Knockout. Erica Orloff

      “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