“Hello, Baby Girl.” Deacon smiled at Destiny. “Hello, not-so-baby girl.” He looked up at me.
“Don’t press your luck,” I snapped. “The kid here wants breakfast food. Pancakes or cereal.”
“How about eggs?” Deacon smiled at her again. I remembered that smile. He was always smiling at me when I was little, seemingly delighted just to be around me.
“I don’t like eggs.”
“Pancakes it is, then.”
Deacon rose from his chair and started opening up cabinets, looking for Bisquick and syrup. As he puttered, the doorbell rang. Deacon and I exchanged glances.
“I’ll get it,” Deacon said grimly. The ranch was far enough off the beaten path that no one showed up there unless he or she was really looking for us—good or bad.
I immediately pulled Destiny over on my lap and eyed the butcher block full of knives that was two feet from us on the counter. I’d never let anyone take her without a fight.
I listened for sounds of a scuffle, but didn’t hear any.
“Look who,” Deacon said, coming back a minute or so later with Rob in tow.
“Rob!” I gave Destiny a hug, then slid her off my lap and jumped up to give Rob a bear hug. “God, is it good to see you.”
“This beats the ‘No, I’m not going to marry you yet’ greeting.” He hugged me back, and as usual, I could feel his chest against mine, solid and absolutely rock hard.
“Well, I can tell you we’re not getting married in the midst of all this chaos.”
“Believe it or not, I’m with you on that. This case gets weirder and weirder.” He looked over at Destiny and then walked over to the table where she sat. I don’t even know if she recognized him from the night her mother was killed. I was amazed at her resilience so far, but that night, she had to have been in shock. Deacon said her teeth had chattered for four straight hours after he got her to the ranch. Then she’d passed out, exhausted.
Rob knelt in front of her, I assumed to make himself less imposing. “Hi, Destiny. I’m Jack’s friend, Rob. I’m a policeman, and I catch bad guys. And I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you or Jack, okay?”
She nodded. Rob tousled her hair.
Deacon opened a cabinet door. “I was just getting ready to make Baby Girl pancakes. It’s good to have a child around this old ranch again.”
“Pancakes? You like pancakes?” Rob looked at Destiny. She nodded again. “You sure you wouldn’t rather have toasted spider legs?”
I watched Destiny stifle a giggle. She shook her head.
“What about fried cactus?”
She shook her head again, her eyes twinkling just a tiny bit.
“How about sautéed monkey feet?”
“Gross!” she said, laughing.
“Well—” Rob put on a disappointed face “—if I can’t talk you into any of those delicacies, could I make you my special German pancakes? It’s a recipe from my great-grandmother on my mother’s side, and be prepared to never want any other kind of pancake for the rest of your life!”
I loved watching the gentleness in his face. I had seen him, more than a few times, break up a bar fight or come to the aid of someone on the street, even when he was off duty. He was always supremely calm and competent. Sometimes, like when this one guy in a bar had grabbed his cocktail waitress by the hair and threatened her, Rob’s eyes went stormy and you knew he wasn’t a person to trifle with. But he and I had never discussed children. Maybe it was because I had spent my life immersed in a world of men, always trying to prove I was as tough as the guys. Maybe he didn’t think I was the “mommy” type. But he sure was the daddy type.
Rob commandeered the kitchen. Next thing I knew, at the picnic-style long table that served as our kitchen table, Big Jimmy, Miguel, Terry and a couple of other sparring partners and trainers, and little Destiny, were chowing down on pancakes fried in enough oil to lube a car. The pancakes were slightly crispy, golden and beyond delicious, and Rob went through two boxes of Bisquick feeding the gang.
After everyone was sitting around groaning about how full they were, I grabbed Rob’s hand and said, “Let’s take a walk.”
Big Jimmy looked at me and gave a slight nod. “I’ll take Destiny into the den. Come on, sugar, let’s go color.” The sight of Big Jimmy, all three hundred pounds of muscle, long black braid down his back, scooping up Destiny like a little doll, made me smile. He was the proverbial big teddy bear.
Rob and I strolled out into the rocky yard and off toward the mountains. The air was fresh, and he held my hand.
“I’ve missed you, Jack.”
“You’re just saying that, but secretly you’re glad I’m not squeezing your toothpaste tube from the middle,” I said, referring to his somewhat anal-retentive neatness and my…well, my sloppiness.
“I like when you do that. The next time I go to use my toothpaste, it reminds me that you were there. It makes me hopeful that one day, you’ll be there permanently.”
“Rob…”
“I know.” He put up his hands. “I won’t bother you about it. Just know, even with all this crazy shit going on that I love you. Even though I have a feeling you may be the reason my blood pressure is a little high and this little vein here—” he pointed to his temple “—throbs with regularity.”
“I’m proud of that little vein.”
“You know you can’t hide her forever, right?”
I nodded. “I keep expecting to see my face and an Amber Alert up on the television. What gives? Why hasn’t Perrone pressured the cops to find Destiny?”
“I don’t know. In fact, they’ve pretty much pulled me off the case. They have me working that murder over on the Strip. Because Crystal was Perrone’s fiancée, and because Perrone is one of the top two hundred wealthiest men in the world, and because the chief is a friend of Perrone’s from way back, this has a hands-off atmosphere about it. I was told to forget the angle she was murdered.”
“What about the fingerprint?”
“They’re going with it belonged to her dealer, that this is like some John Belushi case of a dealer shooting someone up and it just being too much and she died. Perrone is saying she had a drug problem. He even produced a letter from some doctor friend of his saying he treated her privately for drug abuse.”
“But her arms were clear. You saw them.”
“I didn’t say this doesn’t stink to high heaven like a bad fish, Jack. I’m just saying what the party line is.”
“And Destiny?”
“Perrone’s saying he wants her found privately. He says he knows where she is and it’s a family matter until he says otherwise.”
“And you?” I turned to look into his eyes, amazed in the sunlight at how clear and gray they were.
He clenched his jaw and glanced away. “She was your friend. I’m going to get to the bottom of it. But that doesn’t mean I want you snooping around.”
“Well, you better get to the bottom of it quickly because I’m not going to park myself out here like a sitting duck. Did you know Benny Bonita paid us a visit last night with a few of his posse?”
“What’d that asshole want?”
“Something that Crystal ‘took’ from him.”
“What?”
“I