“Yes,” Nelle agreed. “Why wouldn’t just you die? You should be the only one who dies.”
“Because she’s crazy.”
“Are you lying?” Tock asked. “I sense you lie a lot.”
“Of course I lie a lot. That’s how I survive. By lying.”
“To your sister?”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “And to the government.”
Mads frowned. “Why are you lying to the government? You’re thirteen.”
“You certainly ask a lot of questions.”
“Actually, I don’t. But what I do know is that I don’t care what you guys do. I’m going to be at the tryouts today and I’m going to get on the school team. Because I’m going to be in the WNBA.”
“What’s the WNBA?” Cass asked.
Mads started walking away. “It’s sad you have a vagina.”
“So I’m not getting points for remembering LaBronnie James?” Max demanded.
Mads spun around and yelled in Max’s face, “It’s LeBron!” Of course, the kid didn’t even blink. “His name’s LeBron James. Not LaBronnie! How did you even know about him anyway? I mean, he’s blowing up the NBA, but you are clearly not a fan. I mean, you called it the basketball and couldn’t even pull Michael Jordan’s name out of your ass and everyone on earth knows him.”
“Oh, I needed some extra cash last week and I saw this kid walking around with these brand-new sneakers that I knew I could sell for a really high price. So first, I asked him about them and he bragged they were LaBronn—” She briefly paused when Mads growled and self-corrected. “LeBron James’s newest shoes or whatever. So when he separated from his friends, I tackled him, dragged him into the bushes, beat him up, and stole his shoes.”
Horrified, Mads gasped. “You what?”
“I needed the money!”
“So you had to beat up a child?”
“He wasn’t a child. He was, like, seventeen. And I had to bail my father out of jail again, but you can’t tell Charlie because if she finds out, she’s gonna lose it. Again. But Stevie was hysterical. She knew that if Charlie found out Dad was in jail again, she was going to have him killed while he was stuck there.”
Tock folded her arms over her chest. “Your sister would have your father killed while he’s in jail?”
“She’s been a little angry since she discovered Dad used our Social Security numbers to not only steal our identities but also for some long con he was working that eventually and typically blew up in his face.”
“Is that why he was in jail?”
“Oh, no. He was in jail because he stole a car with a baby in it, which just happened to belong to the mayor of some little town. Both the car and the baby, unfortunately. Honestly, it’s just another day with my dad and normally I wouldn’t care. I’d leave him there to rot in prison or I’d happily help Charlie hire a dude to hang him from the bars. Either of those options would work for me. But Stevie got really hysterical and when Stevie gets hysterical, Charlie starts freaking out, and when she starts freaking out—”
“Okay, okay.” Mads held her hands up, palms out. Essentially giving up. “Forget I asked.”
“Look, you guys don’t owe me anything. But if you come to the tryout this morning—”
“Afternoon.”
“Whatever. She just has to see me line up and, I don’t know, dribble a ball or something. If she can see me doing something normal, for once, it might actually get Charlie off my back so I can get through the next few days . . .”
“Until you break out the poisonous snakes?” Mads joked.
And that big grin returned. “I did find a couple of timber rattlers on Pack property. If you guys are interested, you can join me for some fine honey badger dining.”
“They’ve probably slithered off by now,” Tock warned her.
“No. They’re in a duffel bag under my bed.”
Max headed off down the street until she seemed to realize that the rest of them weren’t right behind her. That’s when she stopped and turned to find them all watching her aghast that she’d left a bag of poisonous snakes under a bed in a wolf-pack house. Throwing her arms out at her sides, she asked, “What now?”
chapter ONE
Fourteen years later . . .
The paws landed on her, hitting her upper chest. The legs they were attached to wrapped around her, and a thousand pounds of Siberian tiger flipped her over and took her to the ground.
She’d have been angry and put up a fight if machine-gun fire hadn’t lit up the sky moments later, bullets tearing across the ground inches from where they’d landed. The tiger rolled them away from the danger but the bullets came closer.
The cat pulled her in tight and used his thousand-pound body to shield her.
For a brief, panicky moment, Mads almost giggled. Because she felt like she was being shielded by a giant stuffed toy.
Refusing to become a giggling psychotic, Mads pulled herself out of his arms and climbed his body until she could look over his shoulder. She was a nocturnal shifter and she could see deep into the darkness. She caught sight of a good target and resting her bullpup assault rifle against the black-and-white fur—where was the orange?—she took aim with her weapon and opened fire. Her rifle made little noise because her team always used suppressors. They were supposed to get in and out without being seen, but that hadn’t happened today.
Because, Mads now realized, they’d been expected.
How the big cat figured into this, she had no clue and absolutely no time to consider.
She sought out another target and opened fire again. She heard her team also returning fire, as well as the tongue clicks and tiny throat growls that told her they were alive and well. It didn’t mean they hadn’t been shot, just that they were going strong. She wasn’t too worried. Honey badgers were hard to kill.
Just as she had that thought, though, something small and metal landed a few feet away from her and the cat. Mads had only a brief second to wonder what it was before her teammate Tock charged past her, grabbed her arm and yanked her up. As she moved, she screamed out, “Five! Four!”
Tock was counting down. It was never good when Tock was counting down. She’d gotten her nickname because of her obsession with time. A “nightmarish gift” Tock’s father always joked, which had made itself evident when she was still in the “goo-goo, gaa-gaa” phase of babyhood.
But organizing everyone’s time wasn’t Tock’s only area of expertise. She also had a gift for explosive devices. She knew them all. From the lowest kind, made in some mad bomber’s basement, to the kind developed by an entire array of scientists run by a government entity. And because Tock was a true info junky, she didn’t just know how to build, detonate, and disarm the world’s explosives, she’d also forced herself to learn the damage those bombs did. She wanted to understand so she never used them lightly. She never used them just because a boyfriend broke up with her or some cheerleader made her cry.
Which meant that when Tock began counting down out of nowhere, it was for one reason and one reason only.