Breaking Badger

by Shelly Laurenston

  “But your uncle will see us when we get back?” Keane asked.

  “Yes. He will. He’s nice, too, so I believe him.”

  Finn returned from the bathroom and dropped into the seat next to Mads. “I can’t believe there’s a shower and tub in the bathroom here.”

  “And scented oils,” Mads told him.

  “Is that what that rose smell was?”

  “No, that was the fresh flowers they replaced while we were out.”

  “Wow.” He looked around and smiled at her. “This is kind of awesome.”

  “Thank you,” Nelle said from the plush leather seat she reclined in, a copy of the most recent Italian Vogue in her lap. Unlike the rest of them, Nelle hadn’t changed back into her “real” clothes after their time in the museum, pretending to be someone else. That ridiculously overpriced designer dress was one of her regular dresses. She’d had another just like it, but one of her nephews had spilled grape juice on it, so she’d asked the designer to send her a new one even though it was from two seasons before. Why? “Because you know it’s my favorite and I love it! And legally I’m not allowed to beat my nephew to death for fucking up the old one.”

  “I said it was an accident, Auntie!” the sixteen-year-old had yelled back from another room.

  And three days later, delivered by messenger, the dress she currently had on arrived.

  “I designed the look and feel of this particular fleet of planes for my father,” she bragged.

  “Did you also do that without asking him if you could?” Mads wanted to know.

  “American Jesus Christ! Is this about me decorating your house again?”

  “It was rude!”

  “It was necessary! Because we all know you were never going to do it!”

  “She’s right,” Max chimed in. “You were never going to do it.”

  “How the fuck do you know?”

  “I know because you rented that place for six months one time, near where we used to practice, and you remember what happened there.”

  “Oh, come on. I was eighteen.”

  “You were twenty-four and you had nothing in the place but a mattress, a cardboard box, and an old black-and-white TV that you put on the cardboard box.”

  “Where did you even find that TV?” Streep asked. “I thought those TVs were in massive trash heaps, slowly destroying our planet.”

  “You barely had any lights!” Max went on. “It was like a pit of despair and even I hated going there. And once I lived in a dirt hole in the woods for three days.”

  “Why?” Keane felt brave enough to ask.

  “To see if I could.”

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  Finn didn’t know how commenting on enjoying being in a private jet rather than crammed onto a commercial flight with a bunch of complaining full-humans had led to a fight between honey badgers, but here they all were.

  Although he’d kind of known it would be coming. Hard to decorate a person’s house without their knowledge or approval and not have them get a little pissy about it.

  “Seriously?” Mads demanded. “None of you guys think Nelle coming into my house and putting in furniture and clothes and appliances is remotely weird? On any level?”

  “Nope,” Max easily replied.

  “Not at all,” Streep said.

  “I told her to do it,” Tock suddenly admitted.

  Uh-oh. It was like the air had been sucked out of the cabin. Even though Finn had no doubt that most of Mads’s shifter genes were honey badger, he still had a definite feeling that a few hyena ones had slipped through. If nothing else, it would explain how her lovely neck seemed to get longer and sort of drop, then swing out while her eyes looked up at Tock in dangerous warning.

  “You what?”

  Nelle stood. “I think I need to use the conveniently placed shower—”

  “Sit down!” Mads barked.

  Nelle sat back down.

  “I think I was quite clear,” Tock said.

  “You told her to do all that creepy shit in my house?”

  “I did.”

  “Because I’m poor?”

  “In what world are you poor? That hippy aunt of yours ensured you’d never be poor as long as you don’t give your shit away.”

  “Is this about the Kandinsky again?”

  “You also have a Warhol, a Basquiat—”

  “Well, I’d never give away the Basquiat. He gave that to her on her birthday.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether you’d give it away. It’s that you have it. You have millions of dollars’ worth of artwork in storage units spread out all over this country due to your Buddha-loving aunt.”

  “Buddha?” Shay asked.

  Mads shrugged. “She used her love of Buddha to replace her intense love of cocaine. It was the eighties and there was a lot of cocaine.” She refocused on her teammates. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you should have talked to me first.”

  “Why?” Tock asked. “You weren’t going to do it. I really didn’t think you’d notice. Not during playoffs.” She glanced off. “I guess we should have waited until the championships.”

  “Tock!”

  “Look, we are all nearing thirty. It was time for you to act like an adult.”

  “Couldn’t you all have just taken me shopping or something instead?”

  “No!”

  “God, no!”

  “Heaven forbid!”

  “I’d rather set myself on fire . . . again.”

  “You hate shopping,” Tock explained, “unless the new Jordans are out. And then you just go and stand in line with everyone else. That’s not exactly the act of shopping.”

  “Whereas,” Nelle interjected, “I love shopping and I know exactly what you like. I just had to look up a few things online, send my ideas to my personal shoppers, and you were set. That way you didn’t have to worry about it. I was truly trying to be helpful. Not shove your nonexistent poverty down your throat. Since that seems to be what you’re harping on.”

  “And the creepy factor.”

  “What’s so creepy? That you’re easy to buy for? Jeans. Basketball tanks. An array of unattractive basketball sneakers. It’s not exactly brain surgery.”

  “You also bought me underwear.”

  “Sports bras and Hanes for Her. They come in packets.” Nelle looked at her teammates. “Packets.”

  “The condoms?”

  “From what I surmise, they have not gone unused.”

  “With a note on the package.”

  “That was just funny. Max would have done the same thing.”

  “I probably would have,” Max agreed with a small shrug.

  “It would have only been weird if you’d picked one of the other two,” Nelle said, pointing at Keane and Shay. And when Finn’s brothers only gawked at her, she added, “Oh, come on. You three are practically interchangeable. The Dunn triplets are easier to tell apart because at least one of them is a woman.

  “And I’d like you all to keep in mind,” she added, “there are very few people in this world that I would do this sort of thing for: you ungrateful bitches; my father, because he is amazing and brilliant and adores me; my eldest sister, because she never once threw an axe at my head or set the dogs after me; my mother, because I wisely fear her . . . and . . . yeah. That’s it. And that’s how you know you guys mean so much to me because . . .”

  Nelle’s words faded off and Finn looked over to see why she’d stopped talking. That’s when he saw that Streep was sitting on the edge of her seat, hands clasped in front of her, eyes practically bulging from her head.

  “Say it!” Streep finally pushed, with a huge, impatient smile. “Say it!”

  “Say what?” Nelle finally asked.

  “Say that you love us all.”

  The females reared back from Streep. It was as if she’d grown a second head or suggested doing something disgusting with dolphins. There was even a loud, simultaneous “Ewwwww!”

/>   “We risk our lives for each other! We spend so much time together! Happily! We are as close together as five people can be who are not fucking. Why won’t you just say we are all friends and that we love each other dearly?”

  Nelle leaned over and took Streep’s hand. Smiling warmly, she said with great feeling, “You guys are my dearest, closest associates. And I tolerate all of you greatly.”

  The eager grin Streep had on her face faded away and she snatched her hand back.

  “All of you are mean, petty cunts, and I don’t know why I waste a bit of my precious time on you!”

  With that, and with as much dignity as she could muster, Streep stood and walked toward the bathrooms in the back of the jet. Once one of the doors slammed shut, the badgers exploded into laughter. Max fell onto the floor; Mads into Finn’s lap. And Nelle had actual tears in her eyes while Tock had trouble getting her breath back.

  “I can hear you laughing at me, you evil bitches!” Streep yelled from the bathroom. “And I will never forgive you!”

  Of course, that just made them all laugh harder.

  “Streep is right, you know,” Keane said, staring out the window. “You are all evil bitches.”

  chapter TWENTY-ONE

  Shay studied Max MacKilligan for several seconds before asking what they were all thinking. “How do you not know your own uncle has a PhD in zoology? And is currently in charge of a well-known zoo? With his specialty being gorillas?”

  “I don’t know,” Max replied.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I guess he never told me. He was one of the few Yang members who actually spoke to me. He’d write me letters. Some came from Africa.”

  “Did the letters include pictures of him with gorillas?”

  She blinked. “Sometimes.”

  “You didn’t think that was weird? Your honey badger uncle just hanging around a bunch of gorillas?”

  “Well, when you put it that way . . .”

  “I’m just pissed this uncle was only ten miles away from the first goddamn uncle,” Keane growled.

  Mads couldn’t be angry at Max about anything, though. She was just glad to be back in the States. All that flying around and bouncing from country to country had made her homesick. Surprising since she’d never felt as if she’d had a home. Now, though, she had her own house. That was a start to a home. But first she had to be there longer than a day or two.

  They were all waiting in the Africa section of the New Jersey zoo that Max’s Uncle Russ ran. It supposedly had an excellent breeding and rehabilitation program.

  “How are you holding up?” Finn asked Mads as she gazed into the hyena exhibit. He’d eased up behind her, and she’d never heard a sound. Despite her honey badger hearing.

  “I’m doing pretty good. You know, before we went—”

  “On Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride?”

  She laughed and pressed her shoulder against his. “When you get in the middle of a small war, it is a bit of a wild ride. Anyway, I talked to Charlie before we left. Told her about my family coming after me.”

  “And she said you should handle them the way she handled your grandmother back in junior high?”

  Mads turned, resting her elbow on the exhibit railing. “How did you know that?”

  “She managed to keep Max MacKilligan out of prison and out of the morgue for years. There’s only one way to do that. By taking no prisoners. Which seems very Viking to me.”

  “It is very Viking. Although my people did take prisoners so they could sell them as slaves, but I don’t like to talk about that.”

  “That’s probably for the best, considering the diaspora that is your friend group. Do you have any ideas on how you’re going to stomp your family into the ground?”

  “It’s not just the family, though. It’s the entire Clan. And whatever I do, it’ll have to be right the first time.”

  * * *

  Russ Yang, PhD, ordered them into his tiny office with the brusque manner of a Marine sergeant.

  “You’re sure your mother didn’t send you?” he asked Max.

  “I am not answering this question again.”

  “Fine. I’m trusting you, Max. Don’t let me down.” He looked over at Finn and his brothers, and Finn saw a small smile turn up the corner of his lips. “Damn, you boys are built just like him. But you all have your mother’s face. How’s she doing?”

  “Well,” Keane replied. “But she also wants to know who killed our father.”

  “I’m not surprised she doesn’t know. Your mother didn’t know half of what your father did.”

  “Because he was cheating on her?” Finn asked.

  “Your father?” Yang shook his head. “Never. He just wasn’t exactly what he said he was. A part of himself he couldn’t reveal. For her safety. For yours. I only knew because of the people we had to deal with from time to time in the Middle East and Africa.”

  “Are you saying our father was a poacher?” Shay demanded, his voice filled with disgust.

  “Oh, no! Absolutely not. Your father worked for the CIA. He was a spy.”

  * * *

  It was the blank stares on the Malone brothers’ faces. The way they simply stood there, staring at Max’s uncle. She’d never seen cats so confused before.

  Finally, it was Keane who roughly asked, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “It’s true. He was in the CIA. Not even the shifter division of the CIA but the full-human, uptight CIA. Recruited straight out of high school. I don’t think even his siblings knew.”

  “How did you know?” Finn asked.

  “There was a bit of a dustup in the Congo. I found him half-dead in a river. Dragged him out. Realized what he was and took him to safety.”

  “Which was with the gorillas?” Mads guessed.

  “Exactly. We kept him safe until he’d gone through his fever and his body mostly healed. When it was time to get him out of there, I couldn’t find any Americans to help, but there were a few Mossad in the area handling something else.” Yang suddenly looked at Tock and smirked. “When you get a chance, tell your grandmother I said hi.”

  Finn looked back and forth between Yang and Tock. “Her grandmother knew my father?”

  “Spies always know spies. But whether she knows who killed your father . . .” He shrugged. “That’s the thing.”

  “What is?”

  “I don’t know if his death had to do with a specific job. You know, a spy-versus-spy incident. That they would have wrapped up nice and neat in a bullshit story that would have most likely satisfied you boys and your mother. When that didn’t happen . . .” He let out a breath. “He’d contacted me a few weeks before it happened. Left me a message. Said he needed to talk. But I was on a book tour, raising money for the zoo and the gorillas. By the time I was back in the country and able to meet with him . . . he was . . . dead.”

  Yang walked around his desk and briefly looked out the extremely tiny window that let only the barest amount of light into the room before facing the Malone brothers again. “I will say this. His three sons agonizing over his death is not what he would have wanted for any of you. He loved you kids. All of you. And he never would have wanted you to put yourselves at risk. I say that because I know he would have wanted me to say that. I also know that he was the most vengeful motherfucker I’d ever had the deep displeasure of knowing,” he added with a grin. “The ones who’d nearly killed him in the Congo? Not one of them existed longer than a month after he’d made it out. He hunted down each and every one and made them pay by fang and claw, because guns and bombs just weren’t good enough for him when it came to revenge.”

  “It’s over too fast,” Keane said.

  Yang’s eyes lit up when Keane muttered those words and his grin grew impossibly wide. Mads knew the zoologist had heard them before from Keane’s father. More than once.

  “Absolutely nothing terrified your father’s enemies more than when they’d really pissed him off. Because he didn’t stop. He neve
r stopped. And looking at you three—all I see is the tribal version of that rage. Genghis Khan riding across the steppes.”

  “Our mother’s tribe existed long before Genghis’s people were even born, and my mother’s people exist still,” Keane told Russ Yang. “And you’re right. We won’t stop. We’ll never stop. Until we strip the flesh from the bones of whoever killed our father.”

  * * *

  Without a word being spoken among the entire group, they got back into the two SUVs they’d taken to Jersey and headed back to New York. But they didn’t go to Finn’s house. In silent agreement, they went to Queens and Mads’s house.

  When they parked on the street in front of her home, everyone got out. Still silent. But Keane didn’t make it past the hood of the rented SUV he’d picked up while his was in the shop. He simply stopped and dropped his arm on the hood and his head on his forearm.

  Streep immediately went to him, gently rubbing his back.

  “Oh, sweetie, don’t cry,” she sweetly soothed.

  Keane lifted his massive head, eyes dangerously narrowed, and snarled, “I am not crying. And get off me!”

  “I don’t know why I bother with any of you!” she snapped, stepping away.

  “I’m just so tired,” Keane said, his head resting again on his forearm. “Part of me was hoping we’d know enough by now for me to go out, kill the guy, and go home to sleep. That was literally my whole plan for the next twenty-four hours. But instead, we learned that Dad was—”

  “CIA.” Finn leaned against Keane’s SUV. “I can’t believe Dad was in the CIA.”

  “Why is that so unbelievable?” Streep asked.

  “Because he was a Malone,” Finn and his brothers said together.

  “Everything is for the family,” Keane explained. “That’s how we were raised. That’s why we felt so betrayed when they did nothing after Dad was killed.”

  “I hate saying this,” Tock weakly suggested, “but you may have to talk to someone in the government about—”