Hot and Badgered

  “A local would be—owwww!”

  “Do not be big baby cub,” she ordered while she began digging in his flesh with sterilized metal instruments.

  Berg was gritting his teeth as she worked, waiting for this to be over, when the exam room door flew open.

  “What are you doing to my brother?” a female version of himself demanded. “I could hear him whimpering outside!”

  “Helping his big, dumb bear ass,” the doctor replied before she glanced back . . . and up. Her hands froze, and a small growl came from the back of her throat.

  “This is my sister. Britta.” Berg explained, knowing his sister’s size alone was making the cheetah nervous. Female grizzlies were the most feared among the shifters. Not only were they psychotically protective of those they considered family—blood or otherwise—they were, like the males, easily startled. One wrong move could lose a shifter an arm. Or a whole head. “And my sister is going to be calm now. Calm, because I’m fine.”

  The doctor seemed to accept that until a male mirror image of Berg also walked into the room and, after slamming the door, glared around without saying a word.

  Berg sighed. “And that’s my brother. Dag. We’re triplets.”

  “Your poor mother.” The doctor motioned to the far side of the room. “You two, over there.”

  Britta angrily snapped, “You don’t order me aro—”

  “Britta . . . please?” Berg nearly begged. “Instruments digging into my chest. Think about that a moment before you say anything else.”

  With a nod, Britta immediately moved to the corner of the room, but Dag—oblivious as always—leaned in and watched the doctor trying to dig out that bullet.

  Berg knew his brother was just curious. He’d always been fascinated by medical procedures. But that didn’t mean the cheetah would understand. In fact, she was starting to sweat a little. And the room was cool.

  But before Berg could warn his brother off with a growl, Britta came back and grabbed Dag’s arm, yanking him over to the corner.

  Could a cheetah take out three bears? With thumbs, access to lethal surgical supplies, medical training, and blinding speed . . . there was a definite chance. And why risk it when she was, in her own catlike way, trying to help?

  “You know what’s happening right now, don’t you?” Britta asked from the corner. “Coop’s sister is getting a private jet to come over here.”

  “Coop said that might happen.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll handle her,” Britta promised. She suddenly pointed at Berg. “When the cat is done—”

  “I have name, big-bottom bear.”

  “—you and Dag will need to get Coop to Rome, then back to the States.”

  “Coop’s still doing that concert?”

  “There are some people you don’t cancel on. The Pope is definitely one of them. But the remainder of the shows are going to have to be canceled.”

  Berg cringed. And not just from pain. “That’s not good.”

  “It’s not that bad. There are only two more after Vatican City,” Britta reminded him.

  “Yeah,” Berg sighed. “But those two shows are in Russia. Those Kamchatka bears are gonna bitch if we cancel. They do love their Jean-Louis Parker.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Britta said, her head down as she was busy texting on her phone. “Coop says he’ll add St. Petersburg and some city in Siberia and that should quiet the bears and the tigers and the Cossacks.”

  Berg blinked. “There are still Cossacks?”

  “Of course there are still Cossacks,” Britta snapped.

  “How am I supposed to know? I’m not Russian.”

  “Are you almost done?” Britta asked the doctor, her tone typically commanding, despite her lack of power with an Italian medical doctor who was also a cat.

  “I’m done when I am done, sow. Do not pressure me.”

  “So who was the girl?” Britta abruptly asked, attempting to throw her brother off.

  “What girl?” Berg asked, working to keep his face blank. A skill he’d picked up from their father.

  “The girl.”

  The doctor paused in the middle of her work. “You went tense, bear.”

  Ignoring the doctor, Berg told his sister, “There was no girl. Just me and Coop in the room.”

  “Uh-huh,” his sister replied before refocusing on her phone.

  “The sow knows you lie,” the cheetah teased softly, but Berg already knew that.

  * * *

  Stevie MacKilligan leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting on her raised, clasped hands.

  “And how does that make you feel?” she asked the patient across from her. “That your mother treats you like that?”

  “Awful. I deserve better!”

  “You do deserve better,” Stevie insisted. “Just because your mother is the dictator of a small country and kills those she considers enemies of the state, doesn’t mean that your opinion doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re right, Stevie. You’re so right!”

  Stevie turned to the man next to her. “And what about you, Jacques? How are you feeling? Are you still upset about losing that yacht race?”

  “It is all my brother’s fault!”

  A throat clearing had Stevie looking over her shoulder. Dr. Gaertner motioned to her with a wave of his hand and Stevie nodded and stood. She looked at the man sitting across from her. “Why don’t you take over, Dr. Schmidt?”

  “Since I am the actual trained psychiatrist here,” he sort of snipped back.

  Stevie smiled at him. “And you are doing a great job.” She gave him a thumb’s up before walking over to Gaertner and following him out of the group therapy room.

  He led her down the long glass hallway toward the back exit. They often liked to talk while walking in the beautiful garden behind the clinic. One of Stevie’s favorite places.

  “So what’s up?” she asked.

  “I wanted to let you know before you heard from someone else . . . your sisters came by today to see you.”

  Stevie stopped before they reached the doors and faced Gaertner. “My sisters, they’re . . . they’re here?”

  “They were. I asked them to leave. I think we both know you’re not ready to see them right now. Not when you’re doing so well.”

  Stevie blinked and took a step back. “But . . . they were here. Here at the clinic? Inside the clinic? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I told them when the time was right, we’d call them for a controlled meeting. With you and the team and your sisters.”

  “Okay,” Stevie said to herself, not really listening to the doctor anymore. “My sisters were here. They were here.” She clasped her hands together and began to pace. “And you told them to leave. And now I’m alone. But I’m inside. So I should be fine.”

  “Stevie, please,” Gaertner coaxed. “You are fine. I simply was not going to allow your sisters to come here and interrupt the work we have been doing. It is much too important to your health.”

  “If my sisters came here, it’s because something’s wrong.” She turned away from Gaertner to walk back to the patient rooms. “I need a phone. I need to call them.”

  “No, no, Stevie. That is not a good idea.” He gently took her arm and tugged her back around. “You need time away from your family. Time away from the stress you experience.”

  Stevie gazed at the doctor but she didn’t really see him because she could only think one thing . . .

  What did our father do now?

  That was the only reason her sisters would bother her while she was at a clinic. Because he’d done something. Sadly, he was always doing something, and it was always up to Stevie to stop her sisters from killing him. Especially Charlie. Charlie loathed their father. Not that Stevie really blamed her, but he was their father. That mattered. At least to her.

  She was sure of it. Something was really wrong if her sisters had come here to get her. Because they’d come to protect her. And this
idiot doctor had sent them away. Had they really left, though? Had they really gone away? Maybe they were still around. Maybe she had time to catch up to them.

  Stevie turned to Dr. Gaertner and calmly explained how she needed to find her sisters before it was too late and that she would, unfortunately, be forced to leave the clinic much sooner than she’d originally planned . . .

  Oh, wait. That’s how Stevie had planned to handle it in her head. With logic and reason and a calm, rational demeanor.

  But when she faced Gaertner, just seeing his face made her angry. Angry that she was now alone and frightened because—without speaking to her—he’d sent her sisters away. He should have spoken to her first. He should have said something!

  And her fear led to panic, which led to her hissing and throwing herself at Gaertner, knocking him to the ground, and wrapping her hands around his throat.

  Sitting on his chest, she hissed again, this time right into his face, and she had a feeling her eyes had shifted color because his own eyes widened and she suddenly smelled urine, meaning the man had pissed on himself.

  Huh. Maybe not just her eyes. Maybe her fangs had made an appearance too. That happened when she lost control. That’s why she went to places like this. To get control of her panic disorder with the help of talk therapy and medications. To learn how to manage it and to fully understand it so that she didn’t have what her coworkers fondly called “a MacKilligan episode.”

  And Gaertner had been right. Stevie had been doing well! She had been feeling better. More in control without any additional meds. But her sisters had come here, and they didn’t bother her lightly. Her sisters never got in the way of her work or her mental health. They worried about her, and they sometimes babied her, but they never would have just “dropped by” for a “how do ya do?” That was not her sisters’ way.

  Stevie knew they kept an eye on her. She knew that one of them was always close by. But, again, that was not because they were obsessive about her. They were obsessive about what their father had, to quote Charlie, “Fucked up now.”

  She would have made that clear to Gaertner if she’d thought about it, but it never occurred to her that he’d stop her sisters from visiting. That he thought they were somehow the reason behind her panic disorder. If anything, her sisters were the reason Stevie hadn’t spent most of her life in a straitjacket at Bellevue. Their pesky ways and less-than-stellar educations allowed Stevie some much-needed distraction from the cacophony of sights, sounds, and information that packed her brain each and every day.

  The truth was, her sisters kept her sane, which was more than this damn doctor was doing!

  Big, strong hands gripped Stevie and yanked her off the doctor, and someone shoved a needle in her arm. A strong drug was injected into her veins and she felt a brief moment of euphoria. A moment that allowed those holding her to think she’d been controlled. But Stevie wasn’t completely human and, even worse for the staff, she was half honey badger. And thanks to her father’s confused genes, her body didn’t process drugs and poison the way an ordinary full-human or shifter did. Even the medications she took to manage her panic disorder had to be tested and retested continuously for years by a shifter-run medical group in Germany to get the dosage exactly right for her biological makeup.

  So if they thought filling her up with whatever calming drug they gave the regulars was going to really do anything . . .

  The euphoria passed as quickly as it came and Stevie yanked her arm out of the grip of one orderly, pushed the other orderly off her, and without much thought to consequences, yanked the needle out of her arm and rammed it into the eye of the third orderly reaching out to grab her.

  He went down screaming and, in full-blown panic now—other people’s screaming always freaked her out—Stevie screamed along with him as she made a mad run for the exit.

  chapter THREE

  They hadn’t left the Swiss center yet, and Charlie knew the longer they stayed, the more concerned those orderlies were going to become. Already there were five of them standing outside the front doors, waiting for the pair to leave.

  Hoping to calm them down, Charlie found a map in the glove compartment and spread it out on the hood of the Mercedes.

  Max watched her and finally asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to calm them down by looking like we’re lost,” she softly replied.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re making them nervous.”

  “We make everybody nervous. Who gives a fuck?”

  Charlie placed her hands on the hood and asked, “What’s it like to be you, Max? Not to care? Ever?”

  Max shrugged. “It’s awesome.”

  Charlie let out that sigh she was convinced she only used when it came to her middle sibling.

  “I’m not going to argue with you today,” Charlie announced. More for her own benefit than for Max’s because Max didn’t give a shit. “We have too much going on.”

  “So, do you want me to look intensely at the map like it’s still 1982?” Max asked. “You know, rather than just using my fucking phone to take us anywhere we need to go in any part of the world?”

  Charlie briefly wondered if slamming her sister’s head against the SUV’s hood would be considered “arguing” when the front doors of the clinic burst open and her baby sister came rushing through.

  An orderly instinctively reached out and grabbed the hysterical Stevie, but that was not a good move. Not a good move at all.

  Stevie spun and slammed the palm of her hand up, ramming the orderly’s nose and crushing it. He released her and, even though the others hadn’t moved, Stevie kicked one orderly in the groin, another in the leg, breaking the fibula with a cracking sound that echoed around the quiet area. Another got a punch to the face that seemed to break his jaw and cheekbone, and the last was punched in the throat.

  The orderly that had followed her outside had spun back around and returned to the safety of the center in order to get reinforcements.

  That’s when, screaming like she was on fire, Stevie ran for her life, so oblivious to everything around her, she didn’t even see Charlie and Max standing there, watching her. She just took off running. And, with the tiger blood flowing through her veins, she hit forty miles per hour pretty damn quickly.

  Max watched their panic-riddled sister tear off across the front lawn and hit the road that would lead out to the main highway. “Guess the doc told her we’d been here.” Then she laughed because, well . . . it was kind of funny. “Look at her go! I think sparks are coming off her feet.”

  “Come on,” Charlie ordered Max, tossing the map off the SUV hood. “We have to catch her.”

  They scrambled into the SUV and sped after their sister, heading down the long road that led to and from the clinic. On both sides were thick forests.

  “If she goes into the woods—”

  “She’s panicking,” Charlie reminded Max. “She’s just gonna run until she can’t anymore.”

  “She’s so fast.”

  “In short bursts. She has no stamina.” Not an insult, just reality. Again, it was the tiger in her. The wolf and honey badger in Charlie meant she could trot for hours. Not that she ever did. Why bother when she could just as easily rent a car?

  Max suddenly hit the brakes and Charlie let out a relieved breath when she saw her baby sister standing in the middle of the road, taking in deep gulps of air and sobbing.

  “I’ll get her.” Charlie opened her door. “And when I bring her back, you be nice!” she warned.

  “I’m always nice!” Max laughed.

  “Shut up.”

  Charlie walked around the car and over to her baby sister’s side, but she didn’t touch Stevie. She didn’t put her arms around her and hug her. That was just a quick way to get her face torn off.

  “Stevie.” She said her sister’s name flatly, with authority; her voice low. “Stevie,” she repeated.

  Blinking away tears, Stevie straightened her back and fo
cused on Charlie.

  “Charlie?”

  “Hey, bubs.”

  “Charlie!” Now Stevie was in her arms, hugging her tight, and Charlie hugged her back because she was no longer worried about getting her face ripped off.

  “You didn’t leave me. You didn’t leave me,” she chanted.

  “Of course we didn’t. We were just trying to find a way to get to you without the staff knowing.” She stroked Stevie’s hair. She’d started dyeing it a nice, safe blond. Charlie kept hers brown, and Max dyed hers any color she was in the mood to see for a few weeks or months. They did this to avoid the questions. So many questions about their hair.

  “How bad is it?” Charlie asked.

  Swallowing, Stevie took a step back, her gaze focused on the trees behind Charlie’s head.

  Charlie knew that look.

  “Is anyone dead?” Charlie now asked, worried about her sister’s answer.

  “No! No.” Her voice lowered even more. “No.” Stevie cleared her throat. “Someone may have lost an eye, though.”

  “Okay.” Charlie grabbed her sister’s arm and quickly led her to the SUV, pushing her into the backseat and getting in beside her.

  “Go, Max.”

  The car took off and Charlie held her baby sister’s hand and calmly spoke to her. “Deep breath in. Deep breath out. In. Out. Close your eyes and just focus on the engine sounds. The road beneath the wheels. The air against the car.”

  “Your whining against my nerves,” Max joked from the front seat.

  Stevie’s gold eyes popped open and she rammed the flat of her hand against the back of Max’s seat.

  “Hey!” Max barked.

  “Do you know what I’ve been through?” Stevie yelled. “Do you have any concept?”

  “Keep yelling at me, and I’ll give you something to really whine about.”

  Unable to stand another second, Charlie slapped her hands together several times and yelped, “That is enough! We don’t have time for you two psychotic females to be bickering like we’re still in grade school!”

  “Wait,” Stevie said, the anger in her voice gone, unfortunately replaced by hysteria. “Do you hear that?”