If anyone had that money, it had probably been her father, but Max was sure he’d spent it or lost it a long time ago. Probably months or days even after the heist had ended with Devon and her mother in prison.
Devon didn’t want to hear any of that, though. He was convinced Renny Yang had his money and believed that Max was his way of getting it back.
Luckily, Max didn’t mind proving him wrong. But until she’d dealt with Devon properly, she’d have to find a way to distract Charlie from getting involved. And there was only one way to do that—with lunacy.
“Like our guest here,” Max replied, gesturing to the cat with a sweep of her hand. “Poor kitty doesn’t know he’s a kitty. He thinks he’s a boring full-human with no skills. We can’t let him continue to go through his life in such a sad, pathetic way.”
Her sisters focused on Vargas, but the cat was busy downing the last of those cinnamon buns. He was mid-chew when he realized they were all watching him, crumbs covering his mouth, green eyes bouncing from one woman to the other.
“Wha?” he asked around his food.
“We’re here to teach you about our ways,” Max informed him.
“No thank you.” He swallowed, took a sip of coffee. “I’m fine in my reality.”
“But your reality is wrong.”
“Is it? Or is my reality simply drug free?”
Max heard Stevie snort but she fought the urge to slap her sister on the back of the head.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but you need to accept the fact that you are a—”
“Cat. I’m a cat, according to you. In other words”—he pointed at the kitchen window near the stove—“I’m like him.”
Max looked and immediately picked up a spoon and hurled it at the window. The feral cat that she hated didn’t run, though, but simply hissed at her. Bastard!
“Is that any way to treat my kind?” Vargas asked, smirking.
“That is not your kind, idiot,” Max snarled. She was fed up with this. “You’re like us. A shifter. Your DNA is a combination of human and . . .” She gestured with her hand around his face. “. . . some kind of big cat.”
“Wait. I can tell.” Stevie ran around the table to Vargas’s side. She lifted strands of his hair and leaned in close, studying them. Vargas motioned to his empty plate. “Any more of these?”
Without a word of complaint, Charlie picked up his plate and went to where she had a large platter filled with cinnamon rolls. She brought back five for the cat.
“You’re just giving him food now?” Max asked.
“He’s a guest.”
“But I don’t get any?”
“You’re a liar.”
When Max focused on Vargas, he smiled around the big bite of roll he now had in his mouth.
“Jaguar!” Stevie announced, triumphant. “He’s a jaguar.” She returned to her seat. “It took a second because leopards have similar markings but if you really look, you can tell the difference. And he’s definitely jaguar. A black jaguar.” She winked at him. “Kind of rare.”
“What is happening?” Max demanded. Why were her sisters being so nice to someone who was being so . . . cat? He couldn’t be more cat if he was lounging in a tree with a gazelle carcass.
“Look,” Vargas said, wiping his mouth with a paper towel, “I appreciate you guys living in this fantasy universe. And I get it. The world is terrifying right now; it’s easier to pretend that you have special mutant powers. But I live in reality and no one has special mutant powers. And that’s okay. It’s okay to be normal. Be proud of your normalness. Be proud of who you are.”
Deciding this wasn’t worth the effort, Max was about to get up from the table and show Vargas out. She’d call him a car. She had the app on her phone. She’d send him back to the full-humans he seemed most comfortable with, and she’d go back to her life as a MacKilligan. It was for the best.
That was the plan. Until Shen Li, Stevie’s boyfriend, came in through the back door. He’d been outside, hanging upside down from a tree, eating bamboo. This was after he’d had a morning swim . . . in his panda form. That was also the way he’d entered the kitchen. In his panda form. He easily opened the screen door, came up the stairs into the kitchen. In his panda form, he was a healthy size, easy to see from where Vargas was sitting.
And Vargas did see him. His expression didn’t change; it stayed artfully blank, but his bright green-eyed gaze was locked on the panda as Shen went up on his hind legs, used his nose to open one of the cabinets, and used his paw to knock down a few bamboo roots. He picked one up in his mouth, lumbered over to Stevie’s chair, and with nothing more than a thought, shifted from panda to human. He took the bamboo from his mouth so he could lean down and kiss the top of Stevie’s head.
“I’m going up to take a shower. I’ll be down in a few.”
“Shen,” Max said, gesturing to their “guest,” “this is Zé. Zé, this is Shen.”
Shen nodded. “Hi, dude.”
“Hi . . .” Vargas cleared his throat. “Hi.”
Then, bless him, Shen put the bamboo back in his mouth, shifted back to panda, and lumbered his way out of their kitchen on all fours.
Silently, the three sisters watched Vargas. Watched . . . and waited.
After a minute, he glanced at his nearly empty mug and announced, “So you drugged the coffee, then.”
Max threw up her hands and pushed away from the table. “I’m out.”
chapter THREE
Mairi MacKilligan got off the helicopter and walked away from it, keeping her body low so her head didn’t get chopped off. One of the few, true ways that one could kill a honey badger.
She made her way to the upper deck where the Guerra twins were sunning themselves. She cringed when she saw their oiled skin, wondering how they could believe for a moment they wouldn’t get skin cancer one day. It was like looking at roasting sausages.
Before she reached them, however, one of their many bodyguards stopped her. Without a word, he demanded her weapons. She removed her guns and knives and piled them on the table provided for just that purpose. One of the men then came toward her to search her thoroughly but as soon as she looked at him, the man—a foot taller and two hundred pounds heavier than she—stumbled to a stop and looked at the one in charge. None of these men wanted to touch her. They were all full-human and probably didn’t understand their intense fear and distrust of a woman they didn’t know, but instinct in mammals was a valuable thing.
With a wave of his hand, the one in charge motioned her through and she walked across the deck. Several bodyguards stood behind the chair where Aunt Celestina was stretched out. Aunt Caterina was already coming toward her, so Mairi stopped and spread her arms wide.
“Hello, dearest Aun—” she began but the brutal slap across her face stopped the remainder of Mairi’s greeting. She froze where she stood, the sound of that slap still echoing across the ocean surrounding them.
“How hard is it,” Aunt Rina thundered at her, “to kill one man?”
“It depends on the man, don’t it, Auntie?” She smirked. “That Grigori Rasputin—they stabbed him . . . but it didn’t kill him. Fed him cyanide . . . still he kept going. Took three shots to take him down but only because they hit him in the right spot. If they hadn’t, he’d probably be runnin’ around Russia right now, givin’ that Putin a hard time. Which is what I told you about good ol’ Uncle Will, but you didn’t listen, did ya? Blow him up, ya said. Take out his sons, too, ya said. Didn’t listen to me and now . . . he knows you’re after him. They all do, and the MacKilligans won’t let you or me get near him again.”