chapter NINETEEN
Ric finished his presentation to his Uncle Van and Aunt Irene and faced them. “Well? Any questions?”
“She goes from five-foot-six to about twenty feet when she shifts?” Irene glanced off and added, “That’s fascinating. I’d love to get my hands on the woman’s blood.”
Uncle Van glared at his full-human mate. “Is that really your only concern here?”
“I don’t have a concern. I don’t see the problem.”
“Dee-Ann wants to put her down,” Ric explained. “And her sisters. But I think that’s because the oldest basically kicked her ass.”
Van struggled not to smile. “Dee-Ann Smith, daughter of Eggie Smith, got her ass kicked by the oldest honey badger?”
“Don’t laugh,” Ric warned his favorite family member in the universe. “Just don’t.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I really don’t believe in killing people because one is petty,” Aunt Irene stated, coldly analyzing the situation as she often did. She was, after all, one of the greatest minds in science despite what her enemies and critics might say. And she had a lot of enemies and critics. “If I operated that way, I would have killed . . . well . . . everyone.”
“That’s my feeling,” Ric agreed. “The problem is we really can’t expect the honey badgers to step in and self-manage this situation.”
“We can’t?” Van asked. “Why not?”
“Well, first off they’re honey badgers, which means they’re automatically difficult. But the biggest issue is that even among the honey badgers, the MacKilligan family is not exactly welcome. It’s as if most of the badgers are torn between hating and fearing them while also finding some of them laughably pathetic.”
“Wait,” Irene said, sitting up a little straighter. “The MacKilligans? These women are named MacKilligan?”
“Yes.”
“And the one that turns into a T. rex that you called Stevie—”
“She’s not quite a T. rex, Aunt Irene.”
“—is actually Dr. Stevie Stasiuk-MacKilligan? That’s the Stevie you were talking about?”
“Yes. Why?”
She suddenly laughed. A sound she rarely made, which only worried Ric more.
“Oh, gentlemen, you have much more to worry about than the apparent fact that Stevie MacKilligan can shift to something that’s twenty feet tall.”
“And what is that exactly?”
“Well,” Irene leaned back in the office chair, “with a few household products and some gum, she could destroy all of Texas.” Irene thought a moment. “In fact . . . she nearly did.” She thought a little longer and amended with one forefinger raised, “No, no. Sorry. That’s incorrect.” She nodded knowingly. “It was Nevada. She almost destroyed Nevada. And from what I understand, the only thing that stopped her at the time—because she was apparently suffering from some major bout of depression—was the intervention of her sisters. So unless you are positive you can wipe them all out at the same time, I’m not sure it would be wise to try.”
Ric and his uncle stared at Irene until Van turned to him and said, “Why don’t you go talk to the oldest? It seems like she’s the one in charge.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Ric admitted. “With the bears now protecting her and her sisters.”
“Don’t forget who you have in your corner, Ulric,” Van reminded him with a warm smile. “You’ve always had your own bear connections, you know.”
* * *
Dag was standing on a tree limb, reaching to get the bee hive high up among the leaves. Normally, he would have left the bees alone much longer so that the hive could be even bigger, but he was worried about Max MacKilligan. She’d already raided the hives of three different bear homes.
Just that morning, Mr. Walton had found her hanging from one of his trees. He’d actually thought she was dead, because she was draped stomach down over a low limb under the hives, arms hanging listlessly, porcupine quills covering her face, angry African bees attacking the back of her head.
But when he got closer, he heard the snoring. She’d just been sleeping. Happily.
Walton had come to their house raging, but Britta had calmed him down and taken care of it in her way. Keeping the situation from escalating beyond the three of them.
Dag’s brother really liked Charlie MacKilligan. A lot. There wouldn’t be much she could do at this point to piss him off, which meant the hives on their property were not safe from Max MacKilligan.
Dag heard a low whistle. A whistle his siblings used when they wanted to get his attention.
He stopped reaching for the hive and peered out past the leaves to see his sister pointing at a spot on the ground. He looked down.
A young male was standing beneath the tree, staring up at him.
“Uhhh . . . can I help you?” Dag asked, assuming maybe the kid was lost.
“No.”
By now Britta had reached them and asked, “Kyle, what are you doing?”
Finally tearing his gaze away from Dag and moving it to Britta, the kid blinked several times before he said, “You didn’t tell me you were a twin.”
“I’m actually a triplet, but I didn’t have to tell you that. I don’t know you.”
“I need you three to pose naked for me.”
“Okay.” Britta clapped her hands together. “You need to go.”
“Are you embarrassed? You shouldn’t be. Just because you’re not like some stick model doesn’t mean you don’t have your own form of perfection.”
“You think that’s a compliment, but it’s not. So I need you to go.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“I know I don’t care who you—”
“I am an artist. People beg to sit for me. And I’m asking you. Bears. You should feel honored.”
“And yet I just want to punch you in the face.”
Dag dropped from the lowest branch and moved to his sister’s side.
“We appreciate the offer,” he said, “but go away.”
“I know you’re uptight suburbanites, trapped in your tiny little vision of the world—”
“I’m going to crack his jackal bones like kindle,” Britta warned Dag.
“—but imagine being part of something greater.”
“You mean you?” Dag asked the kid.
“Of course that’s what I mean.” He took his phone from the back pocket of his long shorts. He studied the screen a few seconds before holding it up in front of Britta.
Britta’s expression of annoyance quickly turned to surprise and then awe. “You did that? You?”
“Told you. I’m amazing.”
“Wow. You’re like that Michelangelo guy.”
“Oh, please.” Kyle lowered his phone. “I’m better than Michelangelo.”
“Wowwwww,” Britta sighed, gawking at the kid. “Seriously?”
Kyle stared back. “Yeah. Seriously.”
* * *
The Kingston Arms.
Charlie had heard about the hotel chain for years. Not from shifters. From everyone else. It was an extremely expensive hotel that had just opened its newest location in Dubai.
She had always known that it was shifter owned and operated but that was all Charlie knew. Her mother and definitely her grandfather’s Pack could never afford a place like this, and none of them would ever waste the money when a Holiday Inn Express would do just as well.
“This place is awesome,” Max sighed beside her.
And they were only in the lobby. Just the walk to the front desk seemed about a mile long. There were also stores and major restaurants with more of the same on the floors below. A few restaurants on the higher floors. Full-humans mingled easily—and obliviously—with shifters of all breeds and species.
“I could live here,” Charlie said.
“Who couldn’t?” Max pointed at a ridiculously large map of the hotel with a listing of all the available services.
The three of them stood there, staring, trying to figure out where they were and where they needed to go.
“I say we wander around aimlessly until we find her.”
Charlie smiled at Max. “Bernice would lose her mind. Besides, she said go to the front desk.”
They made the long hike to the front desk, taking it all in. But Charlie knew they focused on different things.
For Stevie, it was about the people. The energy. Everything that surrounded them. She drew all that in and her brain organized and sifted until she had a story to tell through music or science. When they got home later, she’d jot notes into one of the precious notebooks she kept in her backpack for possible later use.
For Max, it was about finding trouble. She searched out the drama, the weakness, the open doors. Although she didn’t do much stealing—that Charlie knew about—she still had a thief’s eye. Just like her birth mother. She could size up a jewelry store or one of those brand-name places with all the expensive purses that people sat on a waiting list for, and she could come up with several ways in and out with thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise.
But for Charlie, it was all about escape. Where were the exits? Who stood between her and her sisters and those exits? What could she use as a weapon? Were there cops nearby? Could she incapacitate and escape or would she have to take a life? These were the questions she asked herself every time she entered a building. To the point that she barely realized that’s what she was doing. It was like breathing to her. Or finding water when she was thirsty.
As always, it was about protecting her sisters and herself.
They reached the front desk and without even doing that off-putting sniffing thing everyone had been doing to Charlie, she knew the woman helping them was a shifter. A cat shifter, based on her eyes and the snobby way she looked over the three of them.
“May I help you?” she asked after giving a plastic smile that revealed pointy eyeteeth.
Charlie placed her hands on the counter. “Yeah, we’re looking for Bernice MacKilligan.”
The employee typed into her computer and looked up. “I’m sorry, but we have no one by that name.”
“Think she’s at another hotel?” Stevie asked.
Max snorted. “Bet she’s under her rich person name.”
Charlie rolled her eyes. “Right. Forgot. I meant Bernice Andersen-Cummingzzzzzzzz,” she said, turning the s into a long, drawn out z because she’d found out when she was younger that her aunt hated when she did that.
“Oh, of course.” And there went that plastic smile. “We’ve loved having Mrs. Andersen-Cummings and her family here at Kingston Arms.”
Max’s laugh was loud and long, before she finally got out, “You are such a liar.”
* * *
Berg sat on his front stoop, focusing on the car part in his grease-covered hands, trying to figure out exactly what his sister did when she got behind the wheel of a vehicle that could cause so much damage.
He used a rag to diligently remove excess oil, allowing the hands-on work to help the part of his mind not focused on the task to figure out what he was going to do later that night.
Berg didn’t just want to drag Charlie over to his house for dinner and then merely get her into bed. It would be nice, he was sure, but he wanted to do something a little more special for her. She deserved better than what she’d been getting from life lately, but Berg had never been much of a wooer.
He simply didn’t have the charming patter of the cats or the dogged persistence of the canines. The thought of just sticking around until she finally gave in like the wolves seemed to do bothered him on a visceral level. No matter what her sisters kept saying about “stray-dogging it.”
Bears, unlike the other shifters, had a little something called self-respect. He wanted Charlie to be with him because she really liked him, not because, “Eh. I couldn’t get rid of him anyway.”
A big SUV pulled into a spot right in front of Berg’s house but he didn’t really take notice until the dog came out from under the porch, ran up to the white picket fence, and began barking.
The passenger door opened and a wolf stepped out. Berg recognized him right away. Ulrich Van Holtz. The head of the New York division of the Group. He was Dee-Ann Smith’s boss.
He was dressed casually enough but very Manhattan in his black jeans, black T-shirt, and black work boots. But Berg wasn’t fooled. The T-shirt and jeans were designer and probably cost a few hundred, easily. The boots, Berg was sure, had probably not been purchased at the Brooklyn Army Surplus where the Dunn triplets always got their work boots.
But this wolf was smart. He didn’t come alone into bear-only territory. He brought a bear friend with him. One that Berg recognized since he’d been forced to go shopping for overpriced furniture at his “gallery”—God forbid they should just call it a store.
Lock MacRyrie got out of the SUV and followed his friend over to their fence.
Now the dog was on his hind legs, front legs placed on top of the pickets, and continuing to bark at the two strangers coming too close to his territory.
Berg stared at the pair with one eye, the other closed against the sun.
“Yeah?” he pushed when they just stood there.
“Mr. Dunn, I’m—”
“I know who you are. And I know your mate. She had guns pointed at my friend and her sisters yesterday.”
The wolf at least had the decency to look a little ashamed by that, but his friend seemed oblivious, studying Berg’s picket fence.
“That’s true. But when Dee-Ann attempted to speak to your friend, I was told she reacted a little more harshly than seemed necessary.”
“I was there. Smith should have minded her own business and let Charlie pummel that little weasel. She didn’t and so she ended up getting her ass kicked.”
At this point, the dog was still barking, not caring that he was being annoying. Not caring that they were forced to raise their voices. Not out of anger but because that was the only way they could hear each other over all that racket.
“Look,” the wolf began, “I understand that—”
The wolf’s words stopped. The barking stopped. And all because the large grizzly standing with the wolf had somehow managed to yank one of the pickets off the fence. Not on purpose. Berg knew when he was being threatened. He’d been known to do some threatening of his own. But this wasn’t threatening. This was just the usual bear curiosity that ended up causing a lot of damage.
Berg stared and the wolf cringed, and, finally, the dog slowly moved away from the grizzly in front of him. Apparently, he did see the torn fence as a threat.
“Oh, shit. Sorry.” MacRyrie held the picket up. “I, uh . . . can put it back for you.”
“That’s okay. I can fix it.”
“Anyway,” the wolf continued in a lower volume now that the barking had stopped, “I was hoping to work something out with the MacKilligan sisters.”
“Then what are you talking to me for?”
“It seemed smarter to discuss this with you first.”
“Did it?”
Berg heard high-pitched yelping and looked behind him. His sister came around the corner, her grip tight on the back of a jackal’s jeans, lifting the denim high and into the kid’s ass crack.
“It’s time for you to leave right now,” Britta informed Kyle.
“You are being unreasonab—ow, ow, ow!”
Unlatching the fence gate, she shoved the jackal through as if that alone would keep him out. “When you’re eighteen, you can come back here and ask us about posing naked . . . that way I can slap the shit out of you without any guilt. Or charges of abuse of a minor. Until then . . . stay out of our territory, skinny dog.”
The wolf closed his eyes, took a breath, before asking the jackal, “Again with this, Kyle?”
The kid looked at the wolf but Berg wasn’t sure that he recognized him until Kyle said, “You do seem to forget that I don’t answer to you, Ulrich.”
“I can always get Dee-Ann involved, if you’d like.”
“Unlike the rest of the world,” Kyle scoffed, “I don’t fear the great Dee-Ann Smith. Mostly because she finds me”—air quotes—“ ‘off putting.’ You ask a woman for specific details about all those she and her murderous father have killed throughout their terrifying lives so that you can praise their skills in a sculpted piece for the ages . . . and suddenly I’m the mentally disturbing one.”
“Kyle—”
“Although I do wonder . . . what is it like to be married to an actual sociopath? Do you sleep at all? Or are you too afraid she’ll wake up in the middle of the night and cut your throat for the hell of it? Do you fear for the safety of your child?”
“Okay, that’s it!” Britta suddenly exploded, yanking the gate open and storming through. She grabbed the kid by the back of his jeans again and now his hair. She lifted him off his feet and carried him back to the honey badgers’ house. “You are a horrible, horrible child and if you’d been my son, I’d have taken you directly to a military school!”
“Your sister is awesome,” MacRyrie said.
“She does not tolerate bullshit from anyone. Especially other people’s bratty kids.”
“We really just wanted to talk to Charlie MacKilligan and her sisters about a job with us,” Ric finally said.
“And now? What? You want to lock them up?”
“Lock up who?” Britta asked as she walked back, slapping her hands against each other like she’d just finished cleaning up a mess.
“Charlie and her sisters.”
Britta stopped, crossing her arms, gaze locked on the wolf and bear interloper. “Lock them up for what? For being who they are? For being different? For being hybrids? I expected more of a Van Holtz. And if you think the bears are going to let you start doing that bullshit . . .”
There was silence after Britta let her words—and warning—fade out. And that silence lasted until Lock MacRyrie suddenly faced his friend and announced, “Yeah, we’re not going to let you get away with that.”
Eyes crossing, Van Holtz suddenly gawked at the bear he’d brought to back him up and snarled, “Lock!”
“But we’re not!”
* * *
Charlie and her sister walked into the giant hall that had been reserved for the wedding reception. Unlike most wedding venues, this gargantuan hall had been booked for an entire two weeks to get everything ready. Most events just needed a day to get a room set up. Maybe two. But her aunt wasn’t taking any chances. It also meant that she’d been planning this wedding for at least two . . . maybe three years?
Who planned a wedding for that long? Human or shifter?
The venue was amazing, though. Elaborate crystal chandeliers throughout with a giant one in the middle of the room right over the dance floor. Round tables with chairs decorated with expensive-looking fabric.
The color scheme seemed to be white and red and gray. Standard color choices and hard to get wrong. Though if anyone could, it was Charlie’s cousin.
As they entered the room, the three of them leaned to the side, so the flying vase of flowers missed Charlie’s head by inches. But to be honest, she was mostly impressed at the reaction times of Max and Stevie. She’d trained them both well—by actually throwing things at their heads when they were growing up.
“I hate it!” Carrie MacKilligan Andersen-Cummings screamed at her one older sister and three younger ones, who stood around her, eyes in mid-roll. “I hate it! I hate it all!”
“I’m leaving,” Stevie abruptly announced, turning on her heel. But Max grabbed the back of her neck and yanked her around.
“We don’t desert each other,” Max reprimanded. “Especially when it’s this entertaining.”
Bernice rushed to her daughter’s side. She clasped her hands together as if she was praying . . . or trying to stop herself from choking the life out of her pain-in-the-ass child.
“What is it you want, sweetheart?”
“I don’t want roses,” Carrie spit out. “Everybody has roses! I deserve better than roses!”
Carrie’s sisters, standing behind her, looked at each other, and Charlie wondered how long before one of them snapped and killed her in a fit of sibling-on-sibling rage.
“Make. It. Better. Mommy,” Carrie ordered before stomping off in heels that had to be five inches high. Designer. Probably cost more than Charlie’s entire wardrobe.
The oldest, Kenzie, nodded at Charlie and she nodded back. But that’s when Carrie spotted them and screamed across the room, “What the fuck are they doing here?”
“Calm down,” Bernice ordered her daughter. “They’re here to see me.”
She walked over to Charlie and said in a low voice, “I thought I told you to come alone?”
“I ignored you,” Charlie admitted.
Bernice placed the tips of her fingers against her forehead, closed her eyes, and changed the subject. “So, any word on your father?”
“Yeah,” Max answered, “we just saw him yesterday.”
Brown eyes snapped open and Bernice gawked at them. “You what?”
“Just saw him yesterday.”
“He doused himself in bear spray to sneak into our all-bear neighborhood,” Stevie explained. “He smelled unpleasant.”
“I knew it. I knew that he would ruin—”
“What are they doing here?” Carrie demanded, coming close. She looked at Charlie. “You guys are not invited.”
Charlie nodded and said, “I see you got your nose fixed.”
Finger pointing, Carrie stepped toward Charlie but her mother quickly pulled her back. “Sweetheart, let me handle this. Go over with your sisters.”
“Fine.” She glared at Charlie. “Whore.”
“Your ass is still flat.”
Bernice grabbed her daughter’s arm and yanked her away before she could drag her claws down Charlie’s face. A move Charlie did appreciate. Those claws could leave scars forever depending on how deep one cut.
“Wow,” Stevie muttered, watching the mother and daughter moving away. She lowered her voice to a whisper, “Her ass is flat.”
“She’s never had a good ass.”
“Personally,” Max added, but not bothering to lower her voice, “I like that she made her nose so ridiculously small that she can barely breathe now.” She studied her cousin for a moment and finished up with, “It’s like she has all this face”—she held her hands about two feet apart—“but this”—she closed her hands until she made a tiny circle with her fingers and raised her voice several octaves—“tiny little nose.”
Charlie and Stevie laughed loud until their aunt came over and took hold of Charlie’s arm.
“With me, ladies. With me. Kenzie, you’re in charge until I get back.”
“I don’t want to be.”
“I don’t care!”
Once out of the hall, Bernice stopped and faced the nieces she had barely acknowledged all of their lives.
“Time for tea?” Charlie asked.
Bernice let out an exhausted breath. “Fuck the tea. Let’s hit the bar.”
“It’s not even noon yet,” Stevie wisely pointed out, but Bernice wasn’t having it.
“So you gonna make a big deal about it?” Bernice demanded, arms thrown wide, stepping up to Stevie.
Charlie and Max immediately moved in front of their baby sister to protect her from the raging, middle-aged She-badger.
“It’s never too early for a good scotch,” Charlie said gently, sweeping her arm forward. “Please, Aunt Bernice, lead the way.”
Her aunt stalked off and Charlie started to follow until she heard Max chuckling beside her.
“What?”
“I am so entertained right now.”
Stevie pushed past her sisters and followed their aunt, tossing over her shoulder, “That’s probably because you have a high probability of being a psychotic.”
Max grinned. “But I’m a happy psychotic!”
* * *
“I am not trying to destroy anyone or anything,” Ric explained to the grizzlies glaring at him. “I’m just trying to fix this.”
“Fix what?” Berg Dunn asked. “They clearly don’t want a job and basically just want you to fuck off. So I don’t know why you or anyone else needs to talk to them.”
“They’re making some people nervous.”
“That’s not the MacKilligan sisters’ problem.”
“It could become a problem if the Group and Katzenhaus decide they’re too much of a danger.”
Dunn stood, his sister coming to stand next to him. “If that happens, you’ll have to deal with the BPC,” the bear warned. “Is that what you want? Really?”
“Yeah?” Lock demanded next to Ric. “Really?”
Ric grabbed Lock’s arm. “Could you excuse us a moment?” He pulled his best friend a few feet down the block before stopping and facing him. “What the fuck are you doing, man? You’re my backup!”
“You just said come with me. So I went with you. But this conversation is making me uncomfortable. My mate is a hybrid. Our children are hybrids. And now I’m hearing that Dee-Ann is on a rampage to kill hybrids.”
“She is not . . .” Ric took another breath. “Dee-Ann is only concerned that Stevie MacKilligan doesn’t seem to have full control of her shifting, and she can shift into a twenty-foot-long, tiger-striped honey badger.”
Lock suddenly laughed. “That’s cool.”
“Let me repeat,” Ric snapped. “She doesn’t have control.”
“Oh.” He thought a moment, nodded. “You’re right. That is a concern.”
“I know. So help me. Think you can do that?”
The old friends gazed at each other for a long moment until, eyes narrowing, they looked at what now stood beside them.
Dutch grinned at them. The bruises on his face and neck were . . . substantial. And Ric knew for a fact that the wolverine was quite the scrappy fighter. Still . . . one MacKilligan sister had kicked his ass with hand-to-hand combat. One.
Ric did notice, though, that Dutch didn’t seem bowed by the damage. Despite the bruises and still-healing wounds, he appeared pretty chipper.
“So,” the weasel boldly asked, “what are we talking about?”
Lock sneered and started back toward the other bears. But as he walked past Dutch, he swung his arm out, sending Dutch flying across the street, across the fence of the home opposite them, across that bear’s yard, and into the defenseless porch swing.
Lock didn’t actually put a lot of energy behind that move, either, but he’d never been much of a fan of wolverines and despite having retired from the hockey team, he still had that mighty boar strength.
Ric followed his friend and stood silently as Lock said to the Dunn siblings, “How about we all meet later today in the BPC offices? You can just bring the eldest sister—”
“Charlie.”
Lock nodded. “You bring Charlie. All you guys come with her. And Katzenhaus can send someone and Ric can represent the Group. No one,” he quickly added, “will bring Dee-Ann.”
“Or her father,” Britta said, adding when they all stared at her, “Everyone knows about her father. No Eggie Smith or no deal.”
“He’s wandering the hills of Tennessee in his wolf form,” Ric replied. “He’s not leaving that happy life except for a full-on emergency. It’ll just be me and my Uncle Van representing the Group.”
Britta looked to her brother.
Berg shrugged. “I’ll talk to Charlie about it.”
“Excellent.” Lock held his hand out for a shake but that’s when he realized he was still gripping the picket he’d pulled off the Dunns’ fence. “Oh . . . I can still fix this.”
Britta took the piece of wood. “That’s okay. By the way,” She smiled. “I love your work, Mr. MacRyrie. We have one of your coffee tables. I’ve been saving up for one of your couches. Maybe a dining table.” Her nose crinkled up and she went from gruff and dangerous to delightful. “You’re so talented!”
Lock, as was his way, blushed, buried his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “Uh . . . thanks. And you can call me Lock.”
Growling in disgust, Berg suddenly stomped back to his porch, snarling, “Go away before I change my mind.”
His sister, however, gave another delightful smile and a little wave. “It was so nice meeting you, Lock.”
Ric walked back to the SUV and got into the passenger side; Lock was already starting the engine.
Once they were on the road, heading back toward Manhattan, Lock observed, “Well . . . that was a very pleasant visit.”
Not in the mood, Ric automatically replied, “Shut up.”
“And now it’s a little less pleasant.”
* * *
“ ‘You’re so talented, Mr. MacRyrie,’” Berg mocked his sister in a high-pitched voice, watching as she waved at the SUV carrying the bear and wolf.
When the car turned the corner, the piece of wood his sister had been holding came flying at his head. He ducked, the wood flew past him and rammed into the head of poor Dag, who’d been coming around the corner of the house.
“Motherfucker!”
Britta cringed before blaming Berg. “See what you made me do?”
“Me?”
She rushed to Dag and wiped the blood from his head with her hand. “This is all Berg’s fault,” she told Dag.
“I know it is.”
“Why is everyone blaming me?”
“Excuse me?” The weasel had picked himself up after being tossed across the street by Lock MacRyrie and was now standing outside their fence. Existing.
And his existing annoyed Berg.
Slowly, Berg and his siblings looked over at the weasel. Without saying a word, they focused on him . . . and waited.
Instead of getting the hint, he cheerfully asked, “Any idea when the girls will be back?”
They continued to silently stare, reminding Berg why he loved his siblings. Why he loved being part of triplets. For moments like these.
The weasel glanced around. “Uh . . . okay. Um . . . could you tell them I stopped by?”
Staring.
“All right. I’ll just, uh . . . I’ll just text Max. Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll text Max.”
Finally, after the endless silence, he gave a wave and walked off.
When he was gone, Berg turned to those who’d shared a womb with him for nine months and—to their mother’s great annoyance—three weeks and, as one, they smiled.
* * *
Will walked into his mother’s house, where his brothers were waiting for him. He didn’t know what he was going to tell them. “Our American niece is a giant, tiger-striped, honey badger” just was not a conversation he wanted to have with the MacKilligan boys.
But before he could say a word, his youngest brother, Jim, said, “We have a problem.”
“You mean besides our lost money?”
“I got a call from a contact at Saughton.”
Saughton Prison. Also known as Edinburgh Prison. Considered the most dangerous prison in the British Isles. And most of that, at least lately, was due to one prisoner.
Mairi MacKilligan. His brother Samson’s only girl.
And, like her father, she’d ended up in Saughton before she was even thirty. Maybe, also like her father, she’d ended up getting gutted late one night in her cell.
“And?”
“Mairi’s out.”
Will shook his head. “She’s there at Her Majesty’s pleasure. And trust me, after what she’s done, Her Majesty won’t be letting her out any time soon.”
“They didn’t let her out, Will. She escaped. And no one knows where she is.”
“It’s Scotland not Africa. How hard can it be to track her down on this tiny island?”
“That’s the problem,” Jim said, folding his arms over his chest. “They don’t think she’s in Scotland anymore. Or Europe. Instead she’s loose out there. And pissed at us because we left her in Saughton. You remember how she is, brother. This is gonna get bad.”
Will dropped into the closest chair, gazing up at his siblings. “Oh, fuck.”