somehow her fault they were waltzing near the food court, Mads pulled one of her classic court moves. A move she could only do in a shifter league. She leaped onto the cat’s chest and climbed up and over him, then continued on her way.
“Did you seriously just do that?” she heard him call out after her.
Grinning, she didn’t even bother to turn around. Because, yeah. She’d really just done that.
* * *
Finn stood in the middle of the main floor, stunned, realizing that a honey badger had just used him as some kind of ladder. Or bridge.
He hadn’t really expected to see any of the badgers that had come to the house that morning. Especially the one so comfortable sleeping in his cabinets. He definitely hadn’t expected her to climb over him. Who did that?
“What’s wrong with your face?” Keane asked as he walked up to him. He also carried his football gear.
“What?”
“Your face.”
“What about it?”
Keane pointed at it. “It looks weird.”
Finn jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, about to explain how annoyed he was, when a Black woman on roller skates skidded to a stop and announced, “He’s smiling!”
“What?” both Keane and Finn snapped at her.
Seemingly unbothered by their tone, she threw her arms in the air and insisted, “You’re smiling! You’re happy! Everyone should be so happy!”
With that disturbing performance, she skated away.
“What was that?” Finn asked his brother.
“Some freakish hybrid. Just ignore it.” Keane motioned to the elevators. “Let’s get to practice.”
* * *
Charlie MacKilligan expected a few things in life. She expected her father to make her very existence a nightmare. She expected Stevie to screech like a murder victim when squirrels came too close. She expected Max to have access to stolen cars and grenade launchers at any given moment. And being in love with one of triplets meant having three bears around her at all times. Thankfully, she liked all three, but still . . . That was a lot of bear to deal with on any given day.
Anyway, those were things Charlie expected. So when those things happened or she had to deal with those things—like walking out of the shower wearing only a towel to find her mate, Berg, sitting on his bed with his brother and sister, Dag and Britta—she wasn’t surprised. What did surprise her was a ranting Max. Because Max didn’t rant. She caused others to rant, but Max didn’t rant unless she was trying to distract someone from something going on behind them.
It started as soon as they all got into the SUV. It was Charlie, Max, Stevie, Shen, Berg, and a new kitten. Charlie had barely pulled away from the curb when Max suddenly announced, “Those dirty Malones rejected my Danish.”
Charlie hit the brakes and asked, “What does that mean?”
“I made them a kind gesture, to show them I appreciated what they did for us, and they threw it back in my face!”
“What did they do?”
Max looked at her, stared a moment, before replying, “Nothin’.”
“You see, Max, when you start lying to me—”
“Stevie’s planning on having a baby,” she quickly announced, “and she’s gone off her medication.”
Charlie watched Max and quickly came to the conclusion her sister was attempting to distract her, but she wasn’t lying.
“Well,” Max pushed when Charlie only stared at her, “aren’t you going to say anything?”
“Okay. Don’t get the baby its first knife until it’s at least thirteen. There. I said something.”
“And that’s it?” Max leaned over and said in a very loud whisper, “You’re not concerned? Even a little? I mean, just look at her!”
Charlie did. Her baby sister was in the backseat between a giant panda and a grizzly bear. She held a red-and-white kitten so small that she’d used a hand towel to wrap him in, but she could have gotten away with a wash cloth. Stevie was so busy cooing over that cat, she wasn’t even paying attention to Max. When she noticed that Charlie was looking at her, she held up the tiny thing for her sister to see and cheered in a squeaky voice, “Kitten!”
Turning back around, Charlie shook her head. “She looks fine.”
“Really? Because she just went off her meds. Without any warning!”
Without any warning? Stevie? No way. No way! Stevie could be unpredictable when it came to her work or dealing with nature. But she was never unpredictable when it came to her mental health. She never just “went off her meds.” And she definitely never, ever made unplanned decisions. Charlie remembered when Stevie was eleven and set up a schedule for therapy three times a week. She put all her appointments on a massive calendar that she put in the Pack kitchen for all to see. So that everyone knew when she had to be at her appointments. She had no shame and she kept everyone informed. Why would that suddenly change?
It wouldn’t. Charlie knew that as sure as she was sitting here. Her baby sister wouldn’t change. She feared going to one of those mental hospitals they’d seen in horror movies when they were kids. The ones people were forced into against their will. If she was going to a mental hospital, she wanted to have complete control over the situation. So, nope. Stevie hadn’t changed. So then where did Max get the idea that . . .
“Kitten!” Stevie said, holding up the cat again.
“And what do you have to say for yourself?” Max demanded of Shen. “Now that you can’t drown me out with your damn bamboo chewing.”
Shen looked Max right in the eyes and replied, “I’m just a male. I want lots of babies. I just want my seed pouring out of me like I’m a Gatling gun.” Then, to get his point across, Shen made machine-gun sounds with his mouth.
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