LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I’m Louie Palmer. How is it you came to arrive first at the scene?”

      “I’m Rob’s fiancée, Jacqueline Rooney,” I said. Rob shot me a look. I knew what he was thinking. Sure, now that you need to get in good with the cops, I’m your fiancé.

      “Nice to meet you.” Detective Palmer shook my hand. “You live here?”

      “Correct.”

      He looked around the foyer at the hurled brass urn, the broken lamp, the bullet holes in the wall, the turned-over coffee table in the den, visible through the archway. “You came home to two unidentified men.”

      “Yes.”

      “And you were alone?”

      I nodded.

      “And you surprised them, as I understand it, according to the call Detective Carson placed.”

      “Yes.”

      “And you—” he gazed down at me “—managed to overpower and chase away a man with a semiautomatic weapon and his accomplice.”

      “Yes, that’s precisely what I am saying.”

      “I’m not sure I buy that.”

      “I’m a trainer. Boxing. They wouldn’t be the first two men I’ve decked.”

      Palmer looked at Rob, who nodded. “Trust her on that one. You don’t want to cross her. On our second date, a drunk was harassing this waitress. When Jack here butted in and told him to quit it, the guy grabbed her arm. Jack broke his nose.”

      “I see,” Palmer said. “Must make for an interesting relationship.”

      Rob nodded. “You don’t know the half of it.”

      “And the woman upstairs is?”

      “Crystal Lake.” I saw him react to her name. “She had it legally changed to that when she moved here years ago. I only knew her by that name, and I have no idea what her given name was.”

      “And she’s a friend of yours?”

      “Old friend. Yes. I hadn’t seen her in a while. She lives with Tony Perrone. She’s technically his fiancée. It’s his rock she’s wearing on her left hand. She’s the star of the Majestic show.”

      Palmer wiped his brow. “Tony Perrone? Jesus H. Christ, this is going to be a long night.”

      For the next three hours, I went over and over my story so much that I started to believe it. I had surprised the two men. But no, I hadn’t seen Crystal’s little girl. I left Deacon out of the entire equation.

      Somewhere near four o’clock in the morning, the last of the police left, taking Crystal’s body with them. They told me they’d like me to look at mug shots in the next day or so. Rob and I were the only ones remaining in the house.

      “I need a tequila,” I told him.

      “You and me both.”

      We sat in the kitchen, and I poured us two, neat. “Screw the lemon,” I said, and tossed mine back.

      He slammed his back, as well. Rob has dark brown hair cut neatly and those unfathomable gray eyes of his. Sometimes at night, in bed, I had the feeling they glowed in the dark, they were so pale in the moonlight.

      “I won’t ever sleep in that bed again. I’m going to replace it. I don’t even know if I can sleep in that room again. She didn’t deserve that. And I know it has to do with the fight. With Keenan. With me and Deacon and my father.”

      “But you don’t know that, Jack. Maybe it has to do with drugs, or with an affair she was having behind Perrone’s back. Listen, as a detective, we’re really a lot like archeologists. They go on a dig, and then they sift through sand, looking for tiny bone fragments—”

      “You watch too much of the Discovery Channel.”

      “You have ADD. Let me finish. As detectives, we do the same thing. We sift through pieces of a person’s life. What they’ve left behind. And eventually, we find the fragments we need to figure it all out. Crystal left behind all the clues we’ll need. What am I saying? All the clues I’ll need. You keep out of it.”

      Near dawn, just as the sun was rising, I kissed Rob goodbye, promising to talk to him later, and packed a suitcase, also grabbing Crystal’s things, which I had hidden from the police. After making sure Crystal’s Ferrari was still safe in the garage, and then setting the alarm for the house, I got in my car to drive to the ranch. My car is an old—I prefer “classic”—Cadillac my father had gotten for free when he and Uncle Deacon did their commercials. It was still in beautiful condition, and she was my most prized possession.

      I was beyond exhausted as I headed out the highway to the ranch. Few cars were on the road, and I turned on the radio. Crystal’s death was the lead story, in the true fashion of news—if it bleeds it leads. I turned off the radio, not wanting to hear it. I tried to remember the first time I met Crystal. She was the ring card girl, the woman in a bikini who walked around the boxing ring, holding a big placard pronouncing what round it was. She and I hit it off, and we became fast friends.

      I looked in my rearview mirror and squinted. A shiny black car with no front license plate was a respectable distance back from me, but if I switched lanes, it switched lanes. If I sped up, it sped up.

      “Christ,” I muttered. I thought I should ignore it, but I didn’t want whoever it was to follow me all the way to the ranch. If I suddenly sped up, they’d know I’d spotted them. I decided I didn’t care. I’d give them a run for their money.

      Years before, my father’s Cadillac had needed a new transmission. My father got some great idea that he’d soup up the engine a bit, too, at the same time it was at the mechanic’s. So I knew my car would hold up on open road. I floored it, watching the speedometer hit 120. Luckily for me, I think the national speed limit should be about 90, anyway, and I was used to letting her fly. I headed down the flat expanse of highway, looking in my rearview mirror to see what the black car would do.

      Sure enough, it was gaining on me, riding dangerously close to my bumper. Just like the evil scum who had killed Crystal and tried to take Destiny, the two guys inside looked massive and mean. They wore dark sunglasses. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear they were federal agents. But I did know better. They worked for either Perrone or Bonita, and my money was riding on Perrone.

      I gunned the car harder, taking it to speed limits not even registering on the speedometer. I prayed the desert highways would stay empty and that I wouldn’t get into an accident. At that speed, my adrenaline was causing my heart to race. I was tired, very tired, and I needed to stay on top of my game to get away from these two creeps. They nudged still closer, and taking a chance, I drove a little faster, and then spun my wheel. With a screech, I left the highway and drove into the desert, doing a tight 180-degree turn, the steering wheel fighting against me all the way on the shifting sand and pebbles, and then I drove back on the highway again.

      They were still with me. I spotted a cactus up ahead. One of those big, tall Joshua trees, right out of an old Western movie set. I aimed straight toward it, as if I was playing a massive game of chicken with a twenty-foot-tall cactus. The guys in back of me followed right behind. As I left the road again, my tires spun, then I lifted my hands, as if I’d panicked, and let the car fishtail a bit. I let them think I was going to plow right into the cactus—an out-of-control female driver. But at the last minute, I grabbed the wheel and took a sharp left. Then I screamed with delight as I watched them smash their black BMW into the cactus, exploding the air bags and wrecking their car.

      “Sayonara, boys,” I sang, then drove steadily down the road to the ranch, the sign over the long, sandy drive proclaiming Rooney Training Camp.

      Chapter 3

      The first time I met Terry Keenan, I was punching a heavy bag in my uncle Deacon’s gym—which

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