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Sam.
    “Claire, I think what Sam is trying to say is we can’t sit by and watch you risk your life. We love you.” Chris paused for a breath. “Anyway, Mom would force-feed us nothing but steamed broccoli for a month of Sundays if anything happened to you.”
    She chuckled at that. She didn’t know how he managed to do it, but Chris sucked the tension out of a situation better than anyone else in the world. God, she loved him.
    Really, she loved all of them. But they had to learn she could take care of herself. She’d graduated from college, earned her MBA, had her heart pulverized and started her own restaurant, a successful one at that. Was it a baby sister thing? Was it a girl thing?
    Who knew and who cared. It ended now. Today, she took care of them .
    Her fingers trailed through Onion’s fur, causing his tail to thunk on the ground.
    “Thank you all for coming out. I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. Hank, let’s get that report over with.” She glanced back at Jake still sitting on the porch steps. “My fridge is empty. Do you mind going into town to grab a pizza?”
    Jake ambled over to her side. “Sure. What do you like?”
    “Everything.”
    The smirk returned. “My kind of woman.”
     
     

Chapter Six
     
    J ake had no clue how he’d ended up as the pizza delivery boy. He’d started off the afternoon as the valiant protector. Now he sat in the King Pizza parking lot waiting for a large pepperoni. The scent of warm grease did little to distract him from the redhead who had somehow submarined his free will.
    Claire said jump and he asked how high. And he liked it. Damn. The old man would be calling him six kinds of a wimp if he knew, but he couldn’t put off checking in with his father any longer.
    “’Bout damn time you called.” The old man coughed. “Damn cigarettes. I quit two years ago, haven’t stopped hacking up a lung ever since.”
    He nodded as if his father could see him. “If you quit, how come you have a pack in the freezer?”
    “In case of emergencies.” The old man wheezed in a breath. “Enough with the pleasantries, what’s going on there?”
    “Ran into a bit of a snag here.” Jake relayed the case developments to his father. “What the hell could be on that phone and flash drive?”
    “This is crazier than a raccoon on meth.” The old man paused. “Let me do some digging on this end. In the meantime, you play it cool.”
    “Will do.” He paused, chewed his thumbnail and spit it out the window. “You eat today?”
    “Little of this. Little of that. You know chemo can’t kill my appetite.”
    Jake pictured the Francis Warrick of his youth. Tall. Strong. A Lucky Strike always dangling from his lip. Contrast that with the wisp of a figure he cut today. Damn. Cancer was a bitch. Lung cancer? The queen bitch.
    “Glad to hear it.”
    “Don’t need you to be glad. Need you to get this case in your rearview and get your ass back here. I can’t do it all, you know.”
    “I know.”
    “Good. Now give Burlington a call. He wants a progress report.”
    “Will do. Bye.”
    “What, you’re too big to tell your old man you love him?”
    “No, sir” Jake grinned into the phone. Dad had been all huff and puff as long as he could remember. “Love you, Dad.”
    “Love you too.” A cough rang through the phone. “Now get your ass back to work.”
    Jake hung up and flipped open the case file and found Burlington’s personal cell number. What the hell could he tell him? No parent wanted to hear their daughter’s killer spent his free time terrorizing other women. They had to be sick with grief. Jake wished he had better information to offer than he did.
    He’d worked with Burlington before, the guy was a pain in the neck, but no one deserved this. He pictured Burlington in his corner office. Short and skinny with Mick Jagger hair, the hedge fund manager thought of himself as a master of the universe. The fact he hadn’t saved his daughter must be