Her grin faded as she watched his expression grow serious. He leaned down to place a hand on each of her arms.
“You understand we’re doing this for her, right?”
She nodded. “For Vicki and her mom.”
He nodded. “Right. Good. You shouldn’t laugh at people’s pain.”
Shee swallowed. She hadn’t meant to be cruel.
Her father sniffed and clapped his hands together. “At least not if they can hear you. In private, humor isn’t a bad way to make horrible things feel less horrible.”
He grinned and she felt better. She didn’t even point out that the day before he’d called a man burned to death in a car wreck a crispy critter.
She admired herself in the mirror again.
I am a dead ringer, though.
She turned to find her father gone.
“Dad?”
Shee scanned the room. There were only a few places he could hide.
She guessed the opposite side of the far single bed.
Giving the furniture wide berth, she jumped forward, fists up in a fighting stance.
“Hi-ya!”
The space behind the bed hid nothing but the hideous carpet.
Hm. Not there.
Shee heard something rustle behind her and spun as her father burst from the closet, roaring.
“Arrrrr!”
She blocked his attempt to grab her, punched him hard on the inner thigh and ducked to slip from his grasp.
He dropped to one knee to pantomime how he would have reacted had she hit him in the groin as he’d taught her to hit a real attacker. Seeing her watching, he collapsed to his back, rolling on the floor, howling in mock pain.
She giggled. “It can’t hurt that much.”
He popped to his feet. “You have no idea.”
Mick wrapped his arms around her and squeezed.
“I love you, Shee.”
Shee’s cheeks warmed.
“You better not embarrass me like this in public,” she mumbled.
He held her at arms’ length, squinting one eye, his mouth twisted like an angry pirate’s. “Are you kidding? Hugs in public? My reputation as a cold stone killer would be ruined.”
“Exactly. Yours and mine.”
He chuckled and stood. “Deal. We’ll never speak of this again. We’ll get some chow and then our man.”
Shee danced away as he released her, whooping. “Pancakes!”
&&&
Shee and Mick entered the diner to the sound of a tinkling bell and sat in a booth behind the stools lining the counter. Beneath the frilly dress Shee’s father insisted she wear as her Vicki costume, the cracked leather of the seat scratched the back of her legs. She shifted to find a smoother perch.
Mick scanned the room before leaning forward to speak in a muted voice. “The guy we’re looking for eats at the counter every day at thirteen hundred hours.”
Shee checked her watch.
Five to one.
“Got it.”
“You know what to do?”
She nodded. Her stomach tightened, but the sensation felt more like excitement than fear. She knew the difference. He father had been MIA for twenty-four hours once when she was six. She’d sneaked downstairs and overheard the babysitter discussing her father’s disappearance on the phone.
Shee remembered her stomach tightening then, too.
That had been fear.
Mick sat back and then leaned in again. He had a strange, strained look. “Remember to get out of there. Don’t let him grab you.”
“If he grabs me, you’ll have to kill him.”
Her father scowled. “Why would you say that?”
“Because that’s what you told me when you got back from the bar last night.”
Mick cocked an eyebrow. “What makes you think I was at a bar?”
Shee ticked off the reasons on her fingers. “You smelled even more like cigarettes than the motel room already does. You put a slip from The Buckhead Tavern on the nightstand. You had red marks on your forearms from leaning against the bar. Your breath smelled like—”
Mick held up a hand. “Okay. I get it.” He shook his head. “I think I’ve created a monster.”
“—and you said you’d have to kill the man if he hurt me and you don’t say things like that when you’re not drinking.”
Her father poked a finger in her direction and she could tell she’d reached her favorite place—the fine line between amusing him and out-foxing him. “I got it. Now pay attention or I’ll have to kill you.”
She giggled.
That counted. She’d made him laugh five times already in one day. It might be a personal record.
The waitress arrived to hand them shiny, yellowing menus and place two red, plastic glasses of water on the table. Cracks spidered across the surface of the glasses, giving them a well-worn appearance. Shee imagined a million lips kissing their rims. Her lip curled.
Who drinks water, anyway?
“I’d like pancakes with blueberry syrup,” she said without looking at the photos of food scattered across the menu.
The waitress grimaced. “We don’t have blueberry syrup, just regular.”
Shee glared at her father.
Really?
His eyes went dead and she knew she’d just been told to swallow her disappointment with regular syrup.
Shee answered with a tiny nod of resignation.
All the diners in the world and their mark had to come to one without blueberry syrup?
The waitress smiled, her dark red lipstick feathering into the lines etched around her mouth. The wrinkles, the ashy smell enveloping her like a fog, and the yellowing of the gray hair around her temples told Shee the woman had spent a good part of her life smoking.
“You knew what you wanted before you got here,” the waitress said in a scratchy baritone, pulling a pad from the big pocket stitched to the front of her apron. “You’re one of those breakfast-for-dinner girls, huh?”
Shee nodded and looked away to end the chit chat. She had nothing to say to a woman who didn’t have blueberry syrup.
Mick glanced at the menu and
