“I’m sure it’s just jail time.”
“Thank you, Tock,” Stevie replied. “That’s very helpful.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Very.”
The security door opened and Charlie came into the house. She stalked into the living room, stopped, and her gaze moved over all of them.
Max steeled herself for the explosion of rage and disappointment. Ready to shield her friends while accepting all the blame for what had happened. Because it was her fault. All of it. She’d made them all vulnerable.
After a few moments of utter—and painful—silence, Charlie announced, “I’m going to bake cupcakes.”
She stalked from the room, leaving them standing there . . . stunned.
“Is that . . . code or something?” Mads asked. “For, like, murdering us?”
“No,” Max barked. “It means she’s going to make cupcakes. My sister doesn’t lie or use code when it comes to baking.”
“So what do we do?” Streep asked. “Do we make a run for it?”
“My sister has a high prey drive. Making sudden moves will just catch her attention. I suggest we all get comfortable and—”
“Wait for death?” Tock asked.
“I was going to say watch TV, but whatever works for you, sweetie.”
“Before you do anything,” Stevie said to Max, “you may want to check on the cat.”
“Fuck! Did that thing piss in my bed again?”
Stevie crossed her arms over her chest. “Not the cat. The cat.”
“What weird phonetic shit is that?”
“I’m talking about Zé!”
“Oh! That cat!”
“Yes!”
“Don’t get that tone! I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment.”
“He’s been really worried about you! And he was the only one. The rest of us were just worried about what Charlie was going to do to the cops who arrested you.”
“Which was epicly terrifying!” Nelle admitted.
Stevie’s shoulders sagged. “She promised me she wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“She didn’t kill anyone,” Max reassured her.
“That we know of,” Tock muttered.
“And she didn’t touch one cop.” She motioned to her teammates. “Bring Stevie up to speed. I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find the cat.”
“He’s in the backyard,” Stevie told her.
Max nodded and headed through the living room. But when she reached the dining room, she heard Charlie in the kitchen—slamming bowls.
“Nope,” she said to no one in particular. Then she spun on her heel and went out through the front door.
* * *
Zé sat on the ground, his back against the trunk of the tree he’d climbed earlier that day. He’d completely forgotten about calling Kamatsu because he’d been sitting in a tree worried about Max and her teammates. He’d wanted to meet Charlie at the station but the car that Stevie had sent for him brought him back to Queens. When he complained, Stevie had said, “I do what Charlie tells me, because she’s not going to yell at me.”
He assumed she’d meant Charlie would yell at him. Unfortunately, he had no idea which precinct had a “shifter-only division.” And since he wasn’t about to wander around New York state looking for it—or to ask cops if they had any shifters working in their office—he just stayed at the house and hoped for the best.
“Are you listening to me? Because my next question is very important.”
Zé looked up at the kid he’d met about an hour ago. He apparently lived here with Max and her sisters. His name was Kyle. He was a great artist. Brilliant, in fact. A prodigy, like Stevie. And he enjoyed living with the MacKilligan sisters because they didn’t bother him. Not like his own family did, because his family didn’t understand boundaries.
And Zé knew this because the kid had told him all that and much, much more while he’d been standing there, blathering along as if Zé had done anything to warrant such an attack of annoying-ness.
“So,” the kid continued on, “have you ever done any nude modeling?”
“Okay, that’s it.” Zé got to his feet. “I’m out of here.”
He could track Max down later. Because this whole conversation was just weird.
“Are you ashamed of your body? You shouldn’t be. It’s quite nice.”
“You need to stop talking to me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re freaking me out. And I don’t freak out easy.”
“How am I freaking you out?”
“Because you’re a teenage boy asking a grown man if he wants to pose nude for him. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were just a cop attempting to frame me.” The kid wanted to debate this but Zé held his hand up to silence him and walked away.
As he moved out from under the tree, he saw Max coming toward him from the front of the house.
He couldn’t believe how relieved he was to see her. He wanted to rush up to her but he waited where he was until she reached him.
“You’re back.”
“I am. You told my sister.”
“I did. I called Stevie but she put me on the phone with Charlie and I don’t like lying to her. Of the three of you, she does seem the most rational.”
“Most of the time.”
“Hi, Max,” the kid said, now standing near them.
“Heya, Kyle.”
“Zé won’t pose nude for me. I think he’s worried it will put his sexuality into question. Would you please convince him that he is a very virile heterosexual male and that as a woman, you would love to have sex with him, so he can feel confident in his straightness and see this as the artistic request that it is?”
“Sure!” Max said, nodding and smiling and walking. Walking right over to the back door of the house, opening the screen, and yelling into the house in a singsongy voice, “Char-lieeee! Kyle keeps asking Zé to pose nude for him and making the poor guy uncomfortable!”
Charlie’s voice, however, was not singsongy when she barked, “Goddammit, Kyle! Stop doing that! Or no cupcakes for you!”
Kyle blinked and was extremely calm when he asked Max, “Your sister is making cupcakes?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Fine. In honor of your sister’s cupcakes, I’ll let it go. But,” he added, “I consider what you just did a hate crime against art.”
“Of course you do.”
Kyle nodded at Zé. “Zé,” he said.
“Child,” Zé said back.
Zé watched Kyle walk to the garage and disappear inside, closing the door behind him.
“Why did he go into the garage? I’m worried what that implies.”
“Don’t. He turned it into an art studio.”
“So he really is an artist?”
“Yes. And a very good one. He’s also a little nuts.”
“Honestly, your entire house is kind of a freak show.”
“I know. Isn’t it great?” She pointed at Zé. “Did you ever get in touch with your girlfriend?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“The Japanese chick. At least I’m assuming she’s Japanese.”
“You mean Kamatsu? She’s not my girlfriend . . . and I completely forgot to track down her number. I need a laptop so I can get to my online storage.”
“I’ll get you a laptop. You wait here.” She looked at the back door but started to go around the house.
“Where are you going?”
“Charlie is anger-baking,” she said, stopping by one of the windows that looked out over the side yard. “And the last thing you want to do is walk into the middle of that.”
“Why?”
“Because she starts ranting. And when she starts, she doesn’t stop . . . for a long time. She has a lot of rage-stamina.”
“Do you and Stevie make up a lot of terms that involve your sister doing mundane things and anger?”
“Yes!” she replied. She pushed the window open and snuck her way into her own rental home so that she could avoid her sister . . . baking.
Zé let out a breath. “Utter freak show.”
“Hey! Cat!” a voice called out from behind Zé. He looked over his shoulder and saw an obscenely large man across the big yard on the other side of the chain-link fence. He motioned Zé over with several waves of his hand. With nothing else to do and a little curious about what the large man could want, Zé walked across the yard and around an in-ground pool he hadn’t noticed before.
“Yes?” he asked when he stood before the large man who had to be at least seven feet tall. Freak show!
The man lowered himself and whispered, “Is Charlie baking?”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Shhhhhh! Fucking cat! Just answer the question!”
“Yes. She’s baking. Should I alert the media?”
“What’s she making?”
Zé remembered what Charlie had threatened Kyle with. “Cupcakes, I believe.”
“Cupcakes . . .” And the man said that word as if he was talking about something sacred. Like the Lost Arc of the Covenant or the Shroud of Turin.
“Thanks, cat,” the man said before he jogged away, again moving with an ease that Zé would expect of a shorter, leaner man.
As he stood there, wondering, Max came to stand beside him with a thin laptop in hand.
“What are you doing over here?”
“Talking to what I believe was some freakishly sized bear.”
“That’s pretty much the entire street, dude. What did he want?”
“To know if your sister was baking.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said she was.”
Max’s eyes grew wide. “You didn’t tell him what she’s baking, did you?”
“Cupcakes, right?”
“Oh, God. They know about the cupcakes.” Her gaze scanned the street. “They know about the cupcakes . . .”
* * *
Charlie placed another two trays of cupcakes on the dining table to cool and returned to the kitchen. She reached into the cabinet above the fridge and took out several jars of honey. She placed them on the kitchen table with all the other items she needed to make the cupcakes and the icing.
Wiping her hands on a towel, she walked back into the dining room and stopped, staring at the grizzly who’d opened her window and was stretching his long arm inside, his fingers attempting to reach the cupcake trays.
Placing her hands on her hips, Charlie asked, “Whatcha doin’, Lloyd?”
The bear stopped, his gaze locked on the floor, refusing to look up at her.
“Uhhhh . . . nothin’?”
“Is that a statement or a question, Lloyd? Because it sounds like a question. Like you’re not sure. Are you not sure what you’re doing, Lloyd?”
“He’s sorry,” his wife said, pulling him away from the window. “He’s sorry. We’re just going to sit out here and wait until you’re done.”
“Sit out there?” Charlie walked to the window and leaned out. They were everywhere. Sitting around her yard, in the summer sun, chatting and waiting—for her cupcakes.
Well, now she knew what had happened to the dogs. They usually stayed in the kitchen with her while she baked in the hopes that she’d drop something on the floor. But now she knew they were under her bed.
She reared back from the window. “Stevie!”
Charlie returned to the kitchen and again opened the cabinet above the fridge. The place where Stevie usually hid when bears invaded their house or yard. She was definitely not there, nor had she burrowed a hole into the ceiling of the cabinet so she could escape through the house.
Hearing a laugh, Charlie went to the butcher block by the small window that looked out in the backyard. There was Stevie, chatting with the bears while she sat on Shen’s lap. With the panda so close, Stevie wasn’t freaked out by the grizzlies and polars—the “man-eaters,” as she liked to call them.
Seeing her sister so comfortable and casual around people who used to make Stevie hide in trees made Charlie so damn happy, she didn’t think she could stand—
“Hey, Charlie.”
Startled by the voice, Charlie drew the .45 she always holstered to the back of her jeans before she’d even turned around . . . to find it pressed against her sister’s head.
“Dammit, Max!” Charlie quickly removed her finger from the trigger and lowered her weapon. “Don’t sneak up on me!”
“You didn’t smell me right behind you? Did you not take your allergy meds?”
Charlie returned her gun to her holster and walked to the cabinet where they kept the meds. Charlie’s were for allergies and general anxiety. For Stevie, extreme anxiety, occasional depression, and period cramps. There was nothing in there for Max. Charlie wouldn’t say her middle sister didn’t have any issues that could benefit from a little medication, but they weren’t issues Max would admit to.
“What’s going on?” Charlie asked after taking a couple pills and then spritzing her prescription nasal spray up her nose.
“So Zé opened his mouth about the cupcakes—”
“Yeah, I saw the invasion in our yard.”
“It’s quickly turning into a teddy bear picnic. I thought I’d go out and pick up some liquor.”
“We’re throwing a party?”
“We will be. Berg said he could get everyone else to chip in food and their barbeques so you can just focus on the cupcakes.”
“I guess I need to make more cupcakes,” Charlie reasoned when she thought about how many bears were in her yard and how many cupcakes they could put away. Of course, if they could offset that with some steaks, hotdogs, and burgers, the cupcake demands would ease a bit. “Could you pick me up some other stuff while you’re out?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Charlie opened a drawer, searching it for the little notepad she kept there. “Have you seen my notepad?”
“Oh. Here.” Max pulled it out of the back pocket of her cutoff shorts. “Sorry. I forgot I had it.”
Charlie took the notepad, grabbed a pen, sat at the kitchen table, and worked up a list of things she wanted her sister to pick up for her. As she worked, she could feel Max’s gaze on her.
“What, Max?”
“I’m sorry.”
“ ‘Don’t mention cupcakes around bears’ is not something that’s on the list of must-knows for the freshly shifted. Zé will figure it out.”
“No. I don’t mean that. I mean, everything else. I’m sorry about all that.”
“It’s not your fault. You have skills any black ops team would kill to harness. It’s their own fault they got their asses kicked.”
“That’s not what I mean either.”
Confused, Charlie pulled her attention away from her list. “What are you talking about?”
“About . . . everything I’ve done. What they were going to use to blackmail me. You know . . .” She looked away, scratched her forehead, shrugged. “That stuff they talked about.”
“Oh. That stuff.” Charlie went back to her list.
“Yeah. I’m . . . I’m sorry if I disappointed you.”
“Disappointed me?”
“Yeah. I have no excuse and I won’t try to make any. I just hope I can—”
Charlie leaned back in the chair and gazed up at her sister again. “I’m sorry . . . what are we talking about?”
Max let out a frustrated breath. “You know, the stuff I . . . stole?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“I guess I’m confused.”
“About what?”
“I thought you’d be mad.”
“About what?”
“The stuff I stole!”
“Oh.” Charlie tore off the sheet with the list and stood. “I knew.”
“You knew what?”
“I knew about the stuff you stole.”
Max took a step back. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew.”
“But you never said anything.”
“What was there to say?”
“That you were disappointed in me. That you were disgusted. That you were—”
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Charlie came around the table. “I would never say any of that to you because I never felt that way. All three of us have done whatever we needed to do to keep us going. The money you brought in kept us solvent, allowed us to watch out for Stevie when she was in countries where we could never afford to go to without funds. Each of those jobs you took and, by the way, knocked out of the fucking park, kept us alive. How could I hate you for that?”
“So you were aware of every job I did?”
“I think so. Unless you snuck some in.”
Max moved closer. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“What were you doing?”
“When?”
Now Max was inches away, her finger pointing in Charlie’s face. “I did all my jobs in the six months I was not looking out for Stevie. So when you were not looking out for Stevie, what did you do? You know, to keep us solvent?”
Charlie handed Max the sheet of paper before going back to her cupcakes. “And make sure you don’t forget the flour.”
* * *
Zé waited by the black SUV Max had pointed out to him before she went into the house to talk to her sister. When she came out the front door, she seemed . . . upset.
“Are you okay?” he asked as she stomped by.
“Get in the car.”
“Okay.”
She electronically unlocked the doors and he got into the passenger side.
“Is it me or is this vehicle excessively large?”
“It was built for bears,” she said, moving the seat up until her chest was practically one with the steering wheel.
“Um . . . maybe I should drive. You know, since my feet can actually reach the pedals.”
He waited for Max to tell him to go to hell or to just laugh at him, but she didn’t do either. Instead, she texted someone on her phone. She got an immediate reply and started the SUV.
“What’s going on?”
“I need to make a stop before the stores.”
“Okay.” She kept gripping the steering wheel, so he asked, “Max, you seem a bit . . . tense. Is everything all right?”
Badger to the Bone Page 23