“What the fuck happened?” Nina Bugliosi demanded. As usual, the lynx was demurely dressed in a bright green, mini-skirted power suit with a strand of black pearls around her neck and matching earrings.

“They shot at us first.”

“Are you sure? You sure Smith didn’t do something?”

“What, we’re blaming her now for everything?”

“Canines can’t be trusted.”

“You get slapped around by one coyote in grade school and allll canines can’t be trusted?”

“The bitch sucker punched me and that’s not the point.”

“We’re not blaming Smith or the Group for something they didn’t do. It was the bears.”

The lynx looked Cella over before tartly replying, “I thought you were all about the bears.”

“Huh?”

“You and the bears. Heard you were fucking one.”

“Amazing how that’s not your business.”

The elevator doors opened, but before Cella could walk out, her boss shut the doors and hit the “Stop” button.

“What are you doing?” Cella snapped, thinking about how close her nose had come to getting cut off.

“You’re not going to tell me about who you’re fucking?”

“It’s private.”

“Since when, Malone?”

“Since I said so. Besides, aren’t we in the middle of a crisis? Aren’t you supposed to be handling that?”

“I’m your boss, Malone. You have to tell me.”

“Or we could shift right here and four-hundred-pound me can slap around one-hundred-pound you.” Because that was something Cella could get away with. Breaking her boss’s nose while human ... well, that would get her written up.

“Fine,” Nina snapped. “Be that way.”

Nina released Cella from the temporary hostage situation, but they’d only taken two steps away from the elevator when they were both dragged back inside by Nina’s She-lion boss, Gemma Cosworth. Or, as the rest of the “ghetto cats” liked to call her, Her Ladyship the Duchess Cosworth. Because she, like all lions it seemed, thought all other cats were beneath her.

“Well,” the older feline snarled at Cella, “you’ve fucked this up royally, sewer cat.”

Cella raised her hands, palms up. “How is this all my fault?”

“It is until I decide it’s not. And if I find out you snuck up behind even one of those bears ...”

“There was no sneaking. We walked out on the roof. Smith said, ‘Hey, y’all,’ and they opened fire on us.”

“Where are we going?” Nina asked, glancing at her watch. “I have a lunch date this afternoon.” When Cosworth only stared at her, the much-smaller woman quickly added, “Which I, of course, willcancel.”

Crush walked into the Manhattan annex office of BPC and threw his still unconscious brothers to the floor. He knew she’d be here. Knew this was where she’d come during a time of crisis, when the organization was under threat. And she’d leave her little “soldiers” to man the main Brooklyn offices. Or, as Crush liked to call them, her “meat puppets.”

“You wanted to see me?” he asked of the polar sow sitting at the desk.

She looked at the bears on the floor, then up at Crush. “I sent six other—”

“They’re in the Dumpster outside my favorite coffee place.” He shrugged. “You know me and coffee.”

“Yes. I remember.” She gave a little laugh. “Did you kill them?”

“Didn’t have to.”

“Well, you certainly haven’t changed.”

“And I don’t plan to start now.”

“Still,” she gestured to one of the chairs in front of her desk, “sit. Tell me how things have been going. How have you been doing?”

Crush dropped into the chair across from Peg Baissier. “I’ve been just fine. And you?”

Thirty-four years. It had been thirty-four years since Baissier had taken in Crush and his two brothers. And, in the beginning, he’d fallen in line just like all the others before him. It wasn’t hard. So young and yet learning to fight like in the martial arts movies. But when Crush had turned twelve, he’d found out what Baissier had gone out of her way not to tell them. That his parents had worked for her. Had died carrying out her orders. It wasn’t that they were soldiers that bothered him; it was that Baissier hadn’t told him. She’d hidden it like so many other things she’d hidden. And Crush, curious bear that he was, had looked into it. After school, instead of heading home for more training, he’d become friends with wolves, coyotes, foxes. He’d learned to break and enter, to hot-wire cars, to snoop, to steal. Then, once he had the skills down, he’d put them to use not breaking the law but finding out what his parents had done and how they’d died. By the time he was sixteen, he knew more than he’d ever wanted to know about his parents, about Baissier, about all of it. But he finally knew the truth.

At the time, Baissier had no idea. Instead, she thought he was just being a hardheaded kid. She made it plain she didn’t like him, always calling him “the contrary one.” Or “Mr. Difficult,” because he questioned everything and refused to play along—with anything. If, in the middle of August, she said it was hot outside, Crush went out in a fur jacket. If she said it was nighttime, he wore sunglasses. He mostly did it to piss her off, but he also did it to ensure that he never became what she wanted him to be. Another meat puppet to carry out her orders.