Until then, though, she could continue to watch out for the ego-driven little bastard she’d come to like so much.
“Morning,” Max said as she entered the kitchen. She’d showered and put on clothes but she was still half-asleep from what Charlie could tell. She poured herself a large mug of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Want a muffin?”
Max gestured to the dough Charlie was working. “What are you making?”
“Quick-rise cinnamon buns.”
“I’ll wait for one of those.”
“Cool. How’s your arm?”
“Fine. My knife wounds always heal faster than my gunshot wounds. Do you find that?”
“I try not to get shot too often.”
“Bitch.”
“Did you have a good time last night?”
Max’s head dropped. “Okay, I told this to Nelle and apparently, I’m going to have to tell you: we’re not doing this.”
“Not doing what?”
“Talking about me and Zé.”
“Awww. You’re shy about your love.”
“Oh, get a grip.”
Charlie began to sing, “Max has got a boyfriend. Max has got a boyfriend. He’s in a tree-ee, eatin’ mu-u-u-fins.”
“Seriously?”
* * *
Max didn’t appreciate her sister’s laughter when the coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.
“Are you done?” she demanded when the laughter-snorting began.
“Yes. I’m done. Sorry about that. I had a moment.”
Max ran her thumb along the rim of her coffee mug and asked something she’d just been thinking about. “What should I do about Mairi?”
“I thought you didn’t want to do anything.”
“I started thinking—”
“Uh-oh.”
“—she’ll probably try to get to me by hurting you and Stevie. Especially after what we talked about last night. I really fucked with her head.”
“Like mother, like daughter?”
“Something like that.”
“We can try to lure her to us.”
“Think that’ll work?”
“Maybe.”
“She did tell me she was going after Dad. That she had Uncle Will’s blessing to do it.”
Charlie was silent for a few moments.
“What?” Max asked.
“I’m trying to think about how I can use that to our advantage.”
Max sat up in her chair. “But what about Dad?”
The sisters stared at each other until they both exploded into laughter.
“You are too funny,” Charlie said when they finally stopped laughing.
“I know.” Max drank more coffee before asking, “So this new job of yours . . .”
“I haven’t officially signed up yet. It’s just a test job.”
“When is it?”
“I don’t want you coming.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“Max.”
“I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. I’m going. I will have your back. It’ll be like old times.”
“Old times. You mean a couple of weeks ago when we charged into that lab to get Stevie?”
“That, too. Anyway, I’m doing this. With you. Whether you like it or not.”
“Max—”
“If you say ‘no’ again, I’m unleashing my anal glands. Right here. While you’re making your cinnamon buns.”
“Come on, Max! You know that leaves a residue I can’t get off the furniture! Remember when we were living with the Pack? Pops never forgave—”
“Hey, hey, hey! That was because of that sneeze. When Stevie blew pepper in my face. I didn’t do that one on purpose.”
Charlie finished rolling her dough and cut the log into equally sized circles. She was putting them on a metal baking sheet when their front door slammed open. Max wondered if the Malones had returned but it was her teammates who busted into their kitchen.
They were all talking at once, trying to tell Max something. But she couldn’t understand a word. It was Charlie who silenced them with a barked “Shut up!”
They did, moving behind Max. That’s when she noticed that Mads wasn’t with them.
“What’s going on?” Charlie asked.
“It’s Mads,” Nelle said. “We all just got here to pick up Max for shootaround—”
“For what?”
“Informal practice before tonight’s playoff game. Anyway, we were just walking through your gate when Mads’s family showed up.”
Max put her coffee down. “All of them?”
“No. But a few of the stronger males.”
“We tried to intervene but things were about to get nasty and—”
“Yeah.” Max pushed away from the table. “I’ll deal with it.”
It was an old trick Mads’s Clan had learned when Max and her team were in junior high together. They didn’t try to fight Max and the others. They knew how dangerous that was because honey badgers didn’t back down. Even young ones. And each of them had a family or, at the very least, a Pack that wouldn’t let the hyenas get away with killing them outright. So they used a different, crueler tactic: They made Mads suffer for what her friends did. So, if the team tried to pull Mads away from her cousins to get her out of a bad situation, it was Mads who got the wounds. Who got the scars.
It was shitty but very hyena.
Of course, they were no longer in high school and Mads didn’t have to go anywhere with anyone if she didn’t want to.
When Max and her teammates made it outside, one of Mads’s male cousins was already pushing her into the back of a truck. It wasn’t that Mads couldn’t fight them, it was that she wouldn’t. To this day, she still felt like she owed these assholes.
Max, however, was about to show Mads that she didn’t owe them anything.
The teammates had almost reached the truck but the hyenas decided to meet them, their claws already unleashed as they came face-to-face . . . well . . . it was more like face-to-chest since most of them were several inches taller than the badgers. But that was okay. Her team knew how to take on bigger players.
Max reached under her shirt to get one of her blades but before it even cleared the holster, one of the hyenas went down. Then another. Both screaming from the pain in their legs. More of Mads’s hyena cousins jumped off the back of the truck but as they advanced, they went down one by one. Looking over her shoulder, Max saw her sister standing on the porch. She had a .9mm with a suppressor attached so the neighbors wouldn’t complain about the noise.
Charlie jumped over the railing with her hands wrapped around the gun, finger still on the trigger. As she moved closer, two more hyenas attacked . . . two more leg shots. Actually . . . knee shots. She shot them in the knees, ensuring they went down and stayed down at least for a couple of days. Knee damage wasn’t as easy to get over as a regular leg break.
Max’s teammates scrambled back, away from Charlie as she strode across the yard, then jumped over the fence to land next to the truck. She aimed her weapon at the skull of the last hyena standing. She walked him back until he couldn’t go any farther because of his vehicle, and pressed the weapon against his head.