“So, you’re saying . . . your people are in our government.”
“We’re in all governments. We have to be. How else do you think we protect our kind?”
“How high up . . . ?”
“As high as we can get.” His eyes narrowed and she guessed what he was thinking. “Hello? Teddy Roosevelt?” His eyes narrowed even more. “The Teddy Roosevelt?” His lips pursed in disbelief. “Oh, come on! The Teddy Bear? In fact . . . Eleanor Roosevelt was one of us, too, but not FDR.”
“And how did that happen?”
“Bloodlines. He was a distant cousin of Teddy’s. Like a fifth cousin or something. And it’s MacKilligan lore that our family is very distantly connected to—”
“Braveheart or Robert the Bruce?” he asked, now sounding bored and unimpressed.
“Neither. Those two were full-human. I’m talking about the Black Douglas. Distantly, of course. Because we’re honey badgers and the Black Douglas was a wolf.”
“Okay,” he said, slapping his hands against his thighs. “We’re done. I can’t hear any more of this craziness. I just can’t. I’m not a cat. You’re not a badger—and why anyone would want to be that, I do not know—”
“We’re hard to kill, that’s why.”
He sighed and then went on. “And I just can’t do this anymore. Plus, I can’t stop thinking about who can fit this goddamn sneaker!” he said, reaching down and retrieving one of the triplets’ shoes from next to the couch. The boys tended to leave their shit everywhere, while their sister was much tidier.
“So, what I’m going to do,” he said, standing up, “is get a shirt, borrow your cell phone to call a car, and get back to my non-crazy life.”
She could tell he meant it, too. He was going to push everything he’d experienced in the last twenty-four hours from his mind as only a cat could. Because when cats didn’t like something, they simply pretended it didn’t exist. And that’s what he was going to do. Pretend that she didn’t exist, her sisters didn’t exist, and that none of this had ever happened.
But as always in the world of shifters . . . the bears came in and fucked all that shit up.
It was kind of cute, too. The Dunn triplets did it sometimes, when they thought no one was looking. In their grizzly forms, they marched through the house humming “The Bare Necessities” from that old Disney movie.
The three of them, in a line, lumbered through the living room with their big grizzly heads swinging, all three thousand pounds marching along . . . and humming.
Humming “The Bare Necessities” song.
Vargas watched them go by in silence. When they’d made it out of the room, Max expected him to grab the phone she had in the pocket of her basketball shorts but he just . . . walked out. Not out of the house, but upstairs. She could hear his bare feet slowly slapping against each step.
A few seconds later, a calm but concerned Stevie returned to the living room and pointed in the direction of the stairs. Her furrowed brow silently asked Max what had happened.
And all Max could do was cringe. “I think I broke him.”
chapter FOUR
She noticed the Mercedes idling in the middle of the road outside the church. She didn’t approach the vehicle, simply watched. Hoped that no one inside had spotted her near this tree. She’d been planning to sleep for a few hours but if she were noticed . . .
But no one stepped out of the car. The driver didn’t do anything but sit there. He was waiting for someone; she just didn’t know who. She could only hope that whoever was coming wouldn’t be a problem. That they wouldn’t notice her.
She’d been on her own for a couple of years now, since she’d run away from the orphanage. She did better on her own as long as she stayed away from the city and lived in the woods. She loved the woods. Felt at home. For once. But, like the animals she befriended and that befriended her, she knew to stay away from men. There were men in the woods, sometimes, but she knew how to climb. Knew how to blend into her surroundings. Knew how to disappear if she had to. Just like the foxes and wolves that roamed the forests she lived in.
She didn’t move, not even to pull the hood of her coat over her head. Simply watched and waited.
It was a few feet to her left that she heard it. Something coming up from the ground. Scratching at the earth beneath. It took some time for the thing to dig its way through but it finally broke to the surface.
She almost gasped, but slapped a hand over her mouth before she released the sound.
A human hand with a claw on each finger punched its way through the last bit of dirt and forest debris. A few seconds later another hand came through. Arms stretched out and the hands landed hard on the earth nearby. With a grunt, a human pulled itself free. And did it with ease. The struggle was minor, the body wiggling free until a woman stood in the forest. She did an all-over shake that got most of the dirt off her and ran her hands through her short hair. She wiped her face with human fingers, the claws gone. She used those same hands to brush off her clothes before heading toward the car.
When she got close to the vehicle, the trunk was remotely opened and another woman came out from the driver’s side. This one was meticulously dressed in a black suit and high-heeled shoes. The women stopped long enough to stare at each other and then the driver pointed at the trunk.
Clothes were quickly changed, the old ones tossed into the forest. Then, in new jeans and a black T-shirt, the digger threw herself into the other’s arms.
“Are you all right?” the driver finally asked in English. Her accent . . . it was American. Easy to identify because she’d watched a lot of TV in the orphanage and had seen many American TV shows.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” The digger stepped away from the other. The digger also spoke American English. “They kept me separated from the others and mostly shackled. For their own protection, they said.” She shrugged. “The guards kept disappearing. I’m not sure how that happened and neither were they.”
The driver laughed. “I see you haven’t changed.”
“Why would I? Prison is easy once you figure out who the players are . . . and kill them.”
The driver nodded toward the car. “We don’t have much time before they come after you.”
The digger snorted. “I doubt they’ll come after me. As long as I stay out of Bulgaria, I’m sure they’ll be glad to see the back of me. Besides . . . I’ve got something to fix. I can’t let anyone get in the way of that.”
“The aunts don’t understand why we didn’t do this sooner.”
“She was safe when I was in. So it was worth staying. But now . . . now he’s got a three-million bounty on her head. I either stop him or he gets her. I’m not going to let him get her.”
“Even with all those MacKilligan resources, Max couldn’t find him. What makes you think that you can?”
“Because I’ve fucked him,” she said matter-of-factly.
“That doesn’t mean you know him better than anyone else.”
“I know him well enough. I’ll find him.”
“Then let’s get you home.” The driver placed her hand behind the other’s head and pulled her close until their foreheads touched. They stayed like that for a long but powerful moment.