Hot and Badgered (Honey Badger Chronicles, #1)

by Shelly Laurenston

Chuckling, Max put the car in reverse and Charlie worked hard to ignore the short-lived begging and too-long crunching sounds coming from under the car as she pulled out. Charlie knew her sister was taking her time driving back over the gunman. Max “Kill It Again” MacKilligan was known for being vengeful.

“All right,” Charlie began, “you know the drill.” Max nodded and flatly replied, “Go in. Kill everybody. Get Stevie out.” Charlie briefly closed her eyes, took a moment to breathe and try to relax her shoulders. When she felt she wouldn’t yell, she said, “That is not the drill.” “It could be.”

“Of course I know you! How could I forget . . . you?” “Then what’s my name?” “Deuteronomy?” She shrugged. “Dude for short?”

“And you left me with her!” “You said you could handle her,” Berg reminded her. “We all know I think highly of myself and think very little of everyone else. But this time I didn’t realize the depths of her crazy!”

Of course, that’s what Charlie always loved about Stevie. She might be one of the smartest humans in the known universe, but around “the normals” as Max called everyone else, she didn’t act superior. She seemed like anyone else who had a panic disorder and the occasional bout of deep depression that required additional medications.

“I wouldn’t say that. It’s more like they found a way to work together.” “Like uranium and Oppenheimer!” Max crowed.

“No. I don’t have an eating disorder. I have a panic disorder and bouts of depression. I do worry I might start hoarding at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet. And, of course, when one needs a sense of control in one’s life it can definitely lead to an eating disorder or hoarding. But, personally, I’m more worried about the hoarding. Mostly because I do enjoy food and I don’t enjoy vomiting. Now

Stevie was older than Kyle by a few years, but Kyle always got along better with adults than kids his own age. He didn’t know how to talk to them. He did, however, know how to emotionally torture them, which was another reason he didn’t spend a lot of time with kids his own age. Their parents wouldn’t allow it.

Stevie people-watching was a good thing. She seemed to get her best ideas doing that—either for science or music—and hanging around geniuses such as Kyle somehow grounded her. A kid like that, so full of himself, reminded Stevie that she needed to be more human sometimes. That her work affected actual human beings. It kept her from just creating to create without thinking about long-term consequences.

I may know fashion, but I do not abide by fashion.”