Born to Be Badger (Honey Badger Chronicles #5)
Shelly Laurenston
To Mom.
I miss you, lady.
Prologue
“I’m a bad mother.”
Kerrick “Kerry” Jackson gazed at his wife as they quietly indulged in a late-night gallon of rum raisin ice cream in their dark kitchen. They were keeping their voices low due to the five teenage girls sleeping upstairs in their only daughter’s bedroom. They also kept the lights out through the house, but they could see each other fine in the darkness with only the glow from the microwave and the timer on their electric stove. He adored how the blinking light from the stove that she never bothered to set to the right time highlighted his wife’s black hair with that one big white streak down the middle, her mane half in dreads and half in wild curls, piled on top of her head in a ridiculously messy topknot. And her dark eyes peering at him from beneath those white lashes that everyone at the high school thought she’d dyed just so she could be the “edgy mom.” But Ayda Lepstein-Jackson didn’t dye anything. All that white-and-black hair was completely natural, including the white eyebrow over her left eye.
“Why would you ever say that?” he asked her.
“Because we should have gone to the game.”
“You keep saying that, but Tock made it very clear she didn’t want us there.”
“Was it clear, though?” Ayda asked, her brow furrowing, skin bunching in the center of her forehead where, according to her, she’d accidentally slammed into a telephone pole when she was nine. The entire area had swelled and the skin had broken right in the center. There was no obvious scar, but when she frowned, it puckered up again the way the swelling once did.
“Was it clear?” he repeated. “She looked directly at us and said, ‘I don’t want you there.’ I’m not sure she could have been any clearer. Our daughter’s not known for being vague.”
“Our daughter and her team won a nationwide basketball championship, and all those other parents were there in Chicago. . . but not us.”
“Maybe those kids needed their parents there. But our girl does not. We didn’t need to be there for her or for her friends.” The four other teammates sleeping upstairs with their daughter at this very moment. A tighter crew he’d never known. “Even little Cass’s parents didn’t go. I know for a fact they’re in France . . . checking out the Louvre.” He raised a knowing brow at his wife, but she only frowned in confusion.
Not bothering to clarify, Kerry ate another spoonful of ice cream and admitted to his wife, “I think we all know the girls had additional plans for that championship besides winning it, and they simply didn’t want their families there screwing up their timing. You know how our Tock is about time.”
His wife gazed at him, her tongue in the midst of licking her spoon. Slowly, she put the spoon down. “What additional plans?” She gave a little gasp. “A boy?” she asked, eyes wide. “Or a man?” She gasped again, going on before her husband could get a word in. “Oh, my God. Is she involved with a grown man? Wait . . . is it a criminal? Has she made friends with a criminal?”
“What?”
“Is she having unprotected sex with a criminal and he just got out of prison and lured her to Chicago to have unprotected sex with our minor daughter? Is that what you’re telling me?”
For a few seconds, Kerry could do nothing but gawk at his wife. He loved her. He really did. Had since the moment he’d met her. But, in a word, she was nuts. Nutty nuts, as one of his cousins called her. But he actually loved her nutty nuts-ness. It made their married life . . . interesting.
“No,” he finally told her, briefly glancing up at the ceiling when he heard what sounded like one of the girls getting out of bed . . . or falling out. “That’s not what I’m saying. At all. I don’t even know how you got there.”
“She’s a beautiful girl. What criminal wouldn’t want her?”
Kerry shook his head to stop himself from laughing and dipped his spoon into the gallon of ice cream.
“Our daughter,” he promised his wife, “has not been lured by anyone. Nor will she ever be lured by anyone.”
“Then why wouldn’t she want us there with all the other parents?”
“You didn’t notice the extra duffel bags all five girls brought back with them from this trip?” Kerry asked.
Ayda blinked. “What?” When he gave a small shrug, she immediately shook her head. “No. No, no, no. Are you telling me they were”—she lowered her voice even more—“stealing?”
“Why are you whispering? You know who we are; what we are. Did you expect our daughter to be any different?”
“My family does not steal, Kerry.”
He couldn’t help but snort. “Are you kidding? Your family may steal files or nuclear secrets or warheads, but they’re still stealing. And that’s in our daughter’s blood. Like the white stripe in her hair and the fact that she snaps at random people on the street when she feels they’ve gotten within seven feet of her without her express permission. It’s what makes us . . . us. Why would you expect any different from our girl?”
“Because I do! I have worked hard to ensure our daughter does not involve herself in any of that. No thieving. No lying. No conning. And absolutely no geopolitics that can destroy nations. I won’t tolerate it!”
Kerry dropped his spoon into the gallon ice cream container and took her hand. “Baby, you can’t deny what our daughter is.”
“I’m not denying what all of us are. I’m simply working to ensure that—”
“She ignores her instincts?”
“No. That she finds a . . . better path.”
He blew out a breath and told his wife, “Baby, our daughter— Emily ‘Tock’ Lepstein-Jackson—is, and always will be . . . a honey badger.”
“Being a honey badger doesn’t mean she has to be—”
“Rude? Mean? Dangerously unstable? Of course, it does. Because it’s in our blood like your Uncle Ishmael’s giant forehead and my grandmother being able to run marathons back in the day even though one leg is shorter than the other. Our baby is what she is. And what she is, is a snarling, snapping, seventeen-year-old thief who has a very good eye for jewelry, fine art, and kitchen cabinets where she and her badger friends can spend the night. You can’t change that.”
“I changed. I’m pleasant—”
“But it’s a struggle.”
“—I don’t steal—”
“But we all know you want to. Especially when something’s shiny.”
“—and I go out of my way to do the right thing.”
“So does your daughter. That’s why she almost got expelled three weeks ago for attacking that football player who got handsy with some tenth grader she doesn’t know.”
Ayda shook her head. “I had to do some fast talking with the principal on that one.”
“Fast talking or lots of threatening?”