Page 15 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

“M om!”

Tracey Rutowski immediately rolled off the couch, landed on her ass with her back against the furniture, and aimed the Glock she gripped in her hand at whatever was in front of her . . . which turned out to be her four daughters.

“Must you wake me up like that?” she asked her eldest, Nixie.

The only one who looked so angry and so much like her father.

The two middle ones, Angelika and Annika—fraternal twins whom she called “double trouble” since the day she’d discovered them plotting in their crib at three months old—were laughing, and the youngest, Leni, simply appeared annoyed at everyone’s existence but her own.

Trace was surprised how much work her children turned out to be.

Tracey and her brother had been such easy kids.

Obedient. Reliable. Excellent liars. Self-sufficient.

All of which was important, because her parents had rarely been around.

If she’d waited for Marv and Lisa Rutowski to make her dinner or bring her to school every day or rescue her from an East German prison, she’d have starved to death without being able to read or do basic math, but with a perfect grasp of the German language.

But her own children’s generation were so damn needy. When she was growing up, there had been no cell phones to call or text her parents whenever she had a small demand. But now, all she got were whiny, demanding texts.

Mom, what’s for dinner?

Mom, are you in the country?

Mom, how do you get out of the trunk of a car?

Mom, your dogs attacked my boyfriend. Again!

On and on! It was endless.

Personally, she blamed their father. Wolf pups were notoriously needy and demanding and couldn’t do anything on their own until they were in their late teens.

Although nothing about her kids seemed wolf-like except their shoulders and feet; she worried their pack-like need for companionship would be used against them one day.

“Must you bring your weaponry into this house?” Nixie demanded.

“I can’t leave it in my car, Nix. That would be dangerous.”

Deciding not to reply to that, her daughter held up her phone and asked, “Was this you?”

Tracey wasn’t wearing her glasses, so she leaned forward and squinted, attempting to read the screen. When that was ineffective, she looked around for her glasses until Angelika walked over and moved them from Tracey’s forehead and onto her face.

“Oh. Thanks, baby.”

“No problem.”

Again, Tracey looked at the small screen of her eldest’s phone.

“Wow. Boston has become dangerous.”

“Boston has always been dangerous.” She pointed. “You did this, didn’t you? For that girl.”

“She’s your first cousin, and why do you always ask questions you really don’t want the answers to?”

“You are making things impossible for Great-Uncle Edgar.”

Tracey dropped her head back, let go a sound of disgust. She was so tired of this conversation about how hard she was making it on poor Uncle Edgar! The crankiest canine she’d ever met or been forced to have Thanksgiving dinner with!

“You know he’s grooming you, right?” she asked Nixie.

That’s when all four of her daughters exploded.

“Mother!”

“Ma!”

“What the hell?”

“Ewwwwww!”

“I don’t mean that , you pervs! Jesus.” Trace got to her feet. “I mean he’s grooming you to be just another government drone; just workin’ for The Man.”

“What man?”

“Is there a man? Or do you mean any man?”

“Because Uncle Edgar’s retired from being the man.”

“Oh, my God!” Tracey put the safety back on her weapon and placed it on the coffee table. “How are any of you my children? I’m starting to think I need proof.”

“Just look at our noses,” Angelika suggested. “We were all cursed with your nose.”

Trace touched her face. “What’s wrong with my nose?”

“Everything,” all of her daughters replied.

* * *

CeCe álvarez stood back from her most recent painting and studied it as if she were looking at the worst shit on the planet.

She wanted to be her harshest critic so that when actual critics said horrible things, she didn’t care.

At least that had always been her explanation for being so critical of her own work because, for a honey badger, she could be quite sensitive.

Something her tough-as-nails family members did not understand.

“Your father and I survived communist dictators,” her mother would remind her, “and you can’t handle some Anglo calling your work subversive. Pathetic.”

Maybe it was, but it was hard putting your ass out to the world and saying, “Tell me what you think,” only to have them come back and say, “I hate it, and everyone else should hate it, too.”

Over the years it had made CeCe a little . . . reactionary.

In fact, she’d physically assaulted more critics than she cared to count.

She slapped one. Headbutted another. And made a terrifying female art critic cry simply by staring at her until she peed herself.

And those were the only ones she could remember, because she’d been sober at the time.

In any other industry, especially as a woman of color, it should have destroyed her career, but in the nineties art world, it had made her a star.

A feared star, but definitely a star. Any time she would become an artist-in-residence at some fancy Ivy League school, students would flock to her seminars. And eventually her work would sell for hundreds of thousands.

A few years back, though, she and her work had been considered old and boring and “out of touch.” But after being “rediscovered” online, she had sold one of her pieces for several million.

Since she had never stopped working, even during the “lean years,” CeCe now had more than enough material for several shows.

Something Tracey loved because she had always managed CeCe’s art career and received fifteen percent from any sale.

“I’m gettin’ a boat!” her best friend had giddily announced after that last deal.

Not that Trace couldn’t have gotten a boat before then.

Hell, she could have gotten a massive yacht.

She had other clients whose careers she managed, and her galleries always mounted some of the hottest artists while still giving some up-and-comer a shot if she saw in them what she’d always seen in CeCe.

Still . . . despite the new appreciation in her work, CeCe didn’t feel confident enough to say that this piece was worthy of seeing the light of day outside her home studio. Which meant only one thing . . .

“Time to get naked.”

CeCe usually only worked naked in her Manhattan studio.

For some reason, it made her feel closer to her work when there were no clothes in the way.

Unfortunately, her offspring didn’t feel the same way.

When they “caught” her naked, they complained to their father and anyone else who would listen that she was “embarrassing” them.

How she produced such uptight children, she didn’t know, but she tried to meet them halfway.

And, at least when she was in the studio behind the family home, she tried her best to keep her clothes on.

But her kids were currently in the main house, making breakfast for themselves like they were creating the Mona Lisa—sometimes they were so like their father’s restaurant chain–owning family with the cooking—and she just needed a few minutes to see if this piece was working at all.

She stripped off her paint-stained overalls and stood in front of the piece. She was waiting to see if she had the reaction she needed. The one that told her it was working or not working or should be burned in a fire.

It was while she was waiting that the cat, which had been curled up on the tall stool next to her work table, suddenly sat up and hissed.

This wasn’t CeCe’s cat. It lived here, but she had nothing to do with it.

It had just shown up one day in her studio, eating a small bird, and daring her to start a fight.

She figured it would find its own way out when it was done.

What she hadn’t known was that her children had begun feeding it, giving it water, even providing a spot to relieve itself and then cleaning it out every day so CeCe didn’t have a chance to complain about the smell.

It was like she and the cat had come to an understanding: the cat didn’t annoy CeCe, and CeCe didn’t tear it apart one night when she was in her badger form.

Besides, every once in a while, it could be quite, dare she say, helpful?

Like now . . . hissing toward the door in that way. Something was outside her studio that this cat didn’t think should be there, and it wasn’t CeCe’s kids or husband.

* * *

Steph Yoon stood in her garden and sipped her herbal tea. When she worked, she drank coffee. The caffeine helped her focus. But when she just wanted to enjoy nature, she drank tea.

Her husband had built this garden for her in the backyard of their personal home.

He’d tried to do the same at the Van Holtz Pack house, but his family members killed all the flowers by dog-peeing on them every night when they went out hunting.

Or when they’d drunk too much tequila and ended up drunkenly pissing in random spots around the territory.

Moving out of the Pack house had been a good decision all those years ago.

Apparently, Steph made the Pack “nervous.” She didn’t know why.

She rarely shifted to her badger form while at the house.

And she didn’t talk much unless she had something to say.

She mostly kept to herself when her girlfriends weren’t around.

She just put on one of her black hoodie sweatshirts—it was always extra cold in the house, summer or winter—silently worked on her laptop, and occasionally took up residence in a kitchen cabinet when she didn’t want to be bothered.

It wasn’t her fault that the wolves yelped in startled surprise any time they found her in there.