Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)(3)

After the dinner and a few hours of TV, all five girls had gone to bed. Kerry had assumed that was it. They wouldn’t hear from the girls until morning. Or, if they were acting like normal teenagers, maybe they’d sneak out to smoke some weed or drink a beer or two. That was truly all he’d expected.

He now realized, though . . . he should have known better. Because, at the end of the day, Tock and all her friends weren’t like him and his siblings. Or Ayda and her family. They weren’t just honey badger shifters. They were honey badgers. In their hearts. In their blood. In their souls. They couldn’t switch off the honey badger inside them to easily assimilate with full-humans. Many other shifters didn’t even know their kind still existed.

Their families could blend into any gathering without trouble or concern. They could live for years . . . decades . . . among full-humans without a hint that, at a Sunday family meal, they all indulged in slabs of grilled cottonmouth snake in barbeque sauce along with poison-laced wines. But there were badgers that didn’t assimilate. They didn’t bother. Because they didn’t care. He now realized that was his daughter and her friends . . . these girls were true honey badgers. Mean, vicious, snarling honey badgers that no one should ever sneak up on. Or try to kill while they were having a sleepover at a friend’s house.

Too stunned to do anything to help his child, Kerry instead studied the men on the ground. He knew Chicago gangsters when he saw them. Gangsters who were in his house because his child had not stolen from some mall store. She’d plotted and planned and executed a heist from someone much more dangerous. Someone who’d send henchmen to get his stuff back from little girls, even if they had to kill everyone in the house to do so.

Kerry was awed. He bet the heist timing had been impeccable.

When it came to time, his daughter was always impeccable.

What foolish, foolish men these were. They thought nothing of sneaking into a suburban house in the middle of Wisconsin to get their boss’s stuff back. How hard could it be, they’d probably reasoned, grabbing jewels back from little girls?

But Tock and her friends . . . he almost laughed.

The girls were still dressed in their bedclothes for the overnight stay at the Lepstein-Jackson house. Tock in Kerry’s old college football jersey, even though she had no interest in the sport. Mads in her Chicago Bulls basketball tank that was so long it reached past her knees and had the name “Jordan” emblazoned on the back. Little Cass Gonzalez—whom the other girls now called “Streep” for her ability to cry on cue whenever she was accused of stealing something from the teachers’ lounge at their high school—wore a Hello Kitty nightshirt, Hello Kitty socks, and a Hello Kitty headband to hold back her long brown hair. Gong Zhao had on what Kerry could only call a silk negligee with matching silk robe cinched at the waist by a matching silk belt. It seemed a little mature for a girl barely seventeen, but Gong—nicknamed Nelle for some reason—never wore typical teen clothing. Everything in her wardrobe was designer, including what she was currently wearing. And why a seventeen-year-old had a Lacroix negligee and robe, Kerry really didn’t know. Max MacKilligan, smiling as always, had on a pair of running shorts and a cut-off T-shirt with the singer Pink on the front.

There were, however, some additions to their sleep outfits that hadn’t been there before they’d headed off to bed.

Like gold and platinum necklaces inlaid with diamonds. Ruby and emerald rings on their fingers. Thick platinum bracelets on their wrists and—for the smaller ones—around their biceps. And at least two wore tiaras that he was almost positive once belonged to a European royal family.

“Is that one of the Dutch royal jewels?” his wife asked, her voice filled with awe as she gestured to Gong’s neck.

“Yeah. I think so.” Whatever place they’d broken into was probably a regular jewelry store for the world to see but, underneath or on another floor, laundered stolen jewelry for high bidders. That’s what his kid had gone after.

Kerry didn’t know which confused and concerned him more: how his daughter and her friends had found out about this place in Chicago, or how the people in Chicago had found out about his daughter and her friends so quickly. No one, absolutely no one, would expect a bunch of teen girls to break into a place like that. A smash-and-grab, maybe, but a planned assault in the middle of the night with no alarms going off and no cops arriving until the manager came in the next morning to open up? That was a job for old-timers who had been jewelry thieves for decades. That one last job before retirement. Not a starter job for five girls who were still in high school.

Tock signaled to the girls and they began to move. Kerry was only able to glance quickly at an equally shocked Ayda. The seventeen-year-olds had hand signals to communicate silently, as if they were combat trained. They didn’t do that sort of thing on the court. They yelled at one another when they wanted to make a certain move during a game. But when they had bodies to deal with in the middle of the night . . .

Kerry gave a short shake of his head. He knew his girl was special but damn!

Cass grabbed an arm and was about to start dragging a body away when her gaze locked on Kerry and Ayda. She let out a strange little “eep” that they could easily hear despite the glass doors.

“What?” Mads whispered.

Cass simply motioned to Kerry and Ayda with a jerk of her chin and all the girls faced them. Stared. Their eyes glinting in the darkness like any other night-seeing animal.