Charlie had always known of Tracey Rutowski. Not only as Mads’s aunt, but also as a very important art dealer. Her company had galleries all over the world, and she’d helped bring up some of the most important artists of the last thirty years. Many of them people of color. Rutowski was also feared. Stealing from her gallery was not a wise move. Every honey badger avoided it. Full-human thieves eventually learned to avoid any gallery or show the female was involved in.
Still, this mansion didn’t just imply a successful business. It implied old money. And Tracey Rutowski was definitely new money.
Even stranger, the entire mansion reeked of badger and . . . wolf?
“Did you know your nose was a little . . .” Steph Yoon lifted her hands and moved them around her face without touching it, indicating that the pain Charlie had been feeling was from a busted nose. Again.
“I did not.”
“Want me to try and—”
“Max,” Charlie called out.
Her sister appeared at her side, turned Charlie to face her, put her hands on her face, and roughly twisted her nose around with strong fingers until it was back in place enough to heal on its own.
Charlie took in a deep breath. She never breathed better than after she got her nose broken and repaired. But it wouldn’t last. In a few hours, her allergies would be irritating her once again. For now, though, that wolf smell came through even stronger.
“Thanks,” she said to her sister.
“The Malone girl—”
“Nat.”
“—is on her way with those bears,” Yoon told her. “Will be here in a little while.”
“Great.”
“And we’re working on getting Stevie out of her lab.” She glanced at her phone. “She’s not making it easy, though.”
“Let her bring some of her lab stuff with her. She’s working on a problem, and she hates being interrupted.”
“Right. Okay.” She texted someone before asking, “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“I would love some water. And something for a headache.”
“Oh, sure. This way.”
Yoon walked away and Charlie started to follow, but she immediately stopped and spun around. Max and her friends all froze. They hadn’t actually been doing anything, but Charlie wanted to make sure they didn’t start doing anything. Not until she knew exactly what was going on.
Charlie pointed her finger. Mostly at Max, but she made sure to make eye contact with the other two. Tock was off with the Malone brother and Streep had been put into a bed with a doctor and nurse to care for her.
“While we’re here,” she announced to the women, “there will be no stealing, no lying, no setting anything on fire. No parties, no ambushes, no casual get-togethers that turn into riots.” She started to turn away, but stopped again and quickly added, “You will also not gnaw on the furniture, claw your way into any crawl spaces, or chew through any wiring.”
“Are they racoons?” Yoon asked.
“Sometimes.”
With one more glare at her sister and her friends, Charlie followed Yoon from the room.
*
“If we can’t gnaw on furniture, what are we supposed to do?” Nelle asked. Only half joking, Max guessed. The woman did like to gnaw.
“A place like this must have a basketball court somewhere on it.”
“We are not going to practice, Mads.” Max looked up at the walls. So much expensive artwork and she couldn’t touch any of it without her sister kicking her ass.
“You’re practically drooling,” Nelle told her.
“Dude,” Max sighed, staring up at the large wall beside the stairs, “that’s a real Chagall.”
“They’ll definitely notice if that one goes missing.”
Mads joined them. “If we’re not going to practice—”
“Oh, my God, seriously?”
“—we should check on Streep.”
Nelle nodded. “Good idea . . . Max? What’s wrong?”
“I feel like we’ve forgotten something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But something.”
*
“Think we should be worried?” Kyle Jean-Louis Parker asked the male sitting across from him at the kitchen table.
“Worried?” Dutch Alexander was a wolverine who called himself Max MacKilligan’s “best friend.” It seemed, though, to Kyle, that he was more of “just a friend” to the honey badger as she spent more time with the She-badgers on her basketball team than she ever did with Dutch. “Worried about what?”
“No one is here. And those three bears from across the street hustled Nat out of the house about an hour ago. Without saying a word to us.” Kyle looked down at the sleeping dog in his lap that Charlie had recently rescued. As a jackal, he had a soft spot for some canines. And after spending most of the night in the vet ER with this guy while he got his ear repaired, Kyle had grown a little attached. Not that it would last. He was an artist with no time for true connections beyond the connection to his work. But since he was just sitting here and the dog had crawled right into his lap, looking for affection, he didn’t have the heart to toss him off. Seemed unnecessarily cruel. Even for him. “It just seems like something is going on and we’ve been . . . I don’t know . . . forgotten.”
“No way. If something was up, Max would definitely let me know.”
*
Max racked her brain for a good minute or so, but nope! She couldn’t think of anything she might be forgetting.
With a shrug, she started walking up the big staircase to the second floor, her teammates right behind her. “Let’s go check on Streep.”
*
Charlie looked around and sighed, “This kitchen is . . . amazing.”
Rutowski smirked. “My husband likes to cook.”
“I could get so much baking done in this kitchen.” The big room had giant glass doors that let in bright sunshine and looking out over a perfect lawn. It spoke to her on so many levels. How could it not? With four stainless steel double ovens, six gas stoves, four refrigerators, and two freezers that could easily hold several zebra carcasses in each, marble floors and counters, Italian tile, and all the equipment she could ever need or use, she’d never been so envious in her life. “I’d have bears lined up around the block. That could be bad, though. They start going through your trash. Looking for the honey buns you burned.”
“Bears,” Rutowski chuckled. “They’ll eat anything.” She gestured to a plate covered in a glass dome. “Arizona bark scorpion?”
Charlie couldn’t help but curl her lip a little, unable to hide her disgust. “No, thanks. Max and her friends will like that, though. Although you may want to keep anything that squirms or scuttles or slithers out of sight once Stevie gets here. Or the screaming will start, and it will never stop.”
“Good to know.” She gave a vague gesture. “Your head feeling any better?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need anything else? You seem a little anxious.”
“Me? No. I’m fine. I’m fine!”
Rutowski placed her hands over Charlie’s, and Charlie realized that all ten of her fingers were tapping incessantly against the marble counter.