But for eons, shifters had made one thing their focus: protecting their kind. Not just from one another—bears hated wolves; lions hated hyenas; tigers hated everybody—but from the dirty shit full-humans so often got up to with anything they considered “other.” Shifters kept their kind secret because they didn’t want to end up strapped to a lab table, about to be dissected. That was one of the reasons Dez had taken the job she currently had, because she wanted to help protect the most important things in her life: her husband and her son. Big-headed lazy bastards that she adored like the moon and stars.
And if protecting them meant closing down the entire Eastern Seaboard until the shifter-run federal agencies fixed the problem, she was okay with that.
“Are they all dead?” she asked her old partner, Lou “Crush” Crushek. A polar bear who looked like a giant old biker but who was really just an undercover cop who managed to terrify everyone around him simply by standing up. The man was nearly seven feet tall, with long white hair and muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. He was one of Dez’s best friends.
“The lions? Yeah,” he said. “They’re all dead.”
“No.” She motioned around the shipping container with a wave of her hand. “The badgers.”
Crush sort of snorted. “No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’? I’ve seen the casings. They used. 50-caliber ammo. Hollow points. And I’ve seen what the Desert Eagle can do. Are you telling me those badgers aren’t dead somewhere?”
“We don’t know where they are, but they definitely walked out of this shipping container.”
“And that’s not weird to you?”
“MacDermot, my wife is a tiger. I walk in sometimes and find her on our couch, in her cat form, with her legs up in all directions while she licks her own ass and watches a Rangers game on the TV. So what I consider weird may be vastly different from what you do.”
“Yeah.” Dez nodded. “I can see how it would be.”
*
The van didn’t go far before it stopped again and the doors opened. They’d reached a private airport; four running helicopters waited for them.
“Let’s go,” an older Latina badger ordered, her sleeveless T-shirt showing off powerful, tattooed shoulders and arms. “Head to the copters.”
Only Nelle moved forward, stepping down from the van in those ridiculous shoes she insisted on wearing. Who walked around a dock in six-inch designer heels except Nelle?
Towering over the Latina, Nelle said, “We’re not going anywhere until you tell us who you are and what you want.”
The She-badger stepped back, looking past the van.
“They’re being assholes!” she called out to someone.
“Maybe they’re just being cautious!”
“Okay. They’re being cautious assholes.”
Tock glanced at Shay and he muttered, “I’m not going anywhere without my kid.”
“What was that?” the Latina demanded, badger gaze locking on Shay.
“I’m not going anywhere without my daughter,” Shay announced, louder.
“Doesn’t she have a mother who can deal with her?”
Nelle quickly put her hand on Keane’s chest before he could launch himself at the badger.
“Her mother’s at football camp,” Shay said.
The Latina frowned. “On purpose?”
“I have to get my kid,” Shay insisted.
“You’re all covered in blood, the badgers have bullet holes all over, and you three cats are naked,” she added, pointing at Shay and his brothers.
“They didn’t have time to go back and get their clothes,” Nelle explained.
“So . . . what? You want us to run them home first to get their clothes and then get them out? We don’t have time for this.”
“Make time.”
“You don’t seem to understand the situation all of you are currently in.” An S-class Mercedes pulled in near the van and the Latina glanced at it before finishing with, “A situation that could get all of you put down like dogs with rabies.”
Nelle crossed her arms over her chest. “We were attacked. We were ambushed. For once, in fact, we did nothing wrong.”
The doors to the Mercedes opened and Charlie got out of the passenger side. Max jumped out of the van then, running into her sister’s open arms.
“Are you okay?” Charlie demanded. “Are you?”
“I’m fine.”
That’s when Charlie pulled away and slapped the back of her sister’s head.
“What did you do?” Charlie barked.
“Nothing! I swear!”
“Then it was Dad.” Charlie became somber. “We’ve gotta kill Dad.”
Max shrugged. “Okay.”
“It wasn’t Fred MacKilligan,” a dark-haired She-badger said as she closed the driver’s-side door and moved around the front of the Mercedes. “Although none of us are shocked you’d jump to that conclusion. I’ve never met a greater fuckup.”
“Oh, my God,” Tock heard from behind her. She glanced back at Mads. Her teammate had been sitting next to Finn with her head on his shoulder for almost the entire ride. But now, eyes wide as she reacted to the female speaking, Mads slowly got to her feet.
“What’s wrong?” Finn asked.
Mads didn’t answer, but instead asked, “Aunt Tracey?”
The She-badger grinned. “Hi, sweet girl.”
Mads bolted forward, pushing her way through everyone in the van until she could jump off the vehicle and right into the female’s arms.
Tock knew of Mads’s Aunt Tracey. The pair had stayed in communication through discreet emails over the years. That was all they could do because Mads’s bitch of a mother had made it very clear that if Tracey—or anyone in the Rutowski family—tried to have anything to do with Mads, she’d be killed. It was a threat they’d taken very seriously because they all knew that Mads’s mother was mean enough to do it, and her hyena clan would happily join in. It was too great a risk to hope someone in that clan would have a moral issue with killing a kid. So, the Rutowskis had stayed away. Until now. Until Mads was old enough and powerful enough to take not only her mother and grandmother down, but the entire clan. All with the help of football-playing lions who loved nothing more than destroying hyenas for shits and giggles.
Putting her arm around Mads’s shoulders, Tracey Rutowski turned her niece around to face their small group.
“Now, I know we need to go, but I just want to take a few seconds—”
“It’s always a few seconds with you, and then we’re running from the KGB,” one of the older She-badgers complained.
“Anyway . . . I want to introduce you, Mads, to my very best friends.” She pointed at the Latina. “This is Cecilia álvarez. We all call her CeCe. You might know her as C. E. álvarez.”
“The painter and sculptor?” Charlie asked.
“Yes.”
“Hey!” Max said, “I stole one of your paintings. Sold it to my fence for, like, a mil-five.”
Rutowski blinked. “Huh.” After a quick head shake, she motioned to the Asian She-badger with the partially shaved hair. She had lots of earrings on that side and several big scars on her neck. But the prettiest smile Tock had ever seen on a woman not selling toothpaste.
“This is Stephanie Yoon.”
“Just call me Steph.”
“Steph Yoon?” Tock asked. “The founder of Yoonotics? The company that created the killer robots and drones that turned on their human handlers?”
“That is an incorrect summation of what transpired and something I can’t talk about until the lawsuits are resolved. But yes . . . that’s me.”
“I bought a drone from your company and the first time I used it, it definitely attacked me.”