“Crystal…Jesus… It’s been six years. My God, I’ve missed you.”

Jack laughed and wrapped her arms around a six-foot-tall platinum-haired showgirl—the one female friend she’d ever had her whole life.

“Me, too, sugar,” Crystal said, and burst into tears. It was then that Jack stared down at Crystal’s hand…which was holding the very tiny hand of a very tiny girl with big brown eyes and long black hair. “This here’s my little girl, Destiny. And I need you to hide the two of us. I got nowhere else to go.”

“How bad is the trouble?”

“Ohhh, sugar…it’s so bad I gotta tell you even your daddy and your uncle would probably think twice about helping me.”

“You? You innocent in all of it?” Jack asked.

“Only thing I’m guilty of is loving the wrong man.”

One thing Jack’s father and uncle had taught her: friends stick together in times of trouble. She was soon to find out that they probably should have told her that a showgirl on the run is usually the worst kind of trouble of all….

Dear Reader,

We invite you to sit back and enjoy the ride as you experience the powerful suspense, intense action and tingling emotion in Silhouette Bombshell’s November lineup. Strong, sexy, savvy heroines have never been so popular, and we’re putting the best right into your hands. Get ready to meet four extraordinary women who will speak to the Bombshell in you!

Maggie Sanger will need quick wit and fast moves to get out of Egypt alive when her pursuit of a legendary grail puts her on a collision course with a secret society, hostages and her furious ex! Get into Her Kind of Trouble, the latest in author Evelyn Vaughn’s captivating GRAIL KEEPERS miniseries.

Sabotage, scandal and one sexy inspector breathe down the neck of a determined air force captain as she strives to right an old wrong in the latest adventure in the innovative twelve-book ATHENA FORCE continuity series, Pursued by Catherine Mann.

Enter the outrageous underworld of Las Vegas prizefighting as a female boxing trainer goes up against the mob to save her father, her reputation and a child witness in Erica Orloff’s pull-no-punches novel, Knockout.

And though creating identities for undercover agents is her specialty, Kristie Hennessy finds out that work can be deadly when you’ve got everyone fooled and no one to trust but a man you know only by his intriguing voice…. Don’t miss Kate Donovan’s Identity Crisis.

It’s a month of no-holds-barred excitement! Please send your comments to me, c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway Ste. 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Best wishes,

Natashya Wilson

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell

Knockout
Erica Orloff

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ERICA ORLOFF

is the author of Urban Legend, also published by Bombshell, as well as The Roofer (MIRA), and several books for Red Dress Ink. She lives in South Florida, enjoys playing poker and is an avid boxing fan. Her favorite boxer of all time, aside from Ali and Marciano, is the now-retired great featherweight Alexis Arguello.

Dedicated to three very special people:

Alexa, Nicholas and Isabella

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the staff at Bombshell; my wonderful editor, Margaret Marbury; my agent, Jay Poynor; and the members of Writers’ Cramp, Pam, Gina and Jon. I’d also like to thank my father, a boxing fan.

Thanks to Lynda Curnyn, former editor for the Bombshell line, for being a dream to work with and helping me talk through this idea.

To my friends Kerri and Professor John—for the memories of “clownlike” evenings.

And finally, to my extended family and friends, including Walter, Maryanne, Stacey, Jessica, J.D., Alexa, Nick, Bella, Pam, Cleo, Nanc, Kathy and Kathy…. I couldn’t do what I do without you.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 1

My father taught me how to score a boxing match on the ten-point must system. He taught me how to throw a mean left hook, how to jab and feint, and how to punch—and not like a girl. He taught me to how to bluff in poker, when to hold in blackjack, and when to walk away from the tables in craps.

He told me, “Jackie, honey, never trust a man who’s nice to you but treats the waitress like shit.” He also told me you can count your real friends on one hand. And you stand by those friends when they’re in trouble. But he should have told me, “Jack, a showgirl on the run is the worst trouble of all.”

Which is why I was now fighting with my boyfriend in the foyer of my uncle’s house, with a dead body in my bedroom, a little girl crying in my uncle Deacon’s arms, and a welt on my forehead the size of a hard-boiled egg.

“You want me to what?” Rob squared off with me. It pisses me off that when we did have an argument, looking him in the eye was impossible. Rob was six foot two; I’m five foot six. Five and a half really, but I lie. He was also double my width, courtesy of lifting weights, and he had the build of a former USC linebacker.

“I want you to look the other way while we take little Destiny to the ranch.”

“I can’t do that, Jack. I’m a cop—a detective. I do that and I lose my badge. This is a crime scene.”

“Technically, it’s not.”

“And how do you figure that?”

“Well, I called you, as the man I sleep with. I did not, technically, call the police. So…if Deacon takes her out to the ranch, and you and I wait here for the police, all you would have to say is you never saw Deacon and Destiny.”

Rob’s gray eyes seemed to darken like two storm clouds. “You are not going to talk me into this.”

“You know I am, so why don’t you just give in?”

Rob clutched the sides of his temples and gritted his teeth. “Jack, the day I met you, my entire universe stopped making sense.”

“When I tell you everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours, you will thank me for hiding her.”

Rob looked from me to Uncle Deacon, to Destiny, and back to me again. He sighed with resignation. “Fine. Deacon, you can take the girl out to the ranch. But if after hearing Jack’s little story I decide it’s a bad idea, I’m going out there to fetch her back again and take her to social services.”

Deacon looked over at me, and I nodded. I kissed Destiny on the forehead and whispered, “I promise we’ll look after you.” Deacon gingerly carried her in his arms, came back and took her backpack and things, and left the house.

Rob looked down at me and reached out to move my hair off my face. “You need to put ice on your forehead. You probably have a concussion.”

“Probably. The room’s kind of spinning, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

“Yeah…well, my head’s spinning, too. This story better be good, Jack. You have twenty minutes. Then we dial 911.”

“Fine. And aren’t you going to ask me to marry you?” Rob asked me to marry him about twice a week. We live in Vegas, and he just wanted to go over to the Little White Wedding Chapel and have Elvis marry us. But I told him I wasn’t marrying him until my father could walk me down the aisle. And considering Dad still had four years left on his prison sentence, Rob and I looked to be semiengaged—I wore his pear-shaped diamond ring on my left hand—for a long, long time.

“No,” he snapped, crossing his well-muscled arms. “I am not going to ask you tonight. Something about a dead body in my girlfriend’s house takes all the romance out of it. Start talking, Jack. Remember, twenty minutes.” He looked at his watch.

“Okay,” I said. “Here goes.”

Two nights before, I tried to avoid staring at forty pairs of perfect breasts. Naked breasts. As much as I tried to tell myself, “Jack, you’ve got two breasts, same as all of them,” it was difficult not to stare as I made my way backstage at the Majestic Casino’s show.

And actually, that wasn’t true. I had two breasts, all right, but they most certainly did not look like any of the breasts on any of the six-foot-tall showgirls. Some girls have all the luck. Either that or all the silicone.

I knocked on the dressing room door.

“Come on in,” Crystal’s voice sang out from inside.

I opened the door and stepped into a pink nightmare. It looked like someone had thrown up Pepto-Bismol on everything from Crystal’s velvet couch to the walls. Crystal sat, removing her false eyelashes—which looked like black furry caterpillars sitting on her eyes—and wearing a short pink silk kimono.

“Jack,” she said, then turned around and flung her arms wide.

I walked over and leaned down to hug her. “God, it’s good to see you.”

“Did you catch the show?”

“No, sorry. I was at the gym until late.”

“You have to come some night. The special effects are amazing. I actually fly at one point.”

“I thought you were scared of heights.”

“I am. But you know, the show must go on. Break a leg. The whole nine yards. I just suck it up and do it.” The glitter on her cheeks made her look like a fairy princess.

“How’s Destiny?” I asked, referring to her five-year-old pride and joy.

“Oh, just great, Jack. She’s so smart. So cute. Here’s her latest picture.” She pointed and tapped with a long French-manicured acrylic fingernail at a photo taped to her mirror.

“Wow! God, I haven’t seen her since diapers.” I leaned in to look at the little girl whose long hair was pulled into two braids; she had big brown eyes and a wide, innocent grin.

“Yeah. She’s getting big. A lot’s changed, hasn’t it, Jack?”

“You could say that.”

In the nearly four years since I last saw Crystal in person, she had, as she put it, “really hit the jackpot this time,” and fallen in love with Tony Perrone—the same Tony Perrone who owned the Majestic Casino, a television station, a fleet of planes and real estate from one side of the United States to the other—whose five-carat yellow diamond rock she wore on the ring finger of her left hand, though they had never got around to setting a date, and in whose twenty-million-dollar mansion she lived. He was listed in Forbes as among the top-500 wealthiest men in America. Under his tutelage, Crystal had undergone enough plastic surgery to transform her into a walking, talking human Barbie doll. She had also been taking French lessons from a private tutor, and after this season, would quit as the star of the Majestic’s show to become a regular old Vegas housewife—albeit one who drove a Ferrari worth $200,000, had a private zoo in her backyard, complete with giraffes and Bengal tigers, and whose walk-in closet (more like a walk-in apartment) contained 862 pairs of designer shoes.

In those same four years, my father had been sentenced to prison for racketeering, after being framed by the slimy boxing promoter Benny Bonita, and I had moved in with my uncle Deacon as everything I once owned was sold to pay for my father’s defense. Not that it did me—or Dad—any good.

“I have to talk to you.”

“That’s what you said on the phone, and that’s why I’m here.” I sat on a pink velvet tufted ottoman.

“Jack,” she whispered. “The Mob is trying to get to your fighter, Terry Keenan. And if you get in the way, they’ll kill you. They’ll kill anyone who gets in the middle of it.”

My uncle Deacon and my father were the only two brothers in boxing history to hold championship belts at the same time—my father as a middleweight, my uncle as a heavyweight. Together, the famous Rooney brothers owned a training facility for fighters nestled in the foothills of the Nevada mountains, and a gym in one of Las Vegas’s less-savory neighborhoods. When my father went to prison, I tried to take his place. I was raised in a boxing gym and know as much about fighting as any trainer. Terry Keenan was one of our fighters, and in four weeks, on New Year’s Eve, he was scheduled to box for the heavyweight championship of the world.

“What the hell are you talking about, Crystal?” She was nursing a white wine spritzer, which sat on her dressing table. Before Perrone took her away from me and all her friends, she liked Wild Turkey.

“Benny Bonita and Tony had a secret meeting. I heard shouting. Tony didn’t realize I was in the wine cellar. I crept up the stairs and could hear everything. Every word. They have something on Terry Keenan. I’m not sure what, but it’s big. They want him to take a dive in round five, and they don’t care who they have to kill to make this fight go the way they want it. Bonita wants to take over all of your dad’s fighters. Some high rollers and some big-time bookies want to see Keenan lose. In round five to be precise.”

Crystal had serious conspiracy-theory issues. She thought everyone from Elvis to Liberace was beamed down in Area 51. UFOs, alien abductions, JFK, even Princess Di’s death, if there was a conspiracy theory, she embraced it. Despite Tony’s Pygmalion transformation of her, she still got most of her news from the National Enquirer.

“Crystal, Tony Perrone has a reputation as a ruthless businessman, and there are whispers about the Mob, but I can’t see him doing business with the likes of Bonita.”

Benny Bonita was the loudest, brashest, most crooked, most obnoxious fight promoter in the history of a sport with brash showmen—with the biggest pompadour toupee to match. He also framed my father, and I hated him with a passion. But as much as I hated him and wanted to buy into Crystal’s theory, Tony Perrone was too smart. He would be careful not to have more than a hint of the Mob around him. It would be bad for business—bad for his gaming license.

“I’m sure of what I heard, Jack. Swear to God. Bonita said something like ‘I should have taken care of the other brother—and that kid of Rooney’s, too.’ He meant you. That’s when I panicked.”

“Crystal, I don’t know if there’s any need to panic. This is a brutal sport. People do a lot of trash talking. It’s part of the whole game. Put it from your mind. Keenan will fight Bonita’s man, and he will win. And he’ll win here in the Majestic’s arena. I can’t wait to rub Bonita’s face in it.”

Crystal stared at me, her long platinum hair falling to her waist, her eyes a cross between blue and green, perfect cheekbones (implants), perfect nose (nose job), perfect teeth (porcelain veneers). Surprisingly, only her breasts were real. “One of these days, Jack, that stubborn streak of yours is going to get you in big trouble.”

“Come on, now, Crystal. It wouldn’t be the first time. And it sure won’t be the last.”

“You hope not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you just hope it won’t be your last.”

The next afternoon Crystal had shown up on my and Deacon’s doorstep with her daughter in tow.

“We need to hide out here for a few days,” she had said. Her Ferrari looked to be packed with expensive luggage. Her suitcases probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

“Please tell me you didn’t confront Tony about Benny Bonita,” I said as I led her and Destiny into the house. She towered over me in the stiletto heels she always wore. We were a study in contrasts. She was tall, I was short; she was a platinum blond, and I had black hair with a lot of unruly curl in it; she had those blue-green eyes and mine were dark brown; and most of all, she had the build of a bombshell, and I had the build of a lean fighter.

“I didn’t have to confront Tony. He accused me of eavesdropping. Said I was acting all weird. He grabbed my wrists and asked if I overheard him in his office. I blamed the way I was acting on the pair of panties the housekeeper found in our bed. She washed them and put them in my drawer. But they weren’t mine. My ass isn’t that big, the bastard.”

“So which was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were you acting weird because he was cheating on you or because of Benny Bonita?”

“Benny. I’ve caught Tony cheating before. How do you think I got this rock?” she asked, waving her diamond in the air.

We retrieved her suitcases, and I showed her upstairs. Deacon’s house was no twenty-million-dollar mansion, but it was a palatial luxury house. My bedroom suite had been done by some fancy decorator Deacon hired. He wanted it to be masculine, yet inviting, whatever the hell that means. My sitting room has a butter-cream leather couch and recliner, a French country table and Tiffany lamps. My bed is a king-size four-poster, and my bathroom has a tub big enough to swim in. On the walls and shelves, though, are my things. Pictures of my father when he was Golden Gloves champ, photos of me, him and Deacon taken from when I was a little girl and was hanging out in the gym, one of us at Disneyland, and one on a trip to New York City. On the wall hung my father’s middleweight championship belt.

“So you left Tony?”

“I told him I wanted to get away. But really…I keep hearing him on the telephone, very angry, talking to Benny. I know he is. Tony’s intense, but he’s not a screamer. But that day with Benny, he screamed. Loud. Something’s going on, and honestly, I don’t want to be there when whatever it is happens. I told him I was going to visit an old friend and that I’d be back in a few days. I need to think this all through, Jack.”

“Look, I’m no fan of Tony Perrone. He’s got an ego the size of the Grand Canyon. However, you’ve said all along he’s a good father figure to Destiny. And I still don’t think he’d get involved with Benny in any kind of illegal scheme. Maybe the meeting was about the terms of the fight. About the arena. About percentages. About the cable rights.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, look, my house—technically Deacon’s house—is your house.” I leaned down to look Destiny in the eyes. “I wish I had some toys for you to play with. I don’t even have an old teddy bear. When I was your age, I was already going with my father to the boxing gym. I played with punching bags, and one of the trainers made me my own jump rope. But no dolls.”

Destiny, wearing a pink backpack, smiled up at me.

“I brought some of her favorites,” Crystal said, unzipping a big bag and pulling out a Barbie doll.

“You like Barbies?” I asked Destiny.

She nodded but didn’t speak.

“She’s kind of shy,” Crystal said.

“I don’t suppose they have a Boxing Barbie.” I looked at Destiny. She giggled slightly and shook her head.

“One of our fighters has a match tonight so you’ll have the house to yourselves. Let me show you around. Here’s the bed. You take mine—you and Destiny. And there’s the bathroom. Clean towels are in the linen closet. I’ll sleep in the guest room. This way, you two have the sitting room so she has a place to play. I don’t have any food to offer you two, but tomorrow I’ll get up early and go to the grocery store. All I have is leftover Chinese. And you know Deacon, he still does that juicer. You’ll hear it whirring at all hours. You know that thing is strong enough to juice a human head, I think. If you want fruit, or raw carrots, I can bring some up. That’s what he lives on. That and fresh salmon.”

“We’re not really hungry.”

“Okay. I’ll get some other food tomorrow. What can she eat?”

Crystal laughed. “She can eat the same food you and I eat.”

“Oh. Well, what does she like to eat?”

“Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets, French fries…Cheerios. She likes blueberry yogurt, the kind with the fruit on the bottom.” All of a sudden, Crystal started crying.

“It’s okay, Mama,” Destiny whispered.

“Yeah, Crystal. It’s going to be okay. Just chill for a couple of days. Listen, I’m going downstairs to let Deacon know you’re here, okay? Why don’t you freshen up or change into your swimsuits and go for a dip in the pool.”

“It’s actually time for The Wiggles.”

“The what?”

“It’s a TV show. Her favorite.” Crystal picked up the remote and turned on my plasma-screen television, clicking through to the program.

“I didn’t even know I had that channel on my cable,” I said, shaking my head. Then I left my sitting room and went down to talk to Deacon, who was sipping some sort of brown-green liquid.

“What the hell is that?”

“Wheat grass.”

“Gross. Hey, Deacon?”

“What?”

“Crystal’s upstairs.”

“Crystal? Well, Lord, it’s been a while since we’ve seen her around.”

“She’s here with her daughter.”

“How old is her child now?”

“Five. Listen, they’re, um…I don’t know. She’s on the outs with Tony. Something’s up. I told her she could stay a few days.”

“If she needs money, help, we’re here for her.”

I looked at my uncle. He hadn’t lost any of his thick black hair. His eyes were a warm brown, and his nose had a tilt to the left, courtesy of “Left-Eye” McGill, a boxer Deacon had squared off against a long time ago. “I was hoping you’d say that, Deacon,” I whispered, and leaned down to kiss him on the top of his head, grateful for him. His given name was Nick, but he had found God somewhere along the way and became a minister by mail-order ordination. He was also the high priest of all things boxing, so the nickname fit.

I looked at my watch. “Dad should be calling in about twenty minutes.” I opened the sub-zero refrigerator, which was very clearly delineated. Two shelves for Deacon, stockpiled with okra, kale, parsley, wheat grass, carrots and piles of apples to use in his juicer. Two shelves for me, barren except for Chinese take-out boxes, Coke and a bottle of tequila chilling on its side. I opened up various cartons of takeout, sniffing each one.

“This one’s gone bad,” I said, dumping it in the trash. “But I think if I microwave the chicken and cashews from Tuesday night high enough to obliterate any bacteria, I’ll be okay.”

Deacon rolled his eyes. “I don’t know how it is you ain’t dead yet. I can see your gravestone. ‘Killed by Old Chicken.’”

“But I’m sturdy stock. Grandma lived until she was eighty-eight.”

“I got my hands on you too late. By the time you came to live with me, your father had already turned you into a junk-food eatin’, trash-talkin’, poker-playin’ hellion.”

I gave him my best you-are-so-full-of-shit look. “Deacon, you play poker with me.”

“Yes, but I do not curse like a navy seaman when we’re playing.”

I popped my Chinese food in the microwave, heated it and began eating out of the box. Ten minutes later the phone rang, and I ran toward it.

“Yes…I’ll accept the call…Dad?”

“Hey, Jack, how are ya, kiddo? Good to hear your voice.”

“I’m doing okay.”

“How’s Deacon?”

“You know, lecturing me about my taste for Chinese.”

“Best food on the planet, especially the second day. What I wouldn’t give for Chinese takeout right now.”

“If I could, I’d mail you some.”

He laughed his hollowed-out laugh. He was counting the days until his release—four long years from now. “How’s Keenan look?”

“Good. He’s in great shape, and Deacon says next week we’ll go into lockdown mode, have him move out to the ranch. That way we can keep him from that flaky actress he’s dating.”

“Is she still talking about having a baby with him?”

“Yup. I’m sure it’s a ploy to get at his multimillion-dollar take for this fight.”

“He needs to dump her. He’s too smart for that.”

“Let’s hope so.” Both my father, who was a boxing legend himself, and Deacon had watched too many of the guys they trained fall in with, as Deacon called them, “fast women and phony friends.” We all thought it was pathetic when people like Mike Tyson ended up declaring bankruptcy. Entourages, flashy clothes and cars. They bought into the life, and it ended up leaving them destitute with only fleeting memories of the good life.

“Want to talk to Deacon?”

“No, that’s okay. Tell him that Keenan needs to stop leading with his left every time he’s going to throw an uppercut.”

“Okay.”

“Listen, there’s a line of guys here waitin’ for the phone. Bye, Jack.”

“Bye, Dad. I love you. See you next visiting day.”

“Love you, too.”

He hung up, and I felt my spirits sink. My father was framed. Sure, everyone says that whole “I’m really innocent” routine, but in my father’s case, it’s true. We even know who did it: Benny Bonita. Which was why, more than anything, we wanted Terry Keenan to win and decimate his opponent Gentleman Jake Johnson. We may not have been able to prove my father was not trying to extort Benny Bonita—it was the other way around—but we could plaster his fighter’s face on the canvas and prove, once and for all, that the Rooney brothers—and one Jackie Rooney—were the best trainers and managers in the world. Even from prison my father was a better trainer, a better man, than the oily Bonita.

Later that night, Miguel Jimenez’s face had the consistency of raw beef. He sat, shoulders slumped, in the locker room of the arena.

“What happened, Miguel? Look at you. You have bruises on top of bruises. You look like the friggin’ elephant man!” I snarled.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He wouldn’t look at me, his dark black eyes darting away from mine.

“Oh, you’re gonna talk about it. Something happened in that ring.”

My uncle Deacon said, “Leave him alone. The kid feels bad enough he got knocked out without your big ol’ mouth rubbing it in, Jacqueline Marie.”

When my uncle uses my given name—instead of calling me Jack like the rest of the world—I know he means business.

“Fine. Just go shower, Miguel.”

I shook my head and stormed out of the locker room. Deacon followed me.

“Jack, Miguel’s just a kid from the barrio. He got an attack of nerves. He had an off night.”

I wheeled around in the hallway outside the locker room. “That was no off night, Deacon. It was a dive. He took a goddamn dive!”

Deacon stared me down. Suddenly, I saw a flash of recognition go through him; his eyes changed almost imperceptibly. He shook his head. “My God…I…Lord, I think you might be right.”

“And I know who’s behind it.”

“Bonita?”

“Has to be. You know, Crystal keeps going on and on about Tony Perrone and Bonita joining forces to take over our fighters, and she says they have something on Terry Keenan. They want him to go down in round five. She said she heard them. She’s got this whole conspiracy thing going on.”

“Yeah, but she thinks she was alien-abducted during puberty.”

“I know. But she says she heard them.”

“Why would Perrone mess with Bonita? I mean, sure, allow the fights to be held at the Majestic, but get involved? Get his hands dirty?”

“I don’t know.” I suddenly doubted the whole thing. “Maybe Miguel did just have an off night.”

“Let’s just go home and think about all this before we go confronting Keenan—or Miguel.”

“All right. I feel sick to my stomach, anyway. What a lousy night.”

The two of us had ridden to the Las Vegas Metro-dome arena in Deacon’s Mercedes. We drove out of the city of Las Vegas toward our home. I planned to try to get Crystal to think harder about exactly what she’d heard happening in Tony Perrone’s office.

As we drove into our gated community, the houses sparkled with their outdoor lights twinkling beneath the Nevada sky. Deacon had taken his boxing earnings and endorsement deals he and my father did—a series of commercials for razors, and a popular one for Cadillac—and invested it all in Vegas real estate before the big boom hit. He had enough to live on in style for the rest of his life.

My uncle and father pretty much raised me together. Deacon never married nor had children, so it seemed as if I was his just as much as my dad’s, the way he doted on me. He never fell for fast women and phony friends.

My father, on the other hand, had no phony friends but loved cheap women. He was saddled with me as a full-time father when my mother, whom he married in a Vegas quickie wedding, decided to divorce him equally quickly after I was born, leaving me behind, and moving to Hollywood with a B-movie producer she met while cocktail waitressing. I don’t remember her, and frankly, I never missed having a mother, except when it was time to buy my first bra. Deacon and my father stood in the department store arguing over whether I should get the sexy black one (my choice—I wanted a boyfriend), plain white cotton one (Deacon’s choice) or the sports bra (Dad’s choice).

“Deacon, maybe we should have Big Jimmy around for Crystal. Just in case all this stuff she’s saying is true.”

Deacon nodded. I could tell he was still thinking about Miguel.

Big Jimmy was our cornerman and a former motorcycle club member. He was also Crystal’s last boyfriend before Tony Perrone. He still loved her, I think.

As we pulled into our driveway, Deacon said, “I forgot to turn on the outside lights.”

“Light’s on upstairs,” I said, nodding at my bedroom window.

Deacon parked the car, and we got out and walked up to the front door.

“Christ,” I whispered. “It’s open a little.”

An uneasy feeling settled over me, and I looked at Deacon. Then we cautiously stepped inside. Two goons stood in the foyer, holding Destiny, who was kicking and clawing like a feral cat.

Deacon punched the one without Destiny powerfully in his sternum, sinking him to his knees with a loud grunt. I took aim at the other one, but he held Destiny up in front of him. She shrieked—loudly.

The goon Deacon punched was now leaning forward, almost to the floor, clutching his gut and gasping. I grabbed the brass lamp from the front hallway table and brought it down on his head. Then I turned and kicked the other guy in the balls. He doubled over for a second, then popped up madder than before. Sticking Destiny under one arm like a sack of flour, he reached out with his fist and tried to punch me in the face, managing to land a strong blow on my forehead.

But I didn’t spend my life in boxing gyms for nothing.

I held both my hands up in a boxer’s stance and ducked from his next blow. Then I delivered my own right hook to his jaw. Swinging around with my left, I connected with his nose, which spurted blood as he screamed in pain. He dropped Destiny, and I scooped her up.

Boxing is a sport of kings. And gentlemen. Apparently, no one told him the rule about fighting fair, because he withdrew a semiautomatic from a holster at his waist and fired several rounds as I dived for cover into the den and overturned the coffee table to protect Destiny and me. She was screaming again. Deacon tackled the gunman. The guy on the ground stirred and rose unsteadily to his feet.

“Give up the kid, and you won’t get hurt,” he shouted out.

“Fuck you!”

“One more chance…then you will get hurt. All we want is the kid.”

Destiny looked up at me and clutched my arm.

I was trapped. I knew they would come into the den and shoot me unless Deacon overpowered them both. I heard fighting, the sounds of fists against flesh, and I peeked over the table. The guy with the gun was now on the floor, courtesy of my uncle, his gun clattering across the hardwood.

“Wait here,” I whispered to Destiny. Then I took a brass urn and hurled it, catching the second guy in the head. I leaped from behind the table and screamed, “Get out!” at the top of my lungs, rushing up to him and kicking him in the stomach. Deacon was fighting the second guy as if it was a title match. The bad guys fought back, blow for blow, but Deacon definitely wore them down, and I was hurling anything I could at their faces. Eventually they backed out the door and ran to their car. Deacon and I decided not to give chase, and instead came over to Destiny.

“You okay?”

She nodded, and I picked her up and handed her to Deacon so he could hold her tight and calm her. He shushed her and rocked her gentle as a teddy bear. I remembered when he used to do that for me.

“Crystal?” I looked at Deacon in a panic and went running up the staircase.

I prayed she was cowering in my bedroom, though I couldn’t imagine her giving up Destiny without a fight. I went to my room and pushed open the door.

She was in my bedroom, all right. With a tourniquet around her arm and a needle hanging out, her big blue-green eyes staring straight up at the ceiling.

Rob looked at me as I finished telling him everything that happened. “You know, I could have dated a schoolteacher, a nurse, a librarian. Someone with a nice, quiet profession. But no, you have to be involved with the most crooked sport on the planet.”

“Deacon and I aren’t crooked.”

“No. But my guess is after tonight, you’re both as good as dead.”

Chapter 2

Rob called 911, and while we waited, we got our stories straight. Yes, Destiny had been at the house that afternoon, but she wasn’t there now. Perhaps they should begin their search with Tony Perrone.

“See,” I said to Rob. “Tony has the money to pursue custody. Crystal never named Destiny’s father, so he’s the closest thing she’s got to one. But, on the other hand, he may be the one who murdered Crystal.”

“Now, wait a minute. She’s got a bag of heroin up there and a needle hanging from her arm. Those two guys may have been up to no good, but they didn’t murder her.”

“Don’t you watch Law and Order, CSI?”

“No. I have too much to do keeping track of my fiancée to watch TV.”

“Girlfriend.”

“Fiancée. You accepted the ring. It’s just a long engagement, given we don’t want a wedding at the state penitentiary.”

“No. He has to walk me down a real aisle.”

“Fine. Let’s just call you my girlfriend for the moment, okay? So what are you saying? That they forced her to do heroin? Come on, Jack. This was just a bad scene all around.”

I poked Rob in the chest. “Listen, Crystal didn’t use drugs.” I felt a choked-off sob rising in my throat at the use of the past tense when referring to her.

“I’m not trying to denigrate your friend. But when was the last time you saw her?”

“Today.”

“No, before that.”

“It’s been a couple of years. But we spoke on the phone often.”

“She was living the high life in that mansion. You don’t know whether or not she was also living the high life. She could have been a user and you didn’t know about it.”

I crossed my arms. “Not Crystal. She never even smoked pot. Nothing. She was chicken. In high school, she knew this guy who smoked a joint laced with PCP and he went crazy. And she just never tried drugs. It was totally not her, Rob. Besides…I…I stared at her there on that bed, on my bed. I put a…” Suddenly, what I had been through caught up with me, and I felt the tears starting to come, so I willed them away. “I put a blanket on her. I couldn’t bear to see her there. Cold. And one thing I didn’t see? Track marks. Her arms were as porcelain and beautiful as the rest of her. Unmarked.”

Rob looked at me, then ran upstairs. When he came back down, he said, “I’m not sure what kind of mess you’re in, but you’re right about her arms.”

We heard the sirens approaching.

“Rob, when I solve her murder, I will get even with whoever did this to her. And if I’m right, I think all paths will lead to that snake, Benny Bonita.”

“Look, this isn’t Nancy Drew, Jack. Let me handle this. You worry about Destiny. Poor kid. Do you know what, if anything, she saw?”

“No. She’s shaken up, and she knows her mother’s dead. But at that age…I don’t know if she gets that it means Crystal’s never coming back.”

“Okay, I’m giving this a day or two, tops. At some point, you’re going to have to give up Destiny. We have to talk to her. We have to get her seen by a child psychiatrist. Have to find out who her legal guardian is.”

“And if it’s Tony Perrone, I can tell you, you’re getting her over my dead body. And I mean it. You’ll have to kill me to get her.”

“You’re always saying ‘You’ll have to kill me first to get me to marry you without my father there,’ ‘You’ll have to kill me first to get me to meet your parents.’ One of these days, Jack, I’m going to take you up on that offer!”

“The vein in your temple is pulsing.”

“Shut up!”

We heard several car doors being slammed, and suddenly my house was overrun with police and two guys from the medical examiner’s office.

“Detective Carson?” Another detective, this one in a cheesy gray jacket with stains on the lapels, reeking of cologne, approached us.

“Yeah,” Rob said, and stuck out his hand.

“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 was technically half my father’s, though we’d transferred the title to me to avoid anyone trying to come after it to pay legal bills.

“I’m looking for Jack Rooney,” he had said, surveying the gym full of fighters. The scent of stale gym socks and sweat permeated the air. I’d grown up in the stench of windowless gyms, and I was used to it after all this time.

I stopped punching the bag and turned to face him, out of breath, my arms aching slightly. I clumsily pulled the mouth guard out from between my teeth. “You’re…looking…at her. My name’s Jacqueline, but everyone calls me Jack.”

Keenan’s blue eyes narrowed. “Son of a bitch! No one told me you were a girl.”

“Woman,” I corrected him, less winded. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone set up a fighter like that as a joke. Miguel Jimenez came looking for a guy, too.”

“Well, I sure as hell am not training with a woman,” Keenan seethed. He stood about six foot two and was in superb shape, from what I could tell as he crossed his arms across his chest, his T-shirt sleeves bulging at the biceps.

“Suit yourself,” I snapped, and turned back to what I was doing, punching the bag more forcefully. As he walked away, I muttered under my breath, “Fine, asshole, don’t train here, then. You and that pretty face of yours will soon regret it.”

And regret it he did. Terry Keenan was back three months later, his beautiful face—big blue eyes, two dimples, a solid chin and a smattering of boyish freckles across his nose—now just a tad less beautiful since his nose had gotten broken, twice.

And that was how Terry Keenan came to train with me and Uncle Deacon, and now we were poised for the biggest fight of all our lives—the heavyweight championship of the world in four weeks.

“Get off the ropes!” I screamed at Terry. I looked at my uncle. “Can you see what happens when he gets backed up against the ropes like that?”

Deacon and I were standing on the ground, looking into our boxing ring, where our best chance at a title was sparring with a fighter by the name of Rock Morrison. Deacon had his arms folded, his face stony as he studied our two boxers. Deacon wasn’t a screamer. I was. I would yell from the corner or scream “fake left,” “jab right” or even a desperate “just fucking hit him!” Deacon, as befitted his nickname, which implied a near-biblical wisdom in the ring, studied fighters and videos of matches, and taped sparring sessions, poring over them time and time again until it became clear what our boxer was doing wrong. Then he made a pronouncement, like Moses coming down off the mount with two tablets of stone.

“All right, guys,” I shouted at the fighters. “Break it up. Catch your breath.”

Deacon finally spoke. “Son…” He motioned to Terry Keenan, wanting him to come closer to the ropes.

“Mmph,” our fighter responded, his mouth guard still in place. He walked to us and leaned over the ropes, sweat dripping down his face.

“The good Lord gave you two legs, Terry. Both of them work just fine. But you’re always relying on just one. Change up your footwork.” End of pronouncement. Deacon was done for the afternoon.

“Terry, you heard him,” I said. “Work out with the jump rope and then shower up. We’ll look over some tapes tonight before dinner.”

Terry nodded at me. That pretty face was unusual for a boxer, and his upcoming opponent, Gentleman Jake Johnson—whose face was decidedly less pretty—had offered to permanently make Terry’s face ugly in all the prefight trash talking. Now Deacon and I both, privately, wondered if Keenan had also gotten another kind of offer—to take a dive. Benny Bonita couldn’t be trusted, and though we believed in Terry, he had an enormous family. His seven brothers—and one sister—all seemed to think Terry was the ticket to the big time. We wondered if that meant that an even bigger paycheck, courtesy of a bribe from Bonita, was awfully enticing.

Deacon and I headed out of the gym and over to the ranch house, walking over sand and passing small cacti and scrubby-looking bushes. The ranch house was a rambling building with ten bedrooms. It had been a brothel once, and after that, it had been an actual ranch of some sort. I think the former owner had gone from hustling hookers to rustling ostriches.

I opened the front door and went into the large den, where Destiny sat watching a show with a bright purple dinosaur.

“Hi, Destiny,” I said, sitting next to her and reaching out to brush a stray hair from her face.

“Hi, Auntie Jack.”

“How are you doing, kiddo?” Dumb question. How was she supposed to be doing? Her mother was dead, and she was stuck with me and Deacon at a boxing camp while we figured out what to do.

“Okay. Uncle Deacon says Mommy went up to heaven.” She said it very matter-of-fact. Deacon said children didn’t grasp the permanence of death until ten or eleven.

“Yeah…Mommy is in heaven, sweetie pie, which is really sad. But you know what?”

“What?”

“You get to have a guardian angel. Honey, she is going to watch over you.”

Destiny leaned into me, burying her face near my belly. I’d never spent much time with kids. In fact, though I felt badly for her, inside I was realizing the enormity of hiding her. I expected at any moment a phalanx of cops and FBI agents to come swooping down to grab her—and I would get a nice cell to match my father’s.

“Destiny, honey…do you miss Tony?”

“Uncle Tony? Kinda. Did he go up to heaven, too?”

“No.” Though I suppose to some people, Vegas is kind of like heaven. “He’s back at your house.”

“Did you know I have a pet tiger at our house? I couldn’t pet him, but Uncle Tony let me name him.”

“What’d you name him?”

“Tigger.”

“Cute.”

“He’s huge. As big as one in the jungle. Uncle Tony told me he could eat me in one big gulp.”

“Probably could. Did you spend a lot of time with Uncle Tony?”

She shrugged her tiny shoulders and shook her head. “Uh-uh. He was always very busy, Mommy said. I wasn’t s’posed to bother him. But sometimes the three of us did stuff together. Or Mommy would take me to his work to visit him.”

“Did you like visiting him at work?”

“Kinda. I drew pictures on paper in his office, and then the three of us would go out for dinner.”

“What’s your favorite dinner?”

“Chicken nuggets.”

“I think I know how to make them,” I said without enthusiasm. “But Big Jimmy does the cooking out here. I’ll ask him if he can make you some.”

“Big Jimmy and I made cookies.”

“Really?” I knew he was a softie.

“Uh-huh. He used to be Mommy’s boyfriend. She always talked about him.”

“She talked about him? I didn’t know that.” I thought about how Crystal left Big Jimmy. She wanted the lights of Vegas to shine on her, and Big Jimmy wasn’t part of that scene. If she hadn’t left Big Jimmy, she’d be alive and holding Destiny instead of me.

The phone rang. I leaned over to the end table and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Jack, it’s me.”

“Hi, Rob.”

“Listen…Babe, what I’m hearing…the syringe…it had a fingerprint on it. Not Crystal’s.”

“How long can I keep hiding you know what?” I looked down at Destiny.

“I’m not sure. Not long. But for now, keep that kid safe, while I figure it out.”

I stroked Destiny’s cheek. “Like I said, you’d have to kill me first, Rob.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Chapter 4

Benny Bonita made Don King look modest. And, quite frankly, he made Don King look like he had a better hairdresser.

However, expensive, flashy suits and ugly pompadour aside, the reason I hated Benny Bonita was he had worn a wire two years ago in a sting that made it appear as if my father was taking a bribe to have one of his fighters throw a match. But my father wasn’t doing anything of the sort. My father was trying to catch Bonita in his little scheme. It was just Dad’s unfortunate luck that he had a cop named Conrad Spiller on his side—a drunken oaf he played poker with who screwed up the entire matter. And Benny Bonita had the chief of police on his side—a slick son of a bitch named Lawrence Dillard. Which meant Dad got busted and Conrad got a desk assignment prior to early retirement, and I got broke hiring attorneys. It also meant I hated Benny Bonita with every fiber of my being.

And that evening, about an hour after I tucked Destiny in bed, Benny decided to show up at the ranch. With five bodyguards.

Perhaps bodyguards isn’t the right term. Donald Trump has bodyguards. Dumb blond pop stars have bodyguards. Benny Bonita had five linebackers who served hard time in prison. At least that’s how they looked. And they didn’t ring the doorbell like the Avon lady. They sped up to the ranch in two black Hummers and almost drove through the front door.

Deacon, Big Jimmy, Miguel, Terry and Eddie the Geek, another of our trainers who insisted on wearing glasses like Buddy Holly, hence his nickname, were sitting in the den watching a TiVo’d episode of All My Children. Don’t ask. Deacon got all the guys hooked on it years ago. He has a thing for Susan Lucci. Now they all have a thing for Susan Lucci.

“Good Lord Almighty! What was that?” Deacon jumped up, hearing the Hummers crash into a fence.

I raced to the front of the house and peered out a window. We had security lights that were activated when someone drove up the driveway, so the front of the house was lit up like the Vegas strip. “It looks like Bonita and several of his choirboys.”

Deacon, Big Jimmy and the rest of them joined me in the foyer. Big Jimmy was packing a gun of some sort he always wore strapped to his ankle. Deacon opened the front hall closet and pulled out a rifle, and I looked for something big and heavy to beat someone over the head with—should it become necessary. And with Bonita, there was a good chance of that. I settled on a nine iron out of Deacon’s golf bag.

“Not my lucky nine iron!” he shouted at me. “Are you crazy, girl? Grab the wood club.”

I traded out the nine iron, and Terry and Miguel adopted fighter stances. Eddie the Geek, all five foot two of him, opened the door cautiously. Benny and his goons strode in like they owned the place.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in. Six oil-slicked rats.” I sneered at them.

Bonita turned to face me. He had pockmarked skin and wore his trademark black Ray•Bans so I couldn’t see beady little eyes. “Jack…Jack…still a little girl in a man’s game. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet, like your dear old dad?”

I raised the golf club and considered just slicing at his knees. I wanted to see him fall to the ground and beg for mercy. Deacon raised his rifle and pointed it right at Bonita’s chest, causing the well-built bodyguards to all draw their weapons out from beneath their suit jackets.

“Looks like we have an old-fashioned standoff, Bonita. So why don’t you and your boys get lost?” Deacon said.

“I’ve come for something that’s mine, and I ain’t leavin’ till I get it.”

“Not a chance,” I snarled. I just wanted him to give me an excuse to club him. At that moment, I had never hated another human being so much in my life. I had visions of Crystal sprawled on my bed.

Terry Keenan was the voice of reason, coming to stand between Bonita’s thugs and Deacon and me. “Come on, fellas…Jack. Let’s leave the fightin’ for the ring. Everybody put away your weapons.” He stretched out his arms and looked from one to the other, urging calm with his steady blue gaze.

Slowly, Deacon lowered the rifle. Bonita nodded almost imperceptibly at his guys, and they reholstered their weapons. I lowered the golf club—only slightly.

Bonita’s voice was gravelly. “Now, look, sweetie, your friend Crystal took something that wasn’t hers to take. And I just want it back.”

I was completely confused. He obviously hadn’t come looking for Destiny, then. What had Crystal taken? Money? Drugs? I had to keep an advantage over him by pretending I knew what he was talking about.

“You’ll get your…stuff…back when I have assurance that Destiny will be left alone. I’m not having her raised by Tony Perrone.”

“You think he wants that brat? This is a lot bigger than your pretty little head can understand. You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

“In fact, I do. A lying, cheating snake.” I walked closer to Bonita, and raised myself to my full height to stare him in the eyes—or at least in the Ray•Bans. I could smell faint garlic on his breath.

“I’m only an honest fight promoter.”

“Spare me your sarcasm.”

“Look, it’s an ugly business, Jack. And it’s no place for a lady.”

“You referring to me or Crystal?”

“Both,” he snarled.

That’s when I’d had enough. I punched Bonita in his soft belly as hard as I could, twisting my fist upward and making sure I landed in the vicinity of his diaphragm, knocking the breath out of him. Bonita was a fight promoter. And unlike my father and uncle, he really wasn’t a fighter—not a very good one at least, even in his prime. And he was soft. Too many women, too much booze and cigars and good casino buffets. Too much time surrounded by big burly guards who did his dirty work so he didn’t have to do it himself. Just had to give the order.

Quick as lightning, he reached out a fist and grabbed hold of my hair, pulling me close to him. “Wouldn’t bother me one bit to watch you die. You’re just another Rooney in my way.”

He released me and shoved me toward my uncle. Deacon wrapped a protective arm around me. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

“Yeah.” I glared defiantly at Bonita. “What my uncle is saying is you’ll get yours, Bonita.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged and signaled to his guys to leave. “But chances are you won’t be around to see it.”

“Don’t count on it.”

His bodyguards closed ranks around him, and they headed out the door. “Remember, Jack…” Bonita gave one last glance in my direction. “I want what’s mine.”

With that he shut the door, leaving me confused—about what he wanted—and worried. It hadn’t gotten past me that Terry Keenan was the one to step between Bonita and me. I wondered whether that was out of concern for me and Deacon or a secret new loyalty to Benny Bonita.

“Is nothing sacred?” Deacon asked. “Comes to a man’s home in the middle of All My Children, interrupting a man’s private time to relax.” Switching gears, he said, “I wonder what Crystal took.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Deacon, can I have a word with you?”

He nodded at the rest of them. “You all go and rewind to where we left off. And Eddie, how’s about you reheat some of that jambalaya from supper? I’ll be joining you in a moment.”

Deacon followed me down the long hallway to the office. Walking in always filled me with a swarming sense of sentiment. I once told myself it felt as if a beehive had taken residence in my belly. While Deacon and I both had boxing memorabilia in the house, the office here at the ranch was where pictures of my life played out in living color—albeit some of that living color including putrid shades of tie-dye overdose in the outfits my father and Deacon wore in the sixties. There were pictures of the two of them as champs. But once I arrived on the scene, there were pictures of the two of them with me in diapers, with me the first time they took me fishing. Always, in every shot, Deacon was on my right and my father on my left. It was as if I had two proud fathers—and two overbearing ones the first time I went out on a date. Other pictures were of them the day they bought the gym, and then this camp. They were so proud. They had come up from nothing, two boys from a poor family in rural California. Then their father had dragged them into Los Angeles while their father and mother had struggled to find work. Deacon and Dad had dodged bullets on their way to school. And it wasn’t much better in the projects at night.

Like many boxers, they had turned to the sport as a possible way out of the projects. Both brothers urged each other on. They were inseparable. And they both made it big and eventually relocated to Vegas. I was so proud of the two of them. The office was a shrine to all they had achieved—including raising me.

“Deacon…why did Terry intervene?”

“He didn’t want to see anyone hurt.”

“It could also be because he’s on Bonita’s side.”

“I don’t think so, Jack. Not Terry. He’s worked too hard to get to this place. To have a shot at the title.”

“And no one’s ever thrown a title match before?”

Deacon sighed.

“Would you have, Deacon? If the price was right?”

“Never. Your name is all you have in this world. You can be stripped of your possessions, even sent to prison, but an honest man has his name, his reputation. And I had a reputation as a fighter. I could walk proud.”

“What about Terry, though? All those brothers and sisters looking for a handout. They call here with their problems—can I borrow a thousand for a down payment on a new car, my kid needs braces. Whatever. One even called begging for money so he could start this ‘sure thing’ business selling water filters or something. Multilevel marketing. A scam.”

“Yeah, but remember when Terry came back? He wanted to win so badly he could taste it.”

Terry had swallowed a lot of pride to come back and train with Deacon and me. As it was, a lot of people in the fight biz assumed once my father got sent to prison, the Rooney fighters would leave in droves. After all, they were used to training with two champions. Not one champion and one girl. Terry had walked out just at the sight of me. But when he came back to the Rooney camp, he was willing to train with a girl, willing to do anything to win.

“Maybe you’re right, Deacon. I don’t know. Since Miguel lost so badly, since Crystal, I’m paranoid as hell.”

“Me, too,” he said quietly. “How’s Baby Girl?” He had taken to calling Destiny that.

I shrugged. “How could she be doing? Her mother was murdered, she’s sent out to the desert to a camp with a bunch of virtual strangers. She’s suffering, the poor thing.”

“You know sooner or later Rob’s going to come out here with an order to take her. If we’re lucky, he’ll be able to do it without all of us getting arrested.”

I looked on the wall at a picture of me when I was Destiny’s age. Maybe I had grown up in gyms that reeked of sweat, watching men try to beat each other up, but it was an idyllic childhood in many ways. I had always known I was loved.

“I’m going to check on her.” I kissed Deacon on the cheek and left the office and walked down the long hall to the bedroom Destiny and I shared. We had decided after her trauma, it would be best if she could look over and see me there next to her at night.

The light was on. She insisted on it, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to argue with her after all she had been through. The TV was on, too, “for company.” She was watching the Wiggles video, which was her favorite. She watched it over and over and over again. I was getting rather sick of The Wiggles. Five men in asexual turtlenecks singing songs and prancing about with an octopus. Kind of weird.

She was still awake.

“Hey there, sweetie pie. Can’t sleep?”

She shook her head.

I sat next to her and stroked her cheek. “I know things are really scary right now. Really confusing. But I promise you I’m going to take care of you. Do you know that, at least?”

She nodded. “My mommy said you were her best friend. You and Big Jimmy were her two favorite people in the world—except for me. I was her favoritest favorite.”

I smiled. “What about Tony? Wasn’t he one of her favorites?”

She scrunched up her face. “She said it was complicated.”

“Yeah, well, with grown-ups, sometimes life is pretty complicated.”

“I saw him, you know.”

“Who, honey?”

“That bad man. Tonight. I heard the crash, and then I looked out the window. I saw him and hid under the bed.”

“Benny Bonita?”

She nodded, wide-eyed.

“Don’t worry, he’s gone.”

“I know,” she whispered. “He scared my mommy.”

“How do you know that?”

“She said so.”

I slid down so that I was lying next to her on the king-size bed. “You know, let’s not think about all this right now. Let’s get some sleep, okay?”

“Can we say prayers?”

My father was steadfastly agnostic. Deacon filled my head with the Lord this and the Lord that. And as for me, praying wasn’t my strong suit. “Sure kid. You have one in mind?”

“No. I just say God bless Mommy. And God bless Big Jimmy. And God bless Auntie Jack. And God bless Uncle Deacon. Amen. Oh, yeah. And, God? Please make Mr. Bonita stay far, far away.”

“I’ll say amen to that,” I whispered, and held her hand until she fell asleep.

Chapter 5

The next morning, early, Destiny woke me up. I groaned. “Kid…it’s way too early to get up. Why don’t you watch those wiggle-worm guys.”

She giggled. “The Wiggles.”

“Yeah. Them.” I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head.

“I’m hungry.”

“Go get yourself something to eat,” I said from under the covers.

“Like what?”

“Deacon will make you a smoothie.”

“He makes gross ones.”

“There’s leftover jambalaya in the fridge.”

“Yuck. For breakfast?”

“I’ve been eating cold leftovers for breakfast since before you were born. They’re good for you.”

“Breakfast is s’posed to be something like cereal or pancakes.”

“That’s a conspiracy dreamed up by Mr. Kellogg and Mr. Post.”

“You’re not very good at baby-sitting,” she said.

So the little pip-squeak guilted me into getting up. I pulled on a robe and shuffled out to the kitchen where Deacon—who always rises before dawn—was sipping a smoothie the color of what the devil spewed in The Exorcist. It was enough to make me gag.

“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 have no idea.”

“Did you check her suitcases?”

I looked at him. “That must be why you’re the detective and I try to get men to punch each other’s lights out for a living. Come on.”

I jogged toward the house, and Rob tagged along behind me. Quietly, we let ourselves into the house and moved down the hall to the office. I didn’t want Destiny to see us going through her mother’s belongings. Deacon had hidden her luggage in a locked closet. All of them were Louis Vuitton suitcases that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

On top of the first suitcase was a huge makeup bag. I started with that, going through each cosmetic—and there were a lot of them. I opened each compact, each jar of wrinkle cream, each tube of cleanser, everything. I smelled each one, thinking maybe they concealed drugs. All the cosmetics and skin products were from La Prairie—one of the most expensive cosmetic companies in the world. But nothing else.

“Damn!” I looked at Rob.

“Keep searching.”

We went through suitcase after suitcase, each piece of clothing.

“Feel along the hems,” Rob told me. “In case she sewed something into the lining of a skirt or a pair of pants.”

“Like what?”

“Like a safety deposit box key or the key to a locker. I don’t think she’d really be so dumb as to have whatever it is on her.”

After an hour of careful fingering of her clothes, we came up with nothing. Now that the suitcases were empty, Rob and I began moving our hands along the seams, feeling the bottoms, looking for any indication there was a secret hiding spot.

“Nothing,” I said disgustedly. I looked around at the floor where all her flashy-trashy Vegas clothes lay—sequins and tight low-ride jeans, stiletto Jimmy Choos. Suddenly, I felt tears overtaking my eyes. “This is all that’s left of a life, Rob. This and Destiny.”

He reached out to rub my shoulders. “Baby, she touched a lot of lives. And that’s always going to be with you and Deacon and Big Jimmy.”

“Yeah.” I wiped at my face. “And when I find out who killed her, his life isn’t going to be worth shit.”

“Jack…” Rob’s voice was warning and measured.

“Like you said. This whole thing stinks like rotten fish. And I’m not going to let her die without a word, just swept under Tony Perrone’s carpet.”

“Did I ever tell you that you scare me sometimes?”

“You tell me that all the time.”

“Yeah, but this time, Jack, I really mean it.”

Chapter 6

Rob left in the afternoon, with a passionate kiss and a promise to continue looking into Crystal’s death. I took Destiny and went over to the gym to see how training was going.

We had two full-size boxing rings out in an enormous barn. Jimenez was in one, and Keenan was in another. They were sparring with two up-and-coming boxers—one a kid from the barrio in L.A. and the other a refugee from Kosovo whose real name was unpronounceable to most of the guys, so they called him Sovo.

Big Jimmy came over to Destiny and me and picked her up. In his arms, she looked even tinier.

“Now, don’t you get scared, Destiny. They’re pretend fighting,” he soothed.

“It looks like they’re really fighting.”

Gazing into the ring, I knew she was right. Sparring has a lot of heavy breathing, spitting, snorting, and the sounds of glove smacking flesh and boxing shoes shuffling on canvas, same as a real fight.

“Well, Destiny,” I said. “It may look real, but in sparring, they’re practicing for a real fight, and so they don’t try to hurt each other quite so much. Sometimes someone has a lucky shot, of course. But mostly they’re just practicing.”

“Why do people fight?”

“Fight? Well, this is boxing. And it’s a sport. Just two guys, two athletes, highly trained, in a ring, seeing who can outbox the other. And sometimes the two boxers don’t like each other, but it’s not like a real fight. I mean, there are rules and judges and even doctors standing by to stop the fight if it looks like someone’s really gotten hurt.”

I watched her as she stared at the men in the two rings. Every once in a while, she winced. I’d grown up in gyms. I can’t recall if I ever winced, though Deacon told stories of how, when my father and he used to fight, the other brother would take me along to the match, and I would cover my eyes if they started losing. But eventually, Deacon said, I stopped covering my eyes and started yelling at the judges if they scored the fight incorrectly—or at least in a way I didn’t agree with.

Big Jimmy patted her back. He was one-quarter Cherokee, and the size of a tank. His hair was jet black, almost blue, and his face, considering how many fights he’d been in, was regal with wide slashes of cheekbones and a straight—for a boxer—nose. Big Jimmy was a motorcycle-club member years before, a real hell-raiser. He drank too much, and my father told me he sold crystal meth and was just bad news. He’d been arrested for something, and he had to do some community service to get his record expunged. So he took a job helping out at my father’s and Deacon’s summer camp, working with under-privileged kids. From that experience, he got in the ring and began channeling his anger and energies into fights. He did pretty well, too, until he tore his rotator cuff. That’s when they offered to make him their cornerman. He had great instincts in the ring. And he was the best cornerman in the business.

He became part of our inner circle. And then, when we all met Crystal that night she was a ring card girl, he was a goner. He really loved her. He brought her flowers, he held open doors, and she told me that in the bedroom, he rocked her world. But no one ever gets wealthy being a cornerman. Hell, not many people get wealthy training fighters. It was my uncle Deacon’s investments that fed his lifestyle. Of course, now that Terry had a real title shot, we all stood to make some serious money.

I concentrated on Terry for a while, yelling instructions from ringside. “Dance more. You’re planting your feet too much. Stop dropping that left shoulder and telegraphing your left hook…jab…jab…work on the body, tire him out.”

Destiny and Big Jimmy came over to ringside, too.

“What are you telling them?” she asked.

“You ever study spelling words or anything in school?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, you study words to learn how to spell. I study boxing films to make Terry a better boxer.”

“What do you mean? Like you go to the movies?”

“Kind of. Now, the best boxer who ever lived, probably, was Muhammad Ali. Graziano, now he had a punch that could knock a man from here to Kansas. But Ali was the whole package—footwork, strong punch, tireless, and with so much charisma, honey, he could light up a room. And do you know what he called himself? What his nickname was?”

“No.”

“The Greatest. As in the greatest fighter…ever.”

“Wow!”

“Right. So back in the den, we have hundreds of videos of fights and matches, of the most brutal, most grueling fights, of the fights that were over in twenty-seven seconds…”

“Twenty-seven seconds?”

“Yeah. There was a time when Iron Mike Tyson had the world fooled that he was invincible. And he took down everybody with these shots that just—boom—brought them down quickly. So we study him. We study all of them. And then we have to figure out what Terry and Miguel are doing wrong and what they’re doing right. And we build on that.”

“I don’t think I’d want to be a boxer. It would hurt.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes it does hurt.”

I looked at her and memories flooded back of the first time I saw my father badly beaten.

“Hey, Princess,” he whispered, his voice barely a rasp. He was in a hospital bed, and Uncle Deacon used his status as reigning champ to bend the hospital rules so that I could go to my father’s bedside. I was seven years old.

“Oh, Daddy.” I rushed over to him and flung my head on his belly and hugged him. He winced.

“You probably shouldn’t hug Daddy right now,” Deacon said, coming over to me and patting my back.

I lifted my head and took a small step backward, tears blurring my vision. “You look terrible, Daddy.” His head was bandaged where he had sustained a deep gash over his left eye. He had a concussion. His face was swollen and bruised. It almost wasn’t recognizable as a human face in spots. Oxygen tubes were inserted in his nose, and he had two different IV lines flowing into his veins.

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