chapter TWENTY-ONE

chapter TWENTY-ONEShay studied Max MacKilligan for several seconds before asking what they were all thinking. “How do you not know your own uncle has a PhD in zoology? And is currently in charge of a well-known zoo? With his specialty being gorillas?”“I don’t know,” Max replied.“Uh-huh.”“I guess he never told me. He was one of the few Yang members who actually spoke to me. He’d write me letters. Some came from Africa.”“Did the letters include pictures of him with gorillas?”She blinked. “Sometimes.”“You didn’t think that was weird? Your honey badger uncle just hanging around a bunch of gorillas?”“Well, when you put it that way . . .”“I’m just pissed this uncle was only ten miles away from the first goddamn uncle,” Keane growled.Mads couldn’t be angry at Max about anything, though. She was just glad to be back in the States. All that flying around and bouncing from country to country had made her homesick. Surprising since she’d never felt as if she’d had a home. Now, though, she had her own house. That was a start to a home. But first she had to be there longer than a day or two.They were all waiting in the Africa section of the New Jersey zoo that Max’s Uncle Russ ran. It supposedly had an excellent breeding and rehabilitation program.“How are you holding up?” Finn asked Mads as she gazed into the hyena exhibit. He’d eased up behind her, and she’d never heard a sound. Despite her honey badger hearing.“I’m doing pretty good. You know, before we went—”“On Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride?”She laughed and pressed her shoulder against his. “When you get in the middle of a small war, it is a bit of a wild ride. Anyway, I talked to Charlie before we left. Told her about my family coming after me.”“And she said you should handle them the way she handled your grandmother back in junior high?”Mads turned, resting her elbow on the exhibit railing. “How did you know that?”“She managed to keep Max MacKilligan out of prison and out of the morgue for years. There’s only one way to do that. By taking no prisoners. Which seems very Viking to me.”“It is very Viking. Although my people did take prisoners so they could sell them as slaves, but I don’t like to talk about that.”“That’s probably for the best, considering the diaspora that is your friend group. Do you have any ideas on how you’re going to stomp your family into the ground?”“It’s not just the family, though. It’s the entire Clan. And whatever I do, it’ll have to be right the first time.”* * *Russ Yang, PhD, ordered them into his tiny office with the brusque manner of a Marine sergeant.“You’re sure your mother didn’t send you?” he asked Max.“I am not answering this question again.”“Fine. I’m trusting you, Max. Don’t let me down.” He looked over at Finn and his brothers, and Finn saw a small smile turn up the corner of his lips. “Damn, you boys are built just like him. But you all have your mother’s face. How’s she doing?”“Well,” Keane replied. “But she also wants to know who killed our father.”“I’m not surprised she doesn’t know. Your mother didn’t know half of what your father did.”“Because he was cheating on her?” Finn asked.“Your father?” Yang shook his head. “Never. He just wasn’t exactly what he said he was. A part of himself he couldn’t reveal. For her safety. For yours. I only knew because of the people we had to deal with from time to time in the Middle East and Africa.”“Are you saying our father was a poacher?” Shay demanded, his voice filled with disgust.“Oh, no! Absolutely not. Your father worked for the CIA. He was a spy.”* * *It was the blank stares on the Malone brothers’ faces. The way they simply stood there, staring at Max’s uncle. She’d never seen cats so confused before.Finally, it was Keane who roughly asked, “What the fuck are you talking about?”“It’s true. He was in the CIA. Not even the shifter division of the CIA but the full-human, uptight CIA. Recruited straight out of high school. I don’t think even his siblings knew.”“How did you know?” Finn asked.“There was a bit of a dustup in the Congo. I found him half-dead in a river. Dragged him out. Realized what he was and took him to safety.”“Which was with the gorillas?” Mads guessed.“Exactly. We kept him safe until he’d gone through his fever and his body mostly healed. When it was time to get him out of there, I couldn’t find any Americans to help, but there were a few Mossad in the area handling something else.” Yang suddenly looked at Tock and smirked. “When you get a chance, tell your grandmother I said hi.”Finn looked back and forth between Yang and Tock. “Her grandmother knew my father?”“Spies always know spies. But whether she knows who killed your father . . .” He shrugged. “That’s the thing.”“What is?”“I don’t know if his death had to do with a specific job. You know, a spy-versus-spy incident. That they would have wrapped up nice and neat in a bullshit story that would have most likely satisfied you boys and your mother. When that didn’t happen . . .” He let out a breath. “He’d contacted me a few weeks before it happened. Left me a message. Said he needed to talk. But I was on a book tour, raising money for the zoo and the gorillas. By the time I was back in the country and able to meet with him . . . he was . . . dead.”Yang walked around his desk and briefly looked out the extremely tiny window that let only the barest amount of light into the room before facing the Malone brothers again. “I will say this. His three sons agonizing over his death is not what he would have wanted for any of you. He loved you kids. All of you. And he never would have wanted you to put yourselves at risk. I say that because I know he would have wanted me to say that. I also know that he was the most vengeful motherfucker I’d ever had the deep displeasure of knowing,” he added with a grin. “The ones who’d nearly killed him in the Congo? Not one of them existed longer than a month after he’d made it out. He hunted down each and every one and made them pay by fang and claw, because guns and bombs just weren’t good enough for him when it came to revenge.”“It’s over too fast,” Keane said.Yang’s eyes lit up when Keane muttered those words and his grin grew impossibly wide. Mads knew the zoologist had heard them before from Keane’s father. More than once.“Absolutely nothing terrified your father’s enemies more than when they’d really pissed him off. Because he didn’t stop. He never stopped. And looking at you three—all I see is the tribal version of that rage. Genghis Khan riding across the steppes.”“Our mother’s tribe existed long before Genghis’s people were even born, and my mother’s people exist still,” Keane told Russ Yang. “And you’re right. We won’t stop. We’ll never stop. Until we strip the flesh from the bones of whoever killed our father.”* * *Without a word being spoken among the entire group, they got back into the two SUVs they’d taken to Jersey and headed back to New York. But they didn’t go to Finn’s house. In silent agreement, they went to Queens and Mads’s house.When they parked on the street in front of her home, everyone got out. Still silent. But Keane didn’t make it past the hood of the rented SUV he’d picked up while his was in the shop. He simply stopped and dropped his arm on the hood and his head on his forearm.Streep immediately went to him, gently rubbing his back.“Oh, sweetie, don’t cry,” she sweetly soothed.Keane lifted his massive head, eyes dangerously narrowed, and snarled, “I am not crying. And get off me!”“I don’t know why I bother with any of you!” she snapped, stepping away.“I’m just so tired,” Keane said, his head resting again on his forearm. “Part of me was hoping we’d know enough by now for me to go out, kill the guy, and go home to sleep. That was literally my whole plan for the next twenty-four hours. But instead, we learned that Dad was—”“CIA.” Finn leaned against Keane’s SUV. “I can’t believe Dad was in the CIA.”“Why is that so unbelievable?” Streep asked.“Because he was a Malone,” Finn and his brothers said together.“Everything is for the family,” Keane explained. “That’s how we were raised. That’s why we felt so betrayed when they did nothing after Dad was killed.”“I hate saying this,” Tock weakly suggested, “but you may have to talk to someone in the government about—”Finn felt bad because they wouldn’t even let her finish her sentence. They started loudly groaning at the mere thought of trying to get any information about anything from the government.“I am still trying to get a new trash can for the house,” Finn told her.“That’s local government.”“You act like federal government is better.”“No, but if you can talk to the shifter divisions of the CIA—”“But Dad was in with the full-humans.”“That doesn’t mean our kind didn’t know what was going on with him. My grandmother always knows where all her people are—shifter and non.”“You could also talk to your connections,” Shay said, gazing down at Tock.“That’s not a good idea.”“Why not?”“You do not want my grandmother involved in this. At all.”“So you’re afraid of your grandmother?” Shay pushed.“No. But you should be.”“Can I make a suggestion?” Nelle offered as she hopped over to Keane and leaned against his back so she could remove one of her high heels and shake it out.“What are you doing?” he demanded, trying to look over his shoulder to observe.“I have something in my shoe.”“You couldn’t lean against the car?”“You were right here. And stop complaining! There are men who’d kill for me to do to them what I’m currently doing to you.”“What men? I want names.”“What’s your suggestion, Nelle?” Mads asked.“You guys take a break. Not a long one,” she quickly added when they opened their mouths to instantly disagree. “Just a couple of days. To sleep. Play your football. You all seem to like that. Anything that will allow your brains to reset.”Finn gazed at Keane. “She’s not wrong.”“Of course I’m not wrong. When am I ever wrong?”“When you bought me pink Hanes For Her,” Mads tossed in. “I only wear black.”“And when Mads needs a break,” Nelle continued with a smile, “she enjoys being ungrateful.”“That’s a nice idea and all,” Keane grumbled, “but I don’t know what you think would actually distract us from the murder of our father.”“Hey, Mads,” Streep said, pointing out to the street. “Isn’t that your pet coyote?”“He’s not my pet.”“Yes, he is,” Finn muttered.It took a second for the coyote to pass the SUV so they could all see him. But once he did, they noticed that he had something long and cumbersome hanging from both sides of his mouth.“What is he holding?” Keane asked.“Huh,” Mads said before replying, “that is a hyena leg. The coyote is holding a hyena leg.”“From a recently killed hyena,” Tock added.Shay went out into the street and looked for a blood trail. He found it and began to follow, with the rest of them trooping behind.They made a left at the corner and kept going until Max said, “This is cat terri—”Which was all she got out before a lion roar exploded around them, warning them off.“How do they get away with that?” Tock wanted to know. “There are full-human streets and businesses all around here!”Male lions seemed to come from every house, every yard. And they were not happy to have honey badgers in their territory. Not happy at all.“You need to go.”“What did I do?” Max demanded when it seemed to dawn on her that the lions were speaking to no one but her.“Where’s my father’s watch?”“I know you stole my car!”“I had ten thousand dollars in that bedroom safe!”“Hey, hey, hey!” Max said, palms out to placate. She waited a moment before she added, “You don’t know any of that was me.”One of the lions unleashed a mini-roar and big fangs sprang forward, but Finn stepped between them, pushing his fellow cat back.“That’s not going to happen,” Finn warned.“Why? What are you three going to do?”Finn told him honestly. “Tear your throat out.”“Okay.” Mads quickly pushed herself between the males. “Before this gets out of hand, I have one simple question and then we’re gone: Did you guys happen to see a hyena hanging around here?”The lions looked her over, and one asked, “Are you a cop?”“I play basketball.”Another male snapped his fingers. “Wisconsin Butchers! You guys just won the playoffs!”“Yeah!”“Would you sign my ball?”“Hey!” Finn barked.“He means his basketball.”“I know. I still don’t like it.”“And in answer to your question,” said a lion male with lots of black hair in his mane, “yeah. We saw six hyenas hanging around. We could smell ’em. We tracked them down to the bears’ street, but we don’t like them being that close to our cubs. So we went after them.”“And?”He glanced at the others and, after most shrugged, replied, “Five got away, the sixth . . . did not.”“Do you still have the body?”“It’s being cremated. There’s really no way to adequately explain how a hyena got its throat ripped out on your property. Not even to New York cops. Although some street coyote did get a bit of the body before we could get it in the back of Clem’s car.”“Keep anything from it?” When his eyes narrowed with distrust, Mads again said, “I play basketball.”“Right.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet, handing it to Mads. She immediately yanked out the driver’s license.“Wisconsin ID.” She looked at Finn. “My mother sent scouts. To my house.”“You’re not hyena,” the lion noted.“It’s a long story.”“Which I think it’s about time you filled us in on,” Tock said.“Yeah,” a young lion male agreed. “It’s time to tell us what’s going on.”With his fangs out, Shay snarled, “She’s not talking to you!”“Well, you don’t have to be rude about it!”* * *It was not a long story to tell, since everyone knew bits and pieces anyway. But once Mads was done, she felt better. Although she did have to take the sword away from Max because she nearly took Keane’s head off when she kept swinging it around.“What do you want to do?” Tock asked, while sitting on Mads’s floor and attempting to wrestle the hyena leg from the coyote.“I want to forget my mother and grandmother exist, but that’s not possible because they won’t leave me alone. And just give him that leg so he can bury it under the house, Tock!”“You could send the sword back,” Streep reasoned. “But, honestly, I still think they’d come after you.”“I know,” Mads said, watching the coyote run away with his prize. “I just don’t understand why.”“You represent what they will never be,” Nelle explained. “They are hyena. Down to their core. Although they do lack the intelligence I’ve seen in most hyenas. Your great-grandmother, however, was Viking. You are Viking. And the Galendotter Clan in Norway is Viking. Being able to shift into hyena is simply another weapon for you. Like having a sword or an axe. As long as you live and breathe, you are a threat to your mother and grandmother because you are more fit to rule the American Clan than they are.”“I don’t want to rule the Clan. I don’t want to rule the family. I don’t need them. I got you guys. They don’t have my back.”“Because to Tova you’re not hyena. But to Solveig, you didn’t need to be. You were badger, but more important, you were Viking. That’s all those Norwegians care about.”“You already have a plan,” Finn prompted. “Don’t you?”Mads shook her head. “It’s too . . . it’s crazy. It’s like a Max plan.”Max frowned. “What’s that mean?”“That’s what you need right now,” Tock said. “Something so ridiculous and insane that no one in their right mind would ever think of it or do it. A Max plan.”“Hey!” Max complained. “I’m getting insulted.”“No, you’re not,” Tock told her.Max grinned. “Nah. I’m not.”Mads looked at the Malone brothers. “I’ll need your help. All of you.”“Who do you want us to kill?” Keane asked. “I’d prefer not to kill the old lady, though.”“No, no, no.” Mads shook her head. “Not exactly that. I need your connections.”“Oh, God,” Shay groaned. “You need the rest of the Malones, don’t you?”“Actually, the last thing I want or need for this . . . are tigers.”