The one requirement they all had to have was rudeness. If they were nice, he wasn’t interested. It was the rude ones that had to go. It was a fucking public service, just like taking a drunk driver off the streets.
He’d given her a hefty dose of the sedative because he didn’t want her waking up before they got back to Sacramento. She needed to stay asleep for a good five hours. Six would be better. He’d stash her in the giant cooler he’d bought for the company years ago. Hank had thought him crazy, but he’d told him that he liked to bring home quartered elk if they had an overnight and he’d gone hunting.
Hank was an avowed vegetarian. Just the possibility of red meat in the cooler ensured he’d never even look. If he only knew.
He zipped up the bag, straightened his wig, then checked the time, pleased. He was ahead of schedule. He actually had real time to kill. He headed back into the bar, where Miss Mint Julep was ordering another bourbon. He sat next to her and ordered a club soda.
“What happened to the bitch?” she asked companionably.
“She was going to drive her rental to the airport.” He rolled his eyes. “She was three sheets to the wind, so I called her a cab. The rental agency can fetch the car later.”
Miss Mint Julep lifted her glass. “To gentlemen.”
He smiled at her and did the same. “To nice ladies.”
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2:15 P.M.
The sound of male voices speaking in low tones woke Daisy from her nap. She wasn’t a sound sleeper under the best circumstances. Being raised by a paranoid father had seen to that. They’d always been on alert, always ready to take up arms or run.
It had been exhausting. And a hard habit to break.
Pushing her hair from her face, Daisy rolled out of bed and straightened the sweats she’d put on after the shower she’d taken after calling her father.
After witnessing Gideon handle and comfort her father. Holy cow.
She was sure that he didn’t realize what a feat that really was. Frederick Dawson had always seemed indomitable. Unbreakable. A force of nature. Someone she’d both admired and . . . feared a little, if she was being honest. He’d carried an intensity that had been, at times, overwhelming.
But he’d always loved her. She’d never doubted it. He’d loved them with a fierceness that she’d accepted but never quite understood. Not until recently. Maybe it was time, maybe maturity, maybe even the fact that she’d gotten a few hours’ sleep, but Daisy woke thinking of her father in a much more compassionate light.
How much guilt must he have carried on his shoulders for robbing them of ten years of their lives? She needed to call him. Put his fears to rest. She loved him, no matter what.
She pushed at the accordion-style screen that separated her bed from the rest of the open-plan apartment. The only interior door led to the bathroom, so it only took a blink to see that the two men talking were Rafe and Gideon.
Funny, though. She hadn’t been even the slightest bit frightened at waking to male voices. She could take care of herself, as she’d shown last night, but it was nice to not need to. For a little while. And that was what Rafe and Gideon had given her—that bubble of safety.
The two were sitting at a card table that Daisy recognized as Rafe’s. They’d moved her sofa and chairs so that there was room for the table, which was covered in bits of paper.
Gideon sensed her first, whipping around to look at her over his shoulder. He scrutinized her, toes to face, then nodded, seeming satisfied with whatever he’d seen.
“You slept,” he said.
Rafe looked over and smiled lazily. “Hey, DD. Sorry if we woke you. I wanted to do this upstairs where we could be quiet, but the Fed insisted we keep an eye on you.”
Daisy smiled back. “I’m grateful to the Fed. I was able to sleep a little because I knew he was here.”
“The Fed is sitting right here,” Gideon said, rolling his eyes. “The cop brought food.”
Rafe opened the plastic container and the aroma of meat pie tickled Daisy’s nose. “Pirozhki,” he said.
Daisy’s stomach gave a sudden growl and she plucked the container from his hands. They were the bite-sized meat pies that had been her favorites when she was a little girl. “Your mom was busy this morning,” she said with a fond smile.
“She wanted to make you feel better,” Rafe said gruffly. “She felt helpless.”
Daisy stared at the little pies for a moment, remembering. “She made these for me after my mom died. She’d hold me on her lap and sing to me, then she’d feed me pirozhki.”
“I know,” Rafe said gently. “I didn’t know if you remembered.”
“I remember everything your folks did for me back then.” She blinked back tears, because she was not crying in front of Gideon again today. “What was your favorite?” she asked him. “What did Irina make for you when you were sad?”
Gideon looked startled. “Um . . .” Then he smiled. “Honey cake. Luckily she always has one made.”
“That’s good, too.” She narrowed her eyes at Rafe. “Any news?”
“Only that we found your friend Jacob. He was on his ranch and had been at the time of the attack. It was verified by the local vet. They were birthing a foal. All night.”
“At least Jacob doesn’t have to worry about SacPD breathing down his neck.” She pulled a stool over to the card table and sat down to see what they were doing. Munching on Irina’s offering, she studied the hundreds of pieces of paper that covered the table. Some were square-ish, most were rhombuses. Or rhombi? she wondered. “Rhombi,” she decided aloud. “Definitely. Why are you—?” She cut off her own question when she realized the answer. “The cut-up photo from last night. These are the pieces?”
Gideon nodded, respect flickering through his eyes that made her want to preen. “Yes,” he said. “Cindy Grimes, the forensics investigator from last night, is working on putting the pieces back together.”
“So that she can get fingerprints,” Daisy said absently. “Can you pass me a napkin, Rafe?”
Rafe leaned sideways, the apartment small enough that he could reach the dining nook table from where he sat. “We thought about clearing your stuff from the table but I wasn’t sure if you were in the middle of a project, so we brought a card table down.”
Daisy glanced at the sewing machine and pottery wheel that took up her entire dining area. “In between projects,” she said, then returned her attention to the scraps of paper spread across the card table. “How long did Cindy think it would take to assemble the pieces?”
“Several days at least,” Rafe said, “because she’ll need to do it under a microscope. But she made a copy of them for us. Said if we wanted to help, she’d be grateful.”
Daisy wiped her fingers on the napkin that Rafe put in her hand. “Thank you,” she said to him, and then began rearranging the pieces. “Cindy enlarged them.”
“She did,” Gideon said. “What are you doing?”
Daisy didn’t look up. “The puzzle.”
Gideon put his hand over hers. “Stop it. I had those pieces sorted.”
She blinked up at him, momentarily riveted at the sight of his face, only inches away from hers. His green eyes had grown dark with irritation. He was very, very pretty, but apparently not so good with puzzles. “Um. No, you didn’t.” He opened his mouth to protest and she popped a pirozhki between his lips. “Eat and watch. I may appear to be a little flaky.” She gestured to the clutter of the apartment, which she suspected he’d only seen as an unfinished, undisciplined mess. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but he wasn’t entirely right, either. “I may not be good at pottery or a lot of other things, but there are some things I rock at. Puzzles is one of them. Now hush and let me work.”
Rafe took the bowl of meat pies from her hand, leaving her free to rearrange the pieces twice as fast. “Living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere affords few recreational opportunities,” she murmured, her gaze focused on the hundreds of pieces, looking for color variations and shadows. “We did a lot of puzzles.”
She sorted and squinted and sorted some more, losing track of time as she moved the pieces around until a portion of the picture started to come together. The woman’s face. “Miriam,” she said softly.
“Eileen,” Gideon corrected in a whisper.
She glanced up at him. He was watching her, and this time his respect was unmistakable. “I thought her name was Miriam.”
He frowned, then nodded. “Right. You’d left by then.”
“I was thrown out,” she said petulantly.
Gideon’s lips twitched. “Sorry about that. Her church name was Miriam, but her mother called her Eileen. That was the name on her birth certificate. She hadn’t been born in the community. She was renamed once her family entered.”
“Community,” Daisy repeated. “You mean the Eden church?”
Gideon sucked in a breath, his head jerking around to stare at Rafe. “You told her?”