what Dee-Ann Smith and her tiger girlfriend, Cella Malone, did for a living and they were very good at it. The question for Max was what was her sister about to get into? Could she be like Dee-Ann Smith and just kill on order? Charlie had done a lot of things over the years, but there had always been a reason. Maybe not a valid one, depending on whom one spoke to, but at least Charlie felt it was valid. That’s what Max needed to make sure of. She needed to know that her sister was going to do something that, at the end of the day, she could be proud of. Or at the very least, something she could live with. A MacKilligan with PTSD was like a Godzilla with rabies: a situation that was not going to end well for anyone.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” Mads guessed.
“I have to. She’s my sister, I don’t know who her team will be; I need to make sure this thing is legit. Not a setup. Not a way to use her for something else down the line. And I want to have her back.”
“Then we’ll go, too,” Nelle said, looking around at the others for agreement. “We’ll all go . . .” Everyone’s gaze settled on Tock.
“Can you fit that into your schedule?” Mads asked Tock.
With her gaze locked on them, Tock stretched out her hand, picked up her phone. She put in her twenty-digit passcode and opened up her schedule program without even looking at her phone. Just at them. “What day?” she asked Max.
“Tonight. After the game. But I can’t ask you guys to—”
“It’s in my schedule,” Tock said after typing into her phone again.
“How many thirty-minute blocks did you give us?” Mads asked with great sarcasm.
“Hopefully enough for your lazy ass.”
“Okay!” Nelle cut in before it became nasty. “That’s it. We’re all in this. We’re going to do this to support a woman that at least four of us are absolutely terrified of. But we’re going to do it because she had Mads’s back when she didn’t have to. So we do this together,” she said, swinging her forefinger in a circle, “because we are . . .” She prompted again as they all gazed at her continuing to make that big circle with her fingers. “Because we are . . .”
“What?” Max finally asked.
“Girlfriends!”
Streep clapped happily in agreement. Tock looked again at her watch. Max and Mads just made sounds of disgust until Mads suddenly said, “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“We’re not alone.”
They all sniffed the air and then looked up.
“Why are you up there?” Max asked her baby sister, who hung from the ceiling.
“I wasn’t going to stay, because it looked private, but then it got interesting. So I stayed.”
“I thought you were doing that ballet thing.”
“I did. But Oriana was a little hungover and she vomited on the current prima ballerina of the company and . . . at that point, I figured I’d just go home.”
“And listen in on my business.”
“I don’t know why you’re getting so bitchy. It’s not like any of you have inside voices.”
“Not a word to Charlie. Understand? And get down from there!”
“Be caref—” Nelle winced when Stevie hit the table.
Mads shook her head. “You’re half cat, but you didn’t even try to land on your feet.”
* * *
Zé walked into Max’s bedroom. She was stretched out on the mattress, gazing up at the ceiling, her hands behind her head. He stretched out beside her.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“Thinking.”
“About what? Life? Death? Existence?”
“Underwear.”
“Underwear?”
“Yeah.”
“Lucky underwear?”
“No. Just underwear that matches my uniform.” She sat up. “You are coming tonight, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Your sister already invited me.”
She got up and went to a pile of dirty clothes on the floor. He would need to get her a proper laundry basket. Just having dirty clothes lying around one’s room was tacky. “Stevie must like you if she invited you.”
“Stevie didn’t invite me. It was Charlie. I’ll be attending with her and the triplets.”
Max faced him, three pairs of bright yellow panties in her hand. “Wait . . . Charlie’s coming? To the playoff game?”
“Yes. Then she said you, your teammates, and Charlie would be going off to kill a bunch of people after the game.”
Max’s eyes widened and she might have stopped breathing. “Charlie told you that?”
“No, that was Stevie.”
Those wide eyes slammed shut and she now gripped her dirty underwear. “She can’t keep her mouth shut!”
“It’s not her fault. I just happened to overhear her talking