He nodded and motioned to his sons. They disappeared off the porch and into the dark, melding into the snow and ice-covered trees and buildings. Moving silently, quickly—and with baseball bats. They didn’t shift for this sort of thing. They never had.

Ennis’s oldest, Derek, smashed the passenger side window and his younger brother, Bobby, took care of the driver’s side. Ennis’s youngest, who wasn’t even twenty yet, leaped onto the roof, unleashed his claws, and tore at the metal, ripping it open. A couple more of her cousins destroyed the windshield while Derek and Bobby dragged out the front seat occupants and their younger brothers pulled out the ones in the backseat. They were all bears. Big, dangerous, but stupid. Stupid to come here.

Bobby slammed the head of the one he’d pulled from the driver’s seat onto the hood of the vehicle, making sure to press it into the shattered windshield glass. And there he held him while his brothers battered the other occupants with baseball bats and two-by-fours. They also kicked and stomped until the outsiders were nothing but bloody messes that were still breathing. Then, while the bears were shoved back into their vehicle, Bobby leaned in and whispered something to the driver. When he was done, he yanked the bear up and shoved him into the driver’s seat.

Cella’s cousins stood back and watched the Range Rover drive off; then a couple of them gathered up the blood-covered weapons and went about getting rid of them.

Removing the silencer from her weapon, Cella said to Crushek, “Come on. They’re about to bring out the cake.”

“Happy Birthday” was sung, the cake was cut, and a barely used Jeep with a bright green ribbon around it was given. All in all, a good night, and yet no one mentioned the fact that four men had been severely beaten. Everyone knew, but no one seemed to have an issue with it. It was just sort of ... accepted. Apparently, that’s what anyone who came on this street uninvited could expect.

And yet Crush couldn’t get all “By the Book” Crushek on the Malones about it because he knew those bears didn’t just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why they were here, however, he still didn’t know. Had they come for him? Planning to pick him up once he’d left Cella’s house? Maybe. Or had BPC—and those bears were definitely BPC—locked on Malone’s family for some reason? Crush didn’t know. What he did know, however, was that he didn’t like it, which was why he didn’t care that all of those attacking tiger males had moved like one, well-trained unit, proving they’d done this many times before; he didn’t care that Malone had a most likely unregistered .45 in her garage—although that silencer was a little worrying, but she’d probably got that from the She-wolf. What he did care about was that those bears were in Cella’s neighborhood. With her and Dr. Davis’s daughters and all those cubs. Kids being around, the elderly, these were little things that didn’t mean shit to BPC, or more specifically, Peg Baissier.

Now he sat on the front porch steps of Butch Malone’s house and watched the street. He couldn’t help himself. He felt like he’d brought BPC here.

“Detective?”

Crushek looked up into Meghan’s gold-and-green eyes. “Off to drive the new car?”

She snorted. “Not my idea.” She glanced back at the cousins waiting for her. “Figure we’ll go get a shake or something to shut them up.”

“Hope you had a good birthday.”

She was quiet for a moment and he realized she was thinking about what he’d said before she finally replied, “Yes. I did.”

Wow, mother and daughter couldn’t be less alike. He saw that now. He also understood what Malone had been talking about. He didn’t like to say it, didn’t like to think it. But her Aunt Deirdre was a bitch. She saw Malone as a threat. She’d probably spent years trying to make her feel unimportant. When that didn’t work, she’d tried to make the rest of the family feel that way about Malone instead.

But from what Crush could tell ... that hadn’t worked, either.

“I’m here! I’m here!” Josie Davis came running around the corner and over to the car.

“Here.” Meghan threw the keys at her friend. “She likes to drive more than I do,” she explained when Crush only stared at her.

“Just like your mother.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. She never does anything anyone would expect of her, either.”

Her head dropped, but he saw the smile, the bit of pride.

“It was really nice meeting you, Detective,” she said.

“You, too.”

She started to walk away, but she stopped, glanced back at him, and whispered, “And thank you. Seriously.”

Wondering if she knew about the war between her mother and great-aunt, Crush just watched her head over to the Jeep, her cousins yelling for Meghan to “get a move on!”

“I swear,” Malone said, dropping down next to him on the stoop. “She’s really my kid.”

“Believe it or not, I can tell.”

“You really came through for me tonight. Thank you.”

“I have to say, Malone, it was really hard. To spend hours with Nice Guy Malone, Destruction Anderson, and six-time V.I.P. winner Please End It Ferguson was really, really hard on me and I’m not sure I can ever forgive you.”

Her smile wide, “Destruction promised you a jersey, didn’t he?”

“Yesss.”

She laughed, bumping his arm with her shoulder. “I have to say you made the night for these guys. You know, it’s not like they’ll ever be in the Hockey Hall of Fame with all the full-human players; you’re not going to find videos of them or their pics and trophies memorialized in Madison Square Garden. But it’s fans like you that make it all worth it.”